IndustryGoogle Oct. 2005 Update “Jagger” & Contacting Google About It

Google Oct. 2005 Update "Jagger" & Contacting Google About It

Noticed changes to Google results? Many have, and now it’s official.
An update is on, and Google’s Matt Cutts gives
advice in his Update
Jagger: Contacting Google
post on how to contact Google with any
concerns in terms of spam, bad relevancy, whether you think your site
was penalized and so on.

But wait a minute! Didn’t Matt downplay earlier that an update
was going on in his More
info on updates
post? Yes, I’d say he did — but he later added
with this:

Just to clarify, these days with lots
of smaller and larger changes happening at different points in time,
it’s a little arbitrary to decide when to call something an update.
That decision has usually fallen on Brett Tabke’s shoulders over at
WebmasterWorld (WMW also chooses what name they want to call it when
Brett decides enough has changed to call it an update.) Given that
there should be new PageRank/backlinks visible in a few days (assuming
no issues at our end), I wouldn’t be surprised if Brett slaps a name on
it pre-emptively, even though there will still be some flux to come.

Absolutely, WebmasterWorld has been the traditional mechanism for
naming
updates. But whether something is an update or not isn’t a unilateral
WebmasterWorld decision, though Matt admittedly does qualify his
statement to say this is “usuallly” rather than “always” the case.

Last month is a good example of how this is becoming a bigger issue.
There was debate over whether a Google update
should be declared. WebmasterWorld initially declared one was underway,
dubbed it “Gilligan,” then after Matt downplayed if it really was an
update, a “false alarm” was declared by WebmasterWorld.

I cover this more in my Google’s
Cutts Says Not An Update – I Say An Update, Just Not A Dance
post
from earlier, which also explains why even if Matt and WebmasterWorld
didn’t feel it was an update, I certainly did — nor was I alone.

Now let’s skip forward to this update.  We’d been having
scattered posts on our forums about Google changes last week. On
Monday, catching up on weekend posts, I saw a new flurry of them coming
in. It was enough that I consolidated some threads into a single Oct.
2005 Google Update

thread. As far as we were concerned at SEW
Forums, an update was on. I went with the naming system we use, just
the month and year. Certainly one was in the minds of several
members, so having a thread just for them to discuss the issue helps.

Over at Threadwatch, it effectively declared the same in the Google Update
drops SEO’s in it
post that Brian Turner started (he also posted
early with us, kicking off our thread). Brian pointed over to a Digital
Point forum discussion,
Google seems to be dancing
, where people were effectively
declaring an update last week. He also pointed to much WebmasterWorld
talk here
(link currently down due to WebmasterWorld routing problems, see new
live thread here),
though
this was before an “official” update was declared.

All this chatter was enough to get Matt to make his More
info on updates
post, which was a great weather report/confirmation
that things officially were going on. However, he stopped short of
saying it
was an update, leaving that declaration to be WebmasterWorld’s call.

It’s just silly. Matt and Google know if they are doing an update,
especially one that might generate a lot of forum chatter. I love that
we’re getting weather
reports
from Google, Yahoo and others now, but we need them issued
ahead of time.

It’s like standing outside in the rain then deciding to tune in your
radio to a weather forecast to see if it’s raining. Of course it’s
raining — you can feel the drops. Since the search engine decide if
rain will fall, give us the heads-up before — and if you think it’s
going to be a signficant downpour, then proactively declare an update
underway. And err on the site of caution.

I’m totally cool with the idea of WebmasterWorld then continuing to
assign a fun, memorable name to declared update. That’s been the
tradition, and WMW deserves to continue to have that honor. I just want
the search engines themselves to declare that the weather might be
rough and give the official word that something is coming before it
hits.

By the way, Changes
and Paranoia – the sky is falling from
from Jim Boykin out today is
worth a read for some fresh perspective on the insanity that can erupt
in dicussions out of update and how to stay focused on things to care
about.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Oct.
2005 Google Update “Jagger”
forum thread.

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