Very Strange -fi Activity

[NovaW]

Just was looking at the 9 datacenters - which have been steady pretty much all day. Almost fell off my chair when I saw -fi. A completely different set of results on - fi than anything else I've ever seen. It's probably fleeting - but very worrying that google could ever create a ranking like that.

Anybody else seeing some "spam is the king of the world" results on -fi that are very different than the other datacenters?

[quotations]

-fi looks about the same to me. Very similar to the rest but slightly better results than the other data centers.

I checked 4 important phrases and the most anything moved was up one place.

[healthgal]

The fi data center looks the same. But the sj data center is showing way different results than all the others.....ugly results.

is the sj data center going to be the main google results? It seems to be the same as www2 and 3

[BigDave]

Haven't you all learned the hazards to watching those datacenters yet?

Here you go again trying to start another 10,000 SEO ulcers! ;)

[NovaW]

-sj looks the same as the others to me, although of course it's different for different phrases. What is on -fi right now for this one specific phrase is quite scary. Looks like the inverse spam filter was turned on.

[healthgal]

What is an inverse spam filter? for me i notice on my main two key words in sj i've dropped but the same in all other data centers. Geez, could be a long weekend

[quotations]

>Looks like the inverse spam filter was turned on.

Not to me.

Although "major spammer number one" is still in first place at number one (up from number 4 before this "improvement" to the index) major spammer number two has moved down from number 7 to number 8.

Maybe a selective spam filter has been instituted?

[Powdork]

I agree that sites are moving very little on -fi for my searches. Good thing too since it is showing up on Y! currently for me

[Alphawolf]

fi in serps I track is similar if not WAy more stable than SJ.

In SJ I get different # of results on almost every refresh (up to a few depending on SERP).

Example:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,510,000.

Very next refresh:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,460,000.

Next refresh:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,130,000.

Different SERP on SJ:

Results 1 - 10 of about 366,000.
Results 1 - 10 of about 365,000.
Results 1 - 10 of about 418,000.
Results 1 - 10 of about 367,000.
Results 1 - 10 of about 413,000.

Other SERP:

Results 1 - 10 of about 917,000.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,120,000.

Backlinks seem to be back to where they were 3-4 months ago. I thought backlinks would be added as time went on...not removed.

I am speaking of DMOZ and Google directory backlinks in addition to others.

Client went from Page 1 to page 15 on one of the most important phrases.

SJ and others data centers seems to be picking their site map as a good page to serve up. Well, site map was PR0'd.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

:) What fun.

AW

[GoogleGuy]

If we're going to be poring over data center differences for the next few weeks, I'll just duck on out and see what's going on in the other forums. ;)

[Eleveeze Preslee]

ok, this is interesting. Googleguy seems to be saying the answer the datacenter questions is to be found in other forums. Maybe its his way of saying that while on close inspection they all seem to be saying different things, an overall view would show that they all are part of the same thing.

[Monkscuba]

I think what GG is saying is :

"Why oh Why are you even looking at all these data centers? Of course the numbers and SERPs keep changing. What you see means almost nothing, so don't fret and don't try to understand it. Instead, go and do something useful"

[merlin30]

As each data centre has probably hundreds of servers, it wouldn't be surprising to see different search results on each refresh as you would hit a different server in the same data centre; at the moment some servers are at slightly different stages of the update. Obviously it is going to a be while before each server in each data centre holds identical versions of data.

[NovaW]

I think GoogleGuy is saying - these type of discussions are boring because they are too focused at the micro level. Perfectly understandable comment. Personally I don't find it boring & this is a discussion forum afterall - each to his own.

[viggen]

<Why oh Why are you even looking at all these data centers? >

Because they are there, if Google shows them to us they must expect to get reactions like this.

This whole datacenter set up is just another brilliant piece of PR Work, nothing more, as Google gets constant attention. (apart from being a very good Search Engine ofcourse).

cheers
viggen

[subway]

What GoogleGuy has just told us is that these differences will be ongoing for the next few weeks! Now what does he mean by that! :)

[AthlonInside]

I think they are testing different algo in different data centers so they can evaluate different algo and find out which is the best and pick it to be the standard and apply to all datacenters.

This is smarter by just testing 1 algo on all datacenters. With 8 datacenters, they can do different minor tweak to evaluate the SERPs.

[Alphawolf]

"Why oh Why are you even looking at all these data centers? Of course the numbers and SERPs keep changing. What you see means almost nothing, so don't fret and don't try to understand it. Instead, go and do something useful"

Why? Well, the results are being fed to Yahoo and AOL Search. If this was all behind the scenes I don't think anyone would make quite the fuss they have been.

I wonder what % of people on yahoo click on the 'send feedback' link and 'Help us improve.' link on Google?

I never have...

Out of those who have submitted the forms, probably 99.9% are bias and want to complain on a SERP because thier page isn't listed where they want. ;)

Of interest: A forum I hang out in for web design has multiple posts on Google's odd results. Odd- meaning thier sites have changed positions from very good to very bad.

Where are all the folks who are thrilled with the results since all sites that go down, others go up? I'd figure some would come out of the woodwork and wan to "brag".

AW