Google seems to be dancing

Personally I think ranking based on freshness is fundamentally flawed. Let's say we have THE authority site on some historical event. It contains all knowledge pertaining to that event and largely there's nothing left out. Should it be penalised because it never changes (after all there's nothing new to add) compared with a new site on the same topic which changes all the time because it's adding stuff the authority site already has?

 

Ranking based on freshness is the one thing Google has been recieving most criticism on recently - the lack of fresh content within it's index (A side effect of the sandbox).

I would say that adding fresher/newer content to the index is something google could have been concentrating on a lot recently...

(For Prosperity:

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4268)

 

True to some degree, but even historical events have new things come to light. A site that has not had new content in years is likely missing new information.

Personally I think the whole search algo is flawed and always will be as people will find ways to manipulate it.

 

The reason I bring it up is my site is 3 months old. I have been adding an average of 4 new pages/day and with each page I add my index is updated. The google bot seems to live at my site and since this all started my SE traffic has tripled.

 

Aloha Will,
I think your statement ran through my thought process umpteen times today... I'm thankful that my Yahoo, MSN and partner sites are still pulling their 60%.

Greetings Mnemtsas,
Funny thing is my adsense revenue hasn't decreased. It's up 10%+ today with CTR up 50%. hmmmmmm...

Caryl,
I've really appreciated reading your data center research reports today. Comforting somehow.
Mahalos, Thank you...

 

But what is FRESH? I update my site every 2-3 weeks and pages may or may not have new content because I only update my baseball statistics once a year but I make change to the layout every now and again. Is Google going to force me to work harder??

Aye karumba

 

My site was completely overhauled, new sections added etc a few weeks ago, so that isn't it.

 

It's just a theory, worth about as much as a PR prediction. For all I know Google may have just let me out of the sandbox.

 

Well, I wish they'd let more of my sites out of the sandbox. I've now got more languishing in there than I have out of it.
One odd thing. The site that is getting crawled lots has had it's homepage visited by Gbot about 300 times in the past 2 days. I've never paid this much attention to the logs for a site sitting at 500+ so I don't know if this sort of behavior is normal.
Is it normal behavior for Gbot ???
It stikes me as odd that Gbot would pay so much attention to a site sitting so far down in the SERPs.

 

Funnily enough I've been on a rash of posting new articles in the last two months. So it ain't freshness of content that got me Google Bashed.

 

Have you updated your hame page as well?

If so then seems my theory floats about as well as the polish navy.

 

My home page has rotating content on it so it's a bit different everytime you see it. So in effect, yes, it does get updated.

 

So could it be how that rotating content is generated?

If you update a home page to reflect new content then the bulk of the page stays the same and could indicate a growing site, while if you use feeds then the entire page or bulk of it changes and maybe these sites are being penelized as it could be duplicate content.

 

Nope. It's my content, rotating from customer testimonials, unique for my site. It rotates through about 50 different items.

 

Thanks, I have one more theory, I just checked out.

One of my pages ranked in the 50s for longest nose. The bulk of the sites above me were joke sites with:
why is the longest nose only 11 inches --- 'cause then it would be a foot.

I now rank #2 and the joke sites are all gone.
In short, heavy penalties for duplicate content.

 

Well I'm pretty sure its something to do with links. My theory is a bunch of sites have had external link weight removed (perhaps the over optimized ones) and are ranking only for internal link weight. This is why the really huge sites with a vBulletin forum are ranking so well for the term 'vBulletin'.

I think Google is reprocessing the link weight now. 4 or 5 of my SERPS are back at No1 now but a bunch of others are still nowhere. Interestingly the serps back at no1 have not updated the allinanchor. I still rank 60-100 for this but no1 in the results.

 

If that's the case and internal linking will be the new fad are we going to see more and more sites that are self contained internal link farms?

This would be a bad move.

 

I don't believe it will be permanent. I think my slow reinstatement for some of my KW serps late today means you will see the external link weight reinstated over the next few days. Perhaps with some new subtle filters in place.

Pure conjecture of course, but it's late and I love conspiracy theories just before bed time.

 

I heard Bill Gates is in the process of buying Google, but before the sale is complete the Google algo must be changed over(in phases) to the MSN algo.

 

I hear Sergey and Larry are just Bill Gates clones with a bunch of plastic surgery to make us think they are different people. Resistance is FUTILE!!!!!