Google PageRank/SERP Updates Archives

We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks.

The overall theme is that there is a lot of ranking fluctuation taking place over the past few weeks. There are some rumors that Google has adjusted their link algorithm to look more at how "relevant" the link is to the page it is linking to. What exactly that means and if the rumor is true, is incredibly hard to validate. But the thread is getting a lot of traction and if you are noticing unstable shifts in Google for your search phrases, you might want to take a look at that thread.

Overall it has been a busy month, from adult sites being penalized and restored, to a couple PageRank updates and new Webmaster Tools features - Google has been up to a lot of things over the past 30 days. Here is a rundown of our Google specific coverage over the past thirty-days.

• Google's Recent PageRank "Technical Quirk"?
• Google Reverses Adult/Porn Site Penalties
• Google Search Spanks The Adult Porn Industry?
• June 2009 Google PageRank Update: Kind Of Early
• Why Google May Shorten Your Long URL in the SERPs
• Google Webmaster Tools Link Reports Change
• Google Finally Adds Domain Change Tool & Launches New Webmaster Tools Design
• Google Now Notifying Webmasters After Reconsideration Request Review via Email
• Google UK Search Shake Up - June 2009

For last month's report, see the June 2009 Google Webmaster Report.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It seems like there are several threads around the SEO forum space that have discussion on a recent PageRank update. Yes, even more recent then the June PageRank update.

There is a WebmasterWorld thread, a few DigitalPoint Forum threads and a few Google Webmaster Help threads. I will only link to two, but there are plenty out there.

In the Google Webmaster Help, Googler, JohnMu, replied to one webmaster saying that he/she should not worry about the last PageRank change because it was likely a "technical quirk."

The way John said it, made it sound like the error was on Google's side. Here is what John said:

You have a nice-looking site :). As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about.

So I am wondering if the recent PageRank update noticed by a small percentage of webmasters, was a technical bug on Google's front?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help.

There are hundreds of reports across the web about a Google PageRank update. Most of you know, I am not a fan of the PageRank score displayed in the Google Toolbar, but I report it anyway, because I report what SEOs care about, which I determine by looking at threads in the forums.

What is interesting about this PageRank update is that it comes less than a month from the last PageRank update. The May 2009 PageRank update took place on May 27th/28th. This one started last night on June 23rd.

Normally, toolbar PageRank updates happen about every three months. So to see a widespread update like this just a month later, is interesting. Outside of that, I don't have much more to add.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

A couple weeks ago, the news that Google treated the distribution of PageRank for pages with nofollow links differently then they would other pages. As explained then:

If you have $10 in authority to spend on those ten links, and you block 5 of them, the other 5 aren’t going to get $2 each. They’re still getting $1. It’s just that the other $5 you thought you were saving is now going to waste.

So Google's Matt Cutts finally wrote a detailed blog post on PageRank Sculpting that discusses what Google does and doesn't do. Go read the whole post when you have a chance, it is very important.

This has been in place for about a year and no SEO really picked up on it.

To my question of "Are Blogs Doomed With NoFollow PageRank Sculpting Issue?" Matt replied:

Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?

A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

SEOs and webmasters are simply not happy. The bottom line is this is how it has been for about a year and I doubt it will change.

I am not going to summarize the comments in the thread, simply cause I am not feeling all that great, but I'll link them for you. There are some interesting comments in the thread and in Matt's post.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

It is that time of the month again and we got your Google Webmaster report based on a new WebmasterWorld thread.

The main thing I see repeated throughout the thread is that Google seems to be bouncing some results around by plus or minus fifteen positions. One SEO put it like this:

My site is recovered for 60% of terms and back to old positions. For 25% of terms is back but lower for +/- 10 or 15 positions. For 15% terms is still not back. And within 15% is one of most import keywords.

That really is what most of the thread is about today. The last webmaster report is the May 2009 webmaster report. Here are some other key items that happened with Google over the past month.

• Small Google May 2009 Update?
• Google May 2009 Toolbar PageRank Update
• Google Webmaster Tools Tests New Design
• Google Updates Backlink Data in New Webmaster Tools
• Most Webmasters Will Use Google's New Rich Snippet Markups
• Google Web Search's New Click Tracking
• Google Launches New Search Suggestions & Drops Counts
• Google Wonder Wheel & Search Options Go Live
• Why Does My Google Profile Not Show For A Google Search?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Starting yesterday afternoon, people began noticing the little green pixels in the Google Toolbar began updating. Yes, there was a Google Toolbar PageRank update last night and many of the forums are buzzing about it.

Yes, a Toolbar PageRank update means nothing in terms of your ranking changing anytime soon. The PageRank scores shown in the toolbar are outdated and have zero direct impact on your Google rankings. That doesn't mean that PageRank has no influence, but the toolbar score does not have any influence. Google shows us one thing, but yet uses another thing.

The last possible PageRank update was in early April 2009, so it has been just about two months since the last update. Typically Google updates the PageRank value in the Toolbar every few months or so. So this update does seem more recent then updates in the recent past.

Forum discussion at several forums including:

• WebmasterWorld
• Google Webmaster Help
• HighRankings Forums
• DigitalPoint Forums
• Google Web Search Help
• Search Engine Roundtable Forums

A Google Webmasters Help thread asks, what does it mean when the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator is a red color, as opposed to green?

Here is a screen capture:

So what does that mean?

(1) Maybe this image was photoshoped
(2) Or maybe there is a plugin that makes the color red, instead of green

This is a joke, but it caught my attention and I thought it would be nice to lighten things up a bit before the weekend.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

We rarely cover Google updates these days, since it appears Google is in a constant flux. But I have noticed a dozen or so threads at DigitalPoint Forums and an updated WebmasterWorld, plus a few threads at Google Webmasters Help discussions on the topic of either a back link update, PageRank update or major drops or increases in rankings for specific categories.

Now, this does not mean there is a massive update going on. In fact, I would classify this as a minor update possibly only impacting specific sites that may have triggered a new penalty or just random fluctuations in Google that some webmasters took notice to.

In any event, if you noticed a major change for your site in Google, you are not alone. It is not as 'huge' as some of the past updates, but it seems like many are discussing this specific, possible update.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld, and Google Webmasters Help.

Like every month, we try to provide you with a Google webmaster report on what is going on with Google over the past month, in terms of the SEO perspective. You can read the April 2009 report, in case you missed it.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a scary silence in the Google results. Some are a bit worried that things aren't moving around in the rankings as they normally do. But some webmasters are noticing shuffles, but not all.

Tedster does add an interesting point:

I also see "more associative search results" - maybe the effect of the approach outlined Google patent. It does get frustrating when an experienced user of search can't count on seeing precise results, even by using quoted phrases, plus signs and the like.

Here are the most important stories in this topic over the past few weeks:

• Google Replaces Comments Bubble with "Review This Site" Link
• Google Maps Merging Competing Business's Local Information
• Is Google's Geo Targeting Off In Web Search?
• Google Confirms One Line Sitelinks (Aka Classic Sitelinks)
• How To Verify My Google Profile

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a pretty funny thread for anyone who is somewhat familiar with the SEO industry. A thread at Google Webmasters Help has this SEO who goes on a rant about the nofollow and what have happened to links. In fact, he says that Google should consider all links nofollow by default and require webmasters to add a rel="follow" to links that they deem respectable enough to deserve any link equity.

Here is the webmaster's post:

I'm thinking that I should just adopt a site-wide policy that all links have nofollow. Because of Google's PageRank algorithm, links have become a dirty thing that requires a lot of consideration, a cause for concerns and panic, an object of envy, conflict, fight, bitterness, etc.. Reading this forum is a good indication of the sad state of what "links" have become. And, it's all because of Google's PageRank algorithm. It would be simpler, easier, and healthier if all links had nofollow as a policy. In fact, I wish Google would do the opposite; require people to add rel="follow" only when you want to pass "link juice" to someone else. The truth of the matter is that everyone has to know what PageRank is these days and some degree of SEO, which means that everyone is perfectly aware of what value and power links have. No one is innocent. Everyone treats links like money whether we actually get paid for it or not. Links has become a currency of power. In the old days, when we used to call them "hyperllinks" they were just a mechanism for convenience.

Now how is that for a rant? I kind of agree. I mean, the nofollow link attribute was originally designed to prevent spam in blogs, forums, and any open web form. Now it is used for ads, for managing your internal PageRank and to penalize sites. I am not going to go off on a rant on the nofollow attribute, so I will stop there.

The Google Webmasters Help thread has a lot of discussion around the nofollow attribute. It makes for a fun, pre-weekend read.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

The last time we discussed the grey PageRank Google toolbar indicator was just about two years ago. It was then when the gray/grey color changed from meaning banned to having no clear meaning. Back then, there was a blank white bar and a blank gray bar, both with PR0s. White meant PageRank was not yet calculated for the page, gray likely meant a ban or penalty. This is no longer the case.

Here is a picture of gray:

Today, we have a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing what the gray bar means. There are a few theories that I will share with you.

One person thinks that gray is given to pages with not enough PageRank to reach the 1 level. Another person thinks that pages in the supplemental index receives gray. Some believe that pages with penalties still receive the gray indicator. Let me quote Tedster's post on this topic:

It is no longer true that any url gets the TBPR that it earns. Some types of pages (lists of links for example) seem to get flagged as an automaic gray bar - and that's that. I used to think this was manual, and in the beginning it may have been. But now I think that original "seed set" has been used to generate a machine-learning algo that is intended to locate other pages of the same nature. This approach to various segmants of the algo is something that is more and more in use. All those PhD in Statistics folks need something to do, right?

For a while, my theoretical algorithm was misfiring quite a bit and the mysterious graybar disease was nearly epidemic. Just this past month, I'm seeing some of those peculiar gray bars come back to white or even green. That could indicate either that the machine-learning has improved, or something about its logic has been tweaked.

Can it be a form of artificial PageRank, is it Google classifying certain pages in a group, is it pages in the supplemental index or is it just nothing?

I wonder if we can get a response from Google on this, knowing that we should not live and die by what the PageRank indicator says in the Google Toolbar.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

About a week ago, we wrote a piece about getting PageRank without links. In that write up, we wrote how Google may give pages temporary or artificial PageRank to make up for the page being new.

We decided to poll our readers, asking if they believed in such a concept or not.

54% of our readers, 83 of the 153 responses, said they believe that Google does give web pages artificial PageRank. 44% of our readers, 67 of the 153 responses, said they do not believe in an artificial PageRank concept.

Interesting break down. Personally, I do believe Google does give new pages a temporary or artificial PageRank value early on.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

Every month we report on a monthly WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the current state of the Google web search index. This month, the WebmasterWorld thread has very little to report. If you want to see last month's report click here.

Instead, I thought I highlight the most important posts here over the past couple weeks, in relation to Google's web search changes.

• Google Gets Generic on Local Web Search Queries
• Google Releases Major Blog Search Blogroll Algorithm Update
• Google Blog Search Updates Link Query Algorithm
• See Google "Classic" Sitelinks In Action (One Line Sitelinks)
• Google Still Showing Different Results Based on Query Case
• April Fools Google PageRank Update
• Google Adds More Search Refinements & Detailed Snippets
• Google Pushing More Search Options On Searchers?

Those are some of the more important Google related updates over the course of the past few weeks.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, as well as today, I spotted dozens of threads on Google updating their site's toolbar PageRank scores. I didn't want to post the details until today, simply because it was April Fools. But the PageRank update seems to be here and like always, too many people care.

We have threads at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums (dozens there), and HighRankings Forum.

Yes, it seems like Google did push out a toolbar update. I will quote one post from all of these threads. The post is from Googler, JohnMu in the Google Webmasters Help thread:

I'm pretty sure we'll have another Toolbar PR update this year. However, as touched upon by the others, this is generally not something you need to worry about.

Enough said.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and HighRankings Forum.

In our monthly tradition, we are reporting on the March 2009 Google Search changes as seen via the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread. You can see the February report that we posted last month to catch up.

This month, one member feels Google is now weighing heavier on the keywords used in backlinks (anchor text) to determine page relevancy. Full member, jcmiras said:

Assuming you searched for "word1+word2+word3" (without quotes), usually, we thought that all of the pages that appear in the SERP should contain all of the keywords. However, there are pages in the result which contain only "word1" and "word2" but "word3" is not there, instead, it is on one of the pages that that particular page in the SERP is linking to.

WebmasterWorld's administrator, Tedster, said he has seen a recent spike in chatter about this in the forums and elsewhere.

Other news that happened recently and that is being discussed include stories that we posted within the past couple weeks. They include:

• Google Blog Search To Test New Link Command Features Next Week
• Google March 2009 PageRank Update or Glitch?
• February '09 Google Image Search Update?

