huge google update

[s2kinteg916]

i had 3 sites in top 10 ranking and now there all gone... not cool..

[DaveM]

Were they new?

[Shawn]

I don't notice any changes. What keywords are you looking at?

[ozgression]

Was "Google Florida" the last major update? If so, it's been over two months... hope their is an update.
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vaporizer guide (http://howtomakeavaporizer.info/)

[Mike]

Can't see any changes.

[r2d2]

No changes for me either.

[MarkB]

None here either.

[DaveM]

Nothing here for me either

[Shawn]

I see what he was talking about, around 11 PM eastern I saw changes for about 5 minutes. Dave, it wiped both of our sites out for the search term "cell phone reviews." Thankfully, it's back now to "normal" now.

[HiddenVorlon]

Did something Florida-like happen last night? My site is still in Google, but instead of being dropped from one key phrase like I was post-Florida, now I have been dropped from 2 more phrases that I was #1 on yesterday.

Anyone else seeing this? This is not good...

[ozgression]

I have noticed major changes in my rankings (for the worse).

Looks like another major update. What will you guys call this one? :)
________
Ferrari 312PB (http://www.ferrari-wiki.com/wiki/Ferrari_312PB)

[chromate]

I don't really see any major changes for any of my sites. My Cutlery site went from 108 to 76. But apart from that, everything else is the same.

[MarkB]

Only one of my sites worsened (for a crap keyword anyway - dropped completely), while another site, for another keyword/phrase, jumped 6 spots :)

[HiddenVorlon]

A lot of my stuff came back to normal... I hope this is not a sign of things to come - that they might actually run with these results.

[incka]

Well debt management guide has gone up one position, but I haven't checked it in weeks...

[Chris]

I haven't noticed any major changes.

[MattM]

No changes here.

[incka]

Matt, we don't know your sites...

[MattM]

Private for now. ;)

[s2kinteg916]

false alarm... it was just off the server i was looking at... weird though......

[incka]

Shawn Week's site moved abit...

[Apollo]

In my area there are changes at least twice a week. I thought this was common throughout google now. It seems to use different algorithms and returns different numbers of search results each time.
It seems that with each completely new results set the stemming gets even more absurd and I fear as some have suggested that the more absurd the stemming gets the greater the revenue google receives from adwords, so it is likely to continue.

[Nick]

Yeah, I've noticed the update.

My site www.learn-japanese.net went from not being anywhere for "learn japanese" to being 114. However, the phrase that attributed to over 50% of my traffic, "kanji symbols", went from 4 to 40.

I don't know whether to be happy or pissed off. Oh well. It's not like the site was making a ton of money to being with.

Ah, but my backlinks have gone from 19 (as of jan 8) to now being 30. Maybe that has something to do with it.

[DaveM]

Seems as if me and Shawn's site both dissapeared I cant even see his under "wireless phone reviews"

Maybe this is just another glitch. Didnt the last one happen at around 1130? It's 11:20pm here right now.

[Shawn]

I frankly give up. I optimize. I make relevant content. I make helpful pages. Google BANS my site from the god damn search engines. Oh, it's not "banning," it's simply "ranking."

Right. Spammers get #1, I get #2,458.

I'm done.

[DaveM]

Shawn, what tool are you using to determine rank?

[Shawn]

That was a guess. I'm not within 4,000 search results.

[DaveM]

Yeah... I used a tool to search and just closed the program after to it getting to about 8000 without finding my site :(

[Shawn]

http://www.shawnweeks.com/images/a.JPG

[incka]

For Wireless Phone Reviews this site has a higher ranking than Shawn's site...

[chromate]

I've been hit too. My Carbohydrate Counter site has moved from #2 / #3 to #40.

[chromate]

Having said that, the datacenters are not very consistent. Hopefully, they're still updating and things will change. I can't see why they would stay as they are now (at least for my keywords). Unless google have introduced another new algorithm, RR (randon ranking!)

I guess this is the penance for relying on a single keyword. Sigh.

[incka]

And why isn't http://www.camcorder-reviews.net/ in your sig anymore?

[s2kinteg916]

alright looks like it updated... im nowhere to be seen on all my sites......

not cool...

