Update Dominic - Part 5

The saga!

[dvduval]

dvduval:
Indeed I am missing a PR7 backlink!

I checked also with the same result. I'm starting to breath easier (but that could also be the coffee wearing off!)

Worth noting: It is highly unlikely Google will reduce the size of its index. Otherwise they'll get hit with a barage of those "enlargement" emails (if you know what I mean), and that would be embarrassing!
;-)

[steveb]

On the keyword I have dropped through the floor on -sj on, it is showing me moving from #6 for allinanchor:keyword to #24, about where I'm showing in the -sj results (on -sj I have gone from 19, to 23, to 26 in twenty four hours).

This is crazy since my anchor text has increased and I know the others have not passed me. The only thing I'm thinking could be is that my anchor text is usually a three word phrase, not a single word.

Could -sj be penalizing sites with multiple word anchor text?

There is no way on earth my site should drop twenty places on Google for this term (the most obvious one for the site in my profile). I have more links, better quality links, good anchor text (though the three words, not just one), two points higher PR and far better on the page content to grab keywords from than most of these others. I also am clean as a whistle.

I've gone up and down within the realm of plausibility for other terms, but for this one, this twenty point drop, its just not possible for me to fall behind some of these sites.

Google Guy, am I being penalized for that guy calling me "GoogleGuy's toady"?

[rfgdxm1]

Read my post above steveb. My main site's home page has totally dropped off the radar for the most important key word. Even though all backlinks are their. It just isn't reasonable I could fall below the top 10 or 20 (I'm was #4 last month) for that allinanchor SERP. It is a non-competitive word with few sites that would have it in the anchor text of links. Only possible conclusion is Google hasn't factored in the anchor text to that page. Sound like this may be what has happened to you. You can always pray to the Google gods along with me that your inbound anchor text will somehow make it in before the dance ends.

As for being GoogleGuy's toady, if true wouldn't that mean you'd get #1 on all SERPs you desired? And GoogleGuy, if you find his services as a toady inadequate, with the right incentives I'd be willing to offer my services as your obsequious lickspittle around here. ;)

[edited by: rfgdxm1 at 7:27 am (utc) on May 7, 2003]

[darkroom]

hey rfgdxm1,
I just noticed that finally i have someone to share my problem with. It seems that we have a common problem with our rankings. Hope it gets better by the end of this update.

[BikeMan]

Well for the keyword combo that I have been optimising for the link text seems to be the predominant factor affecting ranking. Content seems to rank very low on the scale as two of the websites ranking ahead of me have not been in operation for a while (1 year for one and 2 months for the other).

What I find really strange is links for competing sites from the same page are reflecting for competing sites but are not reflecting for my site. These links have been in place for a while.

Well hopefully things should improve.

[netnerd]

SO which one is nearest to www?

sj, fi, www2, www3 or what?

[rfgdxm1]

No way of knowing netnerd. Personally, I hope these SERPs from hell are far from complete.

[needinfo]

In this thread it was mentioned that sites added withtin the past 2 months are probably looking the worst right now on the sj and/or fi servers.
But surely older established sites which have done a lot of work on getting good quality links to their sites over the past 2 months will be in the same boat. Any comments.

[tigger]

I've not been keeping up with this as I'm just waiting to see what happens when everything stops jumping around, but I've got sites that have been around for 3 yrs and new ones just started and they're all bee affected the same way

[needinfo]

Thanks for that tigger.
I'm not getting too worked up about all this because when searching in my industry with 2 - 3 keyword phrases some on the fi server sites are being returned which are from the correct industry sector but their specific products are not what was searched for.

For example : Search for "blue big widgets" is returning sites on "green big widgets" and "yellow big widgets" in the top 5 positions along with sites on "blue big widgets" as it should.

It's almost as if the Google algo on the fi server is placing different levels of emphasis on different words in a phrase searched on.

[steveb]

I figure I was always sounding so pleased with Google that they might have decided that they needed to bring me down to earth.

Hmmm, "teoma toady".... better get my application in.

[lobshot]

I am seeing fresh tags on www right now, dated May 5. I don't recall seeing fresh tags during an update? Is this unusual?

[textex]

rfgdxm1 and steveb and everyone else including you GoogleGuy!

Today's check shows that one of my sites has jumped for my extremely competetive two word combo from #8 to #2.

But the same site dropped from #2 to #10 for a four word combo.

Normally I link with Title:
blue keywords - fuzzy green blue keywords - description

Can it be that the data is being restored from anchor texts not all at the same time. Like blue keywords has restored but not fuzzy green blue keywords?

