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Google algorithm change launched

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google algorithm change launched

#11

Post by bhavin »

bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

UPDATE: I am even more surprised to see that when I logged out of my account and searched again on google.ie, one of the efreedom disappeared!!

So, does this mean that Google search now takes into account my past search result clicks (or rather mis-clicks)? Or ranks contents in someway that proves efreedom is somehow more relevant to me?

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#12

Post by mbrubeck »

bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

The two links show the same results for me now (logged in). Perhaps the index/algorithm changes just took a while to be deployed to all servers.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#13

Post by Matt_Cutts »

bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

The high-order bit for me is that Stack Overflow is #1 for both pages. We can do localization based on TLD: the query [bank] will return different results on google.com vs. google.ie, for example. Without doing a deep dig yet, we might have thought that open-mag.com was more helpful for European searchers, for example. It looks like that site is based in Portugal.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#15

Post by Matt_Cutts »

bhavin wrote: post #11
bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

UPDATE: I am even more surprised to see that when I logged out of my account and searched again on google.ie, one of the efreedom disappeared!! So, does this mean that Google search now takes into account my past search result clicks (or rather mis-clicks)? Or ranks contents in someway that proves efreedom is somehow more relevant to me?

If you're using personalized search, we do look at past clicks to change your ranking. So if you clicked on efreedom in the past, that could affect your ranking. You can add "&pws=0" (or use incognito mode in Chrome without logging in) to turn off personalized search and see whether that's the factor for you.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#16

Post by mol2103 »

bhavin wrote: post #11
bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

UPDATE: I am even more surprised to see that when I logged out of my account and searched again on google.ie, one of the efreedom disappeared!! So, does this mean that Google search now takes into account my past search result clicks (or rather mis-clicks)? Or ranks contents in someway that proves efreedom is somehow more relevant to me?

Google has been doing this for some time now.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#17

Post by tomrod »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #13
bhavin wrote: post #8

I would like to point out one interesting thing I noticed today. I was looking for "gcc optimization flags for xeon". Following query is from google.com and contains no efreedom on the front page. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fl... Now, the same query from google.ie (ireland site) contains 2 efreedom on the top page! http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gcc+optimization+fla... Why this strange…

The high-order bit for me is that Stack Overflow is #1 for both pages. We can do localization based on TLD: the query [bank] will return different results on google.com vs. google.ie, for example. Without doing a deep dig yet, we might have thought that open-mag.com was more helpful for European searchers, for example. It looks like that site is based in Portugal.

Kudos for keeping locational variety. Is there a flag/keyword we can enter into the search to ignore location?

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#18

Post by RealGeek »

Will this change effect sites like filestube.com and freshwap.net? FilesTube ranks for majority of the long tail keywords, even those not related to downloads/torrents/rapidshare.

I see filestube's auto-generated search listing pages ranking on Google all the time. Pages like: http://www.filestube.com/m/matt+cutts http://www.filestube.com/g/google+scraper

Same goes for freshwap: http://www.freshwap.net/387/dl/Google+Matt+Cutts

These sites will give out an auto-generated page for every keyword you enter into it. Apparently, Google loves to index them... there are 126 million pages of files tube indexed in Google. I thought indexing search listing pages of other search engine was against Google's policies.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#19

Post by tristanperry »

Sounds good, thanks for the update Matt. I must ask though: I wonder whether you've seen the "January 26 2011 Traffic Change - Back to 'Zombie Traffic' " discussion over at Webmaster World? A number of webmasters there (who own websites with fully unique content) are reporting that they've seen lower quality content sites and/or content scrapers rank above their established sites with good content, starting from around the 26th Jan.

There's no specific queries/websites talked about there (I might be wrong but I think Webmaster World has some rules preventing specific discussion of websites/queries), although I thought I'd flag it up since some webmasters have noticed adverse affects from a Jan 26th algo change; and it sounds like this might be the cause.

Anywhoo, that being said: it's great to see Google continuing to be on the ball and responding to the recent feedback from various blogs and other sources (e.g. here).

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#20

Post by Matt_Cutts »

cryptoz wrote: post #10
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll still circle back to this page for quite a while, or you can tweet them to me. If it's long feedback, you can blog it and tweet a link to the blog post.

This comment made me chuckle. I agree all this should be discussed out in the open, but blogging and then tweeting links to the blog post....what happened to email!? :)

I get way too much email already, but the main reason is that email is a poor use of my cycles for doing support. In the 10 minutes that I would use to reply to one person, I could make a webmaster video that 1000+ people would benefit from, or 1/6th of a blog post that could answer other peoples' question for a year or more. Even Twitter is 1 to many instead of 1 to 1. I do get and reply to a ton of email, but when possible I try to communicate in ways that will help multiple people at once.
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