Update Florida - Nov 2003 Google Update

Looks like an Old Fashioned Dance Baby!

[synergy]

www-in is showing some major shifting in all the serps I follow.. anyone else seeing this? These results were showing yesterday as well, but synced with the others late in the afternoon.

The results look really good.. hopefully this will reflect across all the datacenters soon. Seems like the spammier sites I compete against have moved down while the good honest pages have moved up.

[prodigyfx]

Hey! Google sells black-hat...

[googlestore.com...]

[steveb]

tambiz, you are looking at the importance of allinanchor backwards. Any one site might make the top ten in the serps without ranking anywhere for allinanchor, but look at the top ten for allinanchor, and the top 20 of the regular search results. Those that rank well for allinanchor will generally/usually/normally rank very well for a regular search.

Also, allinanchor is more important for pithy searches... one word, common two words. allinanchor isn't important for "name of the fifth Beatle" or other obscure and multiword queries. Those sorts of links just don't hardly exist.

Again, the point is that if a site ranks well for allinanchor, the vast majority of the time it ranks well for the search result, so any idea about some generic penalty for good anchor text is just nonsense. The search results we are seeing now clearly contradict that notion.

[nippi]

I am not seeing a pattern.

In order to for me to say "this is the reason" site or siteb has gone up or down, I need to compare with 10 or so other sites that have done the same, with same sorts of site set up.

eg. two identical words in title, links to bad neighbours etc.

I am not seeing this. Each hypthoses I ahve tried, is not matched by similar results from other sites I manage.

sit tight

[customdy]

Can someone help me make sense out of this?

on www.goole.com

search allintext:bluewidget - #2 in SERPs
search allinachor:bluewidget -#2 is SERPS
search bluewidget - about 1,0000 out of 1.3M

prior to this update
search bluewidget - #2

[synergy]

And the moral to this massive thread is:

sit tight

[stinky]

I just finished reading the hole thread and now feel like I wont to puke.
During the last update my site disappeared on google for 7 out of 10 keywords ranking in the top 5-10 spots. After the update was finished my site came back and started climbing to top 1-3 top spots for all keywords.
With this up date my site has vanished again for 9 out of my 10 keywords. Also my site does not come up in yahoo serps anymore since this update, why is that? Is anyone else page MIA from yahoo serp also? If you site vanished last time during the update and came back better do you guys think it will be the same for this update?
Can somebody with experience and thats honest take a look at my site and see if everything is clean and tell me if I have anything to worry about or I should just hang tight. Thanks

[stinky]

I forgot to mention that when I do the allinurl:keyword1 and allinanchor:keyword1 with all my keywords I seem to show up in my old positions. But when I do a regular search on G I am no were to be found. What is allinanchor and allinurl supposed to show?

[willardnesss]

Any reason why I am # 3 in Google.ca (Canada), but I am about #96 for Google.com for the same keyword phrase?

Does Canada get updated and indexed a lot differently...or is it just running a few days behind?

Thanks!

[hanuman]

no changes here . still holding position 3 and 4 for my keywords. same pr6. :-P

we lost 1 pr point during the august dance,,,,pr7 to pr 6,,,,

[Shoplifter]

Repeating a previous question:

If I use one of the various google dance machines and look at a keyword we are still there at a decent listing.

If I go directly to the server ie www3.google.com and search we are not there.

Yep I have cleard my cache and checked it on two machines.

Any ideas?

[Powdork]

When you use the dance tools they typically add ie? to the search query. This yields results with fewer or different filters applied. Try adding ie? immediately after .com/ after you've done your search on www3

[Shoplifter]

Thanks Powdork that explains some of it.

Any idea what sort of filters?

If I use the ie? for my main keyword it is the same as a regular search. If I use it for a less popular term I am number 10 with it as opposed to 90 without.

Any ideas when this madness ends and the crying/celebrating starts?

[mayor]

Being a white hat around here sux. Very boring update so far. Traffic is unchanged.

If all the black hats are getting trashed, why aren't I seeing a jump in traffic.

[mosley700]

>>Being a white hat around here sux. Very boring update so far. Traffic is unchanged.
If all the black hats are getting trashed, why aren't I seeing a jump in traffic.

Google's profiling is about as accorate as the police profiling. A lot of trash remains in the SERP's, and a lot of good sites have gone AWOL.

Whitehat/blackhat? Get serious.

There are specific issues that affect search quality - instead of shooting from the hip Google might want to address those specific issues.

[coosblues]

Enough of the whining and speculation. It's a dance people or have we all forgotten how to dance? The band is still playing in "googleland" and the dance isn't over. I've read "nearly" every post in this thread and what have I learned. Not ONE thing. My time is better spent working on my site, and better yet, being proud of my site. I'd suggest everyone visit another forum or give your wife or kids a hug. There's a matter of faith here, and I for one have the faith that Google will come through just as they always have. I don't notice the MODS jumping in, probably having a nice laugh. Now, if the MODS were to jump in and raise some concern that worth taking note of, and of course Googleguys comments. Sometimes you just can't get a baby to stop crying - they just have to cry themselves to sleep, but don't they wake usually wake up happy? Don't let a little dance get the best of you - the therapists would love it but your positions would still be the same when you left the office. When the band stops playing then we can evaluate and NOT SPECULATE.

