Isn't it a good thing the google update is dead?

Won't it mean that sites are updated daily or weekly instead of monthly?

[nadsab]

I've been reading these posts about the dead dance this eve after a several month absence from this forum. I was thinking, what does it matter if google does not do a deep crawl every month to update their database, as long as they are crawling sites on a daily basis?

Or does this mean they are only indexing a few pages from each site?

I mean, they have not stopped crawling sites, have they?

[olderscot]

You're right, it is a good thing that google now updates regulalry and I think you'll find that pretty much everyone here is in favour of it.

I think what people are missing is the 'ggogle dance' as an event that could be watched for and celebrated. There's just a lot less ceremony around a daily event.

Mike

[swizz]

You can still celebrate it individually with a nice glass of wine and a fondue ;)

-SwiZZ

[ciml]

Google is fresher, but it's less stable (fresh results aren't necessarily long term results). I don't think it spiders quite as deep (assuming links only coming in to the top).

Webmasters like predictability, hence all the complaining webmasters recently. On the other hand, searchers don't compare rankings every day, they just want to find what they're looking for.

I like 'new Google' as a surfer/researcher much more than I like 'new Google' as a promoter/reverse engineer. I amagine that Google would be quite happy with that. :-)

[Marcia]

I don't think it's a good thing at all from a user perspective, just going by what I'm seeing in the search results.

There's too much instability, too many irrelevant pages showing up, and it's turned into a spammers playground. It's now a field day for cranking out automated, experimental dynamic junk.

It WAS updated regularly, with predictability, stability and quality search results.

[erikv]

I don't think it's a good thing at all from a user perspective, just going by what I'm seeing in the search results.

Exactly my feelings too, and not because the big G isn't crawling my site enough anymore. But I've seen that it doesn't matter anymore whether you add pages each day or wait a whole month to do so; the crawler doesn't seem to index them anyway.

The net result is that, even if you do have relevant content that was positioned #1 to 10 before, it's not to be found anywhere these days... And that means I'm not the only one who loses out; the searcher does too.

[twebdonny]

The freshness is good, the lack of a real update is not.
Pages enter the index with rankings they should not
have and hurt established websites that have worked long
and hard to attain certain positions based on merit. Until
Google is able to actually readjust the rankings in the index as fast as they are allowing sites to enter I for
one am not satisfied.

[Gus_R]

I agree with twebdonny, fresh update ins't related with quality.
For me, reduces the stress to see whow my site is going, I know changes will appear within a week from googlebot was in logs, and this is very stable.

[bether2]

I don't think it's a good thing at all from a user perspective, just going by what I'm seeing in the search results.

I agree with Marcia on this. My site is largely educational. As I'm adding more content, I do research using google - along with my printed sources - to find confirmation of the accuracy of what I'm writing.

These days, for one search I might be very pleased with the amount of information that I find in the google results - more information than I used to find. The next search brings total disbelief at the lack of relevant sites in the google results.

I've tried vivisimo. Sometimes I use teoma or Fast. What I really want is to get back the consistently great reference tool that google used to be. If the "old" google hadn't been so good, I wouldn't miss it so much.

Beth

[Yidaki]

Hey, google is quite instantly updating - not that bad, imho. Yeah, the index is unstable and doesn't return the old high quality resuts yet. But i can imagine that the developement is still ongoing and as in the past there's a good chance that the results will get better again and will be fresher and fresher. I like that.

From the seo's pov it's getting more difficult to optimize.
But the webmasters and the searchers will have an advantage through the changes.

[Chndru]

From the seo's pov it's getting more difficult to optimize.

I suspect the aim of G would be that, webmasters would just have to worry about making a user-friendly and spiderable website and leave the ranking and tweaking of websites to themselves.

[TravelMan]

I miss the monthly update.

It stimulated debate and interest, and made my job a little bit more fathomable, in that I could actually measure and compare prior efforts from an identifiable reference point.

Sure, it produced a high volume of "aaargh my site has fallen down the mine shaft" type posts, but it also produced some good post-update threads/discussions that are now sadly lacking.

In some ways I can understand some of the possible reasons behind its apparent demise, which, IMO may be linked to the fact that the update, in some respects, revealed far more to SEOs than G would perhaps of liked.

The lack of such a contrasting 'before and after' snapshot in combination with what many people believe is almost a randomised ( albeit ever so subtley) algo that shifts and changes with unknown prediction, has certainly made things a little harder, especially in the more competitive SERPs.

[cgallent]

My take is a little different. First, it was the "early adopters" who took Google from nothing to primetime. The reason Google was great is that it tended to filter out the garbage and offered stable results for a certain period of time. Then the new update went into affect.

Now, Google has exposed it's Achille's heel. They are becoming like everyone else. I did a search yesterday morning and then the same search yesterday evening and had two different sets of results. Those of us who are the "early adopters" of technology will get fed up with Google and move to a more stable environment for searching if they don't get their act straight. We will then take our friends, family and partners with us - much like we all did when Google came on board.

If I want mixed and varied results, I'll do my searching at AltaVista. I still prefer Google, but my patience is running thin. And, they better watch out. They were built through viral marketing and it can take them down.

Plus, Google better come to grips with the fact that websites will be optimized regardless of wether they like it or not. They are better off with SEO's than without.

[c1bernaught]

There was less garbage in the serps when the update was monthly.

The monthly update also kept many webmasters off balance because it was very difficult to predict Google's next move.

Now it's an unstable crap shoot with many completely non-relevant pages showing up in the serps....

Users like to find what they are looking for EACH time they search... right now it's a hit or miss deal with serps moving almost daily... the site you found yesterday in the top 5 or 10 may not be there today...

The "Dance" was fun.... This new thing is just drudgery....

[berli]

Google actually seems a lot better now than it was earlier this summer.

I for one do not like the changing SERPs. I used to bookmark Google results pages, or just memorize searches -- now I have to start bookmarking sites again. It's annoying and stupid.

The results are much improved. I can actually find things again. As for my own website, and those of my friends, we are doing well, quite well. We were suffering in May and June. I think on-site factors are more important that PageRank now, because we're ranking high and I know my own PR is still pretty low.

I get traffic from hundreds of different search strings.

[twilight47]

I have to say that are rankings have been fine with the regular updates as well as adding new pages to the index within a couple weeks, but I notice the fluctuations in SERP ranks for all types of searches.
This does many surfers a disservice. Many searchers don't remember the site, they just remember their search terms.
We often have the same people find us over and over from the same search.

[John_Creed]

I hated the monthly update. Having to wait a month just for a search engine to update is unacceptable in the year 2003. The *only* thing good about the monthly update was the webmaster interest and the excitement it brought.

Google should be praised for trying to give us a more regular update. My only gripe is the system still isn't close to perfect and a lot of work is still needed. But over-all, the system is far better than before.

[steveb]

"You're right, it is a good thing that google now updates regulalry and I think you'll find that pretty much everyone here is in favour of it."

Man o man, how can anybody think that? People say the craziest things.

[Arnett]

If google would stay with the regular rolling update and bring back deepbot to work with freshbot I think that the quality of the SERPS would improve. Freshbots makes the results look better. Getting deep and new pages not indexed DIRECTLY from the home page seems to be much more difficult now than it was before.

[wackybrit]

I got a new site indexed in Google within 48 hours. Can't complain ;-) Even the PR bar 'ungrayed'.. sure, it ended up with PR0, but for 48 hours after going into existence, that's not bad, and it should shoot right up once it gets more links. :-)