Google seems to be dancing

I am just curious if there has been a major shake up like this before and if so did it last or did everything go back to the way it was before.

I may be on the good side of what's going on, but I still find it disturbing because it can have major impacts on many people if it sticks.

 

Caryl - thanks for looking into it. I honestly cannot get the results to replicate on other keywords either, even after trying some sights known to have Google Local listings. But, I found it strange and coincidental to this latest dance and shuffle so I felt it worthy of exploring the possibility. I'm still going to keep an eye on this "anomoly" as it may be an indication of further shuffling in the future.

Thanks again! ~ Rob

 

All the time. You'll see historical references to shakeup dates like "Bourbon" or "Allegra" or "22 July 2005" ... those were usually algo shifts or data updates. I would say 98% of the time, the new results stick until the next shift. But who is to say they are finished? Things like this can go on for many days until it settles back into the normal flux.

 

When someone steps out of line, everyone after that advances.

Some sites may be seeing increases simply due to the fact that many, normally ahead of them in the serps, have been dropped.

The most curious would be sites that normally rank a few pages down staying in the same position as this would indicate a "category" or that is not being effected by this Event.

Caryl

 

Here is a link I posted previously to an event like this last February and March...

Here is another link from February 2005...

Updates on certain datacenters

Caryl

 

Thanks, reading it now.

 

That would describe pretty much all the sites I'm watching. But they're not all in the same or even related categories - psychology, seo, and creative writing are the themes for three of them...

I don't know what it IS yet but I don't believe any of the things that I have seen suggested to date are borne out by the data...

 

roman1, your blog title is stretching this page to twice its normal width at 800 x 600. I think that's why Google's hitting you - Cutts hates side-scrolling

 

I better stretch it wider and I'll do even better, actually I noticed that about 15 minutes ago and made another blog entry.

Was there a PR update during/after the superbowl serp shuffle?

 

Well, one thing that stands out to me is that the sites I see being effected are more commercial/sales oriented.

 

Hmmm... that one may hold...

 

There was a Backlink Update that updated and reverted over and over again straight thru to the next Backlink Update.

Check out the other link I added to that previous post with the Superbowl Update link.

Caryl

 

Time to replace those commercial stop words with images.....

 

What are "commercial stop words"? Things like "for sale"? "this week only"?

 

The same here, and Goolgle always strikes on weekends.

 

An interesting observation - you don't happen to have recorded the top 10 results historically by any chance (I feel like I remember multiple vBulletin support sites)?

 

I've noticed only a few minor differences from last week, nothing big yet

 

My affected site isn't very commercial apart from the adsense and chitika ofcouse, besides that it's just about art.

 

Some words are naturally commercial terms. I have fallen for those as well. IF you search for a product name you are most likely looking to purchase it. I've also not fallen for some less "commercial" words.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say the rate of drop is directly proportional to the cost of the click in adwords. I'd like to see some research on that one. If you buy adwords, your drop is less dramatic than if you do not buy adwords.

Right now, I am sticking with the concept that its an update in progress and things will even out later on. I've read tons of times that if you drop or move around a lot early on, its usually a good thing. That's my pacifier LOL

Here are my theories (assuming its linking that is the factor that have changed)
1-Google is discounting more than X links/domain.
2-Anchor text is taken less into account, while the link counts, the anchor text is less meaningful
3-internal site links matter less more - external ones are more important

 

That may be a clue here. My noncommercial site is seeing very little change in keyword rankings.