Keep watching this space and the WebmasterWorld thread for updates.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, I have seen tons and tons of threads in several forums with webmasters and SEOs complaining that their PageRank score in the Google Toolbar took a dive.

I will just list two threads, because I cannot list all of them. There is a thread at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.

The thing is, I didn't see anyone happy with the new PageRank score they received. If you look closely at the Google Webmaster Help you will see, Googler, JohnMu say:

Looking at your site, it might have been that there was some kind of glitch that occurred just as the latest round of Toolbar PageRank was put together. In a case like that, you just need to wait for the next update (we do 3-4 updates per year). That said, this is generally not something that will affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking, so I wouldn't worry about it! Don't worry about PageRank :-).

So, with this guys particular site, there was an issue exporting his site's PageRank to the Toolbar, during Google's quarterly export. There may have been other issues with other pages impacted by this export.

I don't know for sure, but what I do know is that we should not worry about Toolbar PageRank.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.

It was just about a month ago when we reported a Google image search update and now I am seeing reports of another update.

A senior WebmasterWorld member posted a thread at WebmasterWorld on the 20th, reporting a new Google Image Search update. Zeus said:

Yesterday I saw some few glitches here and there in the Image search, but today there are some BIG changes, new Images has been added again, maybe also moderate filter update, where they for years have had a problem with loosing good sites images, be cause other sites are hotlinking to those images with bad text, then Google see the Original site as bad.

What is interesting is that we rarely see an update on Google Image Search 30 days apart from another update. There is some speculation that Google might be updating their image index more frequently these days. Like in the past, Google use to update their web index every X or so days, and now they update their web index almost real time - maybe Google is speeding up the image search index?

Google Image search can be a huge source of referrals for many sites, so it would make sense to me if Google decided to update the image index more frequently. Especially since images and video are so much more active these days on the web.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Here is the February 2009 webmaster report on Google's search result changes based on the WebmasterWorld thread. I will summarize what people are noticing in the Google search results, as per the thread.

• Google accidently labeled the internet as malware
• Some SEOs noticed index counts double in size
• Some are reporting a "glitch" that promotes .edu & .gov as Google Bombs
• Longer tail keywords seem to be 'rollercoastering' in the SERPs
• Tedster's theory is that Google is tweaking the QDF (query deserves freshness) and QDD (query deserves diversity) algorithms.

That is the bulk of what I pulled out from the thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I am now seeing early reports of a Google Image Search update via WebmasterWorld. The reports claim that Google has been adding new images to the image index and those images are now showing up in the search results.

That last Google Image Search update was in October and we see them every few months or so.

There is no word on if there was an update to the image filter. But we may see more reports coming in on that news soon. So, if you have been waiting for your new images to show up in Google, you may now be in luck.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Marcus Tandler blogged about a discovery in a German SEO thread at my old time friend's forum named ABAKUS Forums (translated version over here), about a weird loophole that seems to allow you to check if a site is penalized or not, via the Google Toolbar.

Let me show you how it works. Here is an example.

(1) Open a browser that has the Google Toolbar installed, with a PageRank feature. Navigate to http://www.seo-radio.de/ (as an example) and see the PageRank value is a 5. Here is a screen capture:

(2) Change the URL to http://hyves.seo-radio.de/ and notice the PageRank value jumps up to a 7. Here is a screen capture:

Now, what is going on here. According to the consensus in the thread, there are three values you can get from doing this:

• PR7 = No Google Penalty
• PR4 = Google Penalty
• PR0 = Site Banned in Google

What would be Google's rational in having this loophole? I really don't know. How can this be overlooked by Google? I am not sure. But everyone is in agreement that this loophole will be gone, soon enough.

Forum discussion at Sphinn and ABAKUS Forums.

Over the weekend, I noticed many reports from a wide array of search forums, where webmasters are noticing their PageRank scores drop in the Google Toolbar.

We have threads from WebmasterWorld, two from DigitalPoint Forums, and a Google Webmaster Help thread. All filled with complaints that their toolbar PageRank scores have dropped, many dropped to zero.

In addition, an update to the WebmasterWorld thread on the Google January 2009 changes was also noticed, where some are reporting shifts in the Google results. Here is one snippet from that thread that stands out to me:

Definitely a shift in whats in and whats out, i'm seeing some duplicate pages in the serp's indented duplicates at that, the first of these has a cache date of over a year and the indented results has a cache date of a few days.

Some of the pages that i witnessed drop out of there serp's on the 23rd Dec are suffering from this issue but not all, i'm assuming at the moment that this was the problem for those web pages, still seeing some funky page totals return for some very competitive search terms first page displaying 25 mil results return but if you dig deeper there are only 500 pages before the "omitted results" link comes up.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and a Google Webmaster Help.

On Tuesday, we ran a poll asking if Google's PageRank data reports in Webmaster Tools useless or useful. The results are in and the majority of SEOs believe those reports are completely useless.

I am one to agree with the masses here, not because I don't think Google doesn't want to provide useful information here. But more because of the issues I have seen with the reports in Webmaster Tools over the years and how they often are simply wrong or outdated due to bugs or resource issues.

Here is a breakdown of the 131 responses:
:: PR data in WMT is Useless said 74 respondents or 56.49%
:: PR data in WMT is Not Helpful said 32 respondents or 24.43%
:: PR data in WMT is Somewhat Helpful said 19 respondents or 14.5%
:: PR data in WMT is Very Helpful said 4 respondents or 3.05%
:: Other category said 2 respondents or 1.53%

So there you have it, thanks for participating in the poll.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks just how accurate is the table in Google Webmaster Tools that shows the details of "Your page with the highest PageRank." It is found under "Statistics" and then under "Crawl stats" at the bottom of the page.

Here is a picture of mine:

Yes, no data available for December. In fact, I checked four sites really quickly, and they all said the same thing. Maybe it is a bug for me, or a temporary issue. But that is for another blog post.

Most SEOs that I know take very little stock into this report. It seems to be often outdated and often wrong. One webmaster said, "I think this information is nonsense." But other members think that if the report looks bad, then it is a sign of a penalty or a sign of an indexing issue.

Should webmasters take this report seriously? I am honestly not sure - my gut tells me no, they should not. I have too often seen the reports in Google Webmaster Tools to be flat out wrong, due to many reasons.

What do you think? Take the poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few days ago, we reported the last Google PageRank update of 2008. We're not certain if this is related, but there are a lot of interesting observations related to the PageRank update that we've seen. For once, I've noticed discussion about fewer sitelinks on some sites. In fact, I've personally been impacted by 8 to 6 sitelinks on one of my sites.

Google is also apparently giving some browser "hijacking" domains (that is, sites that don't let you hit the "back" button) a lot more visibility in the SERPs in addition to mirror sites.

We're also not sure if this is related but some people have spotted some big drops their rankings in the SERPs.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups

Over Christmas and the holidays, we reported early signs of a Toolbar PageRank Update. Those reports have now been confirmed by Google's Matt Cutts via Twitter. Matt said about 6 hours ago:

Yes, Google updated our toolbar PageRank values today. Consider this the confirmation.

You can then see other Googler's like JohnMu, "liking this" on Matt's FriendFeed page.

Of course, we have a whole new slew of PageRank update threads and posts now. They include:

• Matt's FriendFeed
• Google Webmaster Help
• DigitalPoint Forums
• WebmasterWorld
• Search Engine Watch Forums

The folks over at the brand new Google Webmaster Help section are happy to see their new forum reach a PageRank of 7, in a matter of just weeks.

So there you have it, as expected, the Toolbar PageRank update has been confirmed.

An updated WebmasterWorld thread has new reports of changes at Google.co.uk and Google.com.au.

Senior member internetheaven, who keeps an eye on the Google UK results said:

Google.co.uk is all over the place. The results for one of the more competitive terms here in the UK (and across the world!) have completely changed. All the major financial companies and associations that usually rank at the top have been pushed down in favour of a few smaller companys and the inner financial sections of "related" websites (e.g. the car insurance ad section of a used car sales magazine) -- plus several MFAs to boot!

It is a slow holiday weekend, so there is not yet much response to internetheaven's post, but this member is senior and I trust him. Have you noticed any major changes with big competitive terms?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, I have noticed several threads mentioning updates to Google's Toolbar PageRank scores. The reports are not as widespread as a typical Toolbar PageRank update warrants, which leads me to ask, is this a true Toolbar PageRank update or did Google conduct a Toolbar PageRank penalty for sites not playing nice with their terms of service?

Necessary Disclaimer: Google Toolbar PageRank is a visual indicator that has no direct impact on ranking well at Google. The Toolbar PageRank is often months outdated and can be very confusing to new SEOs on how it matters. So just be warned.

We have threads at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help all discussing updates to Toolbar PageRank.

Our last coverage of such an update was in the first week of October, which was a possible rollback of the Google Rosh Hashanah 5769 PageRank Update. Since then, it has been pretty quiet on the Toolbar PageRank front.

Last week, Google did update the link reports in Google Webmaster Tools.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.

It has been a while since I posted a link update post, based on Google updating their webmaster tools report. One of the reasons for this is because there has been a two to three month bug, where Google has not updated the report with new links. Google has not confirmed via a Google Webmaster Help thread that the reports are now being updated with the latest linkage data.

We typically provide a grid of our top linked to pages from this report, so here it is:

Now, the links report doesn't seem all that logical to me. But it is possible, who knows. It might also be that the link report is still going through the process of updating.

For the past updates see:

• June 2008 Google Linkage Data
• Google Webmaster Tools Link Update More Frequent?
• October 2007 Google Linkage Data
• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

For the last few months, we've been reporting Google SERP changes as has been observed by the WebmasterWorld community. We haven't been able to locate a list of archived threads, though -- until now.

Tedster has shared a list of WebmasterWorld Google SERP changes posts. The cycle begins in December 2006 and has continued pretty tremendously through today.

If Google history is an area you'd like to explore, be sure to check out the archives and feel some nostalgia.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Less than a week ago, Google announced that Google Sync is now available for BlackBerry users. BlackBerry users rejoiced to join the family of phones supported for syncing up contacts, calendars and so on, on their BlackBerries. Other phone devices supported in the past include Android, iPhone, Motorola, Nokia phone, Nokia S60 phone, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Windows Mobile.

But since the day they released in, many BlackBerry users find themself not able to get a full sync. A Google Help thread has tons of complaints from a wide range of BlackBerry users who are unable to fully sync between Google and their BlackBerries.

Googler, Alden, has asked users with issues to post in the thread the BlackBerry model, whether you are upgrading Sync or using it for the first time and roughly how many contacts you are trying to Sync.

There seems to be no resolution for many BlackBerry users as of yet.

Forum discussion at Google Help.

I have seen two smallish thread, relative to a normal Google update thread, that discusses changes in the Google search results. A WebmasterWorld thread and DigitalPoint Forums thread has discussion around some changes being noticed in Google.

Now, typically these threads are much larger. So I was a bit hesitant to post this information. In fact, I would not be surprised if this was just a quick blurb that went away.

This does come soon after the Yahoo November update this past Friday. The last Google update reported was in early November and turned out to be a bug in the search results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

We have already written our Google November report but when I see a spike in conversation about Google Search changes, I try to keep you informed, even if it is not a new month.

So as you know, we covered the Google November changes and we saw a scary change at Google that was a mistake. That being said, here is what seems to be new at Google.

• Some are noticing the universal search yo-yo effect or at least symptoms of that issue.
• Some are saying Google is now giving more weight to the meta description and H2 tags on your page.
• The site command, as some report, is showing higher number of pages then they have in the past - this comes after a recent report of pages dropping out of Google but some are reporting the exact opposite.
• Some are noticing new reports of Google cache cross-ups.
• Others are noticing an increase in 404 errors in webmaster tools.

Those are some of the non-validated discussions going on about Google in mid-November.

There is also a new, pretty well-organized, thread on these changes at HighRankings Forums.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums and continued at webmasterWorld.

After Google's SERP update over the weekend caused fear (and after Matt Cutts acknowledged that it was a bug), webmasters are calming down and our regularly-scheduled programming (the monthly SERP report) has returned.

One webmaster notes that he used to be on top of the SERPs for regional and worldwide searches (on the "web," that is), and now he's only on top of the regional SERPs.

Another forum member thinks that Google is still cleaning itself up from the "buggy" mess -- there's a lot of "useless junk" still in the SERPs. A third forum member has isolated it to this datacenter.

Some people say the Google SERPs resemble MSN with a ton of .edu links and cheap directories on top.

