Ok most of us have noticed a lot of our pages have been de-indexed in Google. I have several sites which have lost over 90% of their pages in Google. We have heard that Google is suppose to punish or de-index pages for non-related links. Well how many of your sites which lost a bunch of pages had non-related links or are running the COOP? I can personally and honestly say several of my sites which lost major pages had non-related links and are running the COOP. Lets all look at the problem from another angle. We have heard what Google thinks of non-related links (I'm not saying I agree with it). Maybe Google is NOT broken but they are simply dropping pages which have non-related links. Thoughts???
This post has a discussion about this: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=85615 Really interesting.
This doesn't explain why old pages are showing up in the search results. Maybe they had to go back and set a new startdate for their indexed pages (remember that Google never deletes any pages at all from their servers, it is like a wayback machine in there) in their algo which screwed up their results in their main index of pages. Maybe the AS400 reindexing went haywire and they can't recover? My theory is that they have a huge database with all pages ever crawled and they have another huge database with current pages, i.e. you take the change date of the page, and they reindex the current database everso often. Maybe that is why it takes 8 months to get into their index? It's not a sandbox like we think of it, it's just that it takes that long to reindex and tell where to insert the new sites pages?!? I have seen one of my sites get into the index and be waaaaaay up there for a couple of days then disappear... so it made it in to the new index but then had to be reindexed...... Maybe I am just rambling on trying to understand how it might work...... All I KNOW is that Google is f****d up and they change every day..... I wish they would do some BETA testing long before they released anything. I hate to be BETA tester for Google and also have to pay for it (=less income)
Everybody using Google is a BETA tester! I am a software engineer during day time and work a lot with databases and we can't keep on doing beta test with our end users. You have to version whatever you have and do all BETA testing in-house and not let anything out until it is done. Now Google on the other hand, they probably have some kind of script they run and then visually check the results (maybe) to see if it returns what they expected ("OK guys, here we go testing. I feed the script with APPLE and I expect to see Apple Company first because they make us money and then mayb as result #10 on the first page there might actually be a sites about apples......"... "Ok guys.. that looks good! Let's put some lipstick on this pig and get it out there for people to do some more testing! If it doesn't work? We'll just post some crap on Matt's web site so we can blow some smoke up the webmasters a****s and that'll keep the busy for a while when we try to fix our mess. Ordinary people won't notice anyway and we might get some beta tester input from the morons on all forums...."
Not sure I understand your comments. Never said I hated it nor that they are forcing me to use it! If you read the post you'll see that I am saying that BETA testing should be done in-house before it is let loose on the public to use. If you buy some software, or even if it is a freeware, would you like to be a BETA tester without being asked? Don't you expect something to work when you use it? Our software company is in the pharmacy field and you wouldn't like us to dispense medications on a hunch would you????? "It might work and if a few people die from getting the meds.... oh well, some collateral is expected! We'll fix it in the next version!"
Freeware = free software = Google = no pay Use Google to search for anything = BETA tester for Google! BETA tester = testing something that is not ready yet
I understand what you mean Mike. What I don't understand is why you continue to use Google if it makes you feel like a beta tester? Just stop using it