Update Dominic - Part 2

[teeceo]

Continued from Part 1: [webmasterworld.com...]

---

Thanks to google for letting us peek into there database( they could very easy close that door to us)and a thanks to googleguy for "DONATING" his time to answer question(that he don't have to) and for keeping thing here (somewhat) calm. Also, thanks to all that work so hard to keep this forum going strong(I for one don't know how I would get along without it:). I could go on and on but, thats all I will say. Later.

teeceo.

[Critter]

I'm whole debate over -sj highlights one important life lesson, I feel:

Google depends on websites with good and relevant content.
Earning your living based on other people providing content for your search engine is risky business.
Your search algorithms can return garbage if you're not careful and the only person you have to cry to is yourself.

I'm glad this -sj thing happened...it underscores how important websites are to Google.

Truth is, if webmasters got P/O'd with Google they could easily do an exclude/ban of Googlebot en masse and Google would cease to be; other search engines would fill the gap.

Very important to realize what makes a SE great, and that's the content of the websites it crawls/ranks.

Peter

[edited by: Critter at 3:16 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[soapystar]

>"Im glad this -sj thing happened ... its a wake up call to all of us<

I NEVER ORDERED A WAKE UP CALL!

[mrbrad]

Good point Critter ... but lets be realistic here. A mass exodus from Google will never happen.
Blocking googlebot from your site is and always will be ... suicide.

[Dolemite]

Truth is, if webmasters got P/O'd with Google they could easily do an exclude/ban of Googlebot en masse and Google would cease to be; other search engines would fill the gap.

Riiiight...would you trust your competitors to also ban Googlebot, or just let them pick up the traffic/SERP positions you left behind?

I wish it was simple as that, then we'd have all the search engines by the proverbial balls, but the reality is largely the opposite and Google knows it. As if anyone needed to reach for an example, despite their all-important mission critical New Year's resolution of improving communication with webmasters, nothing has changed. If trying to glean something meaningful from GG's cryptic posts is communication, then I think I'll pass.

[Critter]

Remember a SE called AltaVista?

Never say never, things turn on a dime in the forum of public opinion; and especially on the Internet.

All it takes is one immensely popular service to block Google and G loses all its credibility. Could you imagine if you typed in "Slashdot" and the Slashdot site didn't show in the SERPs?

Or what if a big hosting provider blocked Googlebot? Pretty soon people would find out that "I typed it in at Google, but nothing showed up; then I went to X SE and I got it".

It doesn't take a lot to get something like that started if Google does something boneheaded...not that this is the case. My point is that Google relies on us, not the other way around.

Peter

[edited by: Critter at 3:37 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[MurphyDog]

Alta Vista, Alta Vista. It has a familiar ring to it, but I can't imagine it being used as a verb.

[mrbrad]

I used to think that by becoming a webmaster I was self employed and was my own boss. However due in part to the events of -sj last night I have come to realize that Google is now my boss. While Google doesnt time my lunch breaks or count my vacation days like my old boss did, at least my old boss would write me up a few times before punishing me :)

[Dolemite]

All it takes is one immensely popular service to block Google and G loses all its credibility. Could you imagine if you typed in "Slashdot" and the Slashdot site didn't show in the SERPs?

It doesn't take a lot to get something like that started if Google does something boneheaded...not that this is the case. My point is that Google relies on us, not the other way around.

Bad example...anyone who knows about slashdot probably doesn't need to search for it. If you were just looking for it, you'd also get several hundred thousand references to the site itself:

[google.com...]

I don't think any one or even any large group of popular sites could sit by and watch their competitors grow from Google traffic just to prove a point. There are a lot of sites out there that might not be around a month later if they saw their traffic drop by 50%. Just about every "niche" is filled several times over, and any site would be more than happy to move up a position because Joe Webmaster decided that Google doesn't love him.

[Critter]

MrBrad and Dolemite:

If you can create a buzz you don't need Google. (Although Google's a great and low-cost starter!)