And some are just not ranking like they used to (we're talking page 30, not in the top 10 like they used to be).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, Webmasters started to notice major changes with the Google search results. Most of those changes are documented in an incredibly long but only three-day long thread at WebmasterWorld.

I decided to wait on reporting on this thread until Monday morning, to see if things settle. In short, webmasters were not happy. They saw low quality sites come into the search results, they thought Google went backwards. And they actually did.

Matt Cutts of Google made one of his now rare posts at WebmasterWorld explaining that this was a bug. At 11:57am (EST) on November 1st Matt said in reply to all the craziness going on:

I think this was a short-term issue and things should be back to normal pretty soon (if not already).

What exactly happened? Matt clarified later in the thread:

I don't consider those rankings indicative of anything coming in the future. Some data went into the index without all of our quality signals incorporated, and it should be mostly back to normal and continuing to get back to normal over the course of the day.

Yes, this was a bug as Matt said in reply to a question as to wether or not this was a "bug" or a "test." Matt said, "nope, it wasn't a test."

You probably can expect some type of update soon but it likely will not look anything like what we saw over the weekend.

The forum thread has slowed down drastically over the past 24 hours. Things seem to have settled back to where they were. It is nice to see Googlers come in an help alleviate the concern over, what looked to be, a long weekend for SEOs and webmasters.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has users noticing changes over at Google Image Search. The changes may be a filter or may be a full-blown image index update, hard to tell at the moment.

The last Google Image update seemed to be an image filter update in September. But now, the update seems a bit more outside of the scope of what we would classify as a filter.

WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster, observed:

I started seeing some really wrong captions on some images, where the algo is pulling the caption from on-page anchor text. How can on-page anchor text be a candidate for naming for an image that is also on the page?

Senior member, zeus, who reported the image update has seen tons of images drop out of Google Image search, plus he has seen a possible hotlink image bug. The hotlink image bug happens when a third-party site links to a specific image and Google classifies that image from a a third-party domain.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld .

A week or so ago, there was a Google toolbar PageRank update. I am now seeing several reports at DigitalPoint Forums and updates to a WebmasterWorld thread that Google seems to be rolling back that toolbar PageRank update.

Honestly, I am not convinced yet. It can be that some data centers have not yet updated and maybe those data centers are showing older toolbar PageRank scores. Or maybe not.

Why am I so skeptical? Simply because Google knows that toolbar PageRank (what we see) is almost meaningless. Why would they go through the effort of updating PageRank and then revert it back? It just doesn't make much sense to me.

Should you care? No. Spend your time on your site, content and rankings.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

This month, WebmasterWorld members spotted a few anomalies in the Google SERPs:

Some people are spotting some huge numbers (and differences) in results found on Google. For example, they could be performing a search in the middle of the day and find 1 million results. Later that day, the same search may find 2 million results. It's possible that this is because of querying different datacenters (though that number is pretty substantial even to me). It's also possible that this is related to capitalization issues which Barry blogged about earlier today.

Other forum members spot Google deindexing some major pages due to what he believes to be a duplicate meta description. He notices that the same pages will end up coming back though.

On page factors are becoming more relevant versus anchor text, as many other forum members are starting to notice.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, Google updated the toolbar PageRank values. In fact, Matt Cutts of Google basically confirmed the update before it happened, saying:

I wouldn’t be surprised if new PageRanks started showing up this weekend or so.

I figured, since the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah is tonight, let's name it the Rosh Hashanah 5769 PageRank Update. 5769 is the year, like it is 2008 now in the secular calendar. And I'll upload our Rosh Hashanah theme right now for it:

The disclaimer: Take these toolbar PageRank updates with a grain of salt. The toolbar PageRank values are typically months old and do not always reflect the importance and value of a site on the web or even in the eyes of Google.

That being said, you can see most of the past Google updates and PageRank updates over at our Google PageRank/SERP Updates archives. We have tons and tons of discussion on this update.

Here are the forums discussing the update:

• Google PageRank Update, This Weekend!, Sphinn
• Google Page Rank has updated, are your satisfied, DigitalPoint Forums
• Google toolbar PR Update - 27 September, 2008, WebmasterWorld
• Matt Cutts on Pagerank and Serps, DigitalPoint Forums

I cannot tell you how many times we see threads that are either reporting or questioning if there is a Google PageRank update. We try to document all "real" toolbar PageRank updates here, but often, very often, there are smaller updates or not updates at all, of the PageRank bar, reported in the forums.

I figured I highlight one such thread, because Google's JohnMu adds some insight into why people might see a PageRank 0 or update before its time.

A Google Groups thread has one member worried that his PageRank dropped from a 4 to a 0. John, from Google came in to ease this webmaster's concern. He said:

Keeping in mind that we only update PageRank for the Toolbar a few times a year, it might be that there was just some "fluke" with regards to your site right when we updated it. For example, it could be that at that moment, the www- or non-www version was more relevant, now that other version is. At any rate, I don't think you need to worry too much about that :). Two things that you could do are setting a preferred domain name in Webmaster Tools if you haven't done so already and setting up a canonical redirect to that preferred version.

In summary:

• Toolbar PageRank is updated every few months
• Other updates are likely flukes due to canonical issues or issues contacting Google's servers.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

This month, there are already a lot of different observations from the WebmasterWorld discussion on Google SERP changes. Forum members have noted that Google is looking for more fresh results and is specifically weeding out old and outdated pages. One forum member notes the following:

I think Google looks at a site and compares all the content, then keeps some of the most recent content in the results including the higher PR stuff and puts the older stuff in supplemental. That is only a guess but seems to be what is happening.

Additionally, reciprocal linking has been touched upon. It looks like Google is paying more attention to artificial linking versus natural linking schemes. From personal observations as well, I believe this to also be the case.

Numerous forum members are reporting traffic drops and ranking fluctuations as well.

I'm sure there will be a lot more discussion, so check out the thread at WebmasterWorld for additional updates.

Google's web browser, Chrome, launched two days ago and it was missing one major feature that SEOs took notice of. That feature is the PageRank indicator found in the Google Toolbar. But why is it missing? Is it just a feature that may be coming in the future or was this intentionally left out?

This is the question on the mind of some DigitalPoint Forums members and it has been asked at the blog of Matt Cutts two different times. I have currently not seen a response from Google about why it is not in the Chrome browser.

I know Matt Cutts has stated in the past that he would like to work on Google to remove the PageRank indicator. Matt said back in December 2007:

Personally, I wouldn't mind removing the PageRank in the Google Toolbar or swapping it with some other indicator, but that would be a large undertaking. Maybe that can be a long-term goal for me. :)

We also know Google asked for feedback on the PageRank indicator in the past, and that many SEO wants PageRank to go away. So maybe, just maybe, this is Google's first step to do away with their historical PageRank score?

On a funny note, yesterday, Tamar did a write up named Submit Your Google Chrome Feedback Over Here. So now we have about 40 comments, in less than a day, with Chrome feedback. But the post tells people where to go to place their feedback. Of course, I gave Tamar this title, wondering if people would skip the content of the post and just go by the title.

Anyway, is this the beginning of the end to Google's toolbar PageRank score?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Patrick Altoft blogged a recent finding that Google seems to have changed its algorithm and placed less emphasis on anchor text (versus on-site optimization). His theory (which is purely from observations at this point) is that Google is altering the algorithm because anchor text is currently the ranking algorithm's biggest flaw. There are a variety of reasons for this but Patrick specifically notes that the "best" link (as deemed by Google) for anchor text may not be the most ideal one after all.

Forum members are overall interested in this discovery and related developments. Since it may help thwart spammers, this may be a good direction for the algorithm to be headed. However, it may be related to the number of backlinks from a single source, as one forum member says:

It is more likely that Google would reduce value of backlinks with the same anchor text that come from the same domain, ie having 1000 backlinks from one domain using same anchor text could be worse than having 2-3 backlinks from the same site.

On the other hand, it may be that Google is starting to be a lot more privy to semantic indexing and matching up similar keywords with other anchor text. However, it's debatable that this is the case if Google is trying to reduce emphasis on anchor text altogether -- which makes sense in many cases (including in the paid links scenario which the blog post did not touch upon).

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

Just a few days ago, forum members across multiple forums started observing a new Google PageRank update. Forum members believe that Google is lifting PageRank penalties on sites that sold links, but I beg to differ.

It looks like a PR penalty lifting. At least this happened to one of my sites which sold links. No change on my white hat sites.

(Maybe that guy was just lucky.)

Others have confirmed that the PageRank penalty has been lifted, or so that's what they feel is the case. However, it's not necessarily the case that a penalty has been lifted as another forum member points out. However, everyone agrees for the most part that there are PageRank changes that have only come into effect in the past few days, though some are doubting that there is a PageRank update because it's just "too early."

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A few new changes have been spotted after the July 2008 SERP updates that we reported last month.

One forum member at WebmasterWorld thinks that Google might be using different data centers for query refinements. The reason he suspects this is because he's performing the same search but finding different results. It's possible that if Google is realizing that users are not happy with those search results (since they searched again) and are offering a different set of results.

Other forum members wonder why Google's datacenters aren't matched up since they are returning different results.

Another forum member is disturbed because Google apparently rolled back its index. He cites this to "seeing thousands of old 301 HTML pages from back in April from our old site that have not been in the index for 2 months now, right back at the top of the SERPS."

Numerous forum members are annoyed by Google's yoyoing of search results.

Finally, it looks like Google is favoring freshness of results, as one forum member writes:

We're seeing as of today all new content written in July gone from the index, but new content written today appearing in 15-30 minutes after pinging a new sitemap.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

In May, we blogged about Google VP of Engineering Udi Manber's post where he introduced search quality. In the same post, he says that Google has "made significant changes to the PageRank algorithm in January." Last week, Matt Cutts told us that we're in the midst of a PageRank update, and now forum members are wondering what kinds of changes were made to the PR algorithm. In a WebmasterWorld thread, Tedster says that he thinks that a few things may have been altered:

1. Internal links and external links on the same page may not be splitting the PageRank vote equally.
2. Depending on the location of the link, PR may be weighted differently.
3. Multiple links to the same url from the same page may not each get the same piece of the PR vote.
4. "Run-of-site" external links, like Blogrolls, may now have diminished PR.
5. Links between domains that Google sees as "related" may have their PR significantly damped down. Possibly the same goes for sites that link to subdomains.

Are Ted's observations correct? Some of the ideas he proposed may be difficult to fathom. For example, subdomains that are not owned by the same user (think blogspot here) may interlink, and why shouldn't their PR count?

A lot of these ideas are simply that: ideas. They're based on conjecture and not on evidence. Some forum members find that it's important to actually test these theories before calling them as they seem to be.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google's Matt Cutts announced Google is pushing out "new toolbar PageRank values," over the course of the "next few days."

Yes, I keep saying toolbar PageRank is really all that not important. You can read my thoughts on that over here, but I honestly think this toolbar PageRank update is the most important one ever. Why?

Matt Cutts said, and I quote:

I figured the SEO industry could use something to discuss, so I thought I’d give people a heads-up about the toolbar PageRanks.

Yes, we 100% need something to discuss, other then ourselves. It has been a very rough week for the SEO community and this distraction will hopefully set things back on track. So, thank you Matt and Google for that.

Matt also notes that he is "expecting that also in the next few days" that Google will "be expiring some older penalties on websites." By penalties, we assume he means the Google Toolbar PageRank downgrade for selling links. Some were hit by this toolbar PageRank downgrade and have not yet seen an increase in their PageRank.

Forum discussion on the Google toolbar PageRank update at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums and we have additional discussion at WebmasterWorld specifically on the topic of Google "expiring some older penalties on websites."

Tamar covered the Google UK July report yesterday but I noticed a new observation from Gabs at Search Engine Roundtable Forums. Gabs pointed out that Google's UK search algorithm seems to be returning an unusual number of sites related to Australia.

He comments that the number one result for [how to cancel company registration] in Google UK search is an .AU TLD, the number six result is a .SG and the number nine result is a .NS. I personally see them at different positions, but all on the first page.

Gabs said this isn't new. He noticed the same thing happen about a year ago. He said, "google.co.uk is showing a load of .com.au's again." Now, for a search specific to company registrations, you would think that a searcher is typically looking for something more localized. In any event, I am not sure if this is just the "yoyoing" we have seen in the July report or something else.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Last month, we started reporting on Google.co.uk as perceived by webmasters. We may make this a regular column depending on how different Google.co.uk seems to be from Google.com over time.

WebmasterWorld members are reporting extreme "yoyoing" and fluctuations of some rankings on old domains.

Another observation is that the geolocation seems to be shifting -- again. .co.uk pages are showing up on page one, whereas .com pages are showing up on page 2. In other words, improvements are being noted.