[incka]

I'm going to check mine...

[chromate]

Has anyone else noticed that only 3 of google's data-centers are responding? The others seem to be down. Maybe this has something to do with it.

[incka]

I thought if this was an update it was crap... Atleast it isn't, or it is, but the data has crashed... I wondered if a webdeveloper did what the miners did when they were on strike because of Margret Thatcher (wicked witch)...

[GCT13]

Originally posted by chromate
Has anyone else noticed that only 3 of google's data-centers are responding?Yeah I noticed that last night.

Today I saw that I have major fluctuations in my rankings at Google Japan (http://www.google.co.jp). Perhaps the Japan site is a preview of the U.S. Dance?

[GCT13]

Seeing big changes here also. (http://www.google.de/)

[chromate]

On both .de and .co.jp I'm in exactly the same place I was before the update. The whole SERPs look the same for "carbohydrate counter" actually. However, for "southbeach diet" they are the same as on google.com

Weird. Obviously the update's still ticking over.

[Shawn]

The .de and .co.jp are definitely changes from before the update for me. Lets hope that these are an influence with Google in the US.

[Nick]

I want to share with you guys a chinese story that I heard a while ago. Take of it what you will, but I think it helps put things in perspective.

"There once was a farmer who owned a ranch. One day, his only horse escaped from his pen and ran off into the distance. Later that day, many people from town came by and said "oh, we're so sorry. It's too bad that that had to happen to you." And the farmer said, "maybe."

The next day, the farmers horse came back, bringing with him 7 wild horses, all lean and strong. Later that day, many people from town came by and said, "oh, how wonderful. I guess everything worked out in your favor." And the farmer said, "maybe".

The next day, the farmer's son tried to break one of the horses in by riding it. However, he was thrown from the horse, and broke both his legs. Again, the towns people came by later that day to console with the farmer, saying how awful it was for his son to have broken both his legs. The farmer said, "maybe."

A week later, the farmer's country went to war, and a draft was initiated. However, due to the farmer's son haven broken both his legs, he was exempt from war. The towns people said "Oh, how wonderful." And the farmer said, "maybe.""
-------------------------------------

I try not to think of things in terms of gain and loss / advantage and disadvantage, because in all honestly, one doesn't really know.

[Chris]

The fact that so many datacenters are not responding is definitely curious... and it makes me not worry so much about the listings that dropped.

[r2d2]

A lot of mine have dropped... Sure hope it is just a temporary glitch.

[incka]

Mine are the same - rubbish, so I don't really mind, as long as my PR goes up soon...

[dekel]

Hi People,


I am running a page for some time and last month I decided to take it seriously so I set down and worked for 15 hours each day for the last one and a half month, not thinking about google ranking but just making a nicer site for my visitors.
About one week after I started to made the changes I ranked #1 for many keywords, I had to change my host so I can deal with the bandwidth. I was obviously very happy and started to work even harder on expending the site. Yesterday I saw that 90% of my key words disappeared completely (!). I started to look for forums about google and found this place.
I went last night to google.co.il and .hu, and saw that I am still in #1 place, but this morning I am our from co.il, in .hu I am still #1. I was supposed now to sit and work more on my page but this completely depressed me... Is this normal? You think things will get back to how they were? The search results look strange but this is going for 15 hours now, and all around the world.

[chromate]

Dekel, unfortunately no one knows. This is often the case with google. All you can do is stick around and keep an eye on what's happening ;)

It's a shame so much of your site has disappeared. You've obviously been working really hard on it, as a lot of us have. This is the stupid thing. The results as they are now simply provide the searchers with worse sites.

I'm hoping this is some sort of temporary problem. Try not to panic just yet. In the long run, I'm sure you'll be rewarded for your work.

[dekel]

Thanks... I will keep calm for two days and after that I burn my computer.

I have a question. If the googlebot visits many pages each day, what is "the dance" exactly? What's the difference and why its needed?

[MarkB]

I'm not exactly sure, but I believe 'the dance' is when Google starts doing its major updates across its various servers...?

And I share your frustration. I'm getting quite disheartened in all this...

[dekel]

Since I am new here... I have two questions more.

