One year anniversary of the "Florida" Update

Can it happen again?

[Heywood_J]

As we approach the one year anniversary of the Florida update, I am curious if we can expect another radical google update right before the crucial holiday season. Many of us took a beating last year. I fully recovered my pre-florida rankings by January, but many of my cohorts took a lot longer to recover. I remember there was a lot of debate on if this was an intentional move by google, or some suggested google was broken. There were many theories circulating. But, there were very few concrete answers.

The biggest question I have is: Can this happen again?

I am curious of other thoughts on the Florida Update - one year later.

[Jakpot]

"Why not? They dont owe you anything?"
Great response! Thoughtful and to the point.

[Jakpot]

I doubt it will happen again.

It seems to be underway.

[petehall]

It seems to be underway.

Can you elaborate on this a little?

[jaffstar]

I believe that when Florida came, so did a new algo with far more sophistication than the old one.

The new one allows them to do adjustments( dampening factor) and to tweak it to perfection (in their eyes).

Dropping another drastic algo change now could do more harm than good.

[petehall]

But remember the command that revealed the "real" or "old" results? -ddssfff or something like that (I think any non-word worked).

Now that, was strange.

Until they stopped us doing it of course...

[RussellC]

Bottom line, at least to me, is that the sandbox (or penalty effect) for new sites still exists. Anyone see an end to this with the coming update speculation?

[webhound]

Well I for one would welcome a "Florida" style update. The categories we manage are brutal and this stupid sandbox, or whatever you want to call it, takes the cake. Why a search engine would want to exclude new sites from it's index is beyond stupid. It's called having fresh and current results, hello?

So shake it up Google, your engines stale. :-)

[petehall]

Why a search engine would want to exclude new sites from it's index is beyond stupid. It's called having fresh and current results, hello?
So shake it up Google, your engines stale. :-)

I agree with you 100%!

[g1smd]

Should a new 10-shops supermarket chain be able to knock Wal-Mart off their #1 spot?

I would hope not.

Extrapolate that for other topics....

[Powdork]

Should a new 10-shops supermarket chain be able to knock Wal-Mart off their #1 spot?

Absolutely, if they offer better value, or in this case better information.
Should wal-mart have a 10 mile radius around each location where no competition is allowed?

[RussellC]

Should a new 10-shops supermarket chain be able to knock Wal-Mart off their #1 spot?

Absolutely not, but should they be given a fair chance to even rank in the top 100. YES!

[steveb]

"Until they stopped us doing it of course"

The command still calls up a different, weaker result set.

[europeforvisitors]

A sandbox is a great idea if it helps to prevent "I'll spam with my disposable domain until I get caught" sites from showing up on the SERPs. And to use another brick-and-mortar analogy, new businesses don't get listed in the Yellow Pages overnight, either.

[Powdork]

Another important thing to remember is that Wal-Mart would lose it's top spot if they changed their name to WalMart

[petehall]

Until they stopped us doing it of course

The command still calls up a different, weaker result set.

I hardly see any difference.

This could very well be because I am only ever interested in UK search results.

[zafile]

I agree. After sometime, threads full of bull**** and speculation take away the value of the forum.

[HayMeadows]

Me thinks a shake is coming, and the sandbox will be a thing of the past. Hmmm...there's not really a sandbox anyways, is there. Okay a little one that effects search by company name way too much. But they'll get around that once they fix the glitch.

[lizardx]

"Surely 'sandbox' just means slow indexing of poorly linked pages; or something symptomatic of that."

Indexing speed of new domains has never been a problem that I've seen. The posts I like reading are the ones from before Novemember last year.

[bears5122]

Sandbox = Google's way of pumping up ad revenue for new sites who now have no chance of ranking in Google. This process is masked behind the notion that the filter is there to stop spam.

Stop spam? If you need to essentially ban sites for 9 months to stop spam, your engineers aren't doing a very good job.

The results are poor, stale, and useless for anyone searching for "new" information on "new" sites. Sandbox is nothing more than a way of increasing ad revenue by screwing their most valuable commodity, searchers.

[MultiMan]

Not just commercial sites were dishonestly wiped out into the neverthelands of SERPs, but authority sites in non-commerce keywords too. And that is even more infuriating, given that a non-commerce site having to pay the blackmail of AdWords is outrageous simply because it is not even a commerce keyword to pay for the cost.

No conspiracy, as the the sycophants of G$ like to mockingly malign those of us honest white hats who were so raped by G$ this way. Rather, G$ simply perpetrated a deliberate naked strategy of dishonest, irrelevant SERPs specifically for obtaining profits without any valid ethics or legitimacy.

[europeforvisitors]

Rather, G$ simply perpetrated a deliberate naked strategy of dishonest, irrelevant SERPs specifically for obtaining profits without any valid ethics or legitimacy.

How does libel contribute to an intelligent discussion?

[MultiMan]

How does accusing an honest person of libel contribute to an intelligent discussion?

[otnot]

Has anyone noticed that Google is really,really slolw tonight?

[MLHmptn]

Amen to that bears!

They can deny it all they want but that is precisely what Google did! And to this day it hasn't changed much either. "SandBox" is a joke, Supplemental Results are a joke and furthermore Google is a joke.

Bring on the new MSN search already! :>~

[ronin]

A little bit tired of all this Google-bashing.
I am not for a moment a huge fan of Google one way or the other, but Google's results are either competent or incompetent, relevant or irrelevant. There's no dishonesty or cheating about it. Google isn't a public service and isn't obliged to provide the most relevant results it can, it provides the most relevant results it wants to.

If Google's results fall in relevancy and countless millions of searchers still continue to use Google, whose fault is that? Google's or those who can't be bothered to check queries against multiple search engines?

Back on-topic, it's now over a year since Florida. I haven't seen anything notable... has anyone else?

[europeforvisitors]

Back on-topic, it's now over a year since Florida. I haven't seen anything notable... has anyone else?

I haven't, but then, I didn't see much impact from Florida, either. :-)

[Critter]

Of course you all realize that those of us that have *not* super-optimized our sites and have seen our traffic continue to rise are sitting back and watching these b*tch forums with some amusement.

[Herenvardo]

If Google's results fall in relevancy and countless millions of searchers still continue to use Google, whose fault is that? Google's or those who can't be bothered to check queries against multiple search engines?

It's users' problem if they dont find what they want 'cos they only search on one SE. But I also find that taking profit of users' ignorance is dishonest.
Of course, G is a private company and they have the right to provide the results they want. They even could, if wanted, provide random results. And it's still legal. But being legal doesn't mean being honest.
Going out of what is legal is illegal.
Going out of what one feels would be good is evil.
There are lawful good, lawful evil, unlawful good and unlawful evil people. I begin to feel that G is a "lawful evil" comapny.

Greetings,
Herenvardö

[Spine]

Hey Critter, that's a very smug sounding comment.

I haven't 'super optimized' and have sat around for several years watching complaint threads come and go, but now I realize that anybody can be dealt a death blow, no matter how clean the site.

Watch your karma.\

[Powdork]

There are lawful good, lawful evil, unlawful good and unlawful evil people.

OMG it's 'Dungeons and Webmasters';)

Hey Critter, that's a very smug sounding comment.

I actually found efv's post to be the smug one. If you think your site survived Florida because of the quality of your content or for any other reason within your control, you are mistaken. If you think you could rename your site europefortravelers and hope to regain a portion of your G traffic eight months down the road you would again be mistaken. Google cannot keep up with the pace of today's internet and the holes become more glaring every day.