Some feel that Google in the UK is penalizing harsher than in the US.

And finally, Google is still not sure about the locations of some posts. A webmaster reports:

Meanwhile G has moved a load of my .coms hosted on a US server back into the Google.co.za results...argh...what are they doing?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld members are already beginning to notice some issues with the Google SERPs this month, though it has only just begun.

In one instance, a very highly targeted one-page website which used to perform well for short and long tail terms lost all traffic in the short and long tail. This month, the webmaster reports that short tail searches are starting to creep back up but long tail results are nowhere to be found.

Many people keep alluding to a June 4th disaster with the -950 penalty. They're also losing substantial traffic (see this thread). This month, only few admit that they've recovered.

Another forum member admits that he has been seeing a jump in rankings -- from page 1 to page 6. He's worried that his hard work has gone to waste.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google has been updating the link reports in Webmaster Tools more frequently, so I stopped reporting them. But Google also removed the download this table feature from those reports back in February of this year. It was at that time, I was no longer easily able to provide you a report of my top links as reported in Webmaster Tools.

First, here is a screen shot showing the "download this table" is finally back in the reports. I am not sure when Google added it back, but I know it was missing for months and months:

Now that it is back, I can share with you my top pages based on the number of links pointing to them, according to Google Webmaster Tools. So here they are:

I did not include major index pages, such as the home page, archives, and so on, just articles. I have noticed more of the "index" pages to be closer to the top of the report, then in the past. Meaning, more of my informational pages (not articles) have more links then in the past. In addition, I noticed that many of my top pages from the past were no longer top this time around. This seems to imply that those links dropped off the planet and no longer count as much. But I am not sure if that is correct. In fact, I tried to write about that theory in my write up named The Life Time Value of Links Based on Google Webmaster Central from April of last year, but it was very hard to prove - so it is still a theory that I and many others believe in for numerous reasons that I won't get into here.

For the past updates see:

• Google Webmaster Tools Link Update More Frequent?
• October 2007 Google Linkage Data
• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks a question most people who participate in search forums ask themselves. Does Google, on occasion, update the toolbar PageRank score of a particular web site between the major and mass toolbar PageRank updates we report?

Why do we ask this question? Well, if you visit enough forums, you are bound to see a thread or five with the title, "PageRank Update." These threads are fairly noticeable at DigitalPoint Forums but they are found at many other forums on a fairly recent basis.

Real Webmasters are noticing updates to their PageRank scores in the Google Toolbar. This happens all the time, and then they jump to the forums to be the first to announce the next PageRank update. But then you see a mass response of replies saying, "no PR update here."

So is it possible that what that Webmaster noticed was a true toolbar PageRank update for his site? Maybe. There are a few possibilities, the most likely is that he or she is hitting a different data center with different PageRank scores. But I would not rule it out that Google does push minor PageRank scores to the toolbar between major updates.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google.com is an entirely different beast from Google.co.uk -- and webmasters have taken the time to discuss some interesting observations on the .co.uk end.

Some are seeing results jumping around with major reshuffling. On a related note, some are seeing the same but are getting results only for very long tail searches.

Another observes issues with geotargeting. The specific scenario:

For instance many phrases for a 14 year old UK hosted global authority .com is #1 on G.com and is halfway down G.co.uk and some phrases not even ranked at all.

Forum members also observe and believe that Google.co.uk is using click-through data. That's interesting. I guess people know how to rank better, then!

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread is suggesting that after his site was hit by the PageRank penalty from several months ago, he has been getting more qualified advertisers. Here is what this publisher is saying:

I've noticed an increase in quality advertisers since Google de-ranked our resource pages.

We used to get tons of advertising requests from sites just for our PR...we also had to refuse many of them for being off topic and low quality sites. These sites are no longer contacting us, but better sites are now advertising. They get the targeted traffic and it looks good having them as a resource.

Now, even though the PR went down, our site ranking is still high in the search engines because it is a quality content site. They didn't dink us in search ranking, just in advertiser PR.

This site has been hit with the same PageRank penalty. Have I seen a decrease in the number of people requesting I exchange links with them? Far from it. But I think there may have been a drop in the number of requests to just buy PageRank. So, on that level, I do agree - it saves me a lot of time in terms of weeding out the bad advertisers from the good.

So less advertisers are requesting to "buy PageRank" and more advertisers are interested in actually promoting their product/service and/or supporting this site. Which is exactly what I want. I also assume this is exactly what Google wanted, so can this turn into a win-win situation for Google and publishers? I certainly hope so.

For more history on the PageRank penalties, see here, but also note this also, before seeing the first link.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On Thursday, we broke the news that the Yahoo Directory had no PageRank via a WebmasterWorld thread. Matt Cutts of Google quickly commented saying that the Yahoo Directory has a PageRank of 8. Matt was referring to the home page, which we said did have a PR value but not the internal pages.

Since then I have been tracking the discussion to find out that Matt added more details to the WebmasterWorld later on June 6th, saying although it appears the deeper pages do not have PageRank, they actually do. Matt said:

It looks like it's just a matter of canonicalizing upper vs. lowercase as to why some of the subdirectories look the way they do in the toolbar. I just wanted to reiterate that the Yahoo Directory has plenty of PageRank in our internal systems.

This just seems very weird to me. I guess it just proves that what we see in the Google Toolbar as a PageRank score can be very very wrong.

In any event, it is good to know that the Yahoo Directory has PageRank to pass around.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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.

Just a few weeks ago, people started noticing that the Yahoo Directory lost Google PageRank. Well, not the home page of the Yahoo Directory, but the inside directory listing pages. The pages that link to your site and, in the past, past PageRank and link juice.

I am skimming through the pages, even the pages closest to the top of the directory are showing nothing in terms of Google PageRank. For example, the arts section or the WebmasterWorld thread it might be due to how the URLs are set up.

It seems to me that the Yahoo directory is grey barred because its got no pagerank, because the links from the home page http://dir.yahoo.com/ are all via non-search engine friendly redirects like: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dir/home/cats/*http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Travel/

But that doesn't completely jive with me. I know I have personally linked to many of the non-redirected linked versions of the directory pages. Some of those pages should have PageRank, no?

So is the Yahoo Directory still passing value? I assume many would say yes. What is up with the zero PageRank score for all the internal pages?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: I have posted an update named Google Says, Yahoo Directory Does Have PageRank.

It looks that Google might be conducting some sort of major update. Yes, I know - Google is constantly updating, constantly adding content and "improving" the algorithm. But some changes make a bigger impression in the forums then others.

I have noticed recent discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums with people either complaining or praising a major shift in their rankings over the past 24 hours.

First post came in via WebmasterWorld at around 4:30am (EST), saying "There seems to be a roll back now... seeing the same old results for a few highly competitive 2 word keywords." Several members support his findings, even senior member, nuevojefe, added:

Very interesting changes I'm seeing. Major swings in a high traffic niche, but not much different in other niches I watch.

Seems new sites of a certain criteria are being allowed to jet up more though. Surprised to see new sites able to be propped up by network linking.

The DigitalPoint Forums thread has members who are commenting about a loss in traffic. Some members have posted charts showing a major drop in traffic, possibly due to a Google update.

So I think we have sort of major Google update going on.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

This month, WebmasterWorld members have observed the same old shuffle in rankings that plagued webmasters in our April 2008 Google SERP Update post.

A lot of rankings are dropping, and one webmaster even reports that he's hit a new traffic low in 2008.

One member likens these drops to the fact that Google might want to emphasize their paid listings.

Looks to me that at this stage of the game where Google completely dominates the market it would be beneficial for them to have "inconsistent"/"moving" results in the natural search so people would click on the ads as those are consistent. When searchers will get the idea that they will not get the same (even though still relevant) result every time they search, they will most certainly pay more attention to the ads. Google getting richer?

That's definitely an interesting statement.

Other observations include blogs being ranked higher, link exchange websites taking a hit in the rankings, issues with relevant rankings (specifically, more relevant internal pages are now being replaced by the less-relevant home pages for search phrases), and a lot of dropped rankings.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

I am seeing reports from across the SEO forums that Google has updated or begun the update of the PageRank score found within the Google Toolbar.

We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums - all discussing the recent PageRank update that began yesterday some time.

The last time Google updated toolbar PageRank was in late February. Google did recently update the Directory PageRank scores earlier this month. You can see some history on these recent PageRank updates over here.

What this all means for your Google rankings? Not much. Typically, a Google Toolbar PageRank update will have zero direct impact on one's ranking in Google. As Google has said, time and time again, the toolbar PageRank scores are older exports and do not resemble the PageRank score Google uses internally, at the time of ranking your pages in Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

I'll be honest, I keep watching the WebmasterWorld thread discussing the April 2008 Google update, code named Update Dewey.

The latest thing that I noticed were recent reports from very senior members saying that Google is shuffling around the results, in a major way, at Google UK. Here are two posts I isolated from the past 24 hours specific to Google UK and this update:

Oooo! (too effeminate?) Big changes on Google.co.uk ... big, awful changes ... if you've got a bunch of paid links looks like their about to pay off. Top spots in lots of industries have been overtaken by paid link buyers, and not subtle paid link buying either! 2,000 backlinks from just 2 sites with a paid sponsored links section in the bottom right for example.

There's a significant change in the UK algo today. For our top target term the site that recently bought it's way to the top and was rewarded with a site link listing because it has links out to sites that pay it affiliate fees has dropped to #2 and of course lost it's site links. The new #1 has dropped in from nowhere but probably should really be at #1 if it had someone doing at least basic SEO.

In fact, there is a stand alone thread named No.3 in every Google tld except our own - .co.uk at WebmasterWorld, that digs into one issue. The senior WebmasterWorld member says that his UK based site ranks number three in all Google sites except for Google UK, where it ranks 256. Weird, don't you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I have been tracking a thread at WebmasterWorld where this webmaster is shocked to learn that the site he just acquired now has a PageRank score of 10. Before buying the site, it had no PageRank score at all but soon after, it jumped up to a 10 out of 10!

Lucky Webmaster!

Well, not really. My first impression was that someone was spoofing the PageRank, which it turned out to be. So, someone was showing Google.com's PageRank value when you visited the site. There are many tools that check a site's true PageRank, so it is best to go with one of those tools in these cases.

The webmaster confirmed the issue and expressed his confusion:

OK, thanks very much to Miamacs here on WebmasterWorld for catching that some previous design of the site did the 'nasty fake redirect to Google.com' trick to get PR 10.

What I'm still confused about is why it didn't show up until they switched to the new site. Still, I'll be extremely pissed if it comes back to bite them... because, as their current provider, it'll be up to us to fix it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has updated the PageRank bars within the Google Directory recently. The new update now matches the PageRank values of the Google Toolbar. For example, the Computers > Internet > Web Design and Development > Promotion > Weblogs category now shows my revised, penalized Toolbar PageRank score of a 4 and not a 7.

New Directory PageRank Score:

Old Directory PageRank Score:

The last time Google did a PageRank Directory update was in January and at that time, the PageRank score in the directory did not match the toolbar update from November or so. For history on that, start here and go back.

A WebmasterWorld thread notes that Google has also changes the scale of the Directory PageRank bars from a 0-7 to 0-10, this way it matches the Toolbar scale. Interesting, indeed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Following March's update, WebmasterWorld members talk about the newest updates to the Google algorithm, including the previously discussed Dewey update.

Some observations include front page rankings that appear to be delisted (or "dumped way back," as one person puts it). He notes that one of his websites that has been up for over a decade is now totally gone with the exception of 2 pages that were updated in 2001.

News results also seem strange. A 2003 CNN story is occupying the #10 position in search, observes another member. Old documents are making their way to the forefront, whereas new documents are hidden.

Many people are noting multiple subdomains occupying more than one spot in the top 10.

The shuffle is definitely a big concern -- some results from the top spots are being relocated. Someone calls this "crazy swings." Sounds about right.

Matt Cutts is still looking for feedback about these changes, and he has been checking out the forum thread.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The huge WebmasterWorld thread devoted to tracking Google changes over the course of March 2008 has sprung some late March legs. Reseller, well known at WebmasterWorld for tracking the slightest changes at Google, posted two data centers that are very different.

The two data centers that appears to be shuffling around include:

• 72.14.207.104
• 64.233.183.104

Reseller jokes:

May be the folks at Google Search Quality Team are focusing this weekend at improving the search relevancy at the top ;-)

Google's constantly updating their search index and results, but this update seems to be pretty major. We do not know yet if it will propagate through to the main Google.com results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: I am getting word that many folks are seeing the dramatic changes at the main Google.com results. I personally don't see the 72.14.207.104 data center hitting the Google.com results for me, but many are now.

