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This might mean a possible update.
WebmasterWorld Google Update Changes:
The problem: Chit chat noise in update threads.
Last month we hand several thousand messages posted about the update. The volume level was intense and people couldn't find the info that was appropriate. Many senior members complained about the "me too" chit chat messages being left.
We are not going to do that this month. If you don't have anything new to add to a thread thing please kick back and read. Additionally, we are going to be proactive in keeping those threads clean. Again, the volume is so high this time of month that informing everyone of any thread tidying is near impossible.
We would appreciate your continued latitude, cooperation (thanks), and patience as we head into this months update.
Thanks.
For the Team,
Brett Tabke
Google Update FAQ:
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Messages in this thread do not count towards user message totals.
Understanding Dominic: (the previous update):
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This thing's all over the place.
For me this is far worse than before. Yup - I've had enough this time. If they are going to drop balls like this, it is far better to have multiple (x-linked) sites around to at least pick up some of the loss.
But and their is a big but!
I worked very hard and spent a lot of time getting over 200 good links with no spam to my web site. Then dominc came and slashed it to 109 links.
Ok so I wait and take in the comments from everyone that links specially GoogleGuy that they will return in the next update.
No, this update now shows 98 links and my site is dropping I have not changed the way I work and I don't intend to but what google guy says about more links returning in the next update didn't happen. If I had not have listened I would have spent my time getting more links instead of waiting. We learn everyday!
>> The minor page versus index page travesty seems epidemic. <<
>> Ridiculously, in all five cases Google is ranking one of my minor pages above my main/index page.<<
Exactly what I am finding.... and it's widespread.
GoogleGuy also noticed:
>>I did notice the tendency to return subpages rather than index pages for some queries <<
Again, important (for the searcher) sites are missing because of it. They just happen to be different to last time. IMHO, they should have held off with the update until this sort of mess was sorted. It's very poor I'm afraid.
The solution is as I mentioned above.
A friend's site appears now in the fi index, with a PR1.
The weird thing is that the search link:domain.tld returns 13 backlinks.
I checked with a PR2 site and backlinks are reported as well.
Is this a new feature to report backlinks on sites with low PR?
>> Ridiculously, in all five cases Google is ranking one of my minor pages above my main/index page.<<
I am also seeing one of my subpages showing up higher in the serps than the main page--especially for major keyphrases, and higher in allinanchor:major-keyword than my main page! And I do not ask for incoming links to subpages...only the main page. Obviously there is still incomplete data (i.e., backlinks and anchor text) being fed into the algorithm. Maybe this will inprove over the next few weeks. This index is very similar to Dominic in my industry.
C
[edited by: crobb305 at 7:51 am (utc) on June 16, 2003]
Think we all need to sit tight and await more info from GG.
Presume all of the people experiencing this have been doing since Dominic?
This is true to my case, and like others, expected this update to fix things.
------------ Q & A ---------------
Q: For many sites, the index page seems to be buried on search terms for which logic determines they should rank highly. Is this a transient feature, like some of the other recent issues, resulting from the changeover to newer data? Or is it due to a more fundamental algorithmic change?
A: I don’t think it’s a fundamental algorithmic change. I don’t recall hearing about any changes would bring about long-term behavior like this. I’m pretty sure that it’s more of a transient issue, and I wouldn’t be concerned about this.
------------ Earlier this thread ---------
I did notice the tendency to return subpages rather than index pages for some queries. I'll check around with a few more folks than I did last time to find out if that characteristic will change over time.
Most sites have a structure similar to:
Index -> More Specific Pages -> More Specific-er Pages
Where the internal pages are optimized for more specific keywords/phrases and the index is optimized for more general keywords/phrases.
During Dominic, many SERPs I watch contained index pages where the more specificly-optimized pages seemed more applicable for the search phrase.
I.E., searching for "blue furry widgets" returned www.widgets.com instead of www.widgets.com/blue-furry-widgets.html. Despite the fact that you may want to direct people to your homepage, those internal pages are often better results for more specific queries.
So consider where these keyphrases fit in your hierarchy. I can sympathize with your complaints if your index is indeed missing on main phrases, but subphrases belong with subpages.
Mine is a different story however. My backlinks have risen. Contrary to some others, my allinanchor for the keyphrase has plummeted. The drop from serps only occurs when fresh tags are given (regardless of daily crawls of index.html by 64.68.*). There have been changes since the March crawl involving many image links pointing from all pages to home page.
The logo is split into several jpgs, all of which pointed to homepage with keyphrase from every page. Because that was screwing with the description (mysite.com mysite.com mysite.com) I removed most of the links and the description has been cleaner since dominic. I don't think this matters because there is a text link with the same keyphrase (its our name after all) from every page anyway.
[edited by: Powdork at 8:16 am (utc) on June 16, 2003]
No, there is something badly amiss here. It is very widespread and has sunk product and info sites all over the place.
In some cases contact pages are thrown up ahead of the main entry page that actually describes the topic.
It just HAS to be something pertaining to missing links, or links not properly counted, or some tweak to anchor text relvancy that has gone askew. Something somewhere in this area is glitched.
[edited by: Napoleon at 8:19 am (utc) on June 16, 2003]
Sorry if I am writing about something others have already noticed, but this morning www.google.de already has the -fi index and 799,000 backlinks to Yahoo!
Although I notices www, www1 and www2 are still on the old... go figure!
seeing fi in www2 and www3 now
Presume all of the people experiencing this have been doing since Dominic?
