WWW2 & 3

different results.

[needinfo]

WWW2 & 3 are showing big changes in the SERPs to WWW as of this morning in the UK.

Anybody else noticing anything,

[Becky]

I see the data on www2 and www3 switch over to www about 9:00 EST every night.

The thing that I don't understand is how my number two keyword phrase will go from page 1 in the serps to page 13 the next day...then the following day I come back to page 1 again. This makes no sense at all. I'm not making any changes to my website.

I could see the serps flexuating a few spots here and there but this is crazy to jump back and forth every other day from page 1 to oblivion and then back again.

Anyone else seeing this?

[caveman]

Whatever knob they're turning, or data they're adding, it's having the effect of bringing more spammy sites in top 20, where I look. Still too many news and book sites. G was so close early in Brandy. Best, most well rounded SERP's I'd seen from them perhaps ever. Too bad...not that these results are terrible, but we had a few days's glimpse of much better last month...

[Dumb_guy]

So, any word from GG about this being an actual update?

[caveman]

Looked around a little more...appears to me like they are creeping back to a bad version of Florida / Austin (equal amount of news, gov/edu, etc that is of no real value on many searches...plus more spam again).

Perhaps they are just trying to do it slowly this time...so no one will notice. :-)

[Aberdeen]

We jumped from #200 to #6 today and then back to #200 and currently are #6 on www2 and www3 for our 2 keywords.

But the interesting thing is that 4 days ago I made drastic changes to page2 to try and find away round the "filter", and left page3 as it always. Page3 is now in #6 on www2 for blue widgets which was its pre-Austin position, but Page2 is #100 for red widgets on www2. Both pages were in the top 5 pre Austin.

Does this mean pages with a high keyword density, in the future will be allowed back?

[stargeek]

To the question of high keyword density pages:
IMO it is less a question of keyword density with google, Post-Florida, as it is a question of semantically and statistically similar keywords, that is words that often appear with the search term. This has been refered to here as latent semantic indexing.
If the page is optimized to the search term, to the exclusion of natural copy with other similar organic keywords, regarless of the density, it will be "filtered"
(or more properly, just not ranked as relavant)
The recent re-inclusion of the high density page could possibly be due, if the above is true, to google adjusting thier latent semantic weighting vs regular keyword weighting.

[jeffers]

I`m in the process of trying out a new page layout, is there time for me to get my new page registered efore the update or will it kick in in another month?

[vbjaeger]

Does anybody know which IP the results are originating from?

[dwilson]

If we get a backlink update, I sure hope it includes DMOZ links. I've had a link there since late November, and it still doesn't show in my backlinks.

[kaled]

If we get a backlink update, I sure hope it includes DMOZ links. I've had a link there since late November, and it still doesn't show in my backlinks.

I've had a dmoz link (from PR5 page) for ~year. It still does not show up. Nevertheless, it still counts (I think).

Kaled.

[bobinorlando]

Just noticed that site:domainname.com [with no kw in query]
now produces a looonngg list of serps from sites. Whereas before, it produced basically an error message with a link to the site and a link to see what google had in its cache.

So no need to type in site:domainname.com a to see all pages. :)

[vbjaeger]

My only complaint is the number of sub pages for some searches. For instance, one search term looks like this:

web page
subpage
webpage2
subpage2
webpage3
subpage3

All the way through the top 6. The 5th site is now #10.

[hawk]

I asked my friends in 4 diffrent countries to check the results for a keyword. It was different in all the 4. Ofcourse the number of competing pages were maximum at my end and the rankings showed my site at a better position than the rest of the three that had less number of competing pages. I think, the rankings that I see at my end are the actual ones that will be stable after a while, since the site emerged after all the competing pages were addded/dealt with by google algo/server/database.

Why is this taking so long? Anyways, other issue still remains. Googlebot is not crawlign any of my 133+ sites that all have more than a 5 PR and good number of incoming links. Still clueless. Any thoughts guys?

[seopositioning]

Changes are definitely happening...my real estate client is making significant improvements to his already un-rivalled Google rankings

[caveman]

GG started talking about better ROI on the heals of the Florida update, or perhaps earlier than that last year.

It's a fair point that if one sees less visibility on some key pages, but more overall traffic, or higher quality traffic, that can only be good.

What we're seeing for the past two days however, is a dramatic *decline* in the ROI of our G**gle traffic ... suggesting poorer quality SERP's are kicking in. This is in line with our own qualitative observations of the new SERP's, and also in line with what we saw during Florida / Austin, when the semantic elements of the algo were working poorly, and producing far less relevant matches to kw searches.

We could be on the verge of much worse SERP's again. OTOH, it could just be me! Anyone else aware of this yet?