Last month, we reported some SERP changes and this month the trend continues with the following observations from WebmasterWorld members.

First, some members noticed a PageRank change, but we noticed that last week.

Other people are seeing some sitelink anomalies:

I have noticed that the numbers of indexed URLs from the sitemaps of my main site have been steadily reduced in the last two days. The reduction rate is about 5% per day. This drop takes place in all sub-directories and also shows on the results of a site command search. However, it seems that the fully indexed pages are not affected.

Additional observations include a change in the link: results and a few substantial drops in rankings (in one case, from #2 to #39).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

We reported several days ago that Google hasn't updated their external link counts and data in Google Webmaster Tools since early January. Webmasters and SEOs began to complain so Googlers began looking into it.

We now have reports via Google Groups that webmasters are seeing an update to their link counts in Webmaster Tools.

I would share our most popular pages according to Google but in early February Google removed the download table option and we now just have "download all external links." Of course, I can get to this data but I am at SMX and have limited time to mess around in Excel right now.

It would save me a lot of time and I am sure other SEOs and Webmasters a lot of time if Google put that option back.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

After reviewing DigitalPoint Forums, I saw about 5 different threads discussing a PageRank update at Google. I am honestly not sure if this is a legit update but it doesn't really matter.

A toolbar PageRank update has no immediate or direct impact on your rankings at Google.com.

Having said that, there are a few threads at the forum on the update but this DigitalPoint Forums thread is the most active at the moment.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Some may have missed this and I tried to avoid writing about it again, but I figured it might be good to document for the future. Google has pushed out yet another PageRank update for those sites who sell links, reportedly.

A few threads from the weekend have reported downgrades to their PageRank scores. Some of those threads include DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

What is this penalty? It is supposedly a visible PageRank penalty to avert those that sell links for PageRank and those who buy links for PageRank. It is probably working well to discourage link buyers and sellers on sites that were hit. Here is some history:

Google did their first PageRank downgrade around November 12, 2007. Then more penalties were visible on January 8, 2008. But the Google Directory update did not show a PageRank change. So people ask, are these sites still passing link weight and why are the still ranking well.

All in all, I think this solution has been working for Google - so kudos to them and I really mean that. I must add that some are brave and taking a stance by blocking GoogleBot to make a statement and I respect you as well.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld and HighRanking Forum.

Over the weekend, we have received reports via Google Groups that many Gmail users are having issues logging in to Gmail to check their emails.

Many of these users are receiving 502 Errors on their login attempts.

Gmail Guide has confirmed the issue:

I'm sorry to hear that some of you are unable to access your accounts due to 502 errors. Our team is currently aware of the problem and we are working to get things back up and running for you. Please visit our Gmail Updates and Alerts subgroup for up to date information on this problem.

Currently the status of the 502 errors on login at Gmail Updates and Alerts is nada. Keep watching it for updates and I hope it is resolved shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Over the weekend, in a WebmasterWorld thread that is tracking the Google February 2008 SERP changes, the recent discussion is around a new Google update.

This Google update is reportedly impacting the search results in the position two, three, four and five slots for "some "big" search terms," said Tedster, WebmasterWorld administrator. Member Attomic first reported this by saying how unusual it is to see the results move for the search terms he watches:

I've seen some big changes in the 2-5 positions for a search term. They've been moving around and changing positions for a few days. This has been a verrry stable search term for a few years now or I wouldn't even bring it up.

Senior member, BillyS, is convinced that this is a temporary Google glitch:

I'm convinced that Google burped at the end of January and spilled some of its index. For many months we were on a steady climb then traffic dropped by 40% overnight.

This along with the continued agony over what appears to be a Geotargeting or filtering bug is driving some SEOs and Webmasters a bit over the wall.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Following our January SERP changes report, we're back with the WebmasterWorld account of the changes observed at the beginning of this month.

Here's one new piece of information which has been confirmed by numerous webmasters:

Since the 'rollback' to fix #6 glitch my site dissapeared back to the sandbox but still shows up well on all the other DCs ....[Google] has discounted all links with less than 6 months of age.

Others, however, dispute the claim:

...this can't be the case. 6 months ago my pages were #9 and dropping in a specific search term. 6 months ago our link profile was abysmal.

One webmaster notes a "significant" drop in traffic since January 30th.

Another notices that Canadian results are differing from US results and has tested the theory with a proxy server.

Perhaps the strangest revelation of all is a weird caching issue:

I have most of my pages not indexed due to redirects (aka se friendly URL's), and my cached index page is that of another site completely which has nothing to do with me.?

Nobody can reproduce that, however.

On that note, I noticed that I did a site: search using a specific domain and a result came up that had no association at all to the domain I queried. I tested this a few weeks ago and then again just a few hours ago and the problem remains. Strange.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google Directory also noticed an update from DMOZ and new PageRank bars. We reported last week on the first PageRank update of 2008, and as Andy Beard points out also, the Google Directory is showing new data.

What is interesting is that the data is from January 8, 2008 and if you look at the Computers > Internet > Web Design and Development > Promotion > Weblogs category, you will notice that the PageRank penalty many sites received are not displayed in the PageRank score in the Google Directory.

For example it seems like the Toolbar PageRank of this site is a PageRank of 4. But if you look at the most recent Google Directory update, this site appears to be a PageRank of 7. Here is a screen capture:

This seems to validate both Sites With Downgraded Toolbar PageRank Still Passing Link Juice and PageRank Goes Down but Google Rankings Aren't Affected. But the true affects, well - Google can really only attest to.

The last Google Directory update we reported on was September 25, 2007.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Today we are having our first Google Toolbar PageRank update of 2008. At least there are dozens and dozens of reports that PageRank scores on the 72.14.25.x data center has been updated.

What does this mean to you? To your rankings? Nothing.

More on that on Why do some SEOs want toolbar PageRank to go away.

In any event, for many Toolbar PageRank is a prestige thing. So congrats if your PageRank score went up. Sorry if it went down.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting conversation about an increase in long tail traffic people have been noticing from Google. Long tail traffic, if you don't know, are the longer more specific keyword searches, such as big blue pineapple chair searches, where the number of searches are very low but when they land on your page, the conversions should be high.

The reports seem to convey that when Google changed the way they handle supplemental index results just late last month, it actually is making an impact now. People feel that the supplemental index is truly not a separate index anymore and being treated as a listing in the main Google index would be treated.

Thus people are noticing large increases in those long tail referrals from Google, especially those with huge sites.

Which data centers at Google is this appearing on? It is hard to isolate, I am told, but here is one member's thoughts on that.

At the moment I am seeing the newer mixed results at most datacentres, earlier today when I was seeing the differences I was generally comparing the old results on 64.233.161.107 with the new 'mixed' results on 64.233.163.107.

Some feel that the supplemental index and main index are still separated but blended more, as Tedster and g1smd say, "this isn't a move out of Supplemental, but more a blending of results from both indexes."

This is awesome moderation by Tedster, he isolated this conversation and pulled it out from a different thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We are getting reports from across the SEO forums that Google has done another toolbar PageRank update. The update seems to be, once again, hitting sites that sell or buy links.

Many are seeing PageRank drops to a flat out zero score, but some are seeing the typical reduction of 3 or 4 points in that toolbar PageRank score.

Here are the threads discussing this now:

• Another PR downgrade today!, Search Engine Roundtable Forums
• Why is my PageRank 0?, DigitalPoint Forums
• PR4 to PR0 overnight penalized?, WebmasterWorld
• Index Page not in Search Results anymore PR6 to PR3, WebmasterWorld

The main thing here is that there are two things here. The first is just a visible toolbar PageRank reduction and the second is a true penalty where your site is delisted from Google. Two very different things.

In continuing with our theme for Google SERP updates, we now have January's report.

Numerous webmasters are seeing a huge increase in their traffic: double the visits. Naturally, everyone affected is quite thrilled. One webmaster reports with confidence that this is due to long tail searches.

Unfortunately, others lost more than half of their traffic. It seems that this occurred around December 21st or 22nd.

Webmasters report that using the site: operator gives an exact count.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

There is discussion at a DigitalPoint Forums thread that Google is updating the visible toolbar PageRank scores.

I personally did not look deep into this. Because (1) Toolbar PageRank is not all that significant and (2) I am very under the weather.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Matt Cutts found an interesting news article on The Guardian. According to the article, the Florida update occurred in Christmas of 2004. Not so, and we have enough proof here too.

First of all, one of Search Engine Roundtable's first posts ever quotes Google's VP of Engineering on the Florida update. That was in December of 2003. Additionally, we have a plethora of linked threads later in December of 2003 about the Google Florida update, citing a date of November 15. The name "Florida" came from the WebmasterWorld thread which started on November 14, 2003.

So did the Guardian do their research? I don't think so. :)

And maybe the Guardian isn't a trustworthy news source, as Ian over at Sphinn adds:

If that's the UK "Guardian" newspaper then be aware they are known to the masses as "Teh Grauniad", due to their long history of spelling, grammar, and factual errors over the years.

Too funny.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Last month, we provided you with November 2007 Google SERP changes, and this month, the trend continues.

WebmasterWorld members report that their rankings have been fluctuating heavily. One reports that his site was not ranked in the top #1000 on Google but then he hit #19. It then increased and the rankings got better, but it soon disappeared out of the top 1000 again.

Similarly, another person is reporting that his biggest site is jumping back and forth from the #1 result to #16-#20. This sentiment is echoed by at least two other members.

A member reports that gaming and entertainment results are popping into SERPs that have no relationship to gaming and entertainment, which is certainly an issue of relevancy for these webmasters.

Finally, the other thing noted is that .ca and .co.uk results are appearing in .com results even though the market isn't tailored to US demographics.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld are reporting Google has updated the Google Image Search index and algorithm over the weekend.

Many people are noticing new images being found in the image search engine. Also some are noticing that Google is more particular about which images they are showing. The SafeSearch filtering tool, which allows you to define how safe you want your results, seems to have been fine tuned a bit also. The three options include:

• Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you’ll receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
• Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search).
• No Filtering, as you’ve probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.

If someone turns this filter on, there are reports that many images are missing from the results that should not be missing. The suspicions are that if a site that isn't "family friendly" is linking to that image, Google will include it in the filtered results. Even if that image is family friendly and even if that image is on a site that is family friendly.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, tries to offer some type of explanation from Google on this:

Google wants to be extra careful with images (they've recently shown some embarrassing images quite prominently in "universl" search results)

But Tedster still believes this behavior is a bit out of the norm.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Gabs reported Google has done a Sitelinks update. He is indeed correct. The first Sitelinks update was in February 2007 and then we had a new recent one where Google expanded them to 8 sitelinks per result.

Here is the new set of Sitelinks for the Search Engine Roundtable:

This is what they looked like on October 19, 2007:

So it does appear that some Sitelinks have been updated.

Forum discussion at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update again this month. Google has been updating their linkage data in Webmaster Tools more frequently, but it appears it has often been happening the first or second week of the month and not towards the end of the month.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

Again, this is the second major link update in Google Webmaster Tools this month.

For the past updates see:

• November 2007 Google Linkage Data
• October 2007 Google Linkage Data
• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Somehow, I think that the incident with Shopzilla is related to the recent news that anyone using the PayPerPost method just got their PageRanks reduced this weekend.

Forum members have mixed reactions. Some have obviously participated in such schemes. Others hope that those who participate suffer the consequences:

If you cheat you die.

Google seems to be taking out all the "schemes" that were set up to game the system.

Finally, others note that they have been penalized without using any paid advertising at all. These forum members feel that their penalty was unjust and that Google should review why it happened to begin with. Personally, I've seen a lot of incorrect penalties over the past few weeks that Google has not yet rectified, even with a request for reinclusion. I understand the frustration there.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Andy Beard has been tracking the Google PageRank changes like a hawk and he reported PageRank Zeros to many sites. There are also many people reporting PageRank Zeros at DigitalPoint Forums.

Those reporting that they have a PageRank of zero are also reporting that their rankings and traffic from Google are the same. I have seen some sites with a PR0 that do not sell links, so I am not sure if it is directly related to link selling or buying or just a PR bug.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google has updated the Toolbar PageRank score again over the weekend. Reports come from WebmasterWorld and a dozen different threads at DigitalPoint Forums.

This seems to be a continuation of the paid link PageRank downgrades.

Andy Beard documented some of the sites that were impacted by this fourth rendition of PageRank scores in the past month or so.

You can find historical PageRank updates in our Google PageRank updates section of our site.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update earlier this week. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

This update happened earlier this week, it just took me a while to export the data to share with you all.

