Update Florida - Nov 2003 Google Update Part 3

[LaBonne]

continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

---

The panic is settling down, the whine of worry is receding to a steady hum in the back of my head, and several recovery plans are forming...

I lost my index page entirely, due to lazy keyword stuffing. My fault! Unfortunately, mine is a very small business: no listing = no food (let alone xmas).

I was planning on overhauling the website anyway, and I've given myself until 1/1/04 before I accept an opening with another business and abandon my own. The question now is: overhaul the index page and resubmit to Google immediately, overhaul the entire website and resubmit the whole thing in a few weeks, overhaul the website (starting with the index page of course) and wait for Googlebot. Time is most definitely a factor.

...are any of these plans likely to restore my index page to the directory before I have to throw in the towel in January?

There are also longer range options of starting over with a new website and closing the old.

Mahalo Nui Loa! (Thank you very much!)

[James_Dale]

Google have intentionally applied old data on -gv. They have intentionally applied old data to some other DCs too.

We are looking at the most recent stable components of the algorithm (these all reach stability several months apart from one another, so some may be quite old), spread across different DCs.

'Stability' refers to when chunks of data have been compressed, therefore making it easier to apply some of the more arbitrary filters. Some of the new data over at G had not yet been compressed, so it was necessary to use an older index for this purpose.

Once the rolling updates start, many sites will pop back up. In fact, I think the rolling updates have probably already started...these will also take a while though. Google has certain data it will have to rerun on this iteration, due to using older data in the first place.

[edited by: James_Dale at 6:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 21, 2003]

[Edouard_H]

I've been watching an odd sideshow for the key term I've been using to follow this update: The related About network site is showing two top ten results (one with supplemental). It is now finally showing one top ten result (also with supplemental) in -va Based on this myopic, unscientific observation I believe the update is nearing the end and -va reflects the outcome.

(I also believe in voodoo)

[bunltd]

chinook: I see the same thing. NYTimes? how is that relevant? It ain't. My husband even mentioned that Google seems to be "broke", he uses Google all the time, but doesn't follow WW or updates and such.

Hopefully va will come around as Edouard_H suggested - it looks more like what I'd expect to see.

LisaB

[BradBristol]

I agree the results are the worst I have ever seen from google.

I have been seeing www-dc going offline then a few minutes later it comes back online then it starts all over again... Can anyone confirm this?

If www-dc is going down this will be three data centers down, two just since this update started.

[edited by: BradBristol at 6:42 pm (utc) on Nov. 21, 2003]

[Dolemite]

Is it safe to say that sites that rank (well) for blue-widgets and disappear for blue widgets are suffering due to the word pair filter?

I haven't been following Florida closely, but this reminds me an awful lot of Esmerelda and the "missing index page" problem. Do we have confirmation that something different is happening now?

What's the thinking on this...

[agent10]

I'm in the UK and when searching for a variety of specific UK searches, U.S sites with no relevance to the area of the UK but only relevance to the general subject area come up, thus google doesn't seem to be acknowledging all the ketywords used to fine tune a search and is picking out generics only. Hence U.S sites, and many directory sites looming in many searches.

This to me is alienating normal google users since the most relevant sites are not all currently showing up.

[vonna]

Please try this:

If your site is missing goto -va and try your search, but put a + in front of your search so if you are searching for "blue widget" search for "+blue widget".

Please post here if your site is listed with the + sign in front ( only works on -va ).

[Nicola]

Some of the results I am seeing from Google at this time are quite funny :) I realise I cannot post specifics, but there's some really odd results happening right now.

www-va seems to be still providing relevant results.

[johnnydequino]

Anyone else tired of bashing their head against the wall?

Looks like my site is not even showing up for keyword1-keyword2 anymore, let alone keyword1 keyword2.

Sigh.

jd

[GregR]

Google is not completely broken. Search results for my firstname lastname I'm #1 #2 #3 #5 #6 #8 #9.
The price I pay for infamy. :)

[dupac]

Hey
Last week xyz.com, abc.com, qqq.com linked to my site. Now after google update I fell down a little. But I saw yesterday that the rankings changed again and I was better. But when I tried to check backlinks (from google toolbar) I could not find the links from xyz,abc and qqq (all these sites have PR 6 and up).
But I checked in alltheweb and those links were there.

So my question is:

1)If it doesnt show up on google and it does in alltheweb so that means google has not crawled it yet.

2)Since those links have not been crawled by google then the effect of those links are yet to effect my site ranking in google.

I will appreciate if somebody can help me explain this.

thanks
Deepak

[Kirby]

Napolean said:

Words-on-the-page are mattering a lot more right now, which is both good and bad. It would be great if any hint of the localrank concept was in play, but clearly that is not the case, so it can be bad when unrelated sites rank just because they have a link pointing to an on topic site. Also very bad are the ranking of links pages just because they have the keyword repeated over and over and over. 100% keyword density seems to be literally okay.

Brett said:

It looks to me to be all about context. aka: the themes update.

I think you two have found some common ground once again. Very scary.

[Nicola]

Something strange is afoot at ranch Google. It's probably a temporary hickup, not a permanent nail in the coffin.

Someone posted about exact terms i.e. +"purple widgets", I bet there are only webmasters and SEOs who will know about, read or even use that kind of search.

[notawebmaster]

Looks like main searches are reflecting what has been on -VA for the last few days. The final shake out?

[Kirby]

Im also seeing mostly what Google would consider authority sites, yahoo and other directories. The only upside is that everyone else who has been on page 1 for the last year is gone too. I guess if I cant be there, I feel better that no one else is either. Misery loves company.

