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dvduval:
Indeed I am missing a PR7 backlink!
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!
;-)
So what would be the purpose of publishing results, if it was a test on either new or old data?
To get the feedback of listing sites? Can't feature that explanation as a good one.
We would guess that the results that are seen in SJ/FI and now apparently propagated to www2. and www3. are going to be the base point of a new update to come soon, and be propagated to WWW. That what we see now however isn't the finished product, that iterations and updates are still in progress, before propagation to WWW makes sense too.
back to lurking
There are two schools of thought here:
The "Oh My God, NO! " group
and the
"Just Chill Out, Work on Your Site" group.
I am in the first camp, and I have a statement for the self righteous second group:
Four of us at my company have eight months of intense labor and research invested here.
The changes that have displayed on G for the last two months are quantum leaps (e.g. placing page one, position one on a search term w/ 1.9 million results on one of the most competitive keywords on the net) and we felt like we were on our way to the top with almost all of our sites (some 40 in all that we optimize for our company's different products-right now showing at PR5 or PR6).
And, yes, I know the "test database" may NOT be the www results when all is said and done, but that's like saying to a patient "well, it looks like it might be cancer, but chill out...we need to wait til the final results are in".
If -sj results publish to the www even for a week, our online-only business will suffer catastrophic losses.
Chill out? We're on this forum because we know and understand that none of this is to be taken lightly. This isn't just a popularity contest-for me and my staff its our bread and butter!
I may be in the chill out group now, although I was not at the start.
I to have invested many hours in our site over the last three months and to see those fruits washed away really stunk.
I do everything by the book and don't do anyting that would cause some of the drops I saw. #1 to #53 beat by sites that were not even optimized. That is becasue, my work for the last several months has not been included.
So, I can jump around and get upset but what good is that going to do? I certainly don't want to try any changes on my site until I see what really is going to happen.
I'm doing really well on some terms for both the indexes, so either way, I'll be OK.
I think a lot of people are in same boat.
It should be quite interesting to see how this all shakes out!
We for instance, take the profits that Google brings and re-invest it back into paid advertising to cover our bases. We don't like it, but it's a diversity we feel that we need to buffer us from sudden and drastic changes in our rankings on Google.
However, myself I am not one to tell anybody to chill out. Can empathize with anybody feeling the pain of a bad update.
Good luck!
I think you can see where I'm going with this and I'd like to know if there are many others in the same boat.
There is still hope.
>If -sj results publish to the www even for a week, our online-only business will suffer catastrophic losses.
Buy adwords.
Chill out? We're on this forum because we know and understand that none of this is to be taken lightly. This isn't just a popularity contest-for me and my staff its our bread and butter!
If you had wanted predictable Google results, you should have budgeted for adwords. Betting your business on Google not being buggy seems like a poor business model. Google "loses" sites all the time for a month due to various glitches. For people like me running amateur sites, Google dropping the ball is just obnoxious and annoying. However, knowing how often Google drops the ball, I can't imagine running a business relying on getting good, free Google SERPs. Google just isn't reliable, period.
RE my post about "bread and butter" from Google...
We, too, are all over and have been all over Adwords and Overture.
It's the FREE clicks though, that make our PROFIT for our company. We spend in excess of 1M per year in pay per click, but since WW has helped us climb in Google, we've turn our "non-profit organization" into a money-maker. (We didn't start out as a non-profit organization, it just turned out that way-no profit made as we've learned the ropes.)
That's the rub. We don't want to go back to reliance on pay per click ads. We will if we have to, but we're putting our business into reverse if/when we are forced to do so.
Isn't this ass backwards? If Google was dropping sites to try and get people to buy adwords, then wouldn't it be the sites that you didn't pay for adwords that they would nuke from the index?
he also said once we have established our permanent presense on the web in the major engines, that there was still a place for other forms of advertising. paid advertising. indeed, he was clear on that and designed an affordable cpc program to work into the mix once we had our core rankings.
i think, it was very good advice and am glad we took it. yeah, it costs money, but our free listing rankings provided good profits, the engine, to allow us to incorporate paid advetising as well, and the whole thing has paid off.
i think his advice, was good advice. and good to share in this forum as well.
