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Update Florida - Nov 2003 Google Update Part 4

         

Kackle

5:57 am on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



Continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

Kackle - can you explain the "dictionary" for me? And how I might benefit from it - Im reading your posts hard but dont see where youre coming from.

Sure. But you have to act quickly. Google will fix this one just like they fixed the hyphen.

1. Google is depreciating pages/sites that are over-optimized for certain keywords or keyword combinations. It does this by looking up search terms in a dictionary of target keywords or keyword pairs that it has compiled. This dictionary is Top Secret, because if you knew what was in the dictionary, you could avoid these words in your optimization efforts.

2. If the search term or terms hit on a dictionary entry, the search results for that user's search are flagged. This means that before the results are delivered, the order of the links, or even the inclusion of links, are adjusted so as to penalize pages that have overoptimizated for those terms. Most likely the title, headlines, links and anchor text are examined. It's possible that external anchor text pointing to that page has also been pre-collected and is available for scanning, but this is much less likely. (Besides, external links are not something within your immediate control, so don't worry about it right now.)

3. You want to find out which keywords that are relevant to your site are in Google's dictionary. Compile as many relevant keywords you can think of that searchers might use to find your site. Now take these words singly and in pairs, according to how users might search. Run two searches for each combination and compare the results.

4. If the results are strikingly different for the pre-filter and the post-filter search on a particular term or combination of terms, it means that some variation of those terms has been flagged because something was found in Google's dictionary.

5. Do lots of searches and you can come up with a list of "sensitive" words that you'll want to avoid when you re-optimize your pages.

It's a nice weekend project.

James_Dale

11:19 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Some datacentres are returning synonyms ~ by default. Very interesting!

BradBristol

11:19 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



This nonsense about the -dhstahf on searches was blown out of the water by mfishy in message 770.

Not true - When you use -fhfhfh It is NOT showing allinanchor results.

Powdork

11:24 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



-lm is showing the fresh tags. Shows my site with its new title but still gone from the serps. The navlink info probably wouldn't be folded until the next mini update anyway. In the serps I am seeing more indented results on page one than I can recall.

Unca_Tim

11:32 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I think I "may" be onto one of aspects of some peoples grief.

My site overall has faired fairly well in this update. The only place I've been whiped out completely is on my productname/moneykeyword phrase.

I have a support forum pointing at my index page with a graphic link and a text link. This in essence points 100s of pages at my site with the title from the pages and anchor text from the text links being productname/moneykeyword.

I also use my productname/moneykeyword for recip links.

Is it any cooincidence that my only completely missing keyword combination is productname/moneykeyword?

Unca

Stefan

11:35 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Powdork, how about that... just checked -lm, there is a nov 22 tag on the index. I only get my logs zipped once a day... guess googlebot came through today post 5:00 UTC Nov 22

LateNight

11:36 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Steveb - disagree the -uiy -yui is something other than allinanchor results. I rank well(pre-Florida) with a three word combo when I add the -yui -uyt to the search. I do a current allinanchor for it and I am gone. I have no inbounds or internal links with that word. IMO your theory is just that. I have 200 pages all doing well - just the words that used to rank on the index have been destroyed unless the -xtrf etc. is added to searches. The mystery continues....

superscript

11:39 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



I don't want to be one of those blo*dy bores who keeps saying 'wait and see'

But this is clearly *not* the tail end of Florida - it is a new update.

BradBristol

11:47 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



kw1 kw2 allinanchor results returned 647
kw1 kw2 -khsfdsdh (or whatever) results returned 2,550,000

I don't see how these two searches could possibly be returning the same results.

mrbrad

11:48 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



How about this: keyword -getalife

Check your priorities, I mean SERPS, for that one.

steveb

11:49 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The results from the previous algorithm were usually nearly identical to an allinanchor search. They weren't precisely the same. Now
allinanchor:jewelry
and
jewelry -ystsrses
offer up the old style results, very similar but not exactly the same.

Do the same search for: expensive jewelry or discount jewelry. The results closely parallel allinanchor, but are not precisely the same.

Kackle

11:51 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



"New User" posters should be paying attention to the isolated posts from members here who have more than 500 posts to their credit, instead of latching onto whatever bizarro idea some newbie concocts.

Pure hubris. How about those of us who lost our posting privileges on WebmasterWorld over a year ago for being too critical of Google, and are now using a new name?

