Google Update

[Chris]

Anyone else see a Google update? I'm seeing major movement in my listings on digital point (not good movement).

[incka]

Mostly bad for me too.

BTW: It's really hard to read 4webtemplates in your sig Chris.

[nohaber]

Nothing for me

[mobilebadboy]

I'll quote myself from SEOChat yesterday.



Google's definetely up to something. One of my sites they've completely screwed, devaluing every indexed page (removing all normal indexing, simple URL links now) and not only dropping a page that held a #1 spot for months for a particular search term, but completely wiped it off the map. Searching to spot 195 I only find the front page link. Yet it's been back today crawling the whole site. Kill the site then re-crawl it.

Another site with nearly 500 indexed pages is now down to less than 90, several not showing fully indexed anymore. That helps in trying to sell it. Maybe they'll kill the PR too and just email me with a big FU.

Another site it dropped about 1000 pages. Checking now I see another 600 gone. 1600 lost pages in the matter of 24 hours. I guess if they really did this particular site ANY kind of good, I might stop running Adwords and they'd miss out on collecting my money.

I haven't even checked anything today. Of course the events over the last 2 days make me not want to check anything.

[Mike]

Yep, I see quite a lot of changes for different terms. All of my sites have stayed in the same positions really though.

[Dan Morgan]

I saw some odd fluctuations over the past few days for certain terms which made me think that something was going on. Nothing today though.

Is it just me or does DP (or G's API) not seem to be as upto date as the actual SERPs) over the last month?

[chromate]

I haven't noticed anything beyond the ordinary. I can't remember the name of that site r2d2 posted a while back, but that would show any increase in activity.

[mobilebadboy]

This one, http://www.rankpulse.com ?

[michael_gersitz]

I was wondering why there was so much traffic coming to my sites....

Most of my listings have been lowered though...

Only recently indexed pages have high rankings for some reason.

I would like to see a PR change, so I can marvle at my PR for weeks! :)

[MarkB]

No changes for me according to DP. I'm looking forward to the PR update though.

[Jaffro]

yes i've seen some dancing occuring over the past few days.

[Percept]

I'm not seeing much changes.

[nohaber]

There's an update going on. I am moving up (hope it's not temporary) on "diet software" and "fitness software". I have had stable rankings for these two terms for a looong time.
Interestingly, I haven't worked on my software site for months. The only thing that I changed was to optimize my internal links a bit to get more PR in the most important pages. That might be a sign of a PR update at Google (not the toolbar)

[incka]

Jaffro has fallen alot.

[Mike]

I've moved down a page unfortunately...

[Jaffro]

Yea i've dropped a few places on my main term in google not a big loss. moved to the top spot in my secondary term and hit the top on yahoo :) still all good ;) I remember mess.be coming in before like this but they shuffeled out again, hope it happens again.

[r2d2]

Dropped from #1 to #4 for my only decent Google placing... :(

Nevermind, more motivation to work on SEO... :)

[Kyle]

My site sonicshopper is done for. Traffic is down from around 1k unqiues a day, to 100's. Uh oh.

[Chris]

I cannot see any reasoning for these changes.

[incka]

It's killed your dell coupons ranking...

[Chris]

Do you think I don't know that?

[incka]

I was just trying to be sympathetic.

[MarkB]

:rolleyes:

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Do you think I don't know that?

How big is the impact on your traffic Chris?

[Kyle]

savvy is showing up as result #100 for me right now on dell coupons. I couldn't find it earlier. Sorry if I'm telling you information you already know.

[cameron]

I use digital point and I see changes basically everyday to many of my terms. I haven't noticed anything significant.

[intelliot]

Does everyone still watch 'toolbar PR' even though we know the miniscule effect it has on rankings?

[Jaffro]

yea tpr is still worth looking at. just like all the other factors that goes into the ranking process, its worth considering.

my site's back up again, just how it should be :D Next week i can do some work on it and start a new site :D

[incka]

If Jaffros site was PR8 nothing would beat it.

If Chris' dell coupons site was PR8 a few sites might still beat it as all those sites have high PR and loads of other SEO things.

[Jaffro]

PR8 yea right! hah

[Chris]

Sometimes I think some of you have my sites setup on your digital point account. You might achieve more success if you worried about your own sites. I check my rankings every day. I know whats going on, the play by play is really not necessary.

My major competitors still achieve success through multiple domain/duplicate content spam. I don't want to spam like that though.

I'm also noticing lower performance for my AWS sites, this could mean Google is doing something finally to fix the AWS issue. However plenty of AWS sites still clog the search engines. I'm also noticing no decrease in AWS pages listed in Google (as per digitalpoint).

Since I use AWS on my coupon site the AWS pages may be dragging the coupon pages down. I don't know yet though.

I've also read comments elsewhere about other people having sites seemingly dropped with the idea that Google is reverting to older data because of some issue. Which is possible because if you go back 6 or so months my coupon site was listed like it is now.

How much does it affect my traffic? I'm not sure, its complicated. Especially since I'm being crawled heavily right now. I still have decent Inktomi listings, which gives me traffic from MSN and Yahoo. Also, since I was #1 on every coupon search for almost the entire year of 2003 I do have quite a few repeat visitors.

My datafeed driven sites (non-aws) seem to be fine.

I'm diversified, losing some coupon listings (temporarily I'm sure) for me is just the difference between say making 10 million and making 5 million. Either way you're still doing very well.

[Kyle]

Well said. I do see very similar results from 6 months ago or so. The generic affiliate based shopping section on surviveoutdoors is ranking high for the first time in many months. Rankings are so high for certain SERPs that it stands out like it did 6 months ago give or take.

[chromate]

I can concur with this too. I started my aloe vera site in Jan and it got ranked in Feb sometime I think when its PR was low. It's now dropped to around #150 from having been on the 1st / 2nd page for the last few months.

[Mike]

I'm not sure about google doing something with AWS. My AWS sites are performing the best they have ever done, and I'm selling products for hundreds of pounds.

[incka]

Same as Mike, but my AWS sites are in dollars.

Chris: I used to have your sites in my digital point when I only had a few so I could watch more sites rankings, but as I got more I removed them because they slowed it down.

I may have not been looking at dell coupons serps to see where your site is.

[Percept]

Ok, so backlink-updates are absolutely useless now since they don't really provide interesting info anymore, All I get are PR0 to PR2 backlinks.

[Chris]

Well, I bounced back today. Not fully but I'm out of the dumps. My drop down was in two stages so lets see what tommorow brings.

[chromate]

I've also had a partial recovery. My aloe vera site moved from #150 to #30.

[intelliot]

With AWS still doing so well, imagine how much Amazon.com must be making?

[Mike]

They'd be making a lot without AWS anyway ;)

[chromate]

My aloe vera site has once again dropped about 130 places. It's now #160. Something weird is going on. (queue spooky music!)

[Chris]

Anyone else still seeing large swings? Its every other day for me.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I am seeing this. Some terms no movement and others all over the place, but for the same site. One term up to 20 yesterday, today nowhere.

[chromate]

Yep. But I'm only seeing changes for my aloe vera site. Nothing else.

[mobilebadboy]

The only thing I'm seeing is Google is finally starting to put back some of the pages and/or sites it removed over the last few weeks and during this last "update". Still not back to where I was, but I guess it's a start. Although it's dropped other pages on other sites, so I've pretty much just stopped caring.

The one positive I can bring out of this is that the sites Google has screwed, Yahoo has ben crawling the last couple of weeks and I'm noticing an upswing in traffic from them. Now if only MSN would get that new search out, where my ranking blow my Google rankings out of the water, I might be in good shape.