Yes- here.
This is true to my case, and like others, expected this update to fix things.
Same here, again. :)
------------ Q & A ---------------Q: For many sites, the index page seems to be buried on search terms for which logic determines they should rank highly. Is this a transient feature, like some of the other recent issues, resulting from the changeover to newer data? Or is it due to a more fundamental algorithmic change?
A: I don’t think it’s a fundamental algorithmic change. I don’t recall hearing about any changes would bring about long-term behavior like this. I’m pretty sure that it’s more of a transient issue, and I wouldn’t be concerned about this.
Keyword from GG here is 'transient'. Temporary is relative. What is transient to Google may be 3-6 months or more. They've had complaints about this since Dominic first broke.
------------ Earlier this thread ---------I did notice the tendency to return subpages rather than index pages for some queries. I'll check around with a few more folks than I did last time to find out if that characteristic will change over time.
Granted, GG is probably tired and focusing in on words may not be good here, but...
...when he states "...if that characteristic will change over time." That is a shift from stating it is a temporary issue to stating he'll check to see IF it will change OVER TIME
Not a good sign at all, but hope GG will relate this to the GooglePlex.
AW
GoogleGuy has *repeatedly* said that although guestbook links may appear in the backlinks...they are still not being counted towards PR.
I had a few good quality links - regardless of what Google was able to report with 'link:'. And, she obviously counted them. Now I have tens, rather than hundreds, in the PR4 to PR6 range, with most showing through 'link:'. Yet PR slides.
Anyone else seen this?
I'm hoping this is not the final PR.
Suggy
Worse than just showing though, the newhoo.com pages seem to be valued for their pagerank rather than the parallel dmoz page's pagerank. This is usually 2 to three points lower.
So, if you happen to be having your backlink counted as link from a newhoo page instead of dmoz, you are screwed big time.
It appears this phenomenon is at random, but it spells disaster for certain sites, especially those listed in alphabars in dmoz, where all the other sites benefit from a PR6 link but those sites starting with R and W might only be getting a PR3 link.
It's scary that errors of this magnitude (and so utterly unfair to boot) get by undetected.
This also may bode very ill for anyone who has had their content copied. Want to hurt your competitors? Copy their content onto a PR0 domain.
That's nice. Might be like saying the color scheme on the Titanic is nice, but it still is nice.
GoogleGuy has *repeatedly* said that although guestbook links may appear in the backlinks...they are still not being counted towards PR.My question was why do you feel guestbook spamming is still effective? Are they spamming certain kinds of guestbooks that Google may not have picked up on? Are guestbooks the sites only backlinks or are only some of the backlinks from guestbooks?
GoogleGuy has *repeatedly* said [webmasterworld.com] msg #:479
The only "direct" quote I could find > doesn't really clear this up though... other than "it is effective unless a complaint comes in".
When it finds 1 of my sites with the www at the begining the site ranks fine for most keywords, but when it doesn't and thinks its mydomain.com and not www.mydomain.com it is absolutely nowhere!
Very frustrating....does anyone else have a similar problem?
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
edited to add that within 45 minutes she's pulling up pretty much all pages again and again...
[edited by: Clark at 10:06 am (utc) on June 16, 2003]
No - nothing at all to do with hidden text.
The reason is unknown, semi-penalty best explanation I have heard, unless GG confirms it is hangover from Dominic and will eventually disappear.
Quite a few people in this thread are experiencing the same
No... and the missing site has re-appeared. The problem is that two totally unrelated sites have now gone instead.
They seem to be having real problems in this area. Maybe the balance between: PR, keyword density, internal/external weighting, and similar.
Whatever the precise cause, it is simply wrong. I'm sure they will be looking at it. What I'm not sure about is how long it will take. I certainly can't (and won't) sit on my hands and just HOPE they sort it in another 4 weeks.
I also see that backlinks are all over the place on some sites as well, a number well out of date. This area too is not at all right. For me the index is a bit more up to date in SOME areas, but still stale with respect to core areas.
It looks to me like it needs a full deepbot crawl... urgently... to tackle the latter problem. I can't see any evidence thus far that Fresh is going to address it properly.
Re:sub-pages returned above index page.
If you are selling "hardware" then your index page tells me about your line of hardware.
If I search for "wood screws" then I want your sub-page on wood screws NOT your index page. Good for Google.
Just an observation from a new guy on the block.
"it is simply wrong"
Yes, it is. And I think the older the site, irrespective of the cache and backlinks, the higher it is. I have just seen a few sites I have not seen for a long time on the higher pages. It is almost like being in a time warp!
Got you too eh, nuts? If you probe around you should actually find that the index page is there on some related searches. It's just been zapped on the core, most logical, terms.
Yes, you will be clean. All the sites I have found (mine and not mine) all look perfectly OK. They just fail to show on the most logical term (sometimes even a product name).
What we have not seen is a clean sweep of the web picking up the latest links. The backlinks may differ, but there are still so many recent ones missing, going back a number of months.
Hence my conclusion that we need a traditional deepbot crawl to sort it out.
It seems to have found a few (not all) but lost others in the process. I suppose a bit like the missing index: some have recovered, but many others have now gone walkies.
Googleguy said that comparing current backlinks to backlinks before Dom is like comparing apples to oranges.
Is the same true regarding Pagerank - is comparing current PR to PR before Dom like comparing apples to oranges?
