New Google Dance in progress

[Brian Turner]

Just been surfing Google tonight and seeing some big differences between Google UK's web and UK only results.

Am very tempted to think Google are managing to cock up matters again, as seeing some key sites disappear in general SERPs, and some weird completely mixed up listings.

Anyone else seeing anything rolling out?

[TWD-Tony]

I've always been at a loss with Google's regional / country search...

Google knows where a searcher is located and tries to find relevant results regardless of the "UK Only" tickbox - all the UK only option seems to do is filter out some non UK site's that slip through? Compound that with the logged in / logged out results and it is very hard work out position for any website in the SERPs?

[Brian Turner]

Seeing a huge amount of churn in the UK-only results - can't recall seeing this much disruption for a very long time - sites bouncing in and out, yes, but some of these rankings look like wholesale reoganisation.

Some sites are completely disappearing and reappearing, others are showing without the cached link which suggests further disruption.

I had a niggling feeling we might see something big after the Christmas period from Google, and this is looking like a very major dance.

As for UK-only - often geotargeted using cues such as hosting location, IP range of links to, and addresses on sites, to determine location. Plus webmaster tools to state you are in the UK, as some of the big chains with .com's have finally woken up to.

[MarkD]

Could it be caffeine rolling out...

[TWD-Tony]

Following on from this one of my clients has just his index page PR drop from PR3 to PR0 - although internal pagerank seems un-affected... It maybe connected or he has picked up a penalty somehow?

How do you find out if and why you have picked up a penalty with Google?

[MichaelWall]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

Following on from this one of my clients has just his index page PR drop from PR3 to PR0 - although internal pagerank seems un-affected... It maybe connected or he has picked up a penalty somehow?

How do you find out if and why you have picked up a penalty with Google?

Hi Tony,

Have you noticed a drop in the SERPS for the keywords terms you target for the home page.

If you search site:yoursite.com or yoursite name does your page appear top or very near the top or way down the rankings?

cheers,
Michael.

[loki]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

I've always been at a loss with Google's regional / country search... Compound that with the logged in / logged out results and it is very hard work out position for any website in the SERPs?

I'm pretty sure that's how they want it. If you look at it from GG's perspective, they has a love/hate relationship with organic SEO. They don't make money from organic, but without good organic results, they wouldn't have the traffic that drives Adwords revenues.

If SEOs can't easily demonstrate that "we have achieved X, Y and Z" to a client/potential client then it's far more difficult to generate new and ongoing business.

Some may say this is unfair; I'm happy that they let us do what we do.

A lot of people doubt the "Do no evil" buzz but I think that in this case it's real and demonstrable.

[Brian Turner]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

Following on from this one of my clients has just his index page PR drop from PR3 to PR0 - although internal pagerank seems un-affected... It maybe connected or he has picked up a penalty somehow?

How do you find out if and why you have picked up a penalty with Google?

Has traffic been affected, though?

Sometimes the toolbar updates can be buggy, so if that's the only change, and traffic is comparable, it's nothing to worry about.

[TWD-Tony]

Site traffic is fine and position in SERPS is also fine - just the homepage PR has vanished...

When you check Google for backlinks to the homepage it finds NONE - not a single one which is probably why the PR is now zero, there were thousands of backlinks before they disappeared so I am guessing that its just a Google error?

[Brian Turner]

Sounds like it - if it really were a penalty or similar I would expect to see traffic and SERP's take a significant hit.

A PR0 homepage penalty usually kills a site, but as mentioned sometimes the toolbar can show errors.