serps different 2 feet away

[pagetta]

on my pc at work I am having some issues with my google results. On my computer this morning we were page 5, now we have disappeared. Also on my PC our main competitors are bottom of page one. However on my bosses computer, we are still on page 5 and our competitors are number 3! can anyone help with this confusion?!

Also whilst I'm here and asking for help....we're a small site with 80 pages and around 200 visits per day, who can't offer reciprocal links or pay for links, and only has new content to add to the site about once a month - have we got any hope of competing with the big boys on page 1 following this update?!

[dburdon]

Pagetta,

are you all using the same version of Google. That is Google.com or Google.co.uk, with the same geographic and language preferences?

Essentially you should "tune in" to the version your potential customers are likely to use.

[Faglork]

Pagetta,

when you call up www . google . xxx, you do not get always the same machine. Google uses several so-called "data centers" for load-balancing purposes, and you are redirected to the next best-suited DC. So you will end up on a different machine most of the time. You would have have to make sure that you all use the same DC to make results comparable. This can be done by determining the IP address of the site in question. Most easy way: Use FF and install the ShowIP extension. Determine the IP of one DC, and use this IP for search, not the www address. One of the google.co.uk addresses is http://66.249.93.104 , for example. Use that for search.

Different DCs show different results during an update process - the infamous "google dance".

Also whilst I'm here and asking for help....we're a small site with 80 pages and around 200 visits per day, who can't offer reciprocal links or pay for links, and only has new content to add to the site about once a month - have we got any hope of competing with the big boys on page 1 following this update?!

First, the update still isn't over, as you have observed by querying different DCs.

Secondly, IMHO this is not a matter of days. I'd say that it IS possible to compete, but you have to use a strategy and apply that over a longer timespan. I know that this is hard to convey to a boss who wants results "now", but in a competitive market, this is IMO not possible (might be possible with black hat methods, but I advise against that).

One example: Several posters have pointed out that there may be an increasing relevacne of trusted sites (just search for "trust rank"). Now, IF this really will become a important factor, this is something that is not established overnight.

Same with valuable backlinks. You will get good natural backlinks if you have something to offer which is linkworthy. This means "valuable content" and this again takes time to develop, let alone the time to propagate through the net.


hth,
faglork

[ADAM Web Design]

There are three other possibilities that I can see. One's an extension of dburdon's, and the last three are longshots, but they have happened.

Possibility #1:

Are you using the Google toolbar in one or both cases? If so, which datacenter is it set to in each case? If one is set to .co.uk and one it set to .com, then it may explain it.

Possibility #2:

Are you regionally filtering the results (i.e. returning only pages from the UK?) If your boss is doing the search, try doing it yourself; I've had a client do that and it took me a week to figure out why he was getting drastically fewer results than I was.

Possibility #3:

If you and your boss are connecting via different IP addresses as a result of your ISP/ISPs (e.g. two dialup modems connecting, a DSL and a cable connection, or even if you get creative enough with the wiring two DSL connections), then it is possible that you're receiving results from two different datacenters because you're taking different paths to get there.

Mind you, this is a HUGE longshot, but not unheard of. I had a client who had a dialup modem on his server, and one on his laptop, and this is exactly what happened.

Possibility #4:

You or your boss is personalizing the results and removing ones that you don't think are relevant.

With the answers the three of us have given you, you're bound to get it now. I don't think we could come up with anything else!

[dburdon]

Google's certainly looking unstable in the UK today. A client site was ranked 10 yesterday. The client claimed it had slipped to 56.

When I looked it was back at 12. Is something going wrong at Google.co.uk's data centre?

See post on cache problems:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55959

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Possibility #3:

If you and your boss are connecting via different IP addresses as a result of your ISP/ISPs (e.g. two dialup modems connecting, a DSL and a cable connection, or even if you get creative enough with the wiring two DSL connections), then it is possible that you're receiving results from two different datacenters because you're taking different paths to get there.

Just let me add that even from the same PC with the same IP you can get different DCs on different visits (just checked it). google.co.uk resolves to more than one data center. 66.249.93.99 is another one, for example.

faglork

[pagetta]

Thanks for your help guys :-)

That does help explain things a lot better and I will look at my page rank bar and see where its set to. Now just got to try to explain this to the boss !!