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!
;-)

[ncsuk]

LOL im going to laugh instead of cry because this is just too damn funny.

1 phrase of mine

was = #7
now = #285

YAYAYAY

[Jakpot]

Baloney!

[bether2]

Pegasus,

I only see different SERPs on -sj and -fi. It doesn't look like the new algo has migrated to any of the other datacenters yet.

Beth

[edited by: bether2 at 4:01 pm (utc) on May 7, 2003]

[ncsuk]

My best phrase as well has dropped 14 places but I seem to be getting more traffic because a lot of other phrases have come up.

Seems to be some kind of balance or intermediary point thing going on. Perhaps all the non relevant links have been even more discounted now and Google is only counting the best % of the links we have.

What percentage drop has everyone gone down by out of interest.

My links went from 130 ---> 3 so mine dropped by 96.1%

[swerve]

For my terms, -sj seems be exactly what -fi looked like yesterday (regarding rankings and the existence of a few new sites in the SERPS).

[ncsuk]

On www yesterday every one of my rankings went up and I was hoping they where going to stay that way.

Does anyone know any googlecouk datacentres for me to have a peek at?

[wackmaster]

<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. >

Got it... in that case, we see what you see ... -sj and -fi updated, no evidence of any others

<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? >

Yes definitely newer data on -fi, but more sloppy and spammy results. Let's hope the algo is closer on -sj ...

Truth is, until G updates -sj with all the filters, it's probably a waste of time to speculate on quality of results. Hope all the pain we're going thru is at least helpful to mama G!

[promis]

Total paranoia! My main big site dropped from PR6 to PR4 and another tiny site of mine with less that a dozen backlinks and never updated went from PR4 to PR5!. Main site has backinks from Dmoz and Yahoo!. Also backlinks from many PR6 and PR5 sites, mostly related content. All is legit in both sites, no hidden text, no guestbooks no duplicates nothing! GoogleGuy, is this PR final? This is worse than SARS!

[ncsuk]

SARS

S tupid
A nnoying
R anking
S ystem

Id say they where fairly similar. One takes you're breath away the other one just makes you feel like you've been punched in the chest.

[swerve]

For those those that may have missed this in another thread [webmasterworld.com]:

GoogleGuy: I'm expecting SJ results to show up at other data centers, then gradually over time we're going to pull in newer spam filters, backlinks, etc.

Critter: Is all the data from the last deepcrawl in -sj?

GoogleGuy: Um, I doubt it's all in there right now, Critter. I would expect more pages to be pulled in over time.

Dolemite: I'm taking it to mean that newer backlinks will eventually be factored in, so SERPs will change

GoogleGuy: You bet. Dolemite, I think there are still backlinks to be truly added in over time. My hunch is that as that happens, SERPs will change as a result.

albert: Is it possible to give us some rough time line?

GoogleGuy: albert, I just can't to commit to any future dates. If you think about the sheer magnitude of data to be processed, that's a lot of data--easily several terabytes. That's not the sort of thing you process in a day or two. But we'll be going through it as quickly as we can.

I have only taken selected quotes above, see the whole thread [webmasterworld.com] for the full dialog. From this exchange, it seems safe to make the follow assumptions (IMO):

1. -sj does does not contain the complete results from the deep crawl.
2. Pages from the deep crawl will be added to the index in coming days.
3. As pages are added, backlinks will be added.
4. (At least some) SPAM filters have not been applied to the index yet. Thus -sj is currently more spammy than the final index.
5. Given the preceding 4 assumptions, the SERPs of the final index could be drastically different from what we currently see on -sj (IMO).

[brendan]

Excellent summary Swerve I completely agree.

[Critter]

Hey! I was going to post that summary!

(But my cut and paste is broken)...

:)

Peter

[wackmaster]

Swerve: Yes, outstanding.

Hope any questions I asked about -sj versus -fi didn't throw anyone off.

What we're really looking at is the -fi activity ... trying to get a fix on what's going on there (OK, perhaps we have better things to do, granted).

Now that I take a step back, I think it's time for a walk on the beach.

I shouldn't drink martini's before noon, right?

[Perfection]

Regarding swerve's last post... EXACTLY!

Nothing else needs to be said. No complaints, no questions, no nothing. The sj results are far from complete, so what is the point of complaining about and questioning them when, GoogleGuy has said himself, there are still many changes to come?

[netnerd]

I dont want to think about it anymore!

I have wasted all day reading and following this when you are all quite right -sj could change a lot before it settles - if indeed it is the one that is used for www!

[kmtell]

this may be a stupid question...what's -sj and -fi? thanks

[HenryUK]

(Quoting myself) "I don't want to waste time reporting spammy results on indexes that aren't finished, but I'm keen to give my feedback as soon as it is likely to be valuable.
I presume it is currently pointless to point out spam on -fi, -sj, www2 or whatever - but I could be wrong."

response from GoogleGuy: "Timing matters less, HenryUK--feel free to send them in now. You'll want to include your nickname and something like "webmasterworld" or "googleguy," and feel free to include "sj" as well."

