November 2002 Google Update

Official

[dvduval]

Did I announce it first?

[radiosky]

They also got a Thanksgiving Logo up. But I am not going to eat that bird. I love that bird. That bird is my friend.

Added> Happy Thanksgiving To Everyone!

[edited by: radiosky at 7:13 am (utc) on Nov. 28, 2002]

[brotherhood of LAN]

Hey mattglet,

The Google Knowledge Base [webmasterworld.com] should answer any questions about G and its updates.

It might look lengthy but everything is in there, and is applicable for every update (even though it seems not during these threads) ;)

/sidenote
Googleguy, is that a hint you're going to skip next months update? :)

[Marcia]

I'm seeing different results, dantheman. One's *real* important, it stayed solid, a couple dropped a little bit. I have one new little hobby site of my own I'd have liked to be included, but accidentally left the noindex, nofollow.

I never do see much in the way of changes from month to month. Just one site recently dropped quite a bit, but that needs total re-doing from top to bottom altogether.

>Happy Thanksgiving

You too GoogleGuy, and everyone else also. Nice turkey there:

[www2.google.com...]

[GoogleGuy]

What, no compliments on our fruit? :)

hope you have good holidays,
GoogleGuy

[Buckley]

So does this mean if your site doesn't show up in www2 and www3 it's not in? I was hoping my site would reappear after dissapearing during the month. Things are not looking good. :(

[mattglet]

oh man, oh man, oh man... i am one happy camper. i just got 700+ new products added, and this update was to see how google likes my new site design. life is good. i do owe this one to everyone here at WebmasterWorld that has taken time out of their busy lives to answer silly little questions from everyone, which allowed me and countless others to learn the correct way to optimize their site. my thanks to everyone.

[GoogleGuy]

I wouldn't conclude anything so earlier in the update, Buckley. Sometimes it takes a while for everything to get set up.

[Thomas]

The fruits are wonderful, so is Google, so is my new fan club now that I am in the top ten.

Hey, I learned something this update. DO NOT sit and compulse while you wait for the update. Keep pumping in quality backlinks. Pound out new and informative articles while others are worrying about when the update starts. Tweak your Title. And etc.

When my therapist first told me to try this strategy I, as usual, thought he was the one with issues. But to my surprise no more wild dreams of giant PR's trampling me during a riot at a Google dance.

And I am miles ahead of the compulsers for the next dance.

[Buckley]

Thanks for that GG
I'm not holding my breath though. You guys must be really busy. Been waiting over 3 weeks for an e-mail from Google to find out if i have been banned or just dropped out for some other reason. Any other way to find out faster?
Thanks

Cheers from Australia

[Belgian_guy]

Hmmmm, this is weird.

I had freshbot coming over every day. It didn't really satisfy me when i noticed that not all pages made it into the index.
So, i started to redesign and got rid of some frames pages.

Now, with this update, all my pages are appearing in www2 again...
however , it's showing the out of date pages!

No idea if i should feel good or sad now

[radiosky]

According to the Google Directory on www2, I am still PR4, but ahead of PR4 sites that were ahead of me last update. I was hoping for a PR5 but knew it would be close = maybe/maybe not.

However, since Google didn't seem to find my best 20 backlinks (added 2-3 weeks ago) I'm inclined to think I will reach it next time with more work.

Still, my high PR4 in my competition is giving me great results.

[Visit Thailand]

I never really watch out for the update as what will happen will happen but here in Thailand using the .com I cannot see a Turkey or any fruit?!

[Sinner_G]

I'm also seeing less backlinks (maybe G set the backlink limit one PR level higher?).

OTOH, more (dynamic) pages in the index :).

[wreck3d]

ok.. in the 1 whole month I've been reading this board, I have made it to 7th place with the help of ALL the great threads here. I just want to say THANK YOU ALL, and a happy thanksgiving!

-tom

[MOOSBerlin]

GG: a great update!

[Visit Thailand]

I am not sure if this is important but I see yahoo with 632,000 on all three googles.

[rfgdxm1]

Overall a good update for me. My 2 sites have held the #1 posistion on a single critical keyword for each respectively, and one of the sites has held the #6 spot for a third critical keyword. The *really* weird thing is one of my 2 sites jumped way from #28 to #3 for key single important keyword search. What is so weird about this #28 to #3 position jump is that I did basically nothing to try and do better for that site with that keyword. That keyword is important for the other site, not this one. I didn't even try to use SEO techniques like up keyword density to try and get that site way up for that keyword. And, the number of sites that link to that page basically hasn't changed, so any sort of PR jump really can't explain it. I'll give thanksgiving to Google for this, but I really wonder how I succeeded without even trying for that keyword. ;)

[steveb]

belgian guy, what you are experiencing is normal. The update is based on the pages that existed and were crawled about four weeks ago. Fresh pages from the past few weeks are not permanently in the index and won't be till *next* update. They will appear very soon after the update finishes though, again as fresh results. There are other threads dealing with this, you can use the site search to find them. Also, there isn't anything you can do about it so don't worry. :)

[hlbuss]

How permanent are ranking results from www2 and www3 this early in the update?

