When is Google going to update?

I am bored of seeing this pre-update stuff

[allanp73]

Google must be waltzing because this is long and slow dance. I liked seeing the sj version (though I must admit at first I thought that Google had killed my newer sites). The sj version gives real insight into how inter-linking and linking structures can make a big difference in ranking. However, after a week of looking at sj, I am really looking forward to seeing the complete update on www. I have many pages and new links and I very excited to see how I fair this month.
How does everyone else feel?
Do you think this update will come soon?
Will it be a good update?

[rfgdxm1]

Even GG has refused to give any hints. Your guess is as good as anyone elses. Personally, I hope this half baked excuse for an update has a while to go before it is ready.

[Marcia]

I've actually been keeping an eye on www; it's been kind of interesting, especially since some changes were made and picked up by Freshbot, which still appears to be going strong.

The sj version gives real insight into how inter-linking and linking structures can make a big difference in ranking.

Allan, have you drawn any conclusions from what you've observed?

[allanp73]

I noticed that pr played a very important role. The top sites my targeted terms are dominated by high pr and little relevance. For example news agencies, universities, and the like who have the word "widgets" once but aren't selling widgets and the page isn't about widgets.
Despite what others are seeing with very keyword dense sites ranking well, I'm seeing the opposite where pr and low only a few keywords can rank well. Anchor text is also player in this. However, what I notice is Google gives a lot of weight to sites that use keywords in links.

In my case I have the advantage of seeing how older and newer sites are fairing. My newer sites are doing miserable without their linking while my older more established sites have their links accounted for and haved changed much in position. Both the older and newer sites were previously ranked well and were optimized about the same amount, so only the links are causing the differences in rankings.

[littlecloud]

AllanP73 has it right, as far as my sites go also. Links and link text are the deciding or missing factor as the case may be. My older sites doing better than the newer ones only because the links to the newer ones have not been added in to the rankings yet.

[steve128]

In the industries I cover I see no update at all (excepting a few minor freshy shuffling)

But yet www2/3 I see major potential happenings for some but thus far (3days) have yet to move to the live version.

Following normal update procedure I would have expected movement to the live .com by now. (even if temporally)

It seems IMHO that the "dance" is no more, to dance you have to move.
This is not a dance, nor an update, not as we know it jim -;

[Bio4ce]

The stuff I've been looking at is all over the board. I've seen sites with a PR1 dominate several highly competitive terms. The entire index page of that site is comprised of nothing but links and anchor text. Plus, get this, a 500 word title, 500 word meta-description, and 500 meta keywords. That site is everywhere in my industry because it has almost every imaginable combination of key words stuffed into description, keywords, and anchor text.

I would call this dance less like a waltz and more like the hokey pokey. ;)

[OneTooMany]

If www2 and www3 are any indicator to the www update for this month, them I am hurting. I have changed nothing from the last update, except for the addition of about 20-30 new backlinks with top keyword in link text.

My directory structure and keyword density are good. It seems that there is another factor playing a part that I am not noticing.

[steve128]

<The stuff I've been looking at is all over the board. I've seen sites with a PR1 dominate several highly competitive terms.>
Bio4ce are you talking new update, or existing and remained static?

I have never seen a site dominate for competetive keywords with a PR1...ever.

Sure they come and go, is it the result of this "Charade" update?

[WebGuerrilla]

Since this thread is begining to read like all the other update threads currently running, I thought this might be a good opportunity to steer it back on track.

An update as we have always defined it, is the process of pushing out a newly completed index across all of Google's data centers.

For the most part, that process has happened once a month. The last update began on April 11th.

Based on that, I'd say that a real update will most likely begin this weekend. Sunday is Mother's day in the U.S., so that would be the perfect time for it to start.

New data will get pushed out throughout next week. By this time next Friday, we will all come to the realization that the earth-shattering new algo that everyone has been so concerned/excited about doesn't really exist.

Instead, we will see an index very similar to the current one. No dramatic changes, just subtle tweaks that will be welcomed improvements to some and major disasters to others.

[dididudu]

LOL, WebGuerrilla, I like your last sentence. ( I read it 10 times)

"No dramatic changes, just subtle tweaks that will be welcomed improvements to some and major disasters to others."

I am ready for the disaster. :)

For the original post:

I think the update is on it's way, maybe as WG said - this weekend.

I DON'T think it's going to be a GOOD update. ( No need to explain now, I think everyone has read my whining posts in the past. :))

[jady]

On another note: TRAFFIC FROM MSN IS GOING NUTS! THANKS MSN! :)

[steve128]

Mmm WebGuerrilla, but www2/3 is nothing like wwww. is this an indication?
Of what is about to happen?
Personally I don't think so, as it stands.
I could be wrong of course.

[allanp73]

Some cool things I've noticed with my sites.

(1)The cached copy seems pretty new, however the links shown don't reflect this cache copy.
One site that I abandoned because I thought Google would never index it. I went about removing any links other sites pointing to it about 2 months ago. The site was added to index last update and now in this new version of Google is top ranked. When I check the backlinks it shows the links that I removed, but interesting when I view the cache copies of these pages the links are not present.
So my conclusion is the links and content of pages are viewed separately. Now we are seeing the update of the links portion of the mix.

(2)Another interesting observation is one site's index page (which strongly targets a keyword) is missing. However, one of the sub pages which had equal pr and links to this index page is showing and is reasonably ranked. Google is showing it's nature of ranking pages well if they link to another strongly related page. Thus themed linking will be very important in this new version of Google.

(3) Links are not added equally. Older sites and sites with higher pr's are getting their proper backlink numbers quicker than newer and lower pr sites. (I really say pages, as it is a pages game as much as it is a site game.)

(4) Less emphasis is definitely being placed on text and more emphasis is placed on links. This is why as I said before older sites are doing better at this point because they have established links.

(5) I use URLs with hyphened keyword names (I do this as much for the user as for rankings). I noticed that Google definitely gives these a boost. I see many serps dominated but such domains. It all boils down to the anchor text and code in the link itself. Google likes pages and URLs named with the keywords they target.

(6) This update is not over and has a ways to go yet