<So what would be the purpose of publishing results, if it was a test on either new or old data?>
The purpose might be to get some feedback from the many very serious webmasters here, especially prior to launching the first major algo update in a while (fall of last year I believe). GG has even been soliciting input, in his way (i.e., not discouraging or ignoring posts).
Two other points regarding a previous post:
1) Just disliking what one sees in the -sj and -fi servers doesn't make one a spammer. We have some sites that are up, some that are down, but without question - at least in our categories - there are more poor results than is true in www...hopefully that will change as the filters, backlinks etc get added... that's what I hear many here saying, and we're there.
2) Also, in our categories, and in some others we watch, there are significant differences between -sj and -fi, and so far, -fi looks to be of lower overall quality. But again, that's in a very small number of cat's - many others may see things differently - and I have no idea how far along the updating process is at either location.
have been very worried in the beginning as well, but at the moment I only can see, that Google is doing all to get a better, high quality index.
Having watched the sj server in the last 5 days for a couple of sites of mine, I had listings which went from 3 to 86, then to 45 and are now on 1!
I think they are just adding and adding, and normally we never saw this process, how everything gets calculated, but this time we see it for real and it is quite exciting, but I think the best is just relax and wait until all the deep crawl data is inside and then finally moved to the www server.
This would stop us from getting drunk as well, at least until we see the good results at the end :))
Google - thanks for your hard work
oliphaunt
However when it comes to search relevancy, I would think that button that Google may focus on is the one at the bottom of their search page that says "not happy with your search results-- let us know"
Sorry, Google is customer oriented. Not listing site oriented.
But i guess I am not a serious webmaster, if I think like that. O.K.. Seems to be what you implied.
[edited by: abcdef at 12:10 am (utc) on May 8, 2003]
Traveller, I do understand your angst but I am with the 'chill out' massive on this one.
One thing life has tought me is always have a plan B. Google is like the weather and cannot be relied upon. 8 months is too much to gamble in something you cannot control in this mans eyes, Just ask Don King or Rene Rivkin!
But last night I dreamt that I was going to jail (fearing for a certain part of my anatomy) for something I did not do, while Jack the Ripper and Hamish Drool McCool (the inventor of processed sandwich meat) drove past in a Bentley :-)
i think, it was very good advice and am glad we took it. yeah, it costs money, but our free listing rankings provided good profits, the engine, to allow us to incorporate paid advetising as well, and the whole thing has paid off.i think his advice, was good advice. and good to share in this forum as well.
Cool post even if it's not Google related. But really- you are stating that SEO helped you pay for AdWords. :)
How...ironic.
Googleguy- you're catching this post I hope!
"SEO increases Googles revenue"
You Googolians love us and ya know it! ;)
AW
The problem here is that almost all people will just use competing search engines, rather than complain using that form. Thus, it makes sense to look here at least for posts like "Google is even giving me lousy SERPs that don't involve my site."
So I go and triple my adwords bid yesterday for the one [keyword] I have dropped through the floor on in -sj. I check to see today and find it has been disabled for lack of clicks!
I've had this ad for a year, and have an average clickthrough twice the minimum, but I guess in the last 1000 impressions I was one click shy of the minimum!
So... if Google's plan was to get me to pay more for Adwords, it worked, but then it didn't.
And... "buy adwords" also is not necessarily an available response.
<rant>
I'd prefer to see us go back to a freaking algorerhythm that didn't value bogus guestbook and free links... and that didn't seem to think that "fresh" = "good quality".
</rant>
The notion of guestbook signing to scam Google is fairly new. The algo before always counted them. Apparently, Google is phasing in filters for ignoring guestbook links. If you still see sites with just guestbook links, obviously some are slipping through.
Under no circumstance will I visit Google or Webmasterworld today.
"but there is no joy in Mudville --
mighty Casey has struck out."
Remember troi21, somebody is #1 for every SERP. While there may be no joy in Mudville, fans of the visiting team are quite happy. Too bad for me this update, I am manager of the Mudville nine. :(
How is all this affecting SEOs that are paid for delivering results? Surely, their clients are breaking out in a cold sweat and screaming bloody murder.
I would have to agree...maybe some seo's will be replaced....
[edited by: seonut at 1:57 am (utc) on May 8, 2003]
