February 2006 Google Update Options

[Michael Martinez]

Okay, let's start collecting notes and anecdotes here. Keep in mind that I feel this may just be a part of the Big Daddy rollout.

Sometime around the evening of February 21 (Texas time), I noticed a significant change in the Google search results. Searching for the number of pages they have indexed from my sites, I determined they had dropped about half the URLs from Xenite and some other pages from other domains I control. Looking at a number of test searches, I saw a significant shift in results.

I've been checking searches over the past couple of days and see a slow decline in the number of pages they have indexed from Xenite.

So far, I am not seeing any bare URLs in the search results. What I mean is, when Google delists a page but still "knows about it", they will include the URL without a title or description in search results. So far, I am not seeing any bare URLs like that n the results.


When Google dumped millions of sites last February, thousands of searches were filled with bare URLs. It is too soon for us to know if what is happening will be like last year's update. But when I suggested this possibility in January, it didn't happen. I'm hoping it still won't happen.

My domains have not been penalized. I still have many pages ranking highly for targeted search expressions. So I am confident this is a database changeout.

I have seen 2-3 other forums where people have started complaining about lost rankings and listings over the past couple of days. That is a good indicator that a lot of sites have been affected.

This post has been edited by Michael Martinez: Feb 23 2006, 02:02 PM

[Jill]

All I know is Big Daddy can bite me cuz he moved me out of #2 to like # 6 or 7 and has put stupid submit your site to 50 million engines pages above me.

JILL (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/fishslap.gif) BIG DADDY

[powerofeyes]

Lots of sites affected with the new big daddy results, Primary problem many pages are missing for many high quality sites, From what I can see this is a temporary glitch, Big daddy is slowly building up and from it looks the results of big daddy reverted to what it was when big daddy was first visible in couple of datacenters,

Looks like they lost couple of clusters around 3 days back, I expect this to return back to normal nothing more than a temporary glitch AFAIK.

[doughayman]

Michael,

I saw similar results to yours on the eve of February 21st as well, and I started working up a rather nervous lather. Since then, however, I am seeing a return of the pages that I didn't find that evening.

I wrote a little command-line utility that checks for the existence of pages of mine on Google's 1st results page across known datacenters, for given keyword phrases, and I have seen an increase in returns since 2/21 through today (i.e., last 2 days).

I'm going to attribute all of this to datacenter updates, and quit the sweating.

Regards,

Doug

[nedguy]

Well, I'm not holding my breath.

Too many false dawns in too many months of gloom.

(:lol:This morning's was funny though. My stats for yesterday soared. Sessions up from a current norm of 2,000 to 10,500, where they should be. Whoa! I quickly checked unique visitors to make sure it wasn't just a bot. Yes, uniques had doubled.

Maybe, just maybe, Google had finally switched the lights back on.

But no.

Down to earth with a bump when I see that something/somebody collected favicon.ico 15,000 times yesterday! What's that about?!? (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) )

NG

[juliesjewels]

I've been in the top spot for two or three keyword phrases for a good while now but they're suddenly gone. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) The pages that held the top spots were category pages on my site. For all three keyword phrases I'm now not even in the top 100 anymore. But, Google has picked up a couple related articles I've written and those articles are ranking in the 40's - 50's in the SERP's. Gee, Thanks Google!

So, to sum up my highest ranking pages are no where to be found but Google is showing a couple articles I've written (published on my site) in the 40-50 rankings for those keywords. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif)

[ezseo]

I checked rankings from two different computers simultaneously and google displayed differents results depending on the data center. Also, If you check the number of linkings to certain sites, it varies as well as the page ranking.

I hope it goes back to where it was...
(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_jumpon.gif)

[juliesjewels]

Searching for the number of pages they have indexed from my sites, I determined they had dropped about half the URLs from Xenite and some other pages from other domains I control. 

Michael, what command did you use or how did you check to see the number of pages indexed from your site?

[Michael Martinez]

Down to earth with a bump when I see that something/somebody collected favicon.ico 15,000 times yesterday! What's that about?!? (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) )

NG

Very interesting. Someone or something hammered my favicon.ico file this month, too.

Also, Inktomi/Yahoo!/Slurp has fired a lot of false URLs at my server recently in attempts to determine how I handle 404s (I don't -- I redirect everything to my front page, so now Yahoo! has indexed all sorts of bogus duplicate content).

I spent several hours this morning creating yet more useless redirection pages for URLs that shouldn't exist. I would appreciate it if no one derailed this discussion with 301 redirect, .htaccess, robots meta tag, and other 404 solution discussion. If it's that important to you to suggest cures for my spider woes, I'll be glad to respond in another thread about why I do it this way.

In any event, I thought the favicon.ico thing was weird, but now I'm curious about who else has seen that kind of traffic.

[ezseo]

julie,

"site:www.domain.com"

[Michael Martinez]

Michael, what command did you use or how did you check to see the number of pages indexed from your site?

Julie,

On Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, you can type in the following:

site:domain.name

On Ask you apparently have to use:

keyword site:domain.name

[juliesjewels]

Thanks, Guys.

FWIW, I was #2 for keyword "ring guards" two days ago and this was the page in the link: http://www.juliesjewels.com/ctgy-Engagemen...Ring-Guards.htm

And, #3 for keyword phrase "right hand rings" showing this page: http://www.juliesjewels.com/ctgy-Right-Han...amond-Rings.htm

Now if I use the command "site:http://www.juliesjewels.com/ctgy-Engagement-Ring-Wraps-or-Ring-Guards.htm" this page is not found nor is the other page I mention above.

Should I take this to mean both of those pages are out of the Google index?

[Jill]

I've been in the top spot for two or three keyword phrases for a good while now but they're suddenly gone. cry.gif

Julie don't start crying just yet. It's common for pages to go awol during these types of updates.

Give it a few hours or even days, and most likely you'll be okay.

[Michael Martinez]

Now if I use the command "site:http://www.juliesjewels.com/ctgy-Engagement-Ring-Wraps-or-Ring-Guards.htm" this page is not found nor is the other page I mention above. 

Should I take this to mean both of those pages are out of the Google index?

The "site:" command shows all pages with a specified incomplete URL.

That is, you can do "site:www.highrankings.com" and you can do "site:www.highrankings.com/forums" but you cannot do "site:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20500&hl=" because that is a terminating or complete URL path.

[juliesjewels]

I think I understand what you're saying, Michael. So, is there a specific command that would tell me whether or not that particular page is still in the index? I'm curious now as to whether it is still indexed or gone.