Forum Moderators: open
I suspect Google will roll this out. It looks like it is right inline with their current strategy.
This will not be good for Google long-term. They have now become the radical SE that shows results so far removed from all other major SE's that their credibility is at issue.
It should be good for SEO's though, they seem to be playing right into our hands.....the mind boggles;)
But for me "junk" is lightweight pseudo-domains, redirects and other worthless no-content trash. These are simply terrific results. Redirects, gone. High quality topical content from niche sites, ranking much better than ever. True, some of these should still do better and the minor-relevance sites like the newspaper articles should go down.
I've had two pages sent to nowhere (#3 to #31, and #7 to #431) for prime keywords that certainly didn't deserve it, so I'm not doing a jigg here or anything, but it is simply terrific to see so much garbage gone from competitive areas.
steveb, if what you're looking for and at is information, try feeling shoppy and see what you find. ;)
Also... hold your horses here. This minute the results changed significantly. So we may be looking at different things... like different datacenters.
===
Added... at first glance they are changed, but the results seem similar to what they were a few minutes ago. Spam still gone, but rankings different.
===
Added again... and now I bounced back to the results of several minutes ago. Whatever 216.239.37.99 is, it seems to be being fed by different datacenters.
[edited by: steveb at 8:45 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2004]
Seems like they turned the algo the other way around.
I wouldn't be surprised that more data has yet to be put into these results but I would give it a luke warm response.
Links have not been updated but one thing is for sure Googles idea of relavent results is a strange one I mean they have changed so much in the last few months, you would have thought that search results would only change slightly.
Googles idea of a relavent site seems to change dramatically every month.
What was 1st one day in googles eyes is now last and so on
and then back to 1st again, and the site hasn't been updated!
I also have to say that the results do seem to be far different then other search engines, still think they have one too many filters.
We will just have to wait and see.
:)
Lets hope their are a few more ingredients to be added.
Far to many results for my likely are being returned from major news websites that only have a passing mention of the search term.
For the term that I was dropped for in November I'm back in at #3 then I hit reload and I'm down at 72, reload again and nowhere.
Some of my 3 word term SERPs have been taken over by harvested directories full of affiliate ads, the main serious players in these micro niches are dropped. It looks to me like they've extended the algo change into related searches.
I'm noticing something in the HTML around the search terms that is consistent in the top 10 of my SERPs. I copied this error onto my index page and that's the one cached for my #3 result. Might be just a coincidence.
Best wishes
Sid
Yup. Additionally there were pages that showed one result in the cache and another after you clicked. The search phrases I was looking at were relatively small potatoes. I'm assuming there was some automation to it.
Hey guys remember GoogleGuy said that the DNS has been taken away so i expect they have realised that SERP's are not as good as they normally are.
I would imagine that this is going to be one hell of a rollercoaster test site.
I wouldn't be surprised that the results are going to swing all over the place and are doing this so that Jo public does not get to see it in the main index.
I welcome the fact that they have switched the DNS off and that they are working on it. This shows on going work, and testing of filters etc.
Think we all need to take this with a pinch of salt for the time being.
:)
i type green widgets i get sites that sell green widgets but totally different from the first group and more ontopic for large...
whats google doing? the more words you use the less chnace it decides all those words would appear together so ignores the pages where it does cause they must have been put together by us....you think the Russians have taken over and google and are slowly destroying the western world...?
I lost two big ones - synonyms to my main keywords. Completely dropped from the SERPs, but my main ones (which represent significantly more traffic) have me moved up.
I don't know how you guys dealt with Florida. I just had a heart attack in the last 20 minutes trying to figure out what the heck happened to all my hard work over the past month. Overall, I got hurt, but thankfully, hurt in my lower traffic keywords.
What seems to work at this DC is:
- search for widgets and find mostly non-shopping sites.
- search for buy+widgets or widgets+prices and you'll find the places to shop for widgets.
I can live with this and i truly think that this is a major improvement (however they did this). At least in my field(s). Other fields might be totally different.
To top it all off, the web designer put together a "directory" (which of course highlights my competitor all over the place), and is charging 300-1000 bucks for placement. The directory is nothing but spam and ads all over the place and while I have a site full of content, they're still ranking above me. But anyway's, I'm just moaning now. I'm sure others have more to complain about than I do.
I really wish that I hadn't looked at this message board this morning.
(here's hoping that this is just an experimental site)
I just looked at the cache of a website I completely overhauled two weeks ago.
The old version was there again - although I had seen several updates of the new version already!
To check, I looked at the cache of a forum - the "current date" cached was January 10!
I visited the cache for my forum yesterday and it was absolutely up to date.
Is Google using old data (at least at some of the data centers)?
Laurenz
For example, I have a page that comes in #15 for: word1 word2 word4
For the more specific: word1 word2 word3 word4 it drops into the hundreds
None of the 14 sites above it are relevant to word3, and this pages topic is the four words. Similarly, if a fifth word was exchanged for word1, the same thing happens. But if you include all four words, it ranks #1.
Hopefully these things will mostly correct themselves after the next fresh update like after Florida.
'sigh'
Google.com (whichever data center I would be connecting to from CA) shows the same results as yesterday. I think it's just a matter of time before things are updated accross the board.
This truly is a disaster.
Google have to be stopped.