For the past updates see:

• October 2007 Google Linkage Data
• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google is constantly updating the search results pages. But there seems to be a lot of discussion about an update made to the Google search results yesterday.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread and more conversation at a WebmasterWorld thread report such changes. Here are some quotes from some Webmasters:

Once again there has been an update and as usual I lost another 30% of my traffic from Google. Soon it'll be down to nothing and that is without me doing anything except adding more pages, fixing some typo's and a few layout fixes.

Yes, there definitely has been an update or algo movement yesterday. My first guess is that there has been some movement on dup content filtering measures.

Personally, I have yet to see any changes myself. But I admit, I do not look as carefully as most these people.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

As promised last month, we're going to report monthly on Google SERP changes. This month, the following observations on WebmasterWorld have been made:

• Some optimized sites that are being changed for better relevance are just not performing as well. Their rankings seem to be doing worse.
• "Boring websites" with no linkbait are vulnerable to ranking shifts.
• Bigger sites do better. ("Size does matter.")
• Some datacenters have shown changes, but they reverted to their original rankings. Forum members suspect it's part of a new data push (or experimentation, at least).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google has also done a backlink update recently.

Now, I think most people in this forum thread are talking about the link:www.domain.com command when searched at Google.com. That backlink command is known to just show a sampling on one's backlinks and no the full set of backlinks.

If that is the case and people are noticing a change (or increase) in the number of backlinks reported, then there is not much to those numbers. I personally would ignore such an update. What you do want to look at are your backlinks reported in Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.

There have been additional reports of Google Blog Search not return recent backlink counts for specific URL checks. For example, an article I wrote yesterday, shows 0 backlinks in Google Blog Search, click here to see. This appears to be a small, temporary issue in Google. I suspect it will be fixed shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There appears to be more reports of issues with Google's Webmaster Tools. The issues are not exactly the same as we reported earlier, but the issue appears to impact the same tool, the Link Reporting tool at Google Webmaster Tools. But is it an error in reporting or part of a new Google update?

Many are reporting that Google is showing zero external links for their site.

We have threads at Google Groups, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld about this topic, plus some random guy gave me a call about this yesterday.

Is it a penalty? Most have seen that zero links are coming up for their site and their PageRank dropped a point or two. The person I spoke with yesterday showed me his site and it appeared plain. It was in a competitive landscape and was not extraordinary, by any benchmark, but it didn't appear penalized to me. Yes, this person's rankings dropped and traffic dropped, and the site's PageRank and link count dropped.

I personally do not see any of this on my sites but there are plenty of reports about this going on, as of a few days ago.

Forum discussion at Google Groups, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Selling links? Matt Cutts has told Loren at Search Engine Journal that it was buying and selling links that ended up getting your PageRank lowered over the past few days.

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Danny Sullivan adds in the comments that he already knew this was happening. On October 7, Search Engine Land came out with a post warning you that you could get your PageRank lowered for selling links. Fast forward three weeks and we're here.

The discussion moves to Sphinn where there's a lot of confusion over the fact that Google seems to have penalized sites that simply do not participate in selling links. Copyblogger is an example.

Of course, there's also the other side (in a blog post that I can't find and link to): why can't bloggers make a little money on the side? Some of them aren't as rich as the Googlers. :P

How many people do you think were really outed by SEOs?

Still, according to a more recent Search Engine Land post, Google's stance seems unclear:

Google is always working to improve the ways that we generate relevant search results and update our opinions of sites' reputations across the web.

Some of the hard-hit sites seem to be pretty relevant, if you ask me. Again, the question goes back to the many posts I've seen where bloggers ask why they should be penalized if they provide quality content -- and sell links. So what? Why slight them?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

The largest topic by far this week in the forums is the PageRank update that hit sites that are selling links. There are literally dozens upon dozens of threads at many of the webmaster forums on the topic.

We covered it with What Does This Google PageRank Message Mean? and 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007. Yes, Google has confirmed this is a PageRank reduction in the toolbar for selling links. Even Matt Cutts, of Google, gave Loren a quote:

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

The big question is why did this PageRank update hit some sites that are selling links, while others it did not hit? In addition, how did Google hit some sites that were not selling links, which they had to restore a few later?

That is where the theory on how Google determines which sites are selling links.

Remember when Google released the paid link reporting tool back in June? Google asked everyone to report sites that sold links. People reported sites, sites they love, sites they hate, sites they are impartial to, to Google via this form. The form collected hundreds, if not thousands of sites. Google probably put a person or two on the task of scanning the list to validate if those sites sold links. YouTube was on the list, the person who reviewed it may have been on the call and forgot to uncheck it as a site that sells links and moved on. Many sites were not manually reported by you and I (SEOs and Webmasters) and those did not see a PageRank reduction, at least not yet, not until someone reports them.

In my opinion, this was a fairly manual process. Of course, I can be wrong. I am sure Google will automate the process as they continue to collect data, set up characteristics and profiles of sites that sell links. But right now, this seems much more manual than automated to me. And that is why I feel that "we" did this to ourselves. Webmaster A reported Webmaster B, who reported Webmaster A.

Does it matter? I have personally not seen any decline in Google referrals since the drop. Does it mean I will lose sponsors? I have lost one but I have also received an email from another sponsor who said:

I know with the latest PR update that just went live last night you are going to get hammered for going from a PR7 to a PR6 to now a PR4. I wanted you to know that I won't be one of those. We will continue to support you as an advertiser as long as the quality of your blog continues.

We're proud to be a sponsor, regardless of your PageRank.

Honestly, that email was incredibly touching. I never sold links for PageRank purposes. I always thanked those who placed their ads on my site, not in a promotional method but in a way to support the SEO community and this site. I do share site statistics, I don't share PageRank scores on my advertise page. This PageRank update may be a good thing. It will weed out advertisers who are just looking to "buy PageRank" from those who have good intentions about supporting the industry and this site.

But the big question is. Is my theory right? If so, did we do this to ourselves?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld (plus a zillion other threads).

Reports from WebmasterWorld are suggesting that there was a recent Google Images index update.

WebmasterWorld senior member, zeus, said:

I noticed some of my sites have got more images indexed on google image also a little change in rankings, but still no improvement on the filter "Moderate SafeSearch is on " which still filters to mutch good content which has 100% nothing to do with adult stuff, but maybe that comes later in this update, which is often the case with the image update.

So is that SafeSearch feature that WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday we reported about a 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007 which turned out to be a message from Google, at least most of us think so. At Search Engine Land I wrote in Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?:

Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can't say that we were not warned about this? Danny Sullivan wrote Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google over two weeks ago, and now it appears many sites are getting hit with a drop in PageRank.

The coverage of this PageRank update was absolutely massive. Just check out Techmeme and you will see. Heck, even Forbes (who was hit by this) covered it with Google Scares The Search Crowd, where they quoted me extensively.

This morning, I went through the various forums to see what message has been sent to the SEO community. There are a few dozen threads at DigitalPoint Forums on the topic, but I will reference only this DigitalPoint Forums thread and a WebmasterWorld thread.

The first thing I took strong notice to was that none of those impacted reported any drop in traffic from Google. Proof? This site was hit with a PageRank drop from PR7 to PR4. What did it mean for our traffic from Google? We actually have more traffic than we did before the update. Here are two charts from Google Analytics showing week to week comparison and day to day comparison of Google traffic, respectively:

Yes, an increase in traffic.

So this PageRank update seems to just be at the surface, possibly a message. What message? The most logical message can be sending is to come through on Danny's official report, Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google. Sites that sell links have seen a hit in their PageRank score.

Andy Greenberg at Forbes asked me why wouldn't they penalize the sites in terms of removing them from the index? I thought about that and explained that most of these sites produce excellent content. Sites like Forbes, Washingtonpost.com, Techcrunch, Engadget, Search Engine Journal, our site and others produce some of the best content on the web. If Google delisted all of those sites, then that would hurt their relevancy on some queries. With Google, they want to deliver the best possible results. How can they do that and also send a message to link sellers and link buyers? The safest method is to take this route and lower their PageRank. Link buyers, although not recommended, look at PageRank as a measurement for buying links. Google lowering the PageRank of some of these sites should make it harder for some of those sites to sell links.

Andy then asked me why would Google do this if you clearly label your ads as ads to the user. I said, that is a whole new debate, since the nofollow tag came out. Google feels it is not enough to just place those ads in a box and mark them as ads. Google wants you to nofollow the ads so they don't impact the algorithm at all. I said, I understand Google's stance on that and it is a decision each publisher needs to make for themselves.

Will this impact the selling of links on those sites? Time will tell. Will these sites slap on a nofollow tag? Time will tell. Will this make PageRank less valuable in the eyes of SEOs? Time will tell.

For now, I think Google sent a clear message that they don't want sites to sell links or people to buy links. Will this message stop people from doing that? I don't think so, but like I said just before, time will tell.

On a personal note, I trust my sponsors, I value their sponsorships and I couldn't do what I do without their financial support. Some sponsors can't afford huge sponsorships, so they sponsor in their ways. It is what enables this site and many other sites to function and operate on a daily basis. I turn down sponsors all the time because they are simply not relevant or useful to my reader. I hand select them and for them to be on my site, means I trust them. Why nofollow someone you trust and want to thank? Is that a slap in their face? Will I have to and will they continue to sponsor? Time will tell.

As you can see, the message is clear - the reaction is not so clear just yet.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread is reporting yet another large PageRank update taking place in the Google Toolbar.

So you know, there already was a PageRank update this month and it is unusual for there to be large PageRank updates twice in a month.

Of course, PageRank is only Toolbar PageRank and it does not officially represent a site's authority and rank, more on that here.

Some suspect that this update is again attacking paid links.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: I posted a longer piece on this at Search Engine Land named Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?

A DigitalPoint Forums thread is reporting yet another recent Google Webmaster Tools Link update. It appears Google is now updating the linkage data, not monthly, but much more frequently, over at Google Webmaster Tools.

We typically track only the monthly updates at the Search Engine Roundtable, so here are the monthly updates:

• October 2007 Google Linkage Data
• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

So it appears that Google may be updating the data more frequently and that means.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Seems like Google rolled out some new green pixy dust to their Google Toolbar PageRank bar. There are threads at both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld discussing the PageRank update.

Here is my disclaimer on PageRank, before people start jumping on me. :)

So to recap some of Google's recent updates in the past month:

• Google Webmaster Link Tool October 2007 Update
• Webmasters Report October 2007 Google SERP Changes
• Google Directory PageRank Update
• Google Update Underway? Chinese Spam Impacting Google.com

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update last week. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time. There are additional reports of and ranking changes.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

The updates seem less dramatic each month.

For the past updates see:

• September 2007 Google Linkage Data
• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Every month, WebmasterWorld members touch upon new trends that they notice in the Google SERPs. We haven't covered this on Search Engine Roundtable yet before, but if trend analysis is something of interest to you, we may begin to do so (let us know via the comments).

WebmasterWorld members are reporting some October changes, particularly relating to the SERPs on the following Google datacenter IPs:

• 72.14.203.99
• 72.14.203.104
• 72.14.203.107

The response regarding these new SERPs are mixed. Some people are seeing better content, less supplemental results and scraped sites, and more "old fashion content." Others, however, feel that their sites are the ones that are being dropped out of the index in lieu of these new scraper sites. It still appears to be difficult to determine who is the authority site when it comes to Google's preference of the original content.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Gabs from SEO Home reported at a Search Engine Roundtable Forums thread that the Google Directory PageRank bars have updated.

There is a difference, sometimes, between the PageRank shown in the Google Directory when compared to the PageRank shown in the Google Toolbar. Also, the PageRank values Google has internally are normally different from both the Directory and Toolbar PageRank values.

Gabs showed an example of a change. If you look at the cached version of this page, it shows a PageRank value of 3 for Abbey Theatre but the current version shows a PageRank value of 2 (I may be off on those numbers, but you can clearly see the current version of the PageRank bar is less than the cached or older version. Here is a side by said:

Current:

Past:

Side by side, just looking at the PageRank bars:

Note, we had a Google Directory Data Update last month, but the last time I reported a PageRank score update at the Google Directory was back in 2004, that is not saying it hasn't happened since.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

There are several reports across multiple forums about a large update at Google. It appears people are noticing large search results shifts at Google Web Search. Some are obviously happy with the changes, such as one user at Search Engine Watch Forums and an other user at DigitalPoint Forums and some are not.

A WebmasterWorld thread has been tracking this update in more detail. The WebmasterWorld thread picks up speed as of last night, as did the other threads.

