Google Goes Banannas

D.W · 22-09-2009 7:39pm #1

Anyone else seeing crazy fluxs, results, serps etc.. on Google over past few days but especially today? I'm seeing a lot of sites rising and falling, local listings appear then vanish and a lot of erratic behaviour. In one particular search I monitor all the previous (I'd guess) 1-50 top listings have gone and been replaced with previous unknown/unranked pages/sites. Thats an extreme case granted but very strange.

RedCardinal · 23-09-2009 3:22am

You might be seeing a test of some description.

Generally I avoid watching SERPs intra-day. I've learnt the hard way that it serves little use other than wasting a lot of time.

D.W · 23-09-2009 7:46am

RedCardinal wrote: »

You might be seeing a test of some description.

Generally I avoid watching SERPs intra-day. I've learnt the hard way that it serves little use other than wasting a lot of time.

Yip serp watching can eat into time for sure however I do try and keep a close eye periodically especially when I see major fluxes. Not sure about the test theory but perhaps you are right.

It actually resolved itself within an hour or so but was very strange. Reminded me of the infamous Florida update years back where in many cases over 90% of the top 100 serps were replaced-many permanantly. Seems ok again though although I still am convinced there is still a lot of "dancing" going on.

cormee · 24-09-2009 11:26am

D.W wrote: »

Anyone else seeing crazy fluxs, results, serps etc.. on Google over past few days but especially today? I'm seeing a lot of sites rising and falling, local listings appear then vanish and a lot of erratic behaviour. In one particular search I monitor all the previous (I'd guess) 1-50 top listings have gone and been replaced with previous unknown/unranked pages/sites. Thats an extreme case granted but very strange.

It's called the Google Dance - it happens every 3 months or so when Google is updating its indexes. It will settle down soon.

blue4ever · 24-09-2009 2:16pm

caffeine anyone?!

cormee · 24-09-2009 3:52pm

blue4ever wrote: »

caffeine anyone?!

None of my rankings seem to be different according to the sandbox. I haven't noticed any difference.

D.W · 24-09-2009 10:24pm

blue4ever wrote: »

caffeine anyone?!

Nope 100%-what I saw was more than caffeine. Caffeine seems to be more .com focused

D.W · 24-09-2009 10:42pm

cormee wrote: »

It's called the Google Dance - it happens every 3 months or so when Google is updating its indexes. It will settle down soon.

Hmm... no such thing anymore as Google Dance-they used to tango every 2-3 months but now daily and hourly..... What I saw was not a "small" move but major-I actually think was possibly a test scenario via google2 or 3 whereby I saw some horendous serps which I did. "Sandbox"-thats an old one? Thanks anyway Cormee and blue4ever

RedCardinal · 25-09-2009 3:38am

cormee wrote: »

It's called the Google Dance - it happens every 3 months or so when Google is updating its indexes. It will settle down soon.

Em, the "Google Dance" used to happen ~monthly, but this stopped around 2003 after which Google's index constantly updates...

cormee · 25-09-2009 8:27am

RedCardinal wrote: »

Em, the "Google Dance" used to happen ~monthly, but this stopped around 2003 after which Google's index constantly updates...

http://blog.xseo.com/newsGoogleDanceupdates.htm

The search index updates every few days now, however PageRank and back links are updating every 3 months or so which does cause fluctuations on results.

RedCardinal · 25-09-2009 10:19am

cormee wrote: »

http://blog.xseo.com/newsGoogleDanceupdates.htm

The search index updates every few days now, however PageRank and back links are updating every 3 months or so which does cause fluctuations on results.

Complete utter rubbish.

MrBill · 29-09-2009 4:25am

RedCardinal wrote: »

Complete utter rubbish.

You tell 'em Red.

cormee · 29-09-2009 9:09am

Yeh, I certainly had my ass handed to me.

MrBill · 29-09-2009 10:18am

cormee wrote: »

Yeh, I certainly had my ass handed to me.

You certainly did. I really don't know what I hate more, search engines or search engine optimization.

Shaneod21 · 29-09-2009 11:29am

If its a High PR or authority site, backlinks can update every few days.

I tend to ping all the work I do just to get google to crawl quicker. This

works really well for me.

