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Why am I talking about this? Well, Kalman filters have a knob that blends between how much you believe your model vs. how much you believe each new data point. If you tweak the knob all the way in one direction, you always trust the model and any new input just gets ignored. On the other extreme, you can ignore your current estimates about the state of the world, and only trust each new data point as it comes in. If you set the knob too far in that direction, the object you're trying to model jumps all over the place each time you see even a hint of new info.
Lots of people here are getting more stressed than they need to be--their knobs are turned a little too far toward worrying about the very last thing that happened: "Now my subpage is coming up higher than it should! Okay, now my index page is back and the SERPs look good. Gaaack! Now I'm showing well at DC but the subpage still shows up higher at FI! Too much pressure--I'm going to drink now, and start spamming every FFA I see tomorrow!" :)
If you look around, you'll notice not too many senior members posting here. They chime in every so often, but their knobs are twisted further in the other direction. They know that the index switchover takes a little time to settle, and they have the perspective not to get too worried about things right now, and in general.
I haven't posted much of my take lately, but if I could give advice, it would probably be: don't panic. Here's what I would expect. Probably about one data center per day will get switched to the Esmeralda index. You may see some improvements during the course of the switchover as ingredients get blended in as they're ready. I would expect another round of ingredient-adding after the index is switched over.
So: if you're really into Google-watching as a sport, I would check in once a day to see what data centers have been switched, and maybe to run 2-3 searches. Browse a little while, and then come back the next day. Find something fun to do at night besides poring over every last thing that GoogleGuy (or whoever) posts on WebmasterWorld. You'll feel better, I promise.
This is just my take. You're welcome to ignore it. But I mention it because during this index, I heard about a lot of good and bad searches from webmasters, and the more I dig, the more confident I am that things will turn out well.
Added: With Mozilla, at least, you have to be logged in to see this thread... just checked.
[edited by: Stefan at 9:33 pm (utc) on June 19, 2003]
Thanks for your feedback. That probably has something to to with it. But why just this thread do you think?
Last night, sometime after 11pm EST, the -fi index changed. My sites moved in ranking all over the place. Where my sites moved, is besides the point. But, while I was watching specific keywords, I noticed something:
Point 1) the #1 ranking site on a keyword, is one that has been closed for 4 months (in protest of the iraqi war). This site has "NOT IN OUR NAME" as the TITLE tag, it has no meta tags at all. The body of the site is all graphics. While the site USED to match on that keyword, it clearly no longer does. Yet it ranks #1 in the latest google index.
This leads me to point 2) My site ranks #5 on the same keyword as the problem site detailed above.... my site has 175 backlinks, while the problem site has only 56. Where this gets interesting is, on my site, the links google displays as #5, has ZERO backlinks to it. No one is linking to my "add mysite to your page.html", which contains almost no real text.
To me, points #1 and #2 say that the new index has a lot of old data in it somehow, and that page rank is not yet being utilized.
Point 3) I was looking around, and found that google has been indexing a "search engine", called babieca. I have to be specific about this, or no one will understand the loophole I'm about to detail:
Basically, if you go to alexa and look at the sites that link to babieca: [alexa.com...]
you'll see AT&T linking to them. Why does this matter? Well, AT&T did NOT link to them. The link in question is actually a search for the term "mohotta.com", which on page 20, USED to mention babieca.com.
The reason this is important, is: babieca now has AT&T .Net linking to them according to alexa / google, when they clearly didn't intend to, and secondly, the results from the at&t site are powered BY google.
So you have google feeding data back into it's own spiders, who then take the data as links from the website. This situation can be applied to any site that uses google for results.
Very interesting stuff indeed. Hope GG reads this post.
teeceo.
"In this update I checked 'more results from http: // www.mysite.com' and discovered that only four of my pages have been indexed with text, yet all the pages have the same layout. Why is this?"
This is probably why my site is so low on this update, but I've gone through all the pages, and the layout is exactly the same. Me no comprende
I know this question may seem newbish, but I have to ask. Yesterday, I was getting hits from a search query that only comes from the new index. Today, I haven't seen one hit from that query. The new index is on all but two of the datacenters, shouldn't I be experiencing these hits today also?
Thanks for your help,
GoldenRanker
If your backlinks are fluctuating on www, you should be OK when it settles; if your index page is missing, who knows, and join the club. :)
If your backlinks are fluctuating on www, you should be OK when it settles; if your index page is missing, who knows, and join the club. :)
I'm curious why if your backlinks are fluctuating on WWW this will mean that you will probably be ok. As I understand it WWW will return results from all 9 datacentres and because of this it's normal to see fluctuation in backlinks because IN and CW have not got the new index yet.
Everybody who has created more links over the past 2 - 3 months will be seeing backlinks fluctuating.
One possibility is that there are not many secondary phrases on your site that are well optimzed? Just something to check. Sometimes, especially post Dominic, that can make a world of difference.
On our main sites, key phrases tend to be down, but traffic is up. It's coming from the many secondary searches that get us traffic...about 80% of our total, or more...
[webmasterworld.com...]
if your index page is missing, who knows, and join the club.
I'm with the club. I'm doing fine overall, truly am and glad of it, but it is ridiculous that my index page is gone as of today in -fi. It's right up there in every other SE... what on earth is going on with Google? How can they lose all these index pages?
(Full disclosure; I don't even get many hits via the index except for odp, directories etc, so it's not like it makes a lot of difference - Google added all my new pages and ranked them great)
CW & IN still have 617,000 backlinks. Were u using the Webmasterword 4x4 tool?
Is there a penalty for saying a keyword phrase too many times, even on a page that has mass text?
Maybe.
Is there a penalty for repeating the <title> and <H1>?
Nope....some sites are fine with this.
This sure doesn't give me a clue: [google.com...]
Neither has GoogleGuy, has he?
The connection of all of the missing index pages, IMO, has not escaped the powers that be at Google
There is still a couple more datacenters we are waiting to update that does not have my backlinks yet. When it does update and receive my links is there a chance my PR will increase too? Please Advise. Thanks!
Actually went away one search result at a time. First "blue widget" disappeared two nights ago, then "blue widgets", and now "Custom Blue Widget". I'm going to assume "Custom Blue Widgets" will be gone tomorrow.
Where's that window at? Any ideas....shoot what was the name of that person jumping out windows in Dominic?
Mine has been gone for my most important single KW, but not for any KP's, since the last update (a long time now). I am hoping that GG references to more things happening in the next few days will bring it back in.