I couldn't agree more about waiting to see how it shakes out before panicking, but as you see from the exchange above in another thread [webmasterworld.com], GG is welcoming spam reports on the *current* sj index.

[reneewood]

I think what concerns me is that things should be on the tail end of "shaking out" and my homepage is still missing from sj. Did anyone else have a page listed in sj with a decent ranking at the start of the "dance", but have seen it disappear in the past day or so? Can I still be hopeful that it will return? Has anyone had a site disappear in the past 4-5 days and then had it reappear in the last 24 hours with its prior ranking? I'm just baffled. I've got two new pages that have never shown up in the SERPS before. But my homepage--*POOF*.

GoogleGuy....Throw me a bone....

[poet22]

No reason to worry yet. I don't see things at the tail end of anything. We are obviousely in a temp. holding pattern waiting for data to be added or catch up.

[wackmaster]

I'm not sure that things are "near the tail end of shaking out." Until we see the newer index data baked into -sj, I would guess that Google is not there yet.

Also, since the publishing of this last "update" was early (at least relative to recent expectations of May 11-ish), speculation that Google pushed this out to get reactions seems well founded...

If that's true, we could still be looking at days before it all shakes out (perhaps still around 5/11?), and that might also be consistent with GG's comments to date on Dominic...

That's my thinking anyway.

[c1bernaught]

I am now seeing my domain back in the index on sj & fi after the domain had been missing for the last couple of days. Still no sign of my keywords in the serps where I currently rank (www) top 3.

This domain was spidered in Feb. and added to the index in Apr.. It's clean and has good backlinks + text.

I am making the assumption that their are several steps left in the process for creating this most recent index and that when the process is complete I will once again be in good shape in the serps.

I understand that I may be assuming too much.

[cyberax]

this may be a stupid question...what's -sj and -fi? thanks

Kmtell, they are just two of Google's data centers, e.g.

www-sj.google.com
www-fi.google.com

HTH.

Paul

[edited by: cyberax at 9:11 pm (utc) on May 7, 2003]

[poet22]

Ok everyone, so I will be the one to ask. Everytime I see WACKMASTER post I cannot help laughing . What the heck does your nick stand for? Master of whacking or what? lol

[mrbrad]

reneewood:
My site had disappeared too but is now back in -sj with better rankings than before. In fact, my current rankings in -sj are much better than I would have ever hoped from Google.
However I will tame my excitement as it looks like more data still needs to be added. I wont jump up and down until I see it this way on www.

[rfgdxm1]

Oh where, oh where has my inbound anchor text gone? Oh where oh where can it be? My main site is languishing on page 2 for the most important keyword, from #4 on page 1 on www, because the home page hasn't been credited with almost all the inbound anchor text. Clearly evidenced by the allinanchor: search. All the backlinks are showing, so that isn't the issue. From what others have posted I am not the only one this has happened to. Doesn't look like the update has moved off -sj and -fi yet, so I can pray this is just a very slow update, and eventually Google will add the anchor text for this site back in. If not, both my site is hosed, along with Google technology.

[trillianjedi]

I personally hope they have taken the inbound anchor text part of the algo off. That solves the problem of keyword domain name spamming in one hit and puts the weight squarely back on content and surrounding text.

TJ

[wackmaster]

poet22, since you asked...

WACK
Function:  noun
Definition:  odd person
Synonyms:  eccentric, freak, nut, oddball, original

A nickname from some of my employees. I choose to believe it was given lovingly. ;-)

[mrbrad]

TJ:
I couldnt agree with you more!
However I think inbound anchor text that isnt the sites url itself should still count.

[rfgdxm1]

>I personally hope they have taken the inbound anchor text part of the algo off. That solves the problem of keyword domain name spamming in one hit and puts the weight squarely back on content and surrounding text.

By NO means have they done that. If they had, this site would be near the top based on PR and on page factors. The current #4 site on this SERP in -sj has NO on page text at all. The reason it is #4 is inbound anchor text links.

[abcdef]

Keep dreaming wackmaster... message 170... Whatever Google is up to, and they are not obligated to share it with anybody, it is not to secure the the blessing of listing sites before taking something new into real life on WWW.

That would be reverse thinking on the whole matter from Google's point of view, we would think.

And we're with mrbrad. We hope the sj/fi index resembles the final index in some big way, because our rankings our better on it. And, it seems some obvious spammers in our key phrases are missing from it as well.

Also, our listings/rankings in sj/fi are remaining stable from day to day, even if different from WWW. which itself is staying stable for us from day to day right now as well.

Let's here it for sj/fi. ha! (Now if that isn't self serving, don't know what is.)

Good luck, on this uptdate, to all.