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Some think an update is in the wind - are people expecting big, possibly bad for some, changes?
It's too quiet out there.
I've seen the same thing with other centers for various sites. The only conclusion from this, and the above issues, that I can rationally draw is that Google still has quite a few unresolved problems under the hood. Doesn't seem to be in any great rush to fix them though.
Our site is new and there are only 2 backlinks with low prs showing up on google. The other backlinks aren't showing yet. I don't know if our current few number of backlinks has something to do with our sudden drop of positions.
A disaster for me. Seems eBay, Amazon et al are now dominating the top SERP positions
...same here. I've also noticed the same problems with the BBC site, which is a little infuriating, and also some geocities sites believe it or not in top positions. Explain that!
Mat said... Lord, that's what comes from looking at HTML too long. When I wrote center, I meant centre, obviously. Stiff upper lip 'n all that.
Assuming this forum also considers the 'other' Googles, may I say that Google Image Search is also stable - indeed, so stable, I'm finding it moderately useless. One site I work on gets a large amount of referrals from the image search - so much so, we actually optimise for it - but we are finding that the image search regularly turns up a bunch of 404 errors. As users of it, we now use the Altavista image search - it seems far more regularly updated.
Whether this means that Google are concentrating on the web search at the moment, I don't know - but it does strike me as I type this that they don't appear to carry advertising in the image search, so I guess that may explain at least some of it.
For mine the SERPs look the best they have ever looked and they have been and remain stable even as others say there is movement.
I am quite pleased with the SERPS after months of sweating it out after dominic.
I'm even able to find what I'm looking for with minimal effort.
There is literally no spam for my specific terms within the top 20 results. I have NEVER seen it this clean before.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
MrBrad
I am seeing just the opposite. I think they are yet to reactivate a lot of the filters. I am still seeing a lot of guestbooks, invisible text and so on in high ranking sites.
That is indeed the case in many areas... and it looks BAD to the casual surfer for a variety of reasons.
The mile-long URLs on display have every character on the keyboard showing, the content of the Amazon page is usually poor, and the whole impression it gives is that something can't be right. If I want Amazon I'll go to Amazon (ditto eBay).
Perhaps it's related to the sudden climb of PDF and DOC files, which again in most cases people are NOT searching for (they surely want web sites). For some searches you now have to browse down to find proper sites.
>> If Google would stop this crap of requiring a refresh to see us in the serps half the time <<
Surely, that just HAS to be a bug. It happens at different centers at different times, but only to those sites that went missing a few minths ago.
All in all, the signs are that Google is starting to get itself into a hole again. I hope I'm wrong about that, but there has certainly been a clear and significant deterioration in many areas during the last couple of days.
It was almost fixed.... why break it again?
The old 'burp' update type results have returned with around 25-30% of the results TOTALLY with nothing to do with what I was looking for.
So they fixed it (or patched it) but now it's broken again.
Hit refresh on the nine data centres results and they jump about.
Mmmm, sucks currently but if they can fix it again now as quickly as they update (ie not a month +!) then hopefully back to a more logical machine.
Seen a few posts around here recently about GoogleDir/DMOZ's negative impact on rankings. I have also witnessed the same for my main site, which dropped from 1st to 6th this morning. Looking to see what was new, I noticed the Google directory path is now underneath my listing. It wasn't there before.
Additionally, the site that has moved into first place has come from nowhere - and it doesn't have a GoogleDir description under it's listing.
I don't believe it's a coincidence that this 'Broken Google' thing occurs at the same time as a Google Directory update.
No. Thousands of Amazon pages, eBay pages, PDF's.... these are not in DMOZ and never will be. The problem is that they have grabbed and upgraded these when they shouldn't have (assuming they actually want quality SERPS).
I may be paranoid, but I think they never really fixed that 'missing index' problem at all. This little refresh problem seems to be their fix to placate webmasters who were watching their sites go in and out of the index. Hey, if it's there when you refresh, you aren't as apt to whine about it on WebMasterWorld... :D
The thing is, they've been given some breathing room from upset webmasters and they STILL haven't done anything to fix the problem.
So GoogleGuy, pretty please with sugar on it...
Regards
John
It is clear to the world that there are problems (two here at least: the index refresh, and the crappy Amazon/etc returns), yet Google doesn't fix them.
The number of different problems seems to be increasing. Do they not have a QA system there? Or is the live database actually their QA?
All in all a very poor experience, not just for webmasters, but for users (who wants pages full of Amazon and irrelevant PDFs?).
By the way, I'm personally not paranoid about Webmasterworld, but am I the only one not seeing this thread on the Active List page? Is there a problem here as well? The ommision provides fodder to those who claim that anything critical of Google is supressed.
However search results are frighteningly similar to when Goog did it's major orrible update that is now considered a total distaster/experiment/ switchover trouble etc.
Blue furry widgets, and 70% of the results are basically OK but 2-4 of the top ten are green smooth widgets, ie a 20-40% complete irrelevance to the search, with many very well matched sites getting buried by these anomalies.
It's a sad morning here in the UK, so I'm hoping Google will get the spanners and wrenches out before US lunchtime!
If I hit 'refresh' on the results it also improves my mood as I get to see my sites, so I'll probably do that, just wish I could tell the people looking for my site!
Im thinking about doing some sponsorship along the lines of:
'if the results you see below are complete nonsense, please hit refresh and they may improve'
;O)
I'm just trying to figure out what the "problem" with Amazon links everyone is whining about. I guess I"m not whining because I don't compete in their space?
I stand by what I said before about Google Directory updates. I agree, there are other anomalies which may not be accounted for by this, but there is definitely something odd happening with directory updates.
What most people DON'T want is Amazon books flooding the returns everytime they do a search for widgets. In some areas that is exactly what is happening. Ditto eBay, ditto PDFs, ditto MS-Word docs, etc.
I just did a search and there was ONE normal web site on the front page. ONE! That's why I called it crappy.
The dark side of me wonders whether this is an 'arrangement' between Google and Amazon/eBay. Think about who gains from this.... and what they might pay Google for the benefit.
It's probably not - it's more likely just to be appalling QA at Google, but these questions are bound to be asked if they don't sort it soon.
It would be funny if Gogle decided to test a new Index on a Yahoo search feed rather than on one of their servers.
Iguana, you are right! Something is definitely happening there. A site that has been at position #1 for as long as I can remember for several keyword combinations that I check has moved down the SERPs there. I cannot believe it. This site has hidden links in 1 x 1 pixel images... I hope that's not a random event, and Google has finally figured out how to filter out such unethical methods.
What do other people notice in these results? and why there?
My site had been #1 for over 2 years until yesterday it dropped to #5 and then down to #7 today!
What I have noticed is:
1. the sites that have have suddenly shot to the top positions were previously not in the top 10 or 20 positions - in fact many I haven't seen before.
2. most of the new site listings are sub-pages and not the main index page.
3. many of these sub-pages are old pages going back to February this year and earlier.
4. all the new sites that have suddenly appeared do not have a "description" from dmoz or "category" under the google description - and I have seen this pattern in other categories to!
Please Googleguy, a comment from you about what is happening at the moment is overdue.
Stuart
