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This month, WebmasterWorld are reporting that there are fewer results being returned for specific queries. The suspicion lies in quality control practices that are now being implemented, but others believe that the "human editorial army" may be the reason behind this.
Other issues reported include cache problems. The cache date is current, but the cached page is 1-3 months old. Additionally, some say that pages that are cached are not even showing up in search results (even with the site: operator).
In Google.co.uk, it looks like there are some increased rankings and it's a result of the quantity of links (rather than quality). They also say that a lot of junk is showing up on the first page that are not even related to the queries being made. There are a number of UK members chiming in that the SERPs there are "crazy" and irrelevant. One #1 ranking even returns a 404. Obviously, something seems fishy over there.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Michael Martinez
06/06/2008 05:06 pm
It does look like Google has unleashed some sort of update this week. The PageRank watchers are over-excited as usual but the oddness with Yahoo!'s deep page PR may be connected with an apparent rollback in the SERPs.
No Name
06/07/2008 10:23 am
indeed..the Google Ireland serps are way off...I had the misfortune of suffering the effect of this latest ripple seeing a plummet in rankings despite all by-the-book SEO practices