Interesting happenings at Google - Page 2

TimSchroeder · 11-15-2003, 07:56 AM

um, Good Luck

I'm

ed

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 08:20 AM

Some people are saying that their index pages have gone. Others say that theirs haven't gone. My bits of evidence are to do with index pages disappearing, and I think that's the problem - perhaps just domain URLs and not domain/indexpage URLs, and only some sites. If that's so, then things will get back to normal before too long.

TimSchroeder · 11-15-2003, 09:43 AM

I have been doing some reading on some other forums, and it is probably an update where all the filters have not been applied yet.

One person suggested they look like rankings with the anchor text filter (and backlinks) factor not applied yet.

I think things will eventually pan out and I agree that it's probably an update in progress and far from complete.

Leader of Men · 11-15-2003, 09:49 AM

Just thought I'd tell you this...

Both the www and the www-in datacenter are showing 18 pages of my site (I dont mean 18 results, I mean 18 pages worth of results)

http://www-in.google.com/search?q=+s...&sa=N&filter=0

http://www.google.com/search?q=+site...&sa=N&filter=0

janeth · 11-15-2003, 09:54 AM

I was ranked for over 200 key words on my home page in the top 20 and now after being there for six months I'm gone.

I can only find myself so far under one key word.

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 10:09 AM

GoogleGuy is making out that everything is perfectly normal - nothing new there, then :wink:

The main thing is to watch, wait and see what it looks like when the dust has settled.

TimSchroeder · 11-15-2003, 10:27 AM

Phil, is that in the "supporters" forum?

That's where all the good stuff goes on over there huh.

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 10:40 AM

No. It's at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/18296-5-15.htm - that's the page where GG gets into it.

I once got into the supporters forum by mistake but I'm not a member in that way. They received a payment from Phil_C and gave me access by mistake. How I discovered it is another story but it was quite a coincidence.

Mel · 11-15-2003, 11:15 AM

Really weird results

two top rankings (#1 and #2) for a moderately competitive keyword from geocities and earthlink free sites, and I can't even find the keyphrase in the header, on the page or in the IBLs!

Worse than that google is only reporting 7 IBLs for my site, evne though ATW is reporting 316, most of which are solid links.

Lets hope this nonsense changes.

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 11:39 AM

Currently GG is saying that people are telling him the serps are good. I guess those people who are still looking good in the serps think they are good, but the rest of the world's rankings that have disappeared think they are bad. Seems quite normal

I am certain it will all look a lot different when the dust has settled. Trouble is, it can take a while for that to happen.

Mel · 11-15-2003, 12:26 PM

GG is now saying that its going to be 3 or 4 days before the Florida update is complete, so at this point in time we just can't see the final shape of the beast.

janeth · 11-15-2003, 12:36 PM

Hi Mel
So does that mean I have to wait three or four days before we know anything?

Mel · 11-15-2003, 12:41 PM

Sorry Janeth, but according to GoogleGuy its going to be that much longer, but if you don't like what you see now, that should be good news since there are several days of changes yet to come.

While we should begin to understand the general shape of the beast a day or so before the end, in the past major updates have taken longer than first anticipated.

janeth · 11-15-2003, 01:31 PM

Hi Mel,
I do hope it goes back soon.

Do you think it will go back close to what we had before. I do not see how I could go from #1 on about 100 different words to gone.

Droping I can handle but gone is hard to understand

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 02:07 PM

I was leaving this for Mel because you addressed him, but where he is in the world, he's probably fast asleep in bed so....

At this stage, there's no way of knowing how it will end up, Janeth. All we can do is cross our fingers. There seems to be a problem with many sites' index pages having dropped out of sight - hence the vanishing rankings. Losing index pages and putting them back as part of the update routine is not normal. So it may be that the update will be completed in a few days, but the index page problem will still exist until (a) Google recognizes that there's problem and (b) they fix it. It's happened before and Google haven't been quick to accept that there's a problem.

janeth · 11-15-2003, 02:11 PM

Hi PhilC
Now that sounds real bad.

PhilC · 11-15-2003, 02:16 PM

It doesn't sound too good, does it. I hope that I'm completely wrong and that it will all work out in the wash over the next few days. One negative sign that we've been seeing is that GG has commented that some people have said that the results look good, so he isn't admitting that there's a problem. But that's normal for him.

digitalpoint · 11-15-2003, 03:11 PM

For the little bit I looked, the relevancy is a somewhat better overall. I moved down more than I moved up, but the things I moved down on truthfully were things that I probably didn't deserve the high rankings relative to other sites in the world. The few I moved up on, I'm legitimately one of the most relevant sites on the net for.

So whatever tweaking they did, I think they did an excellent job. We need to keep in mind Google is trying to return the most relevant results. *Not* results that are artificially jacked up by SEO. In a perfect search engine world there would be no such thing as SEO.

- Shawn

janeth · 11-15-2003, 06:06 PM

How will we know when they are finished?

**John Scott** · 11-15-2003, 06:21 PM

Google seems to love to "bust" sites. It's sometimes like, if a website is about Green Peanuts, and you link to it using "Green Peanuts" in the anchor text, and put "Green Peanuts" in the body copy, page titles, and H1 tags, then Google assumes you're trying to get top ranking for "Green Peanuts" and drops your site for that search term. They seem paranoid, if you ask me.