The other thing I notice is that my sites that normally did OK have jumped up to top 5 positions for terms. Before they were in the 20's.

[Critter]

Speaking of Teoma...did they take some Wheaties or something? Jeeves is still in my site, getting a page every two seconds or so and is up to almost 20K (twice what Google crawled).

Peter

[promis]

Could it be that the Internet is growing faster than technology (and Google) can cope? We are still stuck at -sj (and fi from what we know). Other data centers have not been affected through day 3 since the GD started. Could it also be that the missing backlinks are victims of this technology shortage? GG was talking about tetrabites of data, in rather a heavy mood. Is all this really the product of a new algo for the sake of better search results or is it a "shrinking" algo for the sake of speed in coping with huge amounts of growing data? Remember my friends, much of this growth is because of the race for pagerank. Instead of concentrating on really good content many are buiding sites after sites and adding pages after pages to get more backlings, more achor text and higher PR. Just a thought I had after checking for the 1001th time the data centers...

[djgreg]

rfgdxm1, darkromm, steveb
same thing with some of my listings.
Curious: 2 sites which have nearly same number of backlinks. First Site is NR.2 for keyword1 , second site is nowhere to see for keyword2. But keyword1 and keyword2 are very realted to each other and used to have same competition and same number of results.
Before update both sites were Nr.2

[annej]

I even found a fresh date of May 6 in the serps on a page I just put up 3 days ago so the freshbot is indeed active.

[lazerzubb]

Oh Update, interesting:
Unanswered Messages [webmasterworld.com]

WebmasterWorld Google Forum News [webmasterworld.com]

Improving the Quality of Threads [webmasterworld.com]

Funny still no directory at www-cw and www-fi?

[wackmaster]

We've been analyzing results in server categories for -sj versus -fi, and find that the results on -fi are considerably more spammy - at least in the cat's we're reviewing.

Anyone else see something similar?

I have read thru all the strings on the -sj update (twice) <ergh!> but not with this question in mind, so please forgive if this has been covered...I can't bear to re-read it all for a third time.

[Felina]

Anyone notice yet if their expired domains that were under penalty have been brought back?
I'm referring to the ones that were automatically banned to due to previous registration not the spamming aspect.

[mrguy]

Isn't it kind of funny that after 5 days now, the SJ results have not migrated over to other 7 main datacenters that are shown on the Google Dance tool and that ww2 and ww3 are merely pointing to the SJ server and not serving up their own results. In recent dances, the results would start to migrate almost the same day it started.

I'm not even seeing the SJ results in the www server pop in and out anymore.

Hmmmm... Could it be the dance has only just begun and is not even close to being finished as some people think it is?

[netnerd]

my head hurts!

im doing well on the other data centres, but sj is killing me!

[power_iq]

mrguy, i think they are still testing the new algo! If the tests are completely we will see theh SERPS on all other DC, too.
Perhaps it will take a few Days!

Tom

[edneil]

In the past, it was easy to know when the update had started, the backlinks changed on www2 and 3. That obviously isn't strictly reliable anymore.

Now I think we are going to have to accept that if there is to be a monthly update there is one and only one way of knowing - Brett will change a thread title to 'the official update thread'

[Pegasus]

Which data centres are updated now?

I know SJ and FI are. Are there any others that have been updated?

[jimun]

Thanks for the post aways back for info on the dance tool its a time saver and has given more info learning about the data centers. Yesterday site at #2 for main keyphrase on www and all data centers except sj could not find my site. This morning at #3 on sj which shows up the same on www2 www3. Also got hit overnight by crawl and crawler googlebot a few times (my weblog does list the ip address). So far I am happy for what I see. :)

[wackmaster]

Pegasus,

Not sure what you mean by 'updated'...

Still see the old version of our site on -sj - so still an older index there it would appea r... are you referring to the filters being applied?

Also, would still love any comments on observations regarding -sj versus -fi. I definitely see differences ... hoping that the -fi data doesn't have the spam filters applied yet ...

[power_iq]

for my keys there are much more results on -sj then -fi.

[MHes]

mrguy

I agree, very early days. The serps on 1,2&3 could never go live or Google would be a laughing stock. I have university sites appearing within car hire searches! Many filters are due to be applied yet.... give them time and they will sort it out, I have every confidence in them..... (MHes drops to his knees)

[Pegasus]

wackmaster I'm wondering about which servers have been changed in any way (whether good or bad), from what they've been showing for the past month.

[amazed]

yes my impression is too sj gets cleaned a bit (not effectively though)

fi has less results in numbers but seems to have new data, try May 5, 2003

...must be testing...read a short while ago if the algorithm was ok, the data would be no problem?