Will this mean another round of building new directory sites?

[algarveb]

'misery loves company' - I see the same thing! The sites that were around 3 years ago seem to be dominating at the moment - but hopefully soon they will be gone!

[Brett_Tabke]

seems to me, a whole mess of blog sites were downgraded. Two of the top blog hosts referrals from google are off 40%.

[caveman]

It's like this:

Someone at G said: "We need to blast the spammers ... they keep gaining ground, and the result is that it's slowly hurting the quality of the SERP's."

Another said: "Yes, agreed. And let's just remember that *anyone* who tries to manipulate the natural order of the ranking is, in effect, spamming."

Result: Many amatuer spammers gone. Many of the more sophisticated spammers still slipping by. Thousands of innocents crushed. SERP's in e-commerce categories returning listings mainly limited to large sites, news sites, .gov sites, .edu sites, bookseller sites, etc...

G should get back to fine tuning for Relevant results. In the past that seemed to work pretty well.

[vonna]

You are correct Brett_Tabke

>I think: the florida update is all about a PR update , they took a old dataset and now compare it to the fresh crawl , and only links that are in the "old" and in the "new" crawl counts as PR, this way google removes sites that have used blogs - guestbooks - ffa - forums etc. to gain PR ( rotating pages ), I think that this type of old to new link compare started in september with a month to month compare, but did not do the trick so now they take a "old dataset" and compare it to a fresh crawl (the florida update).

ANYONE Please try this:
If your site is missing or has dropped in rank , goto -va and try your search, but put a + in front of your search so if you are searching for "blue widget" search for "+blue widget".

Please post here if your site is listed with the + sign in front ( only works on -va ).

[WebSempster]

I am not sure how this factors into the ideas about roll-back but here is the raw data for a search term:
1:date and time (European format)
2:how many results
3:where my client site is ranked

05/11/2003 15:09 740,000 Found at 33
12/11/2003 19:34 639,000 Found at 24
20/11/2003 19:25 644,000 Not found in top 50
21/11/2003 18:59 656,000 Not found in top 50

[George Abitbol]

About the new SERPS and their relevancy

Maybe this has been spotted before in those 3 Florida threads (I read about 90% of it though), but I find a lot of directory listings in the top rankings (sometimes even 1st)

Try these searches :

mac archive
atari archive
linux doc
download oracle
apache httpd
apache docs

Sometimes results are relevant, sometimes they're a far less (I guess that someone typing "download oracle" doesn't want to find all kinds of bits of it with no explanations at all). But anyway I hadn't noticed before that directory listings ranked so well. Can anyone else confirm this is something new in the SERPS?

Fred

[markus007]

The average site in my industry has 10 or so pages index'ed My site has over 20,000. Its not just small sites that are getting nailed, its big sites as well. My categories are now dominated by people who have exchanged links with hundreds of unrelated sites + hidden div/text spam. Most of the sites now dominating these hyper compeditive SERPS are fairly decent sites, but its amazing they where nailed by spam filters.

[vonna]

WebSempster:

>I am not sure how this factors into the ideas about roll-back but here is the raw data for a search term:

WebSempster please try to goto www-va.google.com and try your search term with a "+" in front of the term and let me know how they rank.

[jbgilbert]

Google blew this one as far as some of my clients are concerned.......

I just lost two very good (large) adwords clients because they (like many of my clients) have been checking their Google, Yahoo and AOL rankings and decided (right or wrong) that Google is broken and that they no longer want to be involved with Google marketing.

Nothing I could do to convince them to wait a while -- they just said enough is enough and that Overture advertising with Yahoo and MSN was good enough.

I even asked if they would reconsider once Google got everything finished and was told definitively -- NO CHANCE, NOT INTERESTED.

This can't be good and my two clients are very likely not the only real businesses in the world whos is ticked at Google.

[rfgdxm1]

>seems to me, a whole mess of blog sites were downgraded. Two of the top blog hosts referrals from google are off 40%.

This would make sense. Blogs are in many ways like website message boards. They can be used in a spammy way; and even if the intent isn't spam, that can be the effect. For example, I participate in some website boards that don't mind .sigs with your URL it. The same as Usenet custom. However, it makes no logical sense someone get a Google boost for having their URL in a .sig.

[WebSempster]

for vonna: www-va @ 19:37 GMT
Result count 1,560,000
Not found in top 100

[Brett_Tabke]

Oh ya, there are guys with automated "sig signers" now. I know of one pro-programmer that made an automated msg board script. It will post the same, or similar messages to multiple boards. Worst I've seen was 41 boards - all with his sig file, with one click. The next step for the script, is automating the signup up process.

These fairly sophisticated scripts that are showing up in the heavy hitter aff leagues are stemming out of the auto Yahoo/Hotmail mail signers that the spam communities use. Those were pretty evolved scripts. Adapting that same technique to PRGen scripts is fairly easy. That's how they got all those auto guest books scripts. Now they are just turning them on for the forums that allow sigs.

[shaoye]

my rank does not change much after this update because I did not use any trick.

but I see the sites around me are changed. So I have all new nieghbors now -;))

welcome new neighbors, how you get here, can you tell me ;-))

[mcavill]

The next step for the script, is automating the signup up process.

I've got a competitor has either automated it already, or perhaps has a keen interest in a lot of topics, around 600 different message board profiles last time I checked...oh dear :(

[shopgal]

I'm in a competitive market as like most of us posting here. Maybe more competitive than I realized. Looks like backlinks may have caught up to me.

I use the same page formula for markets with 50% less competition and their positon is a stable #3.
Or is it a google shake-up and as in the past things will slowly return back to normal

shopgal