Cheers

[Powdork]

Any idea what sort of filters?

No, and I don't think it has to be any given set of filters. My experience has been that the two sets of results converge as the dance ends. My experience is not remotely close to statistically significant though.

coosblues,
I have learned from people in this thread and others like it. I would like to think I have helped people in this thread and others like it. Yes, there is a lot of noise, but in thirty years we'll think the new music is a lot of noise and long for the gentle melodies of Slipknot.
It's all relative.:)

[deft_spyder]

It amazes me that noone has said that google is broken because their site is ranking well, nor has anyone said that google is finally doing well because their junk site has dropped.

OK, I lied. It doesn't amaze me.

[MyWifeSays]

deft_spyder,

funny you should say that - this has happened to me. 3 sites have dissapeared, 3 new ones are doing very well and one single page site is #1 for a very competitive term.

i didn't mention it because i can't imagine it still being there in a few days.

i'd be quite happy if things remain as they are but all those people with 1000's of link exchanges must be pulling their hair out.

[cabbie]

>>>It amazes me that noone has said that google is broken because their site is ranking well,

Ok I will say it.
My sites that i cloaked and subdomained are cranking.They were experimental at first and just doing ok but now they are kicking butt.

[shaadi]

For me everything seems to be there where it was last week and I still wonder what you guys are discussing about for all this time - 600+ posts... :-S

Me from India - Major changes on IN datacenter rest all is normal looks like minor changes here and there...

Google should close down the engine if its going to serve all "Spam Site" in its results and earn only from "Good Sites" via PPC

[Josecito]

well guys i dont understand very well how google works but i have an question...

if i search allinanchor:keyword and allintext:keyword and i get #1 in both results, my site will be ranked #1? searching for keyword?

im asking that coz im getting listed #1 using allinanchors and allintext, but in google results im listed #38.

hope someone can answer that question :D

[soapystar]

having laughed qite a bit at the start of this thread because i knew it would all sort itself out very quickly i have to say.......crikey!

it really looks as though this is it...here we go again....can i start the ball rolling?...ok..here goes....

GOOGLE IS BROCKEN!

[edited by: soapystar at 9:38 am (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]

[ALbino]

For me everything seems to be there where it was last week and I still wonder what you guys are discussing about for all this time - 600+ posts... :-S
Me from India - Major changes on IN datacenter rest all is normal looks like minor changes here and there...

Agreed. It looks just about identical to me too. None of my SERPs are any different. Only at the -in datacenter do I see any drastic difference. My overall hits are down probably 15% over the last few days though which suggests to me that maybe I can't see everything. I don't see how I can maintain the same SERPs as before and get a decrease in hits, unless the decrease is for the keywords I don't track. Or unless the users are being given different data than I'm being given on www.

[union_jack]

What I see in the new index is that if you have a large directory site interlinked or a large amount of sub domain linked together these sites are dominating this update.

Any small target sites are getting blown away in most cases also if your URL matches your anchor text this seems to have a big no no.

I manage 30 small sites (less than 200 pages) with targeted urls and anchor text that were ranked no 1 for 12 months that are now not in the top 500 listings.

They are still there in the allinanchor: command. But in the serps they have disappeared and from past experience if they are not there now they won't be there for another month at least, if ever.

Googleguy says there is no problem with this update, so its not going to be a case of the missing index pages returning like last time as far as I can tell.

I don't understand it, why would you rank a low level page over a small targeted site? Makes no sense!

I could do with Googleguy confirming that there is no problem with the index pages like last time. Because if there is there might be some hope for me and my business.

P.S
all the my sites still have there PR and innerpages still rank well. Just the index pages which have my keywords bring people to site which have disappeared.

[Powdork]

GOOGLE IS BROKE!

Dearest and Most Conscientious GoogleGuy,
I am Dave Naivete and me is speaking on behalf of my late ex wife the supreme meta dictator of Liberia. I heard you were broke. I have at my hands acces to $100,000,000 U.S. Francs. If you could be so kind as to deposti the paltry sum of $500,000 in the account of powdork you would be able to access these funds.

or did you mean broken?;)

[soapystar]

"I don't see how I can maintain the same SERPs as before and get a decrease in hits"

if less people are happy with the serps and they are using other engines.....

[needinfo]

union_jack

There is a company in our industry who have a very large network of sites interlinked, they also have many sites which differ slightly but offer the same products and they are certainly dominating the SERPs right now. They have anything from 4 - 6 sites in the top 10 for all our major searches.

[union_jack]

needinfo:

Do they have keyword urls and anchor text interlinking?

I dont interlink my sites as I never needed too.

But I might have to start :-(

[soapystar]

I heard you were broke.

so..not just me noticing then........

[needinfo]

union_jack

Yeah, big time!

Do u think keyword URLs are a problem. I personally think long keyword URLs are bad (5+ word seperated by hyphens/underscores) but normally URLs with keywords in are a logical choice for a domain. I mean you're not going to buy a domain named blue_circles.com when you site gives information on/sells red_triangles.

Same applies to anchor text to some extent. A logical choice for anchor text would be something which reflects your site.

[edited by: needinfo at 9:56 am (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]