[needinfo]

caveman

We've seen some less relevant and spammy sites rise in the last few days on WWW2 & 3. Also seeing more sub pages in the WWW2 & 3 SERPs.

[DaveN]

remember guys :

GG said

I haven't checked, but I'm not aware of anything too large launching in the last day or so. People should expect to see daily or near-daily updates this coming year as we continually update our index data, but I'm not aware of any large algorithm updates that would merit calling this an update.

[caveman]

Hey DaveN,

I'm aware of the comment (to which I believe someone commented, to paraphrase, that it doesn't matter what we hear if what we see suggests otherwise...)

Not trying to stir things up, and in fact I do *not* view this an an 'update' ... but whatever is going on, it started last Friday (?) and is having a profound impact on the quality of our G traffic. ROI's have plummeted; only on G traffic. If it's just the daily shift thing, it is by far the biggest daily shift between major update-ish events that we've ever experienced.

But I'm cautious about extending our experience to broad conclusions, which is why I described what we see qualitatively (observations) and quantitatively (revenues)...and asked if others are experiencing similar reactions or activity....

[Chicken Juggler]

I know I put up a site Friday and started getting Google traffic by Sunday. Already getting 250 visitors a day. Thanks G.

[lunarboy1]

G has killed me in the past 1.5 months, i changed domains, but had a nice 301 and it brought up the new site, everything is nice, but I fell off EVERYTHING for a while, and with this flux i've getting in top ten then falling off.

I used to to be number 1 for a decent ammount of keywords toward the site. And in top5 for everything else.

[SyntheticUpper]

Wood for the trees? Emperor's cloak?

2 observations:

a) GG speaks in riddles which would give even Nostradamus translation difficulties.

b) Amazon really can't afford to dominate Google serps much longer. I'm sure it's a consequence of the 'new improved' algos. But you don't have to be Einstein's less intelligent relative (the one at university - but in a bottle) to realise that if you're searching for information on the Internet, you're not looking for a book on the subject. I go to a bookshop for that - or indeed Amazon, with which I have spent thousands of pounds - but not in the serps please.

Now if that's all too simple, maybe that's the problem.

[ezrydr]

caveman - in my sector it looks like G turned the knob back, a bit, towards Florida. I'm in a location category, and gradually the "local" sites have made it back from Florida. The latest SERPs have more of the national sites, classified ads, .gov, directories (that dominated the SERPs post-Florida) filling many of the top positions again - but with a mixture of local sites remaining. It is as if Florida went too far, the changes to G's algo to correct Florida have now gone too far and G has set the knob back to somewhere in-between.

There is one site that was #5 after Florida, that gradually slipped to around page 4 ~ 5 that is back to #4 - it is a spam/frame re-direct page with a couple dozen keywords in the noframes tag and it's only backlinks (about 30) are from the site to which it re-directs. Seeing that site back in the top 5 gives these new results the unmistakeable flavor of Florida.

[rfgdxm1]

>a) GG speaks in riddles which would give even Nostradamus translation difficulties.

ROFL. ;)

[caveman]

Like others I don't want to call this an update. But what did I read recently about G now evaluating 4-5 new algo variations each month, or something like that?

It's gettin' so that you cain't tell the "minor updates" from the "major algo tweaks", gosh durn it.

[Stefan]

People should expect to see daily or near-daily updates this coming year as we continually update our index data...

Everflux that really fluxes. A rolling update that really rolls along. The new normal, (until they decide on a whole new normal). Sounds like fun.

[flicker]

I've been seeing two different sets of SERPS rotating through at regular intervals, like clockwork. I'll see one set, two hours later a second, two more hours and it's the first again. It's been doing this since Friday. I can hit refresh 15 times and it will never change, but two hours later it's the other data set's shift or something. It's very odd.

Maybe Google couldn't decide which set it liked better, so decided to divide its time evenly. (-: This would probably be less amusing if I had an e-commerce site...!

[caveman]

EverUpdate. :-)

[SyntheticUpper]

Hmmm,

Let's call it "EverTweak"

[SyntheticUpper]

Oh hell! - we usually see new results in the UK after midnight for some reason.

I've just checked the serps in my sector, which have been fairly stable, and now all the zero content, totally unworthy crappy price-comparison sites are back at the the top of the serps.

It's embarassing enough to post a headline 'false alarm' - but what do you call this?

I'd call it an update.

[steveb]

It stands to reason that even in a minor tweak some niches will be effected more than others. In mine, this tweak is clearly more substantial than it is to other people. Some piffle has dropped and more substantial sites are doing better. A very good knob turn for the most part, but then my niche gets hundreds of new insta-sites a day, so seeing this fresh junk devalued is noticable whereas in other areas it might not be noticeable.