July Update?

[Heywood_J]

Is it me or does it look like a significant update is going on at google. I am noticing a number of SERP changes for a few of my sites and they've been fluctuating for the past few days.

Anyone else noticing any major changes?

[Liane]

Since I use a Mac ... I (thankfully) have no toolbar to consult. Like everyone else though, the PR for my site has been going up and down like a toilet seat at a beer festival for the past two days.

However, when I check the directory listing which shows the green bar measure ... it remains the same as it has been for many, many months.

I wouldn't get too excited about this yo-yo effect we are seeing. As long as your rankings remain similar or unchanged, there doesn't seem to be any reason to panic.

Making major changes to the algo DURING an IPO would just be too dumb for words! As much as people seem to love to bash Google these days ... I seriously doubt this is anything to worry about. Of course, Google may have discovered "the" perfect algorithm ... in which case you can ignore this post. :)

[Powdork]

It's a glitch.

Maybe,Maybe not.
[webmasterworld.com...]
see message 5

[Liane]

Well that's interesting!

If you see the link: command start to return a wider spectrum of backlinks instead of high PR links only, you can thank a WebmasterWorld member for the suggestion!

Thanks Dave N ... it really is an interesting approach! AND ... thanks to Powdork for highlighting GoogleGuy's post :)

[bts111]

Good find PowDork.

I know the backlinks that I have, so the link command does not really matter.

It matters to my competitors though ; )

[IITian]

Showing all the high PR links plus random sampling of low PR links is fine but in the current apparent approach by Google, since each DMOZ link has hundreds of clone links, most of the high PR links for sites with DMOZ links wouldn't be shown.

[Marcia]

'Tis not an update, they are playing with us. We were at least warned - isn't that special. ;)

Most of my decent links aren't showing, including ODP. Mostly what's showing is sites with scraped content, including one selling page crankers. I wrote that one and asked that the link be removed.

[IITian]

It is so easy to GoogleLINKbomb any site now. I had provided thousands of low PR links to a government subdirectory. Its backlinks show mostly my pages linking to it.

Next step: Create a 10,000,000 page site with all pages naturally PR0. Provide a link from each page to Google's home page. In the next update about 90% of its backlinks should be yours.

[steveb]

This may be what GG was talking about, but he denied in that thread that this is what would occur.

Two things are possible. One is they just bungled what they wanted to do. The other is this stupid idea is deliberate, and in which case it is just that, stupid.

At worst it is just plain mean to inexperienced webmasters. I see posts on other message boards talking about how people like how their backlinks went up, when in fact (unless you are something like Yahoo) you should only be seeing an increase if you have mostly very low quality links... unless you aren't seeing any backlinks at all. Lots of PR5 and PR4 pages show no backlinks now because they had a few quality links, and quality links are only rarely being shown.

I suppose this could be half of a stew. They just forgot to include 95% of the quality links with the worthless junk they are showing.

Showing links for low PR sites is a fine idea. But at the same time to NOT show the better links for domains is mind bogglingly stupid, as well as rude and semi-mean. Obviously experienced webmasters will just ignore this garbage and look at links on Yahoo, even if that is not a complete solution either.

Since PR didn't update, a good case could be made this is an embarrassing mistake and more complete backlinks will accompany a PR update in a few days. If not though, we will be able to have a benchmark for future "stupidest things Google has ever done."

[steveb]

"Next step: Create a 10,000,000 page site with all pages naturally PR0."

Make 10,000 dmoz clones. You'll look like you rule the Internet.

The new branding... backlink spamming.

[zafile]

I hope Google is selecting which links count and which don't.

It'll be a mess if Google gives some kind of a value to links that aren't authorized by the developer of a particular site.

Can we rely 100% on Google to function perfectly?

Google shouldn't give any value to links coming from unauthorized Web sites (sites that I don't link to).