Update Austin Part 2

[moftary]

continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

---

My new website PR was raised from PR1 to PR5 in the last PR update, still I haven't noticed any improvement in serps!

Does it take time for serps to improve or I should lose hope?

Does it worth it to achieve PR5, PR6 or PR7 when people find you in serps by a five words keyword?

Who said that websites that have PR4 get around 300 hit/day and PR6 websites get around 3000 hit/day and so on?

Hoax! My PR5 website barely gets 100 hit/day while another PR5 website gets 17000 hit/day!

And yes, I am very newbie regarding SEO world if you were wondering.

--mOftary

[truth_speak]

thank you for the help, Pimpernel.

i will get back to you later on what i find out.

[CCowboy]

Pimpernel,

Good Post! I agree Google will not see the light.

Both management and employees have tunnel vision focusing on the coming IPO Riches.

What they forget is they must hang onto their stock for 180 days after the IPO. That represents 9-12 of declining market share if they don't improve their results.

I am sure Yahoo and MSN have enough Marketing cash to point out the decline of the Google results!

[Hollywood]

I am sure that Microsoft and Yahoo will compete with Google and Google will be left with a 33% share or less. Plan ahead.

Hollywood

[Marcia]

What I'm finding hard to fathom is why hotel sites are coming up top ten for searches for mere obscure mention of an article of clothing they provide for the convenience of their guests. That is certainly not explained by theming in any sense of the word.

[Pimpernel]

Can you give an example Marcia? Without seeing any example I would hazard a guess that the search term in question is a weak theme and therefore the stronger rated sites get top listing. This is really what is wrong with the latest update - too much importance is given to Authority sites with the result that Google thinks they are an authority on everything that they mention regardless of the context in which it was mentioned.

[Chelsea]

Why Update Austin (presumably Texas) - is the Internet solely American? Next in line was H, Houston?

[Marcia]

January, start of a new year. Same way they do it annually with hurricanes.

[europeforvisitors]

Why Update Austin (presumably Texas) - is the Internet solely American?

Gee, and I thought it was named after Austin Powers. :-)

[NeverHome]

> As far as this update... "stick a fork in it"

When my wife cooks a roast she uses that technique to see if it's done, i.e. when the juices flow clear, it's ready for consumption. When I stick a fork in Austin, however, there is still a good deal of blood oozing from the flesh.

But then again, some people prefer it underdone.

[ronin]

is the Internet solely American?

Why yes, didn't you know that .com signifies a company in the United States?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The US is possibly the only country in the world which doesn't use its ccTLD, as a standard for non-international companies.

Since India has done so much for Internet development can we nickname the next update 'Bangalore'? No? Oh well.

Meanwhile, back in Austin...

[yankee]

"too much importance is given to Authority sites with the result that Google thinks they are an authority on everything that they mention regardless of the context in which it was mentioned."

Totally agree with this statement. Google needs to find a better way to get rid of spam and redirects than to serve up authority sites for things they aren't an authority on.

[Chelsea]

Why yes, didn't you know that .com signifies a company in the United States?

Same problems over here my friend - my .co.uk now gives me no more precedence in UK and IE searches than the rest of the world - even when using Google.co.uk.

Never mind - at least we collectively got rid of that bloke who was no threat to us ;-)

[edited by: Marcia at 10:33 pm (utc) on Jan. 31, 2004]

[justinsane777]

has anybody run into this on the update...website shows up #2 in serps for a given phrase...search for www.sitename.com in google (check backlinks, etc) and google returns that the site is not in the index?

How can a site be in the serps (highly ranked even) and not in the index?

[Chelsea]

Further:

Whatever the concerns regarding the quality of Google's SERPs, the directory listings haven't made any sense since mid-November 2003, and the country specific listings are clearly in turmoil.

Many weeks ago, non-conspiricists were suggesting that Google wasn't selling out, but was merely broken. The SERPs suggest this.

Comments?

[LateNight]

>>>>Your average small business has for a long time accepted that they cannot realistically achieve top ranking under generic terms but this was compensated for by the fact that they could get top under niche phrases, which frankly is a bit like the real world of corporate versus smaller niche businesses. But now that opportunity has slipped for many of them.<<<<<<

Exactly, I could accept Florida taking away my big generic terms, but Austin in now is now infecting obsure 3 and 4 word search terms. I have hundereds of specific pages that I was able to get by on after Florida, now those are seen as irrelevant. The serps on those highly targeted searches are replaced with authority sites that are :

>>>>>>an authority on everything that they mention regardless of the context in which it was mentioned.<<<<<<

Thanks, for the insight Pimpernel - you nailed it.

