Google seems to be dancing

I've thought this too. How can a multi-multi-billion dollar corporation just throw things out there and not know exactly what is going to happen. Do they only spot-check 10-20 popular search phrases for "okay-ness" then hit the big red button? Its lunacy.

They just think they are Microsoft or something, putting out an endproduct that needs another update in 2-3 weeks. Geesh.

 

Its possible that it has to do with reciprical link directories, but everytime there is an update people say that.

2 years ago after the florida update people where proclaiming its was all becasue of reciprical links, and it didn't seem to be the case

There is sort of catholic school of seo that thinks that anything that helps rankings is bad, and must be the cause of all problems.

 

Imagine the sheer number of systems you'd need to have to have a 'testing ground' for a search engine's algorithm. The idea just doesn't hold water.
Yes, they will test algorithms. But with things like that, what happens in a test environment isn't the same as what happens in real life use. It's no different in a way to Microsoft, they have some of the top MS users and companies test their products (in real world use) for months and months prior to a release yet things still go very wrong upon release.
There is no way google can just mirror the internet for their own testing.

 

I doubt its reciprocals. My sites had like 10-15 recips on each, out of the 1000's of backlinks.

Florida update turned out to be over-optimized pages, didnt' it? I remember that one. I lost a ton of rankings. Removed keyword spam on my pages and I came back right away.

 

This is true.

That school appears to be strongly opposed to rational analysis.

 

If anything it's more to do with one way linking than recips. My site that got hit hardest (so far) has very few outgoing links and many incoming links.
I still think it's too early to try and draw conclusions just yet. Things are still a changing

 

Thats possible but if you think about programming it, it seems sort of crazy

Every links would have be assigned values corelating to every subject of the site its on, and the relationship between the site its pointing at would have to evaulated based on it, then this process would have to be repeated for every link on the internet,

it just seems like a leap to me

and if thats the case, why are old ass sites suddenly so much more relevant?

 

Can someone who got dumped in the past couple of days confirm if they are rising again? Looks like my site is rising again in many of the datacenters, including some pages that weren't indexed before. Three of the datacenters now have me back at #14 where I was before this "event".

 

Isn't that what SE's do? - assign value based upon some metric of relevance. Why would it be any harder to apply that "intelligence" to links? Especially given the laughable consistency in links pages - I would bet that anyone here could identify a links page by looking at the code in a language they couldn't even read. From an algorithmic standpoint, discounting those links would be terribly easy.

As for the testing space, I think it unrealistic that they don't test this thoroughly. But how do you implement changes across that broad and closely scrutinized an index without anybody noticing. Also, when was the last update that of any SE that didn't include some reversion to old data/transitional SERPS/garbage results/general instability? I don't recall an update that just jumped instantly to new, stable results. And who cares except for the tiny minority of SEO's? - that rely on Google anyway.

 

Nope, but then I wouldn't expect to see any rises yet - I only dumped today.

 

no such movement for me yet, ill keep my fingers crossed though!

 

Not only do few other people care, few other people outside of SEOs will have even noticed.
But if SEO'd sites continue to tank then 'normal' users will start to notice.

 

Question from a newcomer: Where/how do you check to see what the googlebot is doing on your site?

My website is created by Freeway Express 3.5 on an iMac. Thanks.

 

This could be a pathetically bad implementation of the TrustRank concept, where Google has arbitrarily decided that major corporations are the most trustworthy sites.

 

Or it could be that their update is starting with older sites, moving towards newer sites and that is why we see media sites at the top, because they were around for longer.

 

It depends on your web host, but you either look at online stats programs or download the raw website logs and analyse them using your own software.

 

My page is position#12 on Datacenters:
216.239.57.98
216.239.57.99
216.239.57.104
216.239.57.105

It is in positions > #744 on the rest of the datacenters.

BUT this is not a change. The 4 datacenters mentioned above have pretty much stayed at that position.

UPDATE: (edited 5:26PM) My site is now showing up at position #12 on 10 datacenters. So, now we'll see if it keeps going in that direction or revert.

Caryl

 

There is a world of difference between counting links and giving them a value based on how many other links point at the page they are on

and

figuring out a list subjects that each link could be relevant to based on the sites content and content of the site its pointing at

 

my site is the only one in my indsutry that tanked in the serps...other small sites are still in the top 10. all of the sites are also ATLEAST 1 year older than mine.

i have 6.5 times the IBLs of the next closest site. so it appears that G actually successfully penalized me for breaking the TOS.

 

I usually think that few people notice a change in results.. and SEO's sounding Google's death bell are crazy. However, after quizzing my wife on her Google experience the past few days, it turns out she has noticed a turn for the crappy. She complained about both commercial and non-commercial searches.

She showed me some of her examples.. italian wedding candy ... the first result is a site about body jewelry. Then.. canada marriage license ... the first result is about.com which she thought was spammy because of the ads trying to sell her marriage license kits. She expects the official Canada .gov site to rank first with the license application.