It appears many people are complaining about Chinese Spam sites coming into the Google web search results. One member described what he saw:

This isn't even news but I noticed something I didn't see before. A good majority of these domains were listed as follows:

fake title whatever blahblah
... description with some of our keyphrases plus a lot of
other scraped stuff all mixed up yet showing for this query...
xr.aghdweo. cn/whatever.html

In addition, George posted a question at Matt Cutts's blog, a Google engineer, asking:

Why are the chinese spam sites still in the index? I thought you were wroking on it and was testing, but the only thing I have seen, and other have reported in WMW, is that sites have disappeared from your listings but the chinese spam sites are still there. How is this possible after over a week?

Matt Cutts replied to that explaining that he is aware of the chinese spam site issue, and they are working on addressing it with an infrastructure change. He said:

On your second point, there’s at least one infrastructure change we wanted to make in order to handle these better. Infrastructure changes take more time than just killing specific spam sites.

So there does seem to be some type of update going on and it appears that there is a Chinese spam issue in Google. It doesn't appear to be specifically Chinese sites, some people are reporting. Unfortunately, I have no examples to share with you at this time. If you know of keyword searches that bring up samples of this problem, feel free to share via comments.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Donna at SEO Scoop sent me an example query that returned these Chinese spam results. Now, I am not sharing the keyword search for this, because Donna warns that if you click on the results, "you'll get infected with a virus." So I decided to show you what they look like via a safe screen capture:

Notice the space between the domain and the .cn extension? The first example is c7b.2kisa．cn/. The period is not really a period, it is a weird character. Compare a normal dot, to this dot cn result:

• ．
• .com

Not sure if you can see the slight difference. Here it a picture of the two blown up:

It seems as if this is a generated unicode hex character of EFBC8E but it doesn't make much sense to me. The link in Google drops the space code off but the display code keeps it there.

Very weird.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update yesterday. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time. There are additional reports of and ranking changes.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

This link update just doesn't seem a 100% correct to me. It just seems like a different pattern from the previous updates.

For the past updates see:

• August 2007 Google Linkage Data
• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

There's an interesting poll on DigitalPoint Forums about the obsessive compulsive nature of users when there are Google PageRank updates. We've already explored last week how Google should consider removal of the PageRank score and this poll's results seem to bolster that argument.

Over half of the respondents say that the Google PageRank updates are making them sick. To put it more specifically, they selected "It makes me sick seeing all those newbies going hysterical around PR updates!"

We have hundreds of posts in our own PageRank category, and I can see where the frustration lies.

But even with the obsessive nature of PageRank, some people know that "PR is entertainment" and means nothing.

Nobody even talks about ranking websites any more. PR is a joke.

So why keep it?

Really, then, I'm all for a page quality indicator that's updated regularly. There's no need for this "mass hysteria" every three months.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday, Barry reported on the WebmasterWorld discussion about removing the PageRank tool.

After a bit of feedback, Adam Lasnik of Google has written on the thread, where he emphasizes the importance of PageRank.

PageRank is an important signal and remains one of many effective measures of quality, but admittedly it's often viewed and used/abused in ways that run contrary to the interests of searchers and webmasters. Still, a lot of folks find the PR information useful; it provides a great incentive to try out our toolbar and explore its other features as well.

But more importantly, Adam solicits advice from the community to offer feedback on what they'd rather see instead:

Given that many of you aren't so fond of PR info in the toolbar, I'd love to know what feature you woudl like to see.

Mandatory criteria:
- Would have to provide actionable info for webmasters
- Would need to be useful and interesting for the ~99.9% of users who aren't webmasters

Of course, that just brings up the suggestion of providing up-to-date and accurate PageRank data -- all the time. I've even heard that at Search Engine Strategies conferences. This is what the webmasters want, and it should appeal to those who are not webmasters.

Other suggestions include a page quality indicator (as long as it's kept current).

The forum discussion is still ongoing and quite interesting. Check it out at WebmasterWorld.

Tedster, administer over at WebmasterWorld, started a WebmasterWorld thread with a proposal to remove PageRank from the toolbar.

As he explains, the PageRank score in the toolbar is an out-of-date metric that is often misconstrued by SEOs and webmasters.

Tedster said:

Enough is enough. Can't the folks in Mountain View see that this situation is nowhere near honorable or "entertaining"? Since it seems that up-to-date and accurate PageRank reporting is an extremely unlikely step for Google to take, I think the time has come for them to stop reporting ANY green fairy dust at all. Keep it as part of the secret sauce, sure, but stop teasing the public at large with funny numbers.

As I see it, PR (PageRank) = PR (Public Relations), and that's the main reason that Google keeps Toolbar PR report around. Branding. Image. Mindshare.

We have seen several PageRank scams and even sometimes buggy data, while people still anxiously await PageRank update. But we also know, PR is not the final answer when it comes to "buying links." We know that many top notch SEOs want Toolbar PageRank to go away. We once lost all PageRank data in May 28, 2005, which turned out to be an export bug - which was resolved in about 24 hours.

Of course, when talking about PageRank, we should reference Danny's What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters.

Now, with all that said, what do you think? Should toolbar PageRank be gone? Will that hurt Google's PR (public relations) campaigns? I bet there are cat fights in Google about this topic. It is a tough decision but ultimately, I feel PageRank should be removed from the toolbar.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update over the weekend. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time. There are additional reports of PageRank updates and ranking changes.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

For the past updates see:

• July 2007 Google Linkage Data
• June 2007 Google Linkage Data
• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

This may be considered a continuation of the June 2007 Google Update but it has now been given a name. The Buffy update, as it is now called out of respect for Vanessa Fox leaving Google, is currently underway.

Yes, Friday we reported a Google Webmaster Link Tool June 2007 Update but we now have a more detailed thread at WebmasterWorld describing major search results changes at Google.com.

WebmasterWorld Admin explains:

Ever since Update Jagger, which prepared the way for Google's new Big Daddy infrastructure, the changes and shifts to the SERPs come so frequently that we haven't called an Update in over a year. Instead, we've been trying to watch the SERP changes in an ongoing, monthly thread that shifts with the irregular roll, pitch and yaw of the good ship Google.

But something quite major is now going on with the Google SERPs. Members are reporting major changes in the single word search results, most particularly, but lots of other things are stirred up as well. On one of my single keywords, I've just passed wikipedia (yeah!) and jdMorgan reported the same for one of his keywords.

So it's time -- we are officially declaring Update Buffy. We'll begin with recent posts from our June SERPs Watching thread. What do you see going on?

So why name it Buffy? Let's say it's in honor of someone who just left her job but knows a whole lot about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've never gone with someone's formal name for an update. Tip of the hat to reseller, goodroi, and jdmorgan for their input.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update and I suppose other data updates as well.

There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and two threads at WebmasterWorld.

Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported via Google Webmaster Tools:

For the past updates see:

• April 2007 Google Linkage Data
• March 2007 Google Linkage Data
• February 2007 Google Linkage Data

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and two threads at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums both are discussing a recent change in Google to the search results.

WebmasterWorld senior member, steveb, said:

And now it has all completely changed to a result set similar to what wwas around a week ago.. gone are all the trivial bits of nothing.

Senior member, Walkman, adds:

Either way, I would guess that this is an algo update so some sites will come back for good.

WebmasterWorld moderator, tigger, concurs that this seems to be a reversal in a week or two and mostly impacting one keyword phrase searches.

Continued forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

In a DigitalPoint Forums thread, a member asks how to check for an invalid PageRank. This is a timely question given that there was a PageRank update earlier this week. Since you can fake your PageRank, it's good to have the right tools on hand to verify PageRank.

Danny at Search Engine Land just wrote an incredible authoritative guide to PageRank and highlights some points that still need to be reiterated: PageRank really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things and it is only one measure of "importance" for your site but isn't updated all too often and thus shouldn't be considered heavily.

Still, a bunch of tools were offered to check the PageRank of a site, and I will be linking to them below:

• Live PageRank: Checks your PageRank on all of Google's datacenters
• Verify PageRank: Checks your PageRank and verifies its legitimacy
• Fake PageRank Detection Tool: This one is currently not working, but the coder says he's trying to get it fixed so I'm linking to it in hopes that he will.
• Check Fake PageRank: This tool also checks your PageRank and verifies if it is valid.

How do you ensure that these tools are accurate? You can also do the easiest check:

Best way is to check manually on IP which shows updated PR.

info:domain.com

If results are nothing or url(s) which doesn't match original then something is fishy if only 1 url is returned and its same then its 100% ok.

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

I'll be honest, I haven't been following the different shades of colors in the Google Toolbar. But Gabs, someone I trust started a thread at Search Engine Roundtable Forums noting that new pages now have a grey color in the Google PageRank Toolbar score.

In the past, Gabs explains, that new pages normally received a white bar and not a grey bar.

In the past, a grey score in the toolbar meant keep away, while white meant the page was not yet indexed but would be.

I have taken a screen capture of the new forum thread (new URL, so not in Google's index yet) showing the Google Toolbar PageRank score from the Firefox toolbar.

Notice that the color is grey and not white.

I doubt this will have any impact on rankings, but it possibly may impact people's link exchange requests. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: More reports of this at DigitalPoint Forums.

This weekend we has a PageRank update and many noticed a drop in their toolbar PageRank scores. Earlier, on Friday, we reported some were noticing possible buggy PageRank values.

Where some noticed their PageRank drop from a number to zero but not lose any traffic at all.

Adam Lasnik, of Google, came into the WebmasterWorld thread yesterday in message number 3326575 and said they will look into it.

If you've seen your PR adjusted to a non-zero number OR you've lost significant traffic, this thread does not really apply to you.

If, however, your PR has dropped to zero AND you've not seen any significant loss in traffic from Google, rest assured that this is most likely a PR-reporting (PR on Toolbar) error; while admittedly alarming at first site, it's nothing to worry about. The tail does not wag the dog in these circumstances :)

With that said, I'll be chatting with some colleagues again today to hash out what might be occurring, and I'll report back here with any news.

Have a good week everyone.

I will keep you updated on any updates from Adam over the course of the week.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

As much as you explain that toolbar PageRank does not show you a result that you can work with, people still tend to obsess about PageRank. Go ahead and read Danny's PageRank Guide once again. In any event, on Friday we reported about possible buggy PageRank but now there seems to be a wide update in the toolbar PageRank scores.

Most people are noticing a drop of one point, while some are noticing PR0s and others are noticing nothing.

We have threads at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld and about a dozen threads at DigitalPoint Forums.

Gabs at Search Engine Roundtable Forums asks if Google is capping the PageRank displayed in the toolbar by a certain value if your site falls within a specific category. Easy enough to check, but I highly doubt it.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, Cre8asite Forums, WebmasterWorld and about a dozen threads at DigitalPoint Forums.

Now that we know that toolbar PageRank does not mean all that much, in terms of ones ranking at this point in time - we can discuss a possible bug in the Google Toolbar.

A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of people reporting that old and trusted sites are now showing a PageRank 0 (PR0) score.

If it happened to their site, some are clarifying that they have seen no significant change in traffic data. That is just one more sign that the toolbar PageRank doesn't impact your rankings directly.

But is there some sort of bug with the toolbar?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Reports began trickling in from DigitalPoint Forums and via WebmasterWorld on April 10th, of recent changes to the Google index.

Let me pull out quotes from both threads:

Today my site is back at its previous position (2nd)

Well I had a an *old* (1996) site that dropped in serps around the 6th of March (from like first page to page xx). Today is the first day they appear to be coming back.

I saw exactly the opposite - decade old site that ranked decently just disappeared overnight

Seems like mine is back too.... keeping my fingers crossed that it will last a while until next time....

I had a site pop back up today to the #2 spot after totally disappearing for a few months. It's been top 3 for 3+ years before that.

All this type of chatter spiked up on Tuesday, April 10th.

There have been no official confirmations from Google, as far as I know.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a lot of recent discussion on a Google backlink update occurring at certain datacenters. But should we be watching these changes anymore?

We now have the Google Webmaster Central Link Tool that gives us all of our backlinks.

Does tracking link:domain.com changes at Google.com, as opposed to tracking our linkage data at Webmaster Central add anything?

In the past, link updates symbolized a Google Dance - a shift in rankings that occurred about once a month. Not ranking changes happen all the time. So is there a benefit to tracking these changes anymore?

We all know Google only shows a random sample of your links with the link command. So again, why track it?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday I reported a Google Link Update Within Webmaster Central's Link Tool but I did not dig deeper.

Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central left a comment explaining that this is just an update in the number of links reported. The linkage details, the actual links in the reports, have yet not updated, but will be updated in the next few days.