1) I understand from this forum that alt tags are important... Just to have alt tags with the my key words?

2) Google reads hyphens as a space? In file names, directories, domains... everything?

Thanks!

[chromate]

Just noticed all my kitchen AWS sites have been deep crawled yesterday. All 2000 pages plus on each site.

[MarkB]

Nice one :) My main AWS site has 9k pages indexed, while the other has about double that (but is a general, untargetted site that does nothing in sales;)).

[dekel]

Robots/Spiders visitors
5 different robots Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Scooter (AltaVista) 935 34.22 MB 25 Jan 2004 - 19:52
Inktomi Slurp 69 3.76 MB 25 Jan 2004 - 18:19
Googlebot (Google) 64 1.17 MB 25 Jan 2004 - 02:07
Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl') 26 431.50 KB 24 Jan 2004 - 19:44
ht://Dig 1 3.11 KB 22 Jan 2004 - 12:21


34 MB ...By Alta Vista :-)

[MarkB]

For my cards site:



Googlebot (Google) 322 6.12 MB 25 Jan 2004 - 01:29
LinkWalker 19 380.33 KB 17 Jan 2004 - 10:43
Jeeves 18 362.58 KB 21 Jan 2004 - 09:59
WISENutbot (Looksmart) 16 319.49 KB 25 Jan 2004 - 10:04
Fast-Webcrawler (AllTheWeb) 2 37.07 KB 23 Jan 2004 - 00:29
Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl') 1 20.00 KB 24 Jan 2004 - 07:51


And usually only about 5 SE hits a day :(

[Jaffro]

wots the 'Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl')' to do with? I had it hit my site 60ish times before google first hit my site.

[MarkB]

Email address trawlers, perhaps?

[chromate]

Anyone seeing any improvements? I'm not. Things are still slowly getting worse :(

[MarkB]

I've seen very slight improvements in some keyword phrases - but they're phrases rarely searched for. Still not listed at all for many others. DOH!

[chromate]

It's bloody annoying. I'm ranked about #175 now for carbohydrate counter. The sites ahead of me are blatantly worse. I just wanna know why. All I can think of is the fact I have 10 sites hosted on the same server and IP all listed in google, most of which link to Carbohydrate Counter. I might seek a new IP for the carb counter site and see if that helps. Though, it's probably pointless because I'm not the only one having problems.

Thing is, the SERPs are looking pretty consistent now across all the data centers and to be honest I can't see things improving unless we have yet another major update soon. Having said that still only 3 data centers seem to be running.

PLEASE LET THIS BE A GLITCH! :)

[MarkB]

Those sites whose rankings improved overnight have now dropped again :rolleyes: This is like a soap opera! :p

[incka]

How important is IP? Allot of people are mentioning it, but the price of extra IP addresses is high. Is it worth getting an IP address per site?

[dekel]

There is a rumor that google bans IPs of spamming sites. If you are hosted on a same server with a site that is banned, you are banned also. But this is not 100% sure...
Where I am hosted an IP is just $1 a month. (I think) (unithosting.net)
BTW, where are all of you hosted?

[Mike]

It's not that expensive really, $5 for 5 IP's for me.

[MarkB]

I get 5 IPs with my server, but I'm only using one (with a second just for secondary DNS).

[chromate]

Yeah. Getting an extra IP is cheap. Not sure it's really worth it though. I'm gonna give it some time before bothering to do that.

[MarkB]

Considering that some virtual hosts will whack 400 sites on one IP, I don't think it'd be fair of Google to ban them completely?

[incka]

Yeah, I think hostony do that...

[chromate]

I don't google would need to do that. Why ban a whole IP instead of just the site that's causing the problem. However, interlinking within the same IP may cause problems? I dunno.

[Kings]

Originally posted by MarkB
Considering that some virtual hosts will whack 400 sites on one IP, I don't think it'd be fair of Google to ban them completely? My previous host had about 900 sites on one IP :eek:

I doubt Google bans IPs though. It would simply ban too many good sites. They don't want to ban the whole internet.

There may be some effect with regards to the LocalRank rumours I've been hearing about lately though. Hasn't Chris started to use different IPs as well? I remember him posting something on SPF about it.

[Chris]

IP based bans are very rare.