Google Data Refresh - Rankings Fluctuations Before Christmas

Google tweaking rankings once again before the holidays? Some people are crying foul at the disruptions going on this holiday season. How could they!? Members on Webmasterworld are talking about some recent changes over yesterday and today that have occured recently to change search rankings. Some are wondering if it has to do with a penalty or just some general reshuffling going on? I had a new client call me a few minutes ago that overnight lost its rankings for a relatively uncompetitive term and wanted to know why all the sites changed in the top 10. Call it an early christmas present from Google maybe?

A senior member on WMW said "Looks like some kind of data refresh to me. I'm seeing lots of movement in what's normally a quiet sector." Whether he is right or not, I am not sure, but I don't think it has to do with any penalties and is more the normal flux we usually see. People are just a bit hyped and sensitive right about now to what is happening with their traffic. Any disruptions seem to be cause for panic. I would recommend those webmasters effected to have a nice frothy egg nog and wait it out.

Continued discussion on Webmaster World - 20 Dec 2006 - Data Refresh or Penalty?

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posted Phoenix in Google PageRank/SERP Updates at December 21, 2006 4:57 PM Comments (14)

Comments

But I bet someone would say "nothing is happening". It's just a bunch of people's imagination. /sarcasm

Posted by DazzlinDonna at December 21, 2006 17:19

Hey i am not arguing! I have been hoisted to the top of the pack for the majority of my key phrases!

I bow to my Google Overlords and thank them for this fantastic Christmas present!!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Luke McCallum at December 21, 2006 17:41

Something is on, we've seen some BIG & reputable sites lose major traffic in the last week overnight. This tied in with some really weird stuff with the site: results, they were coming back with paragraphs of repeated text from the page descriptions. I get the feeling there may have been some database corruption, possibly a crawler level or indexing error as they make an update to help with content deduplication. Hopefully they have got it sorted as pages seem to be reappearing with recent cache dates.

Posted by teddie at December 21, 2006 17:43

I was getting some crazy serps this am with FF..

I hope I just hit an old DC..

Posted by Gabs at December 22, 2006 05:29

The flux is normal. We are waiting for the "big shuffle"

Posted by David at December 22, 2006 07:36

After the last questions of a holiday update, I prepared for this by asking around. Google hasn't launched any major scoring/algorithms updates recently, so any changes you see are normal operation.

Posted by Matt Cutts at December 22, 2006 14:05

See?

Posted by DazzlinDonna at December 22, 2006 22:38

DazzlinDonna, there's been no new major launches recently. I figured that people would want to hear a statement from me, so I commented.

Posted by Matt Cutts at December 23, 2006 00:28

In last week 50% indexing of my website was lost in Google and upto 25% traffic has been decreased. I guess Google dance is going on because I'm feeling some changes in my traffic & indexing daily and think it will takes some time to finish Google dance...

Posted by The Specialist at December 23, 2006 00:57

Matt, Some thing is going on for sure.. Maybe not an update like you say, but there are more than several cases of which I have seen sites getting penalized on on the same time. More or less the same issues.

Posted by Prestige at December 23, 2006 04:25

Matt, Thanks for confirming for us. I am not sure people are convinced however, I have seen some changes myself.

Posted by Ben Pfeiffer at December 23, 2006 11:35

This is very strange...

Posted by Barry Schwartz at December 23, 2006 17:43

What is, Barry?

Posted by DazzlinDonna at December 23, 2006 21:37

The whole back and forth.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at December 23, 2006 22:43