Powdork

11:51 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Here is something strange. When I search for my site by name on -lm it shows up with new title and Nov 22 tag. When I find it searching for the money phrase its right there at #313. Its among other sites with Nov 22 tags but it has none and it shows the old title.

Does anyone know how much more traffic I can expect if I move up to #312? ;)

steveb

11:51 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"I don't see how these two searches could possibly be returning the same results."

? Why would you even think to compare those two numbers. They have nothing to do with each other.

=====

"How about those of us who lost our posting privileges on WebmasterWorld over a year ago for being too critical of Google, and are now using a new name?"

LOL. Thanks for driving the stake through your own heart. I guess its not the new results bugging you then huh?

superscript

11:53 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)



Dear Kackle - you're dead right.

Google worship has been the fashion, until it all goes wrong.

It's an electronic version of the mob really.

LateNight

11:58 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



SteveB - your example may hold for that word but the phrase I am looking at are night and day.

allinanchor:keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 are completely different from keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -yuti -fgrd

- I think many of us are going to be eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for X-mas.

rfgdxm1

11:59 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>But this is clearly *not* the tail end of Florida - it is a new update.

My belief too. Update Florida is done. What you are seeing now is the "continuous update" mode Google has been in for a while.

Stefan

12:01 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



How about those of us who lost our posting privileges on WebmasterWorld over a year ago for being too critical of Google, and are now using a new name?

Is that true?

I posted some msg's back during Dom/Esm, with my non-American, anti_Gulf_War_2, Google_as_part of_the_American_Empire views associated with the posts and to my surprise was never banned... specific anti-Google msg's did it though? You sure it wasn't something else? Brett seems, all in all, to be pretty easy going for a Yank... :-)

Kackle

12:03 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



LOL. Thanks for driving the stake through your own heart. I guess its not the new results bugging you then huh?

Google referrals have been excellent on my nonprofit sites for the last three months. This update didn't affect me at all; in fact, it looks like my traffic is still climbing. But I'm still a fascinated Google Watcher.

Maybe I'm just nervous that 92 percent of all my external referrals to my main site are from Google + Yahoogle. Unlike some people who are enjoying their current results, I can imagine what it's like to drop out of Google.

I take the long view when I look at Google. I'm neither bugged by Google results nor debugged by my site's traffic. I'm an objective observer of the big picture.

BradBristol

12:11 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



Why would you even think to compare those two numbers. They have nothing to do with each other.

The result numbers are for the same kw searches just one uses allinanchor and the other uses -hfhdyro (or whatever)

You just made my point for me - they have nothing to do with each other.

I also find it offensive that some folks around here think if you are a "newbe" to WebmasterWorld you don't have any knowledge and only have "bizarro" ideas.

steveb

12:34 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



BradBristol, all in anchor is a reflection of words used in anchor text pointing to a page.

The -ssstsrse should list all pages where the word or word are used in any way on a page.

The fact that you don't even know that much should tell you that your jumping to bizarro conclusions is a bad idea and you should learn some of the basics here.

A secrch for left furniture liberation -afefeshs returns 34,000 results.

A search for allinanchor:left furniture liberation returns eleven results.

This isn't strange at all, or worthy of noting (aside from the fact eleven pages in the world have left furniture liberation ancjor text...)

The amount of pages for those two things have nothing to do with each other.

Just being a newbie doesn't mean you have bizarre ideas. But postulating an elaborate theory when you don't know the difference between allinanchor and normal occurences of a search term is bizarre.

Trawler

12:35 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi Everyone,

I am a new poster here but have been reading the posts for a few weeks. My websites also got axed in the latest update.

This may be something and maybe not, I am not really that up on SEO but did manage to get to the top many times in the past.

Regarding the searches: Keyword1 Keyword2 ---dfght

If you do this search for your keywords and find your established position and then click on advanced search after your results are returned you will notice that the dfght is appended to the area that says "none of these words"

This leads me to believe it has to be a double filter.

The second half could be almost anything, but the relationship revelancy has to come from the first two words

Hope this makes sense.

BradBristol

12:39 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



The -ssstsrse should list all pages where the word or word are used in any way on a page.

Wrong again... -ssstsrse would EXCLUDE any pages that have ssstsrse on them.

steveb

12:45 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"I don't see how these two searches could possibly be returning the same results."

