Google seems to be dancing

Check out Matt Cutts' blog, he posted about a backlink and possible PR update:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

I'm guessing he should know.

 

On most of my sites the traffic has been well down particularly over the last two days however today it seems to have bounced back and on some sites, with a few hours to go it's looking really good.
These are Amazon sites so I don't know how the individual keywords rate as anything can pop up but it seems like Google has either taken a bunch away and now replacements are popping up or they changed their algo but now it's back to how it was a few days ago.
Problem is conversions for this month are well down, worst they have ever been.

Have I mentioned I hate Google

 

Google is purely a love/hate relationship

 

I'd guess that many of us keep half an eye on Matt's blog. But that post explains next to nothing.
At the moment, I think most people aren't overly interested in Backlinks/PR updates.
What everyone is interested in is why SERPs have tanked so much.
What on earth are 'CJK folks' (China, Japan, Korea ????) and certainly more than just Europeans got hit in this last mess.

 

All I read in the forums is from people who have been hit in this update.....for every site that has been hit another has felt the opposite effect and taken over those spots but we aren't hearing from the owners of those sites.

Could this be because the sites that have risen in the serps are more the large company or corporate sites and not small sites that the average person owns.

 

I am seeing a big dance with a lot of terms dropped coming back up.

 

No, people are just always quicker to complain than they are to celebrate...

I've not had any sites hit by this update, hence not shouting out about it...

 

Too true, you'll normally only hear from people who have been hit during an update.
This update does seem to be a strange one though. I expect when I get hit during an update for an entire site to tank not just some keywords - at least that's what has always happened previously.

 

I was wondering when someone would bring up ARTICLES.

Do you distribute your articles and what % of IBLs are from your articles?

 

I have benefitted greatly by the changes. SE traffic is up 300% and my rankings have jumped majorly.

My site is small and only 3 months old.

 

No, it doesnt work like that, one site drops the rest of the index moves up 1 place. So there is unlikely to be alot of people bothering to mention it.

I see bugs in the serps - I have a site whose description has reverted back to an old one from months ago on some searches.

 

Some of my lesser sites are actually benefiting, it's my long running larger sites being hit including probally my top money maker which is my longest running. Not realy seeing 'big companies' take over, in my case seeing the exact opposite.

 

I am on the bandwagon the says the Corporate Sites are getting the benefits of this dance.

 

I find that blog a bit disconcering... like things are going to be permanently unstable.

FYI I was just doing my morning check of my rankings, and for the first time ever I have several pages on a site showing up in Google. As far as I know it has been in the sandbox. Not clear it is out... but I have never had rankings before today. Of course doing a manual search for some of those pages on a few datacenters reveal different results.

 

Now a few of my other sites seem to be doing worse too. Yesterday it was just my larger, money-making site that was horribly affected.

One thing I keep noticing though is that the allinanchor does not seem to be nearly as important as it was before this mess. I wonder if something else is taking its place?

 

I am showing improvement this morning.

"Allins" have yet to be adjusted though...

NOTE: Updated Cache Date!



Caryl

 

I've also noticed that most pages that I can find of mine that are showing up in the rankings are "Supplemental results" AND pages that I haven't updated in quite some time.

IN other words, it appears as though my new pages are gone and some of my really old pages, with paths that don't even exist on my server anymore, remain.

QUESTION: Do sites penalized or banned by google have pageranks?

 

Yes depending on the severity, plus also depends on if the pr has been updated or not as far as I know.

Interesting stats check this morning. My main site continues to slide down in google, many main keywords I'm totally gone on. But some when including the plural I am gone completely, but take the s off and I'm still there. Interesting in any case.

Plus some of my template sites, or sites that should incur a duplicate penalty are actually getting more traffic from google.

I wonder if google is pulling sites it feels to be 'solid' sites but may have hit some sort of trigger. While pulling them they are running a background automated check on the site, if the site passed it slowly comes back into positions. Something they could not do on their main data servers, trying to get any 'bad' sites out of the serps. Wow need more coffee before thinking in the morning, it hurts

 

Minstrel's theory that inanchor: is being emphasized more could explain some of the drops I have seen, and if so, Google is looking to stop some unnatural linking. While 'web hosting paypal' is searched more, it makes more sense to link to me as 'paypal web hosting' or 'web hosting paypal accepted'...
Perhaps intitle: is factoring in as well as intext: (as opposed to allin...) but for inurl: I see many sites missing one or two of the three keywords from that phrase...

At the same time, I see wrongly attributed internal links on my site, see this post (and the one linked in it):
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=375575#post375575
Still waiting to see if anyone else has spotted something similar in their own sites.

 

Just to really stir things up for me I think Google has released a couple of my other sites from the sandbox. /me thinks G wants to make me work harder this week.
I'm seeing a couple of sites jump from #700+ -> around #250 which considering they've sat at 700+ for the last 4 months is one heck of a jump. So on top of working out what's hit my main sites, I've not got to see if I'm doing anything right on the newer sites.