Update Florida - Nov 2003 Google Update Part 2

[GoogleGuy]

Continued from part 1: [webmasterworld.com...]

---

I stopped by several times yesterday, but it seemed like people were into the analysis stage already. caveman, this update didn't add any penalties for hyphenated domains, so that's not a factor. Just a reminder that people with specific feedback (good or bad) can send it to webmaster [at] google.com with the keyword "floridaupdate" somewhere in the email. I've mentioned that a few times, but as more than one person has pointed out, it can take 2-3 hours to read the whole thread from beginning to end. :)

[naturalinstinct]

canucks1980 - I don't know what you're seeing but a search for my keywords brings very bad results on the first page and the number 1 site is definitely a "black hat" , they have a <noframes> tag which is stuffed full of keywords in <h> tags, safe in the knowledge that everyone sees framed sites these days but it will still be sucked up by googlebot.

[deanril]

Ditto carlr the guy who took my spot has only one mention of the keyword in his desription, on page nothing and hes #1 ...... He ranked well a year ago too, his site has been up for about 5 years.....

[naturalinstinct]

also, can anyone else not get onto google.com at the moment? I can see every other wesite i look for but google is giving me a page cannot be displayed error?

[customdy]

okay maybe good results was not the best words, how about relevant results....

[deanril]

I hope the update is not over, I hope -GV is what the update will end up, its looking better for me then before, because both my sites are doing good instead of only one.

[Napoleon]

Just a few opinions:

>> I am in total *PAIN* and totally confused.. <<

As many webmasters do. You have been betrayed.

You have been encouraged to think that if you focus on content, play clean, get honest links, then all will be fine. Well the truth is.... it isn't fine at all, is it? Those who have played 'honestly' (Google's definition) have been treated the same as those who haven't. A large subset of both groups have been caught in a big net and thrown away.

Nice.

>> I can't believe Google wants this kind of irrelevant search results. <<

Well, unless they are stupid they can see the lower quality for themselves. In some areas it is so clear it is embarressing.

The issue is do they actually care? I don't think they do, or they would surely have swapped back to the old index pronto.

The winners are the big sites, whose deep deep pages, usually full of only semi-related stuff, have risen to the top. Some searches show this better than others.

Accident? Think about it. These guys have deep pockets and large investment budgets. Quite handy to have these onside and aware of the commercial clout of Google positioning come IPO time....

That may seem an ugly theory, but really, the results are so clearly inferior there just has to be some reason for Google to keep them. I'm certainly open to other suggestions though.

>> Results for keyword-keyword look VERY good in my industry. The top 10 are sites that SHOULD be there <<

That's more or less the case. I suspect the reason for the dash phenomina is that dashes in Google do usually mean spaces. As this is a deliberate pre-meditated filter, the programmer forgot that little fact, and the filter doesn't apply when the dash is there.

This is actually a bad week for the search engine industry, and especially for Google. Someone mentioned earlier that Google grew on the back of mutual respect between themselves and webmasters. I actually used to term this the 'social contract' (meaning that those who played broadly by the Google guidelnes would generally benefit in the long run, a win-win). Well.... that mutual respect is in large part disappearing here isn't it... the contract is being torn up.

The consequences of that in the long term are just as serious for Google as they are for webmasters. Certainly, the SEO industry will change for the worse as a result.

[carlr]

How about this:

Let's say Google wants to limit the accessibility to certain types of content, such as adult and pharma.

Let's say that, to do this, thet make sure that user types "keyword keyword" instead of keyword keyword, just to be "sure" that this is what they are looking for...

I am wondering how many people who have seen their website disappear, but reappearing under "keyword keyword" searches, run adult or pharma websites...?

[HayMeadows]

Lets not forget this same thing happened only a few short months ago, and was fixed in weeks, not months. Now GG is saying its only going to be a few short days.

Nice job Google!

[customdy]

Have you ever seen SERPs with the home page is indented from an interior page........ seeing some of this now........

[synergy]

Have you ever seen SERPs with the home page is indented from an interior page........ seeing some of this now........

I've seen instances of this as well.

[KevinC]

try searching it as "keyword-keyword" rather than "keyword keyword".

Not sure if it really is a window into anything important - but when I check all the 2 word keyphrases that I was #1 for over 6 months time using the "-" the serps resemble what I would expect to see. All the sites that were on the front page are back and ranking in an expected order.

It also almost exactly matches:
allinanchor: kw1 kw2

Does this mean anything? Who knows - surely not me.

I find the conspiracy theories a little tuff to swallow - at least at this point. But All google has to do is come out and say, we have made a large change to the algo or some filters are missing, so just hold tight. Wich is it?

[edited by: KevinC at 9:59 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]

[willybfriendly]

Still trying to make sense of things. Going through listings from my old #1 to my current 50+ I note that the vast majority listings are NOT index pages. Nothing new there, since it has already been noted.

But, my "surf safely" listing is a full five positions before I show up in the SERPS.

Now that is an irrelevant result. "Surf safely" has nothing to do with widgets, but by virtue of the link TO my site they rate higher?

