Google acknowledges problems with site: query

They can't admit it, their stock would crash and their primary responsability is to shareholders.

 

Exactly my feeling. Don't treat us like idiots. Admit there's a problem and enlist our assistance in diagnosing it so you can fix the damn thing.

 

Day dreaming Minnie ?

 

Good point.




I hate you guys...

 

We hate you too man.. It's our way of showing respect.

PS: You can always throw that shrink stuff at us.

 

Here I go off the deep end again. While doing some searching tonight on Google for stuff totally unrelated to my site, I noticed that the results looked fine from a purely consumer point of view. I found what I was looking for on the first page, every time. So what’s going on here with some of these site that are dropping pages? Could it be so simple as just domains or sub-domains, which are less than a year old being punished because they are young to the web? What I keep coming back to here is that large sum of money that Google paid to that programmer, I believe from Australia. Matt Cutts or someone said that Google just wanted to buy it for future study.

I thought his explanation was a little suspect, like many others I’ve read recently, but I pretty much went along with it because nothing much else has been said since that time. However, I’m now wondering if rather than just buying this guys algorithm for study, Google might have already included it in “BigDaddy” and that’s why new web sites seem to be getting punished so badly right now. Is the only thing that will fix this problem, time? Nothing really new here, just more endless speculation on my part.

 

Endless speculation is about all we have right now, though. Not a heck of a lot makes sense with Google these days.

I'm still looking at a forum with only two pages showing as indexed out of thousands, but still sitting at PR5 and showing up in the top 10 for about ten relevant and quite competitive (i.e., millions of pages) search terms.

How does THAT happen?

 

I wish I knew. The only common denominator I have found, so far, is the age game of when a domain or sub went live and when Googlebot first saw it. It’s like some kind of stopwatch starts when they first find a domain and until a certain period of time goes by they pretty much ignore it in the search results. However, Googlebot makes regular contact with the domain and does keep it up to date in the database, somewhere.

I think most of this content that seems to have disappeared is still in the Google database, somewhere, but the algorithm won't let it be shown under any circumstance until it gets to a certain age, at which point Google thinks it is ready to be displayed to everyone. What that age might be is anyone’s guess. However, once a site gets to a certain age then everything comes out of the box and is recognized as “real” content and pretty much up to date.

It seems like some kind of “endurance” test to me that isn’t based on good content or link development, but simply on a persons “endurance” to somehow get from date A to date B without losing interest and moving on to something else. Kind of like the difference between a “sprinter” and a “marathon runner” in track and field.

 

In my case, that doesn't apply either. It's neither a new domain nor a new subdomain - both have existed for some time (years not weeks or months).

 

I know, Minstrel. I didn't mean to pure salt into an open wound with your situation. I'm sure this problem isn't simplistic, but very complicated just like the search algorithm. Not meaning to bring even more bad news into this discussion or to get too off topic, but I'm starting to see the same type of disappearing pages problem over at MSN, too. More than likely something both companies are doing right now is behind these problems, but I can't figure it out and more than likely neither can they. Maybe both of their systems have been infected by some kind of bug that will eventually destroy their search systems! I wonder who would want to do something like that Please don’t take me seriously, I’m just trying to have some fun because of all of these problems.

 

Tnx for the info minstrell, all 60 sites i have are indexed with / was supprised in the drop of traffic. thanks again

 

I had two main problematic websites.

One had 512 pages, and one 16.000.

Now (i checked 10 minutes ago on some DCs) the one that had 512, has 2400 (real number of pages), and the one that had 16.000 (real number of pages) has 512.

How weird is that ?

Brin : burn in hell.

 

I'd prefer to set fire to Matt Cutts. First, he annoys me with that appalling blog about his stupid pirate Halloween costume. Then he posts that blog telling everyone that Google is fine unless you're a black hat link buyer and takes off on vacation so we can't bitch slap him.

 

That would make sense in a whacky way but in today's world the latest information is the most relevant so I think a bias should be shown to new pages. Take the news, it lacks logic to put a hold on the latest news for a few months

My sites that have lost pages go from 4 years old to 4 months old.
It's all a big stuff up on Googles part......their search engine has not functioned properly for a couple of years now.

I'm giving up on playing the search engine game and am focusing on Social Bookmarking now.

 

im feeling the love for Matt Cutts also MR Minstrel

 

Age has nothing to do with it (IMHO)

I've got one site that dates back to 2000 and it lost thousands of pages and dropped in the SERPS.

Another domain is maybe 2 months old, and ranks up in the first 30 results (it's #1 in MSN for the same term). It's a reasonably competitive niche and lots of the sites in the niche are edu/gov sites.

 

Agree age doesnt seem to play a part with my websites, my oldest website lost the most pages, 4+ yrs old.

However today they are all back so far checking on McDar, doubt it will last too long though.

 

Can some people effected and not effected describe their linking structure and link sources so maybe we can start figuring out what they are atleast trying to target for...

From what I have heard it seems we can't have links at the bottom of the page, really "close" to each other with few lines of code between them?

I guess all this means is I need some CSS to cheat now...brilliant Google...you screwed the WH and you will never stop the BH ... idiots

Anybody else thinks that they are just trying to cut down on link trading/selling because they think it is taking away from AdSense and AdWords? I don't know seems like they are trying to make webmasters there bitches, thats why my sites don't depend on Google...eventhough I'm pissed off because they fucked it up right when I tried to put some hope in and did a project that depended heavily on Google SERPs, which BTW was doing great till this...and it doesn't seem to be recovering...

Emil

 

I don't believe it has anything to do with linking, or any other SEO strategies that may be employed.

What I believe happened is they messed up their algo and somehow it is affecting new sites and/or new pages that were indexed after August or September 2005. I think anything that was up before this time is pretty stable, but anything since is suseptable to deindexing and reindexing on a random basis.

I may be wrong, but would love to hear opinions.

 

I still haven't changed my thoughts ... G is broken and they have no idea what it is. I have sites that are 4+ years old and they are not stable.