Jagger3 update

Starting yesterday, Jagger3 was visible at the 66.102.9.104 data center. There’s still some minor flux on that data center, but it includes Jagger1, Jagger2, and Jagger3.

221 Responses to Jagger3 update (Leave a comment)

  1. At WMW GG said perhaps to expect Flux over the next few days.

    I am slightly surprised that the DC includes all aspects of Jagger1,2 and 3 as some of the Jagger seem more advanced in different aspects from Jagger3.

    Does this flux include bringing all aspects of the Jaggers together ?

    Cheers

    Stephen

  2. Hi Matt

    Thanks for Jagger3 update.

    Wish you a great weekend!

  3. Matt thanks for the update during your weekend. Much appreciated. Will this be the datacenter that migrates to the final google.com results + or – a little bit of flux, but mainly this is the one?

  4. Matt, does 66.102.9.104 have any canonical name fixes in place and how can one tell if a canonical name issue is a factor?

  5. Thanks for keeping us posted Matt. Watching Jagger 3 sure beats doing all the remodelling chores I’ve been putting off… during Jagger 1 and 2!

  6. Matt,

    Thank you 🙂

    Michael

  7. Thanks for working on weekends to keep us informed. When this change will be propagated to other DCs?

  8. ModemMike, there will still be some settling on canonical name fixes. My hunch is that sometime next week I’l put out a call for people who believe that they have canonical name issues after that. I wouldn’t mind spending some time in the future collecting indexing reports, looking for bugs, etc. and trying to making sure that we get them into good shape.

  9. If that datacenter speaks the truth I am very unhappy with the results I am getting, oh well, I will put some extra muscle into breaking concrete block out back.

    News: Yahoo passed Google today in my stats, if you care.

    A little sad,

    -Aaron

  10. Matt,

    One last thing, I noticed the cache dates changing on that DC this morning and it looks like some are more recent and the more recent cache dates are providing good signs with some rankings.

    Is there a tie in with the cache dates on that DC and when the “settling” will occur?

    Thanks,

    Mike

  11. Matt,
    thank u for information:) As a matter of fact I”m not webmaster. just the editor of my own architectural site (Russian). So I see the great differense between Russian & English serps at the 66.102.9.104 & want to know which is real Jagger3 =English or Russian. Maybe both?

  12. Matt, thanks for the clarification on the canonical fixes… will e-mail once the green flag is out on Matt Cutts canocial towers.

    Btw – do you miss North Carolina? Moving over there (Charlotte area) in a matter of weeks from rainy England….

  13. What are canonical names? Everyone keeps mentioning this and I have no idea what it means.
    Thanks,
    Carol

  14. As I thought
    thanks Matt 🙂

  15. I am with you Carol, LOL!

    (it is a little too geek for me to comprehend)

  16. First of all, I have to disagree with Aaron. From the testing that I’ve done, it looks like you’ve got a lot of the spammy-type issues out that were plaguing J1 and to a lesser extent, J2.

    (I also like that my site jumped from #60-someodd to #8 for my major keyword. Feel free to, y’know, leave that alone or bring it up a few notches, Matt. I won’t mind. Really. 🙂

    Seriously…I like it overall, but I noticed one pretty obscure but nonetheless pretty severe spammy situation that came about in J2 but doesn’t appear to be resolved.

    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&q=web+development+pricing&lr=

    I see the #8 listing as Sygon.com, and the subpage listing for it shows “Web Development Pricing, Web Development Pricing, Web Development Pricing, Web Development Pricing, Web Development Pricing, Web Development Pricing…”

    Mind you, it’s the only one I’ve caught so far (other than the infamous “i90 ringtones” search and I don’t think you guys will ever win that battle…the spammers are just too numerous).

    Also, I know the cause of this is because the datacenter URL starts with an IP instead of a domain name, but none of the local/Froogle/Images/etc. links on the top work. I tried it just to see what would happen and Señor DNS Error made his way to the forefront.

    Not a big deal to me personally, but I just wanted to bring it up as something to fix.

    But all in all, I think you’re on the right track. I definitely think futureGoogle (TM?) is better than nowGoogle (another TM?)

