Hi Everyone, Ever since the begining of February, there have been two live Google indexes that use two different algorithms, which I call Old and New. Old is more like the pre-February algorithm, and New penalizes optimization techniques more than Old does. But in the last week New and Old no longer agree on the number of backlinks that go to my domains. New reports the new smaller link: results, and Old now reports backlink link: results that are the same as they were before February (exactly the same, across all of my domains). New runs on most of the Google results servers, and Old runs on precisely 6 of the servers. Is anyone else seeing the same situation, with link: returning current link counts on New and pre-Feb. link counts on Old? Thanks for your help, Mark
Can you provide the addresses of the datacenters that are providing the new and old? I know that I get different link results using the web interface as opposed to the API.
This is not new! Many Datacenters have never really been updated since Feb 3rd. Attempts have been made but they have all been rolled back after a very short (hours) period of time. I just checked the Datacenters using the Datacenter Quick Check Tool and here are the Datacenters that are currently displaying January Backlink Totals. 216.239.53.99 216.239.57.98 216.239.57.99 66.102.7.99 216.239.53.104 66.102.7.104 216.239.57.104 216.239.57.105 66.102.7.105 66.102.7.147 64.233.161.105 64.233.171.99 64.233.171.104 64.233.171.105 64.233.171.147 These can change at any time. Caryl
The indexes are changing right now as I have been writing this. The numbers I quoted in the original post are from around Midnight Pacific time last night. I am now showing pre-Feb numbers of backlinks on more servers, although I have not been able to figure out how many just yet. Here is an example of one pair of servers that shows different numbers right now: http://216.239.37.99/ New lower link: numbers http://64.233.183.104/ Old higher link: numbers pre-Feb. Mark
Hi Caryl, Thanks for the information. At least for my four sites, I had not seen backlink disagreement until about the last week or so. I don't know why I suddenly have been seeing this. The thing that may be a real new finding is that the old Jan. backlink numbers seem to be spreading across the data centers today. There were only 6 last night, and there are many more now. The other thing I am noticing in the last hour is that the SERPS are becoming more aligned for my search terms. I am seeing much less Old vs. New results. And this is using, as always, your wonderful tools, Caryl! Are we moving to a single indexing algorithm today? The results that are spreading for my search terms seem to be a combination of the New and Old indexing algorithms. There is no longer the stark contrast between New and Old. If anyone else can confirm, today would be a big change day for Google. Mark
And here is my updated list of DC's: 66.102.9.104 66.102.7.99 66.102.7.147 66.102.7.105 66.102.7.104 66.102.7.104 66.102.11.104 64.233.179.104 64.233.179.104 64.233.171.99 64.233.171.147 64.233.171.105 64.233.171.104 64.233.167.104 64.233.167.104 64.233.161.105 64.233.161.104 216.239.59.104 216.239.57.99 216.239.57.98 216.239.57.105 216.239.57.104 216.239.57.104 216.239.53.99 216.239.53.104 216.239.53.104 216.239.39.104 216.239.39.104 216.239.37.104
I put the link:mywebsite onto google alerts and received about 20 emails today, google is stirring something up.
I am seeing exactly the same thing. For a while I thought I was the only one, but I see there are a few threads about this.
There is no question that G has drastically dropped the link counts for many sites today. I have seen this many times before. Usually, the link counts return in a day or two, and often with higher numbers.
Hi allHTTP, Well, I always seem to be the weird one, but my link counts all went UP today. My largest site, which is really big with a Marketleap Link Popularity count typically in the 60,000-70,000 range (between Coke and Macy's), went from 320 to 1690 backlinks. The 1690 number is from pre-February. My links haven't changed that much for this site since January because there are so many already that new additions and deletions are a small fraction of what is already there. So it may be a good example for learning about what is actually happening. Is Google changing or possibly restoring their link aging algorithm???? Have they given up on latent semantic indexing of links and gone back to the old way, or maybe lightened up a bit on what semantic indexing would reject? If any of this is true, it would be big news. Mark
Hi Mark, I am not convinced that there were two or more algoritims. The page that I have been monitoring for a year now and in great detail since Feb. was recorded at many different positions across the Datacenters all at the same time. Here is a small portion of the data I have been keeping. This shows the results across the Datacenters for one keyword search and one page ONLY. If you went by these results you'd swear Google was using as many as 5 different algos at one time. March Results for Experiment page We were not the only site/page effected this way. Several folks have contacted me and have had the same experience with "SOME" pages. I have not been able to find any commonality between the pages that would indicate that Google was "filtering" some bad SOE practice or technique. In fact most of the folks that had have returned to "normal" results as of ~ March 23rd.
"In fact most of the folks that had have returned to "normal" results as of ~ March 23rd." Something big happened on March 23rd. While some people returned to normal results, others (like myself) fell into the "abyss". Funny thing is that some of my pages still rank high while others that ranked high for a year or more don't even show up at all. Up until last Wednesday my site had been very consistent for 2+ years in the rankings through all the major updates. At first I thought it might've been b/c of some outgoing links to top site lists that I put on all my pages about 4-5 days before March 23. Then I started reading about a number of other sites being affected either positively or negatively on that date. But the end result is that traffic is down about 40% and doesn't show any signs of getting any better anytime soon.
A look at RankPulse verifies two major changes in March! Google has not been right since Feb 3rd and many will argue that it has been longer than that!
Very interesting data, Caryl. I am not sure why, but in the case of my large site, the search results were always New or Old, with no in-between. This does not mean that they wouldn't change over the last two months, they did, but they were either all one way or all the other, depending on the data center, and this was for multiple terms. I think what is happening STARTED on March 23rd. I think it is coming to a crescendo now, ie, TODAY. I think elements of the old pre-Feb algorithm are coming back, and that started around March 23rd. This is why you see those folks saying things returned to normal on the 23rd, the New algorithm started to get more like the Old algorithm on that date. But it was confined to no more than six data centers until today. (I have more to say about why people think that things changed on March 23rd, but the explanation is so wild that I will start a new thread to talk about it. It would be off topic for this conversation. I will start the new thread a little later today.) I think some of the more radical elements of the New February algorithm went away over the last week but I'd like to know what everyone else has been observing. Mark
Mark, Do you have any records you can share of data you collected that helped you formulate your theory? Caryl
No, I don't have any files with a history of the bifurcated results. Unfortunately, it is only in my head. I will start keeping files of my results going forward--that is a very good idea. Mark