Waiting on update Cassandra?

[DuhKid]

[webmasterworld.com...]

[eaden]

maybe because we don't know if it will be a Late March or April update, so we give it a code name.

[rfgdxm1]

Oh, no! Is Brett implying that we will all be doomed when the update comes? For those unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Cassandra was a mortal that was given the gift of prophecy, and then curse such nobody would believe her. The notable prophecy where she was not believed was that the people of Troy ignored her warnings it would fall in a war. Thus, is he predicting the update will doom us all, yet we will ignore it? ;) Actually, that doesn't make sense. Search engines are a zero sum game. For every webmaster on top, there is another on the bottom.

[DuhKid]

aahhhhh. I thought maybe he named it after an old hurricane or something. :)

[Brett_Tabke]

That's right eaden, DuhKid.

NFFC suggested naming the updates like they do hurricanes. One month male, one month female. Since last months was the Boston update, we figured this months needed to be a female name. We voted, and Cassandra won. Not much more too it than that. We just liked it.

There are several different meanings to Cassandra. Mostly it is Greek. Some various interpretations of it:

- Truthful
- Trojan prophetess or unheeded prophetess.
- the confuser of men
- She was given the powers of prophecy by Apollo
- Roman, She who is Ignored

[rfgdxm1]

According to:

[arthistory.sbc.edu...]

From the Greek language Cassandra translates as "she who entangles men", which is a bit different that a confuser of them. The rest Brett lists are derived from the legend of Cassandra in Greek mythology.

[getvisibleuk]

So which holidays are coming up for Google to update on? Will we have to wait aslong as the last update and do you think we'll see any special changes?

The only problem I see is the large use of the net at the moment for war information. Surely they won't try and wait for it to die down?

[AcesHigh]

April 3rd Mid Evening, Atlantic Time Zone.

This is the time and date of the next update.

[skipfactor]

You're 0 for 1 Aces. Hope you do better this shot. :)

[rfgdxm1]

>The only problem I see is the large use of the net at the moment for war information. Surely they won't try and wait for it to die down?

I doubt this would be relevant. Those looking for war news will flock to the major news portals, and the surfers know those domain names already. Google is what people use to find sites they don't know about. Google usage may in fact be down if people are glued to news portals rather than the usual surfing.

[salmo]

Any ideas of when the next update will happen, is it likely to be much later since the March one started so late in the month?

[John_Caius]

No-one (except perhaps one person...) ever has any idea, any inside knowledge or any ability to predict based on tea leaves, rats leaving the Googleplex or the colour of the evening sky. Aside from looking at logs and seeing whether you're still getting vigorously spidered, there's not much you can do. Just sit and be patient. Stop biting your fingernails and drumming on the table, write some more content for your site and start up a new link campaign.

[creative craig]

Usualy the freshbot stops crawling about 4 to 5 days before the update, that has been the pattern in the last few updates.

Craig

[Canary]

Nope - Disagree. I was seeing fresh dates during the last update :)

Could happen anytime although most seem to think April Fools.

[creative craig]

Hence the word usualy :)

[John_Caius]

and I've currently got about 30 incarnations of the freshbot spidering my site. Maybe that'll postpone the 500-post waiting-for-the-update thread for another few days...

[John_Caius]

Ok, so you can't even predict it based on the googlebot spidering. How's that link campaign going? ;)

[edited by: John_Caius at 1:36 pm (utc) on Mar. 31, 2003]

[creative craig]

This is what I was looking for :)

[webmasterworld.com...]

[MetropolisRobot]

Yeah GoogleGuy will tell us. He'll make you all sad because he'll say, "I think y'all are worrying far too early".

Kudos to the man who said.."use the time profitably, add more content, create a new link campaign"

Problem with update watching is that if things dont go well for you then you only have a few days before deepbot comes so no time to really make a difference for next time.

The update/dance you should be concerned with is not this one but the next one at this time. Deepbot has been and gone for this update and the results are already in the bag...somewhere.

[creative craig]

Usualy any time when I am asleep, I get into work and the update is about 150 posts old!

Craig

[bobmark]

Given how late the update and crawl were last month, I had thought - and posted - that this might be one of those 6 week or so gaps between updates.
Obviously I have no better knowledge than anyone else - and Google has occasionally crawled as late as mid-month and updated before month end - but the other pattern - i.e. the once a year or so 6-7 week gap between updates - has also happened in pretty much each year.

[Brett_Tabke]

>how do you know when the update is near?
>when Brett starts splicing the dozen "is it update yet" threads.

we are so are there ;-)

[rfgdxm1]

For the sanity of some webmasters around here, GoogleGuy should post whether or not they should take a few days off. ;) Only thing that I can say is I am still seeing fresh tags. This has usually been a sign of the update not being near.

[skipfactor]

GG's going to post the "take a few days off...". I can feel it, but I'm usually wrong here.

[brotherhood of LAN]

a high PR source says this about Cassandra

Cassandra -- ((Greek mythology) a prophetess in Troy during the Trojan War whose predictions were true but were never believed)

Looks like she needs more pagerank for the next update, which is going to happen on Wednesday ;)......

[rfgdxm1]

Or, perhaps he will announce the update is about to happen. He actually did that once, starting a new thread that a lot of sites that had been banned were going to be let back in that update.

[steveb]

The freshbot myth is an inexplicable one. I got freshbot (or deepbot) every day this year except two, and those two days were nowhere near updates. Freshbot visited every day of the last two updates. Look for other tea leaves.

[rfgdxm1]

>I got freshbot (or deepbot) every day this year except two, and those two days were nowhere near updates.

I think you misunderstand. The update has tended to be correlated with *fresh tags dissapearing* on SERPs, not freshbot spidering. The only problem with this as a predictor is fresh tags are also known to disappear at times when there is no update.

[waynet]

What are the odds that they will update tommorow on april fools day, but they don't change the number of backlinks that yahoo has, just to toy with us?

I can see it now:

is this the update?
no, I see the same backlinks...
but I see new serps....

It could drive us all mad... :)

[rfgdxm1]

>What are the odds that they will update tommorow on april fools day, but they don't change the number of backlinks that yahoo has, just to toy with us?

If you look at that chart in the URL in the first post, Yahoo backlinks go up some months, and down some months. Thus, I'd have to think it is possible that on some update the new backlinks are the same as last month. Thus, people would think there is no update when there was. However, an update could easily be confirmed checking backlinks of other sites.