  17. Addendum to my previous post:

    The “web development pricing” issue wasn’t originally discovered by me, but I did do the check from the J3 datacenter all by myself. (It was very difficult typing out all three words. I’m exhausted. I need water.)

    So I can’t take credit for that.

  18. Please do not misquote me Adam, I think the SERPS look pretty good and many splogs have been forced down to fight for mispelled words, BUT at the same time, I am not sure why one of my sites is being seen as lesser than others for it’s main keyword.

    I might actually have to say sorry to Matt, I found this tool: http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php and is shows my site getting better results, looks like this “flux” thinger Matt speaks of, sorry to jump to conclusions guys, I am still a bit of a newbie and tend to not have patience.

    Sorry,

    -Aaron

  19. Sorry, dude…I didn’t intend to misquote you. I was just pointing out that overall, the results to me seem a lot better than they did before, and I’m pretty happy.

    Granted, each of us are only one person and our opinions really don’t amount to all of that much in the grand scheme of things. But it’s always good to voice it to someone who could conceivably make a difference (we hope).

  20. Thanks for the update Matt.
    Our own site has some great competitive rankings after exactly 1 year (we’ve been sandboxed for exactly 365 days) after we registered the domain, is this a coincidence or intended Matt?

  21. Matt, personally for me this DC is not looking good at all. My canonical issues have not been fully resolved and my site is still nowhere.

    Is this it or can we expect some “vanished” sites to still make a reappearance? Can’t see I’m breaking any Google guidelines with my site.

    Thanks for your help.

    Justin

  22. I had some hope that Jagger3 would be a return to sanity for my business. Unfortunately the past few weeks have all but destroyed our business.

    Our website http://www.younevercall.com which had previously been served thousands of Google visitors each day has been destroyed by Google’s update. Our keywords “Treo 650” and “T-Mobile Razr” for example used to rank at the top of the Google charts. Now it seems that Google has relegated us to the 500’s.

    While I am impressed by some of the spam removal that has taken place here, I am hurt by the fact that Google feels no responsibility to even address issues caused by updates. In this case a 3 year old business that has provided service to many thousands of customers, is being totally decimated. And Google wont even answer our emails explaining why a superstar site has been punished.

    We simply don’t know what to do.

    Sam.

  23. Matt,

    Thanks for the weather reports.

    It seems like 66.102.7.104 has better results for my site rather than 66.102.9.104 and that only started appearing a couple of days ago.

    My site, which is a very popular authoritative-like baseball site, is nowhere to be seen on 66.102.9.104 which is apparently Jagger3.

    Is 66.102.7.104 going to end up like 9.104??

    Thanks
    Gary

  24. Hi Matt,

    Should we take what we now see on the datacenter you posted as our new rankings, or expect fluctuation in the next couple of days? This seems to be the big question among the people I’ve talked to.

    Thanks very much,

    Evan

  25. Question 1

    Matt I’ve noticed that there are tons of very spammy pages on 66.102.9.104 that still tend to dominate my search queries. But my question is why do link pages and directory pages gain such high rankings on competitive keywords on this data center, is it because they are connected to websites that are very well aged and have a lot of links pointing at them.

    Question 2

    Is there something happening on the data center located at http://66.102.7.147/ because if so I enjoy it’s search queries and find little to no spam at all! ^_^

  26. Matt, thanks for the heads up — I’m hoping there will be some good news for my website with this last update. I have been working hard during the updates and hopefully will see some results soon.

  27. 66.102.9.104 ????
    Back to the abyss for us?

    Matt, there has to be some way for Google to tell us why we’re penalized. Support has stated (twice) emphatically that we’re not but when you go from the top ten to positions for thousands of keyword combinations to 350+ overnight that’s a penalty.

    How can this issue be resolved?

    KJ

  28. Thanks for the heads up Matt!

    You know I was right after all, it is going to be a month long update… 😉

  29. Matt,

    Can you please comment on the issue that I raised in comments here previously and also at WebMasterWorld (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31842.htm)

    Quote:
    “For a given search phrase, an inner page with hardly any BL’s is the first page from a site that appears in the SERP’s, and the homepage is nowhere to be seen.

    This is despite the fact that the homepage is targetted for the KW in question, and has far more ‘anchor texted’ BL’s.

    An example to illustrate:

    http://www.abcdef.com sells widgets.