[coosblues]

I realize that the results are far from in, but if they hold as I "hope" they might I'd like to add a few thanks where they are due, and to let you know just what I did to achieve the outstanding (for me) results. First, and foremost thanks to webmasterworld. Before this update, you were only getting a link from me off of a pr1 page. Should the results hold that page is now a 4 so next month it should benefit you even more. I can't afford to send you a check right now, but a link was the very least I could do. Thanks to Googleguy for being so "available" and helpful in answering some of the really tough questions. Brett, Marcia, and all the moderators, my hat is off to you. I followed to a letter things I learned here and within 3 months brought a new web site to a solid Pr5. I can't stress this enough - play by the rules and you will be rewarded. Listen to the many people here that know so much more than I do myself. I can tell you what I did the since the last update to bring my pr2 pages to a pr5 and my pr1 pages to a pr4. Not in any specific order: Quality inbound on theme links: Pages rich with well written content many newly added: clean simple navigation: All pages Validate: Droppped all my previous javascripts: I have one CSS sheet, again that Validates: Fairly good but more importantly new cross-linking within my site. Those were my main changes and they yielded me great results. I couldn't have come this far without everyone here. Thanks and have a very Happy Holiday. :)

[rfgdxm1]

>How permanent are ranking results from www2 and www3 this early in the update?

My observation is usually they are a pretty good ballpark approximation. As in, if you are now #1 for a search term, by the end of the dance you may fall to #3 or #4. However, rare for any sort of drop like 30 places down in the SERPs.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Things have happened while we europeans were sleeping. But for my part it really does not make any difference in the day's work. It's still: Upload new pages, tweak the existing ones, gain good backlinks, take a look at Google now and then.

[nutsandbolts]

Wow, it started a bit earlier than usual... Still, looks like a good update apart from one site that is annoying the sausages out of me. My profile site seems to be back okay and it's picked up the Dmoz link once again. Phew!

Now, where's 'me turkey?

[GoogleGuy]

Buckley, some bad news and some good news. Bad news: You know the SEO that you paid to create doorway pages on your site? His doorway pages and sneaky redirects got you caught. We'd already caught that guy once, warned him extremely strongly, then decided to give him one more chance. Instead of straightening up and flying right, looks like he headed right back to the gutter. He probably didn't mention he'd already gotten clients banned before? Folks like that are part of the reason we made this page:
[google.com...]
Please read that page carefully.

The good news is that there's probably light at the end of the tunnel for your site. The last tidbit of advice I'd give is this: just because someone puts a prominent link to an SEO code of ethics on their front page--that doesn't mean that they abide by it. :) Next time, don't choose an SEO that will try stuff like doorway pages + redirects on your site, yah?

Hey, coosblues, I'm glad if I was able to help. Seems like trying to hang around here last month was pretty helpful. WebmasterWorld is great as far as the number of people who are willing to answer questions. There's a lot of helpful folks here.

[jimh009]

My new site went from 9 backlinks to 108. Went from position 60 to position 2 for one targeted keyword.

Is there something sinister at Google that makes them destroy holidays this way? First they do it on Halloween and now Thanksgiving. Instead of watching football, I'll now be sitting in front of my computer checking to see where I end up in the new index!

Oh well, the life of a new webmaster, I guess.

Google was very kind to me this Thanksgiving. Hope it was as kind to everyone else!

Have a nice thanksgiving everyone. And thanks to everyone who helped me improve my SERPS so dramatically.

Good luck.

Jim

- thought it was strange that there wasn't a thread on this - but didn't see it when I started the new topic. Must have been temporarily buried among all the other threads and I was too excited to notice. Sorry for the duplicate post!

[edited by: jimh009 at 9:48 am (utc) on Nov. 28, 2002]

[puzzled]

wow, got 2 PR plus for my website, thank you google.

[olias]

Hmmm, I think it may finally be time for me to do my 'ethical SEO' bit, I've dropped a place pretty much across the board by a site using a shadow domain and deceptive redirect. :(

[JonB]

puzzled: how do ou see this. i thought pr in toolbar is not yet updated.

[GoogleGuy]

Go for the high road, olias! The efforts are longer-lasting and you'll sleep better at night. :)

Sleepy GoogleGuy.. Must walk away.. from keyboard..

[troels nybo nielsen]

> Hmmm, I think it may finally be time for me to do my 'ethical SEO' bit, I've dropped a place pretty much across the board by a site using a shadow domain and deceptive redirect.

Google even has a moralising influence. Good for you, GoogleGuy. :-)