Google - Noticing Changes In SERPS

[cameron]

A few of my sites have taken a dive on important terms over the past couple of days. This is the first time it's happened in as long as I can remember, and it kind of scares me. I haven't changed anything on those sites. Anyone else noticing any big changes?

One thing I noticed is a couple of days ago my backlinks were way down. Most of them are back up now. Maybe this is just a little hiccup related to that and I'll be back to normal in a couple of days.

[Kyle]

Yes, I got hurt too. It happens, just hope it doesn't last too long.

[Jaffro]

yea i see drops all round for me so id say its a little more then the normal shuffle.

[chromate]

A few ups and a few downs. No major drops for my main keywords though. No sites completely dropped this time either, which is a bonus! ;) lol

[MarkB]

One of my sites which has been page 1 for the last 5 years is now nowhere to be seen. How strange :)

[The New Guy]

Thats not good :p

[ozgression]

No changes for me...

[paul]

It seems like the more data available the less it makes sense. Yesterday morning the keyword tracker shows that my main term on a site that has been up for 5 years has dropped from its usual 2 to 10. Yesterday evening and this morning it shows 11. This evening it is back up to a 2.

The only change I had made was to remove a link to another one of my sites from about 15 pages.

The effect was interesting. It cut my page views in half, but my CTR was up by 50% and my income stayed about the same. I know that less than 20% of my visits normally come from this one term; many more come from a series of specialized terms. It makes me think the specialized terms are more targeted visitors who click more ads.

Be mighty hard to prove at the 95% confidence level though :)

[BeautifulMind]

Guy’s, don’t you all now?? Last 7-10 days is a period of Googles indexation. And this jumping is called “Google Dances”.

No surprise, there are over 8 Billion indexes he has to manage. You should wait for final results at the end of the month.

[chromate]

BeautifulMind, keep up mate :) Google stopped working that way ages ago.

[Jaffro]

We *think* google stopped working that way. Personally i think they may have stopped dancing and maybe going back to a similar dancing type pattern now. But what does it matter anyway?! its not like google is nice to us anymore hehe :)

[MarkB]

Weird thing is, the site that dropped complete - I made no changes other than to make the page title more targetted to the keywords I was page 1 for :) heh

[paul]

MarkB, I am beginning to wonder about those title changes. I fell completely off the rankings today,

[davesplace1]

Google is being nice to me, reindexed one of my sites they had dropped for 6 monthes.

[cameron]

Well, I found out the problem with one of my sites. The content isn't displaying properly. Maybe I should visit my sites a little more often to make sure everything is ok. :o

[James]

haha, that could be the problem ;)

That doesn't explain everyone elses rankings, though.

[eMEraLdwPn]

i lost basically all my rankings in february, at that point i made a lot of changes. then a lot of them came back about mid-april, and now about 1/2 - 2/3 seem to have dropped again... i haven't changed anything since back in february after the initial drop.

[cameron]

There's been a PR update, and some of my sites have dropped to a 1. Not the type of thing I like to see. 196 backlinks - PR 1. I just don't get it anymore.

[James]

The PR-system's been glitching, actually, I think.

[r2d2]

The actual PR system, or just the display of toolbar PR? Still seems to be no PR readings for the last day or so.

[Chris]

Who knows.....

[r2d2]

Who knows.....

Some people (http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=683) 'know' :)

[MarkB]

Probably just as well I'm winding down my publishing efforts :)

[Chris]

Some people think they know, but in the end its just speculation. I especially like that bit about low quality links hurting you. Google is very idealistic and they've repeatedly said no link will hurt you as you cannot control who links to you. If link farm links don't hurt I doubt any "untrusted" links would as you cannot get any lower than a link farm. IMO Trustrank is just another theory flavor of the month.

If Google wanted to get rid of it, I think they'd just have a software update that removed the bar from the toolbar, in light of that not happening I'm going with bug/glitch.

[chromate]

It's amusing. A little bit of PR "outage" and almost everyone seems to think "it's the end of PR". It's probably just a toolbar glitch. Stranger things have happened? :)

I do think Google may scrap toolbar PR in the future. But as Chris says, they're more likely to remove it from the toolbar *first*, instead of just shutting it down - which would make the toolbar look like it's not functioning right.

Time will tell. Either way, it doesn't really bother me. It's still a level playing field whatever happens.

[Peter T Davis]

I think people who don't really understand PageRank shouldn't make statements such as "the end of PageRank as we know it" just because the toolbar isn't working. As much as I'd like to pronounce the end of civilization as we know it because I haven't had a decent cup of coffee in two weeks, I'm still holding off on that one.

[James]

Wait a minute, you haven't had a decent cup of coffee in two weeks?!
Time to head for the bomb shelter.

[Peter T Davis]

LoL, yea, that's a fact!

[Chris]

Heh... I should invent something called "fadrank." Have it be a system of ranking whereby a website is valued by how dedicated it's webmaster is to pursuing monthly ranking fads.


Honestly.... search engine fundamentals haven't changed for a long time and they aren't likely to change. Stick to the fundamentals.

Trying to second guess Google all the time just doesn't work. I was #1 on every coupon search in 2003 through SEO manipulation until the Florida update. When you try as hard as I was trying you might be successful, for a time, but then you're extremely vulnerable to algorithm changes.

Meanwhile, my literature site which has mostly been ignored the last few years keeps plugging along and has some amazing rankings. I don't do anything special with that site, other than link popularity building years ago and normal onpage stuff (title, header, content). Just the fundamentals.

[James]

Heh... I should invent something called "fadrank." Have it be a system of ranking whereby a website is valued by how dedicated it's webmaster is to pursuing monthly ranking fads.
Unlike most of these theories, I think this'd last forever.

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Trying to second guess Google all the time just doesn't work. I was #1 on every coupon search in 2003 through SEO manipulation until the Florida update. When you try as hard as I was trying you might be successful, for a time, but then you're extremely vulnerable to algorithm changes.


How is your new coupon site doing?
Are you happy with your datafeed network performace?

[chromate]

So... The toolbar PR returns. :)

[r2d2]

Toolbar PR readings seem to have returned...


... for now ;)

[jumble]

emm i never turned on the "pagerank" feature of the google toolbar.

sounds like i am missing out on all the fun! :)