Then to add what should be obvious, the searches return similar but not the exact same results because the previous algorithm relied very very very heavily on anchor text. So, if 670 or so sites have allinanchor results for a term with 2,500,000 occurences, the old Google's results would mostly just be a ranking of those 670 sites, plus a few others with very high additional algorithm factors like page title, pagerank, high density of keywords, etc.

Syaing "I don't see how these two searches could possibly be returning the same results" is simply saying "I don't know how the old Google could use an anchor text based algorithm". But it did. Results previously have conformed very closely to allinanchor -- where allinanchor text exists; when you get to three and four word combinations, anchor text starts occuring too infrequently and other factors became the algorithm.

The non-secret secret, seems to be merely the old algorithm sitting in reserve.

It should not suprise anyone that when moving to a new data set that the Google keeps the old data set handy.

steveb

12:47 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"Wrong again... -ssstsrse would EXCLUDE any pages that have ssstsrse on them."

Okay now you are just trolling. As I said "The -ssstsrse should list all pages where the word or word are used in any way on a page". The point of searching for discount jewelry -ssstre is to find pages with discount jewlery but not -ssstre. The search term is there, but -ssstre is not.

This stuff is so basic.

[edited by: steveb at 12:48 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]

BradBristol

12:48 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



steveb obviously one of us does not know what he is talking about...

Marval

12:49 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



rfgdxm1 - as much as I want to - I dont think I agree that the original update is done - although the backlinks have come in the PR that was sitting there has not come in yet - at least on the 200 or sites I look at

DanThies

12:51 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Brad:

As I understand it, you're seeing a great similarity between the top results for an allinanchor: search and the regular keyword search in many cases.

In some cases, the top ten may even be identical. The results aren't usually identical, but for a lot of competitive searches, they're darned close.

I hate to get all speculative, but this just might mean that anchor text is an important factor in Google's algorithm.

If you look at the number of results returned for each of these two searches, you should see very different numbers. The allinanchor: search will generally yield far fewer results.

Stefan

12:53 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



steveb obviously one of us does not know what he is talking about...

He does. You should read his posts more thoroughly. Using, www.site.org -whatevercdsb, is well known to those who have been here for a while. I don't think you've grasped the basic concept yet.

Kackle

1:00 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



The second half could be almost anything, but the relationship relevancy has to come from the first two words.

That's right, Trawler. Normally, a search that includes the term -qwqzw means, "Do not include any pages that have the word qwqzw in the page." But, since no sane page has qwqzw on the page, this means that normally, adding this has no effect on the search results, compared to a search that did not include this excluded term.

The point of all this interest in adding something that normally makes no difference, is that in one specific situation, it has been shown that it does indeed make a difference. That's the situation where the search terms are sent to what I've called the "dictionary lookup." This lookup is a big collection of bad words and/or bad word pairs. It's killing a lot of sites in this latest update.

Why would it make a difference for the dictionary lookup? It's a bug. There was another bug like this that was very similar, and that was discovered shortly after this update started a week ago. That bug was a hyphen between two keywords. Guess what happened two days ago? Google fixed that bug. Speculation has it that Google will fix this new bug too. That's why we're all hurrying to see what this interesting bug will tell us about what's in the dictionary.

The way we're doing this is to select one or two keywords, run a search with the excluded term, and another without the excluded term. If the keywords tickle something in the dictionary, what many posters have been seeing is that some sites that were normally near the top of the SERPs before this update suddenly vanish, or at least rank much, much lower. This means that the dictionary got tickled somehow. And that means that the reason these sites have taken a dive is because their "over-optimization" has used keywords that tickle the dictionary.

Now consider -- if there's a huge dictionary of bad words or word pairs, wouldn't it be useful to know what's in that dictionary? That way you know what words to avoid.

If you tickled the dictionary with your keywords, then there must be something in the dictionary that responded to one or more of those words. That's all we're doing -- seeing what tickles the dictionary.

BradBristol

1:02 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)



As I understand it, you're seeing a great similarity between the top results for an allinanchor: search and the regular keyword search in many cases.

Yes a similarity but they are not the same results as was stated by steveb. That was my point.

Actually the difference was between an allinanchor search and an exclusion search like this -kjkdgfkdf.

Now how about we get back on topic...

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