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7thDsites · Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Posts: 96 Location: Livingston, Montana

Hi Google Watchers,

Seems the dance has started today 05 May 2003, Time: 21:05:00 EST

Hope it serves you well!

best,
john

goldcougar · Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Cincinnati, OH

Looks like there are some weird things going on this Dance. On recent search terms like 'SARS', the www2 & www3 servers return about 2-3 times more results than the www server. But when looking at backlinks for domains like cnn.com or yahoo.com, the www server has about twice as many results.

It is like freshbot updates sites, but backlinks haven't been updated yet?
This is a weird one!

admin · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 7:59 pm Post subject:

very strange things are happening. there is a HUGE post in [url=http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12576.htm]webmasterworld[/url] and it seems there are major changes in this algorithm. You can check for early incarnations of results in [url=http://www-sj.google.com/]google sj[/url]. Preliminary results indicate that backlinks are worth less than before. Perhaps too many sites were manipulating their results with link swapping.

This is a very large change, and many people will see their positions change, possibly fall. hang on!

goldcougar · Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Cincinnati, OH

I've been reading forums from seochat and webmasterworld. There is a lot of speculation going on, but I was wondering how much is true.

What I have read says that the -sj servers are testing the new algo, with the old deepcrawl. Part of the new algo is to discount irrelivant backlinks. Over time, -sj servers will update to the newest deepcrawl, set spam filters, and implement the new algo.

Any truth to any of that?
If so, any guess on a time frame? I haven't seen the www server updated with any of the www2 or www3 server SERPs yet.

admin · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 3:48 pm Post subject:

this is an excellent summary of the changes goldcougar! Of all the things that are happening - old pages being indexed, missing backlinks, old websites appearing where they shouldn't - Google is apparently working on things. please note however, that the results are NOT live on www.google.com YET!

goldcougar · Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Cincinnati, OH

I've been looking at backlinks and result pages for my industry keywords on the -sj server since thursday night when everything started, but I haven't seen any changes to it since.

Is there any chance that the current -sj index will be the final index (with outdated backlinks)? It just seems like a long time for google to wait to put backlinks in.

goldcougar · Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Cincinnati, OH

It looks like the index from -sj has spread to most of the others, however it is still the old backlinks from the previous deepcrawl. Are they going to do another deepcrawl and dance immediately after? I also heard a rumor that they might have messed up and lost the data, so that is why they had to go back. Any thoughts?

gravelsack · Joined: 11 Mar 2003 Posts: 4

Google are 'tweaking the dials' on a new algo and I guess they want to do this with a known dataset. I understand they are trying to make it easier to factor in parts of the Algo in different stages - presumably to make it easier to do more frequent updates.

FWIW Many of my sites that were added or updated on the last update are now back to how they were before.

Relevance is down in the main phrases I monitor, and previous experience suggests that a Google update that results in worse relevance will be 'fixed' fairly quickly - consequently I am ignoring this update from an SEO point of view.

If we make any changes based on this update, we could very well come a cropper on the next one.

As always, the safe bet is 'build content and acquire good links'

admin · Posted: Tue May 27, 2003 2:55 pm Post subject:

[quote:726b9996a5="gravelsack"]Relevance is down in the main phrases I monitor, and previous experience suggests that a Google update that results in worse relevance will be 'fixed' fairly quickly - consequently I am ignoring this update from an SEO point of view.[/quote:726b9996a5]

I think this is the best advice. It is best to just hold off and not push the panic button until the next update, presumably sometime next month (June 2003). This update has produced decidedly mixed results, with both improvements and regressions in relevancy. Google will probably have this worked out within a month, possibly two.