If you can't create a buzz Google simply perpetuates you until a/ your lunch gets eaten; or b/ you disappear from SERPS.

Peter

[1milehgh80210]

Except a lot of the companies that created a -buzz- still need to have tons of advertising. (web, TV, print, whatever..)

[Critter]

Ya, like Google...remember that massive Google ad campaign of '98? You couldn't do anything without seeing Google somewhere...

And that SuperBowl commercial, Jeepers!

Peter

[edited by: Critter at 4:09 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[hightraffic10]

I think people need to calm down. Google is going to do what they want regardless of how much people complain or say how scared they are. Honestly webmasters are only a small percent of Google users and they are not trying to make us happy. People are not going to stop using Google because they are tweaking thier algo. Isnt this supposed to be a good thing? Making changes to keep the web fresh and rid of spam? Take a deep breathe people, we cant control what happens.

[futureX]

"we cant control what happens"

but we do... We are google...

[chiyo]

mrbrad wrote >>I used to think that by becoming a webmaster I was self employed and was my own boss<<

after a while you will find thats a fallacy. If its your own business the customer is your boss. ..and possibly your accountant ;)

In some ways, especially if you depend on free Google listings, Google is a customer...

[edited by: chiyo at 4:19 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[JudgeJeffries]

Very strange.
Been at #1 for two months on one phrase and now still at #1 on SJ, but at pre 2 months ago position #7 everywhere else.
Ideas?

[1milehgh80210]

just wondering..
if this was the real update, (don't think it is)
&
if the SERP's were this bad, (many are BAD, some are better)-----
would this cause
1.webmasters to jump on the spam-wagon en-masse?
2.searchers to abandon G for another engine because of a 1 month hiccup?
i.e. How delicate is the SE biz?

[GoogleGuy]

Critter, it wouldn't surprise me to see SJ results start to show up at other data centers soon.

[mfishy]

ARGHHH

[Critter]

OMG...that would mean I got completely dropped?

Why would that happen! My site's completely clean and I've increased the number of links to me!

Plus you crawled 10K pages last month!

Peter

[edited by: Critter at 4:43 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[hightraffic10]

hold on , here we go

[1milehgh80210]

better get over to adwords real quick :)

[GoogleGuy]

Critter, how old is your site?

[Critter]

Up since February 7th.

Peter

[mfishy]

GG, why would you even do the last deepcrawl if you were going to release results with backlinks from months ago?

[webdev]

Well I'm with you critter I would be very pissed off if this was the upate....my site has been doing well in Google for the past 12 months and on one particular key word every update up a couple of places to nearly the top.....looking at SJ im nowehere to be seen.....absolutely no dodgy tactics lots more decent links and always keeping things full of content.....

If this turns out to be the case then all of Googles so called decent ranking tactics are crap I'll start spamming as there's even a site above me on SJ with half a page full of dark purple on black keyword stuffing

[soapystar]

this is completley insane..i have an internal page showing 365 backlinks..all internal...my index page should have about 1000 external plus all the internals and shows just 177 backlinks...the index page has been dropped by ~5 for its keyphrase to #80 while the internal page which has no content and a bunch of links shows at #20 for that keyphrase.

RIP GOOGLE!

[Bio4ce]

If this is the update, you guys at google really FUBARED this one.

[mcavic]

GoogleGuy,

My site (was PR4, now PR3) is a few years old. In the current results I have 28 pages listed. In the last deep crawl, about 1000 new pages were crawled. In the sj results, I only have 15 pages listed - some new and some old.

?

[edited by: mcavic at 4:52 pm (utc) on May 5, 2003]

[mfishy]

Something seems to have been botched badly during the past crawl as sj displays really old backlins that are long gone and very few new ones

[GoogleGuy]

Critter, that's new enough that I would expect your site to do better as we bring in different backlinks. Bio4ce, we've tested SJ along a full spectrum of tests. But if people think that there are bad searches, drop us a spam report to tell us the search and how it got worse.