RedCardinal · 29-09-2009 3:25pm

It's quite likely that all backlinks and PR update in near-real-time I'd imagine. Certainly backlinks will be updated on discovery rather than via some sort of batch I'd say.

PR is also probably a very dynamic data point.

@cormee - the Pagerank we see in our tollbars is indeed updated every few months, but this is just a snapshot of what Google uses internally (which is likely highly dynamic in calculation). There is no known fluctuation around these updates as all that happens is google exports a snapshot to the public PR servers. Hope this makes sense.

cormee · 29-09-2009 4:05pm

RedCardinal wrote: »

It's quite likely that all backlinks and PR update in near-real-time I'd imagine. Certainly backlinks will be updated on discovery rather than via some sort of batch I'd say.

PR is also probably a very dynamic data point.

@cormee - the Pagerank we see in our tollbars is indeed updated every few months, but this is just a snapshot of what Google uses internally (which is likely highly dynamic in calculation). There is no known fluctuation around these updates as all that happens is google exports a snapshot to the public PR servers. Hope this makes sense.

Yep, but it's worth mentioning these updates tend to coincide with the expiration of penalties imposed on websites (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-pagerank-update/) , which I think it's fair to say would cause fluctuations in SERPs. Perhaps I should have explained my definition of 'Googledance' and 'indexes' in a little more detail but given that some posters in this forum would not be too SEO savvy I tried to keep it simple. In any case my original posting was probably wrong as there doesn't seem to have been any updates recently.

RedCardinal · 30-09-2009 6:37am

cormee wrote: »

Yep, but it's worth mentioning these updates tend to coincide with the expiration of penalties imposed on websites

Sorry - I think that's wrong also. Most penalties are lifted after reconsideration request is lodged and reviewed, or via time delay (some penalties last 30 days etc.). I've never heard of any correlation between PR updates and large-scale penalty releases, and I'm fairly close to the coalface

cormee · 30-09-2009 9:55am

RedCardinal wrote: »

Sorry - I think that's wrong also. Most penalties are lifted after reconsideration request is lodged and reviewed, or via time delay (some penalties last 30 days etc.). I've never heard of any correlation between PR updates and large-scale penalty releases, and I'm fairly close to the coalface

You're saying Matt Cutts is wrong? Or you just think it's a coincidence that on that occasion (that blog post) they did the PR update and expired penalties at the same time?

I've seen it mentioned on several occasions on industry blogs such as Google Webmaster Blog, Matt Cutts' blog and Google Blogoscoped that they do expire penalties (penalties that don't have a fixed time or penalties whose removal is dependant on the site owner cleaning up their site/seo tactics) around the same time as PR updates. Granted it is mostly in the comments section of these blogs it's mentioned, and besides the link above I can't provide you with any other official Google opinion on the matter.

Anyhoo - going back to the OP's question - here's a post that is asking the same question, http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=08774a1644274d06&hl=en there doesn't seem to be a solution but at least OP isn't the only one who noticed it.

RedCardinal · 02-10-2009 12:34pm

cormee wrote: »

You're saying Matt Cutts is wrong? Or you just think it's a coincidence that on that occasion (that blog post) they did the PR update and expired penalties at the same time?

I've seen it mentioned on several occasions on industry blogs such as Google Webmaster Blog, Matt Cutts' blog and Google Blogoscoped that they do expire penalties (penalties that don't have a fixed time or penalties whose removal is dependant on the site owner cleaning up their site/seo tactics) around the same time as PR updates. Granted it is mostly in the comments section of these blogs it's mentioned, and besides the link above I can't provide you with any other official Google opinion on the matter.

Anyhoo - going back to the OP's question - here's a post that is asking the same question, http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=08774a1644274d06&hl=en there doesn't seem to be a solution but at least OP isn't the only one who noticed it.

Oh man. Where to start?

Has it dawned on you that Google hands out Toolbar PR penalties? They reduce your visible PR. So often they lift those penalties when they export TBPR.

But there are many types of penalties. You can take something Matt Cutts said, and twist the context to suit your own agenda, but how about not stating things as fact when you obviously haven't a clue what you're talking about?

But before I get ticked off by a MOD for trying to make sure bad advice doesn't prevail, I'll leave it at that.

Google Goes Banannas

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