the results on this datacenter(4.233.179.104) are actually different for me..so I am not 100% sure that these are old rankings...they are slightly different from what I can see...

Welcome to the forums, flatfile.

I got a record high traffic yesterday(23rd) and today everything is back to normal. When looking at my stats, it seems the US levels are still the same as yesterday but the rest of the world is way down. So that's what balances everything out.

That is a valuable observation. This is the mysterious force we don't understand. Is Google intentionally working an international "balancing act" that somehow ends up with no net traffic change.

My long tail traffic is now down by 30-35% ... when will this end or has it just started? I see the same pattern with all long tail sites which I own. This seems to be a hunge change, whatever they do.

Seems like many sites are involved in this change, and I am monitoring my competitors and they are dropping too, being replaced by spam versions of our sites.

Also seeing huge shifts since this morning. Items in #1 or 2 position consistently for years now anywhere from #7 to no where to be found.

Seeing CSEs as first listing for many items. Also a big increase in number of listings after that which either contain keyword as part of the url (including deep within the url), are major retailers, or are major brands.

Largest change in search results I can recall in years.

interesting stuff going on here

same here, 4 years old ecommerce site, lost rankings on several popular keywords since last night.

As I've stated in other threads I don't typically get concerned about day-to-day fluctuations in rankings but I have to say -- I'm seeing the earth moving in this one.

Sites in my 300+ company strong local competitive field, most of whom know how to rank, are all over the place in the last few days.

I can see some notable specifics about what is being affected the most because I have been studying this niche, with these same 30 pages of sites, for about 2 years.

There is a very comprehensive bubble sort happening. But the blackhat sites that I would be hoping to see fall from results are actually gaining in rank. I hope it's simply a matter of needing the cream to rise to the surface so it can be skimmed off.

I'm seeing the earth moving in this one.

Largest change in search results I can recall in years.

this is a seismic change. cutts recently replied to a tweet indicating that this was intentional and not a glitch.

i think this topic needs its own dedicated thread, and we need to start working on a name... this is on the magnitude of mayday, caffeine and florida.

I just searched and only got 4 results ... out of 396,000,000

We are seeing the same in our niche. The two worst offending sites (history of black hat link farms, stealing content from us in the past - one site was kicked out of Google for a year) both seem to have either remained the same or climbed in rankings on all searches I've tested.

In our niche it appears the black hats our smarter than us regular webmasters who don't do any link building tricks. But I guess that is no surprise. I just always assumed justice would catch up with them. Perhaps another day!

We've let our site grow organically for 11 years. Just focusing on improving usability.

If today's update sticks, we are looking at a 30-40% drop in traffic overnight. Something our site has never experienced in 11 years of being online.

i think this topic needs its own dedicated thread, and we need to start working on a name... this is on the magnitude of mayday, caffeine and florida.

My thoughts exactly.

I call it "the Gnoose" update

- Google's Noose

:)

I just searched and only got 4 results ... out of 396,000,000

are you using the personal blocklist extension? if so, the blocklist does not currently bring additional results into the top 10, it just suppresses the results on your list.

No, I got 10 the search before ... 10 the search after ... 10 when I did the search earlier today ... It wasn't on my end

How bout the April Fools Day Update.

Since, tanking legit sites and ranking junk = joke.

With all the press Google has been getting lately about quality issues, this update makes my head explode.

Downdate.

FUpdate

Yes this one looks massive. I too have seen legit sites get large drops in rankings last 24 hours

Why is it that every single time the serps starts to stabilize and sales return, Google has to throw a monkey wrench in the system again? I'd love to see how Google employees would react if they received half pay or less every week. Hey Google, this is not fun anymore - YOU'RE KILLING OUR BUSINESSES!

They are killing their adsense earnings.

I wish there is an alternative to Google. Seriously so pissed with Google. My site is down about 40% today. Bing will never be an alternative. FaceBook, please start Search Engine, teach this Google a big lesson. Monopoly is not good at all. I am so effing frustrated with Google search traffic today.

[edited by: browsee at 10:05 pm (utc) on Feb 24, 2011]

One interesting change we have noticed in some searches in our niche... One of the two competitors sites I mentioned before that had a history of black hat (stealing content from us and others, plus a previous one year Google penalty for link farming)... They are now showing in serps at spots 1-4 for all searches I am testing. The top 4 results all pointing to their one site.

I'm sure they are seeing some amazing traffic today.

Name suggestion: FarmGate

Content farms going down and taking us with them...

I'm gonna make a big blanket statement here.

This update has hit legitimate sites hard, and has resulted in scrapers and similar junk floating to the top.

Anybody who has seen otherwise, feel free to chime in. If what I'm seeing sticks, I can't wait for the press to jump on this.

This update has hit legitimate sites hard, and has resulted in scrapers and similar junk floating to the top.

Happens every time, but they usually get filtered back out as thing start to settle down ... We'll have to see how this one ends up, though, which is always the fun part. ;)

supercyberbob, I completely agree with you. Some of Copycat sites(copied content from my site) who are using black hat methods are getting better results.

Some of my Copycat sites who are using black hat methods are getting better results.

but doesn't this always happen in the beginning when there is a change, and then it corrects itself in a few/several days?

One of the pages that ranks now on the first page, has a scraped SERPs listed under "More Information" which has my site there...

In our case the copycat sites have "done their time" so to speak after getting slapped with 1-year Google penalties in the past. So they are now apparently viewed by Google as legitimate, even though they came to exist solely off stolen content and link farms a few years ago. So I don't envision them getting filtered off.

It is frustrating how they are now dominating serps when you look at how they got there. But what can Google really do about it? It is beyond their control. They are up against some very smart seo folks.

An algorithm change of this magnitude can't be measured by day to day changes. It's a major bubble sort and by it's very nature it's going to take a while to settle. I think the amount of time to stabilize will be in direct proportion to how competitive the niche is on an international, national, regional, and local level.

For me, what I'm noticing at a local audience level is that page 12-14 is the staging ground with page 8 being the high end. When sites that dropped from page 4-5 bubble up from page 12-14 range area they pause at page 8 then sink again and bubble back up. Sites on page 12 that appear as if they are going to move up overall when this thing has run it's course are inching up slightly with very little fluctuation.

These observations are based on a niche of competitors that are 30 pages deep and strong in understanding of SEO in general and web development in particular -- the ultimate challenge for an algorithm -- tech minds against the machine.

Should get interesting over the next few weeks but if this algorithm change doesn't establish effective pattern parsing then goggle's spaghetti ball of patches is hopeless. They will devolve into a commercial search engine -- a consumer traffic cop.