Has there just been a backstep

[kaled]

For one search, my site dropped from #7 to #12 last week (all data centers on dance-tool). Today I'm back to #7 on all but one (which is #8).

Was there a backstep?

Kaled.

[mat]

Lots of threads around this subject - DC's are going down like skittles, some people predicting changes afoot, odd results popping up.
Scant use, but things are fluxing again, just get used to it.

[caveman]

Yesterday, and even more so today, it does appear to me that:
--SERP's are fluctuating wildly
--from time to time, sites/pages that fell out of favor during Florida are now popping back into top thirty spots, if not all the way back.

[nileshkurhade]

SERPs fluctuating in my industry related stuff too.

[caveman]

BTW, I consider what I'm seeing right now to be a forward step, after G's recent backsteps. ;-)

[notsosmart]

Ditto. But that's just me. Something tells me that those who profited from Florida are not as happy as I.

[Chelsea]

Something tells me that those who profited from Florida are not as happy as I.

As a confirmed 'whinger' such news always cheers me up :)

[cdharrison]

I've been monitoring several sites over the past couple of days and they're doing the same thing for me... Guess we've got to just hang on and ride the "Google Waves"...

[GodLikeLotus]

If you could go back to November, I'd certainly be pleased.

[Chelsea]

I think it has to be faced that the post-Florida results are pretty poor, esp. for general searches. G just doesn't come up with the goods anymore unless it is a highly targetted search. Trouble is, you can't do a targetted search until you know the topic area. I was trying to find out about measures of IQ today - but couldn't get anywhere, until I tried typing in Intelligence Quotient - but if you didn't know what the initials stand for, you'd be a bit stuffed trying to use Google. There must be millions of other cases like this occuring every day.

[caveman]

I don't even care if we get back to pre-Florida.

I appreciate is G's attempt to get rid of some spam recently (not saying anyone here does that). It's just that G did it badly...or the linguistics stuff wasn't ready for prime time yet...or whatever.

All I want to see is a more relevant, useful and balanced set of SERP's, with the mom and pop's back in...

I'll know we're back on track when my cousin's Web site reappears. It was killed by Florida. Hobby site. Very cool. Totally a labor of love. Lots of hard core users. Barely made enough to cover costs. People love it. Since FL, searchers on G only find it with obscure search terms. Today, I saw it once at the 14th position in the SERP's for its main search phrase. Not quite back to where it was...but a breath of fresh air!

[edited by: caveman at 4:56 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2004]

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I wonder if folks who are seeing big changes would mind confirming that they are searching on www.google.com and where abouts in the World they are.

I'm pretty sure that in the UK we are seeing different results on the few DCs that are up than you guys in the US are seeing. When I use a CGI based in the US that sends a search to Google amongst others I see some results that I can't get on any visible DC in the UK.

For example one competitor site is at #7 where it was pre Florida on US search but £50 on all DCs I can see in the UK.

Very strange.

Best wishes

Sid

[GodLikeLotus]

I am certain that our UK results are different, using anonymizer you can clearly see many more results.

[kaled]

I remain very suspicious that my site is suffering from a geolocation filter. Florida had zero impact on my SERPS but hit my traffic hard. I see pre-florida traffic levels (from Google) two or three days a week and the rest of the time traffic is down by about 60%.

The only explanation I can come up with is that in much of the rest of the world, users are not finding my site on Google.

If someone could sticky me a way to check this I'd be grateful. I've tried several methods but I always see innocent results.

If this is true, I will a) have to consider hosting in the US, and b) writing to the European Commission to ask them to look into this as an unfair trading practice.

Kaled (UK).

[Hissingsid]

using anonymizer

I just went to snag a copy of Anonymizer. Very funny, the site proclaims "Privacy is your right" and then insists that you give them your email address before you can download.

Sid

[caveman]

A few more observations, having looked around a bit more...

First a sidebar comment: I don't know what our collective definition of 'going live' is, but at the Eastern US location I'm looking from right now, I see the changes regularly on A*L and sometimes on www.

Has there just been a backstep?

--At the dc's showing the newer SERP's: Significant changes seem limited to some of the more hard hit categories in FL.

--Some homepages for hard hit sites seem to be working their way back, as a number of people have reported.

--The general direction represented by FL, rather than being rolled back, is now being extended to a larger number of subpages that had previously escaped the carnage - but this observation is limited to the few categories we watch most often, so I don't know how widespread it is...perhaps not very.

Too soon to tell, but looks...worrisome...albeit predictable.