WBF

<edit>Heck, its not even a link to my current site, but an ald site that is redirected!</edit>

[edited by: willybfriendly at 10:06 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]

[swones]

Dunno if this means anything but googlebot has been in and grabbed robots.txt and my still buried way down index page twice in the last 12 hours. Odd huh?

Simon.

[xMadx]

Hi,
As many people here, i often check my ranking on Google.
For me what I see from my PC in France, on www-in is great, i'm 1st or 2nd for my keywords.

But i notice that results are differents from where your are connected.
And I realize that results on Google are differents if the location of the client who is making the request is located in Europe, Asia, Us or Africa.

To be sure I used differents proxy in the world, and I always get the same results on www-in or other datacenters if i'm connected via an European proxy (Spain, Sweeden, France or Italy) but results are differents from a proxy in US or Canada.

Does anybody have notice this?

How many of yours use a proxy located in a different continent to check their position?

And the big question (for me ;-) ) Why a such difference in ranking (I'm 1st from Europe and only 25 from US)

Kind regards

[jim_w]

Napoleon:

>>The winners are the big sites, whose deep deep pages, usually full of only semi-related stuff, have risen to the top. Some searches show this better than others.<<

Could not agree with you more, except adding that having allies at DMOZ to give you ‘deep links’ helps as well.

[subway]

I don't believe that Google have ever been able to keep Spam out of the SERPS. What they have been outstanding at in the past is ranking and producing so many relevant results on top of the Spam sites, they created the illusion that they are *Spam proof*

What’s happened now is that in Google's admirable pioneering fashion, they have tried to make themselves *SEO Proof* (what could be another glorious notch in their belt) and shot themselves in the foot, because now all the:

1) Content Rich
2) Clean & Well built
3) Original
4) User-friendly

or in other words SEO'd sites are out of the index, leaving Google with a pile of irrelevant trash that was before now buried below 5 pages of decent SERPS.

[nutsandbolts]

Jessica: oh yes, and when I search for keyword1-keyword2 my site i swhere it used to be - #3

Same here - my site is back on the front page again instead of missing from the index.

Okay, so how can we make people add a hyphen every time they search? Anyone? ;)

GoogleGuy - can you flick the "don't need a hyphen" switch...thanks! :)

[deanril]

don't believe that Google have ever been able to keep Spam out of the SERPS. What they have been outstanding at in the past is ranking and producing so many relevant results on top of the Spam sites, they created the illusion that they are *Spam proof*
What’s happened now is that in Google's admirable pioneering fashion, they have tried to make themselves *SEO Proof* (what could be another glorious notch in their belt) and shot themselves in the foot, because now all the:

1) Content Rich
2) Clean & Well built
3) Original
4) User-friendly

or in other words SEO'd sites are out of the index, leaving Google with a pile of irrelevant trash that was before now buried below 5 pages of decent SERPS.

I concur!

[QNetwork]

I have a 9 month old site with PR0 from the start. This site got several of PR6, PR5 links. Some of them from Yahoo. Google does not show any backlinks also. I was hoping that at least in this update, I'll see a real PR and get more pages listed. For about 8 months, Google just got 2 or 3 pages of the site. Some other pages just show the URLs when I search by domain name. I see hundreds of pages being crawled by Google every month, but never saw them in the SERP. So I am getting 99.99% traffic from MSN. I had high hopes to get at least some pages up in the SERP this time. So far my luck did not change.

[Hollywood]

"All quite on the western front"

As we all go into decipher mode - Googlebot crawls on!

I see Googlebot on many sites... crawling away, still.

GoogleGuy - You adding me to page one accross the board yet? :0)~

~ Hollyweird

[Miop]

Summats happening...I can find my index pages by searching for them..however, I had 147 pages (yesterday) and now only listing 45.

[mfishy]

<GoogleGuy - can you flick the "don't need a hyphen" switch...thanks! :) >

nutsandbolts -that post made my day :)

[plumsauce]

sorry, bad interpretation

[edited by: plumsauce at 10:25 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]

[killipso]

Well the message board spammers just figured out that google loves them.
Under a certain state and my keyword 8 out of 10 are message board spam.

[Miop]

With my keyword, it's shopping malls. Shopping malls and indices subpages get further up than actual retailers.

[deanril]

"The search results will be better, Google is not broken"

Domonic update.....

"The search Results will be better"

Florida update.....

[johnnydequino]

Yep, when I put a '-' between my keywords, there I am. Ok, let's do the rollback now.... =\

jd

[deanril]

same here the magic - and there you are

[Toasted]

There's no chance they'll revert to the '-' results.

Just do a search for 'search engine' (Google's #5) and 'search-engine' (the first place I spot Google is #176)... so somehow I don't think we'll be seeing the '-' results take over ;)

(the above searches are without quotes obviously)

[notsleepy]

My analysis so far:

I completely disappeared for some keywords that I was previously number 1 for.

I became number 1 for some keywords that I was previously number 50 for.

Some keywords remained unchanged.

---------

I still find different results for one keyword throughout the day on www-gv

-------
My Conclusion:
Google is still in flux. Be patient.