[Marcia]

>>>>>>an authority on everything that they mention regardless of the context in which it was mentioned.<<<<<<

However, regardless of the context in a lot of cases, if we climb right on up the ODP category tree we can see some reasoning behind it. What we're seeing is the branches spread out further this time around.

Hmmmm... after going on 4 years of diligent Brett_watching, I've never seen him dig out an old thread without some sort of a reason. Wonder what he's up to here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

ahem

Doesn't tell us a whole lot. ;)

[Becky]

It looks as though the dance may be over. I'm seeing all the US datacenters showing the same SERP's as of a few minutes ago.

Although I have never noticed it before, has the european data centers (.de,.fr,)ever showed a different index than the US data centers like they are showing now?

If not, I wonder what this significance is?

[Robert123]

i have still have seen 3 data sets....

[drewls]

I see 4. 2 on the english Googles and 2 on the European.

[Becky]

Robert or drewls,

Have either of you ever seen this before...The different serps on the european data centers? These have not changed since the dance started on the 24th.

[valeyard]

Hmmmm... after going on 4 years of diligent Brett_watching, I've never seen him dig out an old thread without some sort of a reason. Wonder what he's up to here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but the line on that thread that jumped out at me was from WebGuerrilla:

Google will also have to deal with the reality that producing quality free results doesn't seem to translate into profits

Nuff said.

[zafile]

A few days ago, I read a theory about the current situation with Google. The theory dealt with new software deployed by Google in late November 2003 to correct the following problems:

On April 10, 2003, the Harvard Law School issued a report related to a glitch in Google's filters. Read more at http://news.com.com/2100-1032-996417.html

Prior to November 20 2003, the day in which most of "mycountry real estate" Web sites disappeared from Google's SERPs, gambling Web sites often showed among valid real estate results.

Also, there were a few news reports about a problem with Google's SERPs: when school kids made homework about human sexuality and used Google to obtain information, Google's results contained pornographic Web sites among valid clinical results.

According to the theory, to correct the above problems, Google had to deploy new software and clean its databases that contained fraudulent Web sites' data.

Now, Google obtained an important patent on December 2, 2003 on "detecting duplicate and near-duplicate files."

I'm not a software engineer but I'll assume that to deploy new software to fix the above it isn't an easy task specially knowing the size of Google.

I'll appreciate your thoughts.

P.s. One of "my country real estate" sites that became MIA in late November 2003 has improved its ranking:

January 2 - No. 526
January 25 - No. 340
January 31 - No. 143

Edit: Brief correction for clarity.

[skipfactor]

>>On April 10, 2003?

[zafile]

April 10, 2003 is the date of the news report at [news.com.com...] about the Harvard report.

[afterburner]

which site is current, google.com or google.es, right now?

[willybfriendly]

Well, for what it's worth, the wife came home tonight and told me she heard a blurb on NPR (National Public Radio) about Google and how some sites have dived in the results.

Wife is a computer neophyte. NPR has a huge audience.

WBF

[steveb]

For two search times I've found multiple instances of the same site, exact same url, in the top 1000 serps. In one case I found the dmoz category appropriate to the search at #110, #306, #410, #502, #572, and #643. I was looking deep into these serps because this is one place I know of more than one site that implausibly lost a ranking, from top ten down hundreds of spots. Scrolling through the results in some cases I also see more than two instances of results for other domains.

[Chelsea]

I've seen some major changes overnight. A lot of sites with a cache date of 30 Jan and quite a lot of reshuffling. (UK)

[BallochBD]

WillyBfriendly wrote:
<Well, for what it's worth, the wife came home tonight and told me she heard a blurb on NPR (National Public Radio) about Google and how some sites have dived in the results.>

I am actually amazed at the lack of media coverage on this latest update. Following on from Florida and causing the damage it did (it's basically putting me, as a self employed consultant, out of business) you would have thought some of the Media channels would have carried follow up stories?

[Essex_boy]

I just cant believe this, I noticed that my traffic had droppped off big time this morning so I checked Google.
Guess what?

Half of my pages are no longer listed. I use no dodgy tactics just plain HTML.

Anybody? Is this Austins revenge?

<RANT>
Im getting truly sick of Googles playing around, this is the second time they appear to have ruined a perfectly viable web business of mine.

I thought the purpose of a search engine was to reflect the web and its contents not to decide in an arbitary, almost casual, fashion what is and isnt the flavour of the month. I mean for crying out loud peoples livings depend on this.

Interesting point, all the pages that were dropped are the high converting sales pages - plug for adwords?

</RANT>