She said:

We are indeed updating links data. So you should start to see updated counts listings soon. In the cases where webmasters are seeing updated counts and not updated listings, they should see the updated listings within the next day or so.

DigitalPoint Forums picked up on the discrepancy between the count of links reported and the number of actual links in the reports. So hang tight, it is coming shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Google gave us a new link tool about a month ago. Now people are noticing a massive update in the number of links reported in that tool.

Two very new threads, one at DigitalPoint Forums and the other at WebmasterWorld report these updates.

One person at DigitalPoint said:

It looks like there is a link update going on in the webmaster tools new links section. At least it apears that way. I noticed that the number of pages linked and the number of links to prior pages has increased tonight by a significant ammount. However, when clicked it seems to be the same number of links prior. So maybe they're in the process of updating.

For example one of my sites forums front page had three links prior. Now it says 129. However when clicked it's still at three. Something to keep an eye on in the coming days I guess.

One person at WebmasterWorld said:

Just logged into google webmaster tools and to my surprise the backlinks for the sites I manage have gone through the roof! I suppose we are in for a backlink update, pr update earlier than usual as it's probably already complete on google's end...reasoning we are seeing shifting in SERP's.

So have fun checking your links.

Update: I remember I documented the number of links this site had via Google a month ago. We had 131,280 external links then, and today we have 178,137 external links. So looks like it did update on our side.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Not the design update that has happened over last month or so. There seems to have been a Google Image Search index update this weekend.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread has discussion:

Anyone notice some large changes in the amount of traffic they are recieving from google images? Mine was cut in half overnight. Its not really high conversion traffic, but I am still wondering.

Yup noticed a drop as well.....around 75% drop for me...not that it matters..image traffic is pretty worthless for me.

There is also an updated thread at WebmasterWorld with this comment:

Well, we were knocked from 4000+ original photos to about 167 in July. That's crawled up to 327 in the last few weeks.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forum & WebmasterWorld.

Looks like we have reports via WebmasterWorld starting a few days back of a Google PageRank update.

I am not getting in the debate of how important PageRank is or is not. I discussed PageRank over here so that I don't have to mention it in every PageRank article.

So there seems to be a PageRank update taking place. This is just a toolbar PageRank update, so do not expect your rankings to suddenly change.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I was chatting with a few folks who are convinced of a major Google update. David Ogletree was the first I know to spot this. So I revisited a WebmasterWorld and sure enough, since the 18th of this month, four more pages about a possible Google update.

Now, I suspected something was lingering when I wrote about the Possible Google Valentines Day Update but Matt Cutts of Google knocked me down with his comment.

But this truly does appear to be a Presidents Day Google update.

Roel at WebmasterWorld wrote:

A big drop in traffic over the weekend / last 2 days for me. Anyone else seeing this?

Followed by dozens of responses confirming this.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster said:

I don't see this as a true rollback - some of the SERPs I monitor have a whole new configuration.

Based on this thread, I think this is the real deal.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

An early WebmasterWorld thread is reporting very early signs of changes taking place at the various Google data centers. Often, these types of threads tend to spot a Google update that is about to take place. But it would be cool if Google gave us a Valentines Day update.

Let me stress, this is very early and that Google always updates their results - daily. But this seems to be a larger update.

Here are some of the reports from the WebmasterWorld members:

A well known rank tracking service is showing a huge spike of changes for yesterday.

Looking at various datacenters it looks like Google is "testing or comparing" different series of SERPS, at least for the keywords I'm tracking: September set of results, late october, Christmas time and January's SERPS. Perhaps Google is comparing the filter/penalty/alogo changes we have been seeing against its results from pre-September.

Again, it is very early, but I will track it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Matt Cutts commented below that he does not believe there is an update taking place. Plus, he has a room of SES speakers who backs his opinion. :-)

After writing my piece named Why Do Some SEOs Want Toolbar PageRank To Go Away? I found a thread at DigitalPoint Forums asking members to vote if "PR is Overhyped."

Here are the current results:

80% vote yes, PageRank is overhyped

20% vote no, PageRank is not overhyped

This is currently out of 71 votes.

Now, the question isn't asked in too much detail. As I discussed in my article from yesterday on PageRank, there are two sets of PageRank. The first is the score shown in the toolbar, that is way out of date. The second is the actual score Google uses in part of the algorithm to rank pages. Again, PageRank is just one of many variables used in the ranking algorithm. Does it have any importance? Yes. How much importance is that? I would say not much, but some importance. But I just worry about people looking to closely at the toolbar PageRank, more on that here.

In any event, if you have time, go over to the DigitalPoint Forums thread and vote, I would love to see a few hundred votes from the SEO community on this topic.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion over the PageRank score found within Google's Toolbar. So I thought I explain why I, and many other SEOs/SEM reporters would love to see the PageRank score disappear from the Google Toolbar.

Back in the good old days, SEOs used to do whatever they could to increase their PageRank. If you had a high PageRank, typically a 7 or higher - you were set. You could literally rank for almost anything, if you also followed that up with good, on-page SEO work. That quickly went away, I believe, with the florida update of November/December 2003. In any event, SEOs used to wait for the toolbar PageRank to update, to see how they did in getting links from high PageRank sites. If they did a good job with that, they would see their PR increase and immediately see their rankings improve. SEOs were able to see an update coming, when the various Google Data Centers didn't match each other. Google rankings would change on some data centers, the link counts would change and the PageRank would change. Hence, the term, the Google Dance. Those days are pretty much over. Google is now changing almost daily. Google's current link count is almost useless at the time being. Google's data centers are frequently updating.

Ever since then, top SEOs and even Google engineers have been pushing to explain that PageRank is not as important as it once was. In fact, some go to extremes to declare Google PageRank Lunacy, in Sweden, we had a Google representative tell us that the link command was not so useful, later we had someone quote Google as saying PageRank is for Entertainment Purposes Only, which was then refuted by GoogleGuy. We had two other posts that discussed GoogleGuy Once Again Responds to Link Command and Why Does Google Show Old PageRank Values?

All that understood, it is clear that many would like to see the PageRank score go away from the Google toolbar. I am confident, this won't happen soon. I would say that most engineers would probably like to see it go away. But the marketing folks probably would not. I am not talking for Google her, I am just throwing out my feelings on it.

So we see that people are or were obsessed with PageRank, and rightly so. Hence why SEOs and reporters and even some Googlers wanted to tell people to not live and die by it. Some were extreme in their message, but for good reason.

So what is the bottom line at this time on PageRank found within the toolbar?

As Matt Cutts wrote back in his more about PageRank post:

At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes.

PageRank in the toolbar does show you something about the site. But we are far past the days where a Google PageRank update in the toolbar would have almost an immediate impact on your rankings in Google. This is important and you should not obsess over it. It is an indicator of the quality of links you have to your site, but the indicator is old and is not real time - so you need to understand this.

I hope that explains some of the questions out there on Toolbar PageRank, why SEOs fight about it and what it really is at this point in time.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Last night, more new reports of PageRank changes have been reported at the various forums. Again, the PageRank score shown in the Google Toolbar is old, not up to date, and is basically for entertainment purposes only - but people still do track it.

On January 9th we reported the last Google PageRank update. It seems too soon for an other PageRank update to be happening, but anything is possible.

This is either a new PageRank push to the Toolbar or it is still some data fluctuations of the old PageRank push.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

It appears that there is a Google Toolbar PageRank update underway. For anyone not familiar with this topic, the value of the toolbar-displayed PageRank is often argued. A recent discussion which helps to clear up the original poster's misconceptions about PageRank can be found at Cre8asite Forums. Note that the first post per consensus is not considered to be accurate.

WebmasterWorld Forums has been reporting since last week that a Google toolbar PageRank update is underway. The thread has been updated as of today with more adamant proof that people are seeing more or less green in their PageRank diets. The topic was also started at Search Engine Roundtable Forums today, and feel free to link to further discussions in the comments below.

Several threads from the various forums are reporting changes in the Google search results and a back link update.

A Search Engine Roundtable and DigitalPoint Forums thread all reports changes to their back links in Google. I honestly did not think people continue to track their back links using Google anymore, I guess I am wrong.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports changes to search results and shuffling taking place. Tedster, WebmasterWorld administrator says;

The observation about fewer double entries rings a bell with me -- even going back a few weeks. In fact I begin to wonder if there is some extra barrier in place to go from #11 to #10. Yes, I'm also seeing some minor shuffling today.

There is also a thread at DigitalPoint Forums on SERP (search engine result page) changes.

On December 21st, Ben reported a Google Data Refresh - Rankings Fluctuations Before Christmas via a WebmasterWorld thread. Now, I have been tracking that original thread, along with two additional WebmasterWorld threads named part 2 and Is there any point in adding new content?

So what have I got from this? Honestly, not much. One person wants this update to be coined "The Google Xmas Debacle." Sounds cool to me, but too many people are reporting not seeing anything. On the other hand, many people that I know and trust are reporting serious changes.

But what patterns or commonalities do we find with those changes? Again, not much. Some things I pulled out of the thread include:

• Affecting AdSense sites
• Affecting new pages
• Supplemental results increase dramatically
• Less results found in the site operator
• Suggestions of a bad data push

But these are all individual cases. Most of the posts say, I lost 50% of my traffic. Some say, my competitor dropped off from the number one spot and is no where to be found. Some say, everything looks fine and dandy.

So something is going on, but without evidence and actual results to look at, it is hard to reproduce. But I do believe something has happened - to what extent, I honestly do not know. What can be done to reverse it? Again, I do not know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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?

I wrote last Friday about a Possible Google Update Before Holiday Season? Matt Cutts WebmasterWorld on page five, message number 3184750 saying;

Hey folks, I asked around and I don't believe anything new went out Dec. 7th, or the few days before that.

So normal flux? Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums are both reporting significant changes in rankings at Google starting last night. Typically, Google, since December 2003 (aka the Florida update), Google does not want to shake up the search results (did not mention search ads here) before the big holiday season.

Well, these reports seem to be wide and far. So I believe based on the recent volume and breadth that there is a possible Google update underway.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

There are reports from WebmasterWorld that a new Google data refresh is taking place now. People are noticing both large and small shuffling of the positioning of pages for select search queries. I do not believe this is a huge update but I can be wrong.

The thread was started last night and is already two pages long.

No confirmation from Google yet on if this is a real update or not.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A limited number of people are noticing significant changes in their rankings and traffic from Google.com at WebmasterWorld forums.

Some have seen a 80% drop in traffic from Google and some have seen a 350% increase in traffic from Google.

Here are some reports:

My pages lost about 80% of their traffic about 10 days ago or so. Nov 16/17 I noticed a few terms popping back into the top three positions...

My traffic is down about 20% but I am not worried.

I lost 90% of my Google traffic in 2 Days

I'm seeing a 350 percent increase in traffic on 1 of our websites.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Just a quick note that there may be a possible PageRank update taking place right now. It is unsure to if this update is a new one or something called a PageRank rollback. Some even think that the earlier PageRank update was incomplete and this is Google's effort to finish it up.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Aaron Pratt at Cre8asite Forums asks why Google is showing us outdated PageRank values. He asks, "Can Google Multitask or is it in need of some serious upgrades?"

What is interesting is that this seems to come after Matt Cutts posted his more info on PageRank entry which explains all this stuff.

In short, Google takes their internal PageRank scores which is not a number between 0 and 10, but more of an exact "floating-point number." They then plot those numbers on a scale between 0 and 10 and then export that data at some point in time to the Google Toolbars.

Matt said;

At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes.

Why does Google just not show us our exact PageRank at this moment in time? We know they have it and they know we know they have it. It is the same reason why Google won't give us an accurate result set for our back links when using the link: command. Too much information, they feel can harm us. We are on a need to know basis with Google.

Let's take a historic look at this. Of course you can view our Google PageRank / SERPs Update section to read all 78 articles and stories we have on the various updates. But let me pull some out.

- End of Toolbar PageRank? remember when the Toolbar went blank?
- GoogleGuy Claims PageRank Statement to be False in response to...
- Google Tells Us that PageRank is for Entertainment Purposes Only
- GoogleGuy Once Again Responds to Link Command

Those are some of the more important historic PageRank and Back link stories I have.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Yes, an other Google PageRank update is underway. For example DigitalPoint.com has some data centers reporting a PageRank of 8, when it is currently at a PageRank on 7. Check the DigitalPoint's pagerank at this tool.

The data centers with the new PR at this point in time are:
DC: 66.102.7.99
DC: 66.102.7.104
DC: 66.102.7.147

As far as SEO, does this really matter? Again, the visible PR in that toolbar does not mean as much as it did 4 years ago.

You can also see our forums jumping up from a PR4 to a PR6.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.