    The homepage ranks first for ‘abcdef’.
    The homepage previously ranked well for ‘widgets’, and has many BL’s with ‘widgets’ as anchor text.
    Now, the homepage does not show up in the SERP’s for ‘widgets’, but an inner page, call it ‘www.abcdef.com/specs.html’ with a title of ‘List of widget specifications’ shows up in position 98 for ‘widgets’.

    In one example that I am aware of, the inner page which does appear in the SERP’s for a search phrase has NO external backlinks. ” (end quote)

    Other webmasters have stated here and at WMW that the exact same situation has happened to them. Please can you tell us what this situation indicates, and how we might resolve it?

    From an outsider’s point of view, it looks as if there is collateral damage to the anti-spam measures in the Jagger update. If you recommend submitting a report on the ‘Dissatisfied with Results’ screen, fair enough, but I’d be hopeful that the issue could be resolved in a way that would help the other legit webmasters affected, and not just myself because I might report it.

    Thanks for keeping us informed.

  30. Follow on point from the post above:

    I used ‘abcdef.com’ simply as an example. I didn’t realise that blogger would turn it into a link, and that there is an actual site of that domain name.

    I can provide true example url’s if needed.

  31. Thanks for Update, Matt

  32. Thanks so much for the information Matt, it’s very important for me think that behind google search engine exist someone who has this detail whit us.
    Thanks again.
    When do you think that these results will visible in other data centers?

  33. Hey Matt,

    Can you explain difference in the updates of Jagger 3 at 66.102.9.104 and at 66.102.7.104 and which is closer to final version ??? Also when and where to report canoical issues ???…sorry if these were answered somewhere else…..

    JO

    “Where’s your Karma now Dummy ?” – Joy, My Name Is Earl

  34. I don’t like this update at all. I’ve dropped with every key phrase. I am amazed at some of the websites with no content ahead of me.

  35. No-one has yet given an explanation on what exactly is meant by canonical issues. I’m glad I’m not the only one confused 🙂

    It would really help if some of us could learn about what is going on.

    Thanks

  36. Thanks for the info, but this is bad.

    I prsume Google has decided to:

    a) Not concern themselves with relevance
    b) Not concern them selves with spam
    c) Not concern themselves with ridiculously obvious hidden text & keyword stuffing
    d) completely ignore the spam reports they request regarding b & c (at least the weekly ones from me!)

    At least we now know!

    (PS – happy to give examples, but don’t tell me to simply report the these violations to Google. The 10-15 times I have reported these 2, top 10 sites have resulted in exactly squat being done about them)

  37. IMO, jagger2’s search results are better than jagger3

  38. Any progress on the supplemental page problem? I see them on both 66.102.9.104 and 66.102.7.104.

  39. I’d like to know if J3 will clear out the supplimental results for pages that have been taken down. I’m still getting some in supplimental results that I removed from my site months ago. They show up even on the J3 centers.

    I’m also concerned if we could be penalized for duplicate content if Google still has the old URLs and the new ones both in it’s index. I’m referring to pages that are not online anymore? I see some cached back in July.

  40. Matt,

    Our site has been negatively affected by Jagger. Therefore we just requested the transfer of 30,000 site wide links (paid in advance until July 06) to our main competitor who is currently ranked extremely well in Google for our main keyword.

    Our entire website is legit SEO so our site wide links are the only thing that could have caused such a drastic drop in our ranking.

    You guys have effectively created a new technique “Google Bowling” to eliminate the competition.

    I honestly don’t know what you were thinking but thanks nonetheless.

  41. Google SERPs look really good from my position. Overall we have had a slight increase in Google traffic to our site.

  42. Matt, you are wrong, i find changes in 66.102.7.104 and not in 66.102.9.104

  43. Hello Matt,
    I would have to say I don’t see any change from the jagger1 or 2 updates.
    My site was taken out behind the woodshed and whipped in jagger1 and just never recovered.
    Main keywords:
    Fishing Reports was #6 now #100+
    Saltwater Fishing was #8 now #90+ and on and on and on. I have the 3rd or 4rth largest saltwater site on the net and it has just been crushed as far as Google ranks go.
    My MSN ranks are tremendously good. Yahoo average.
    This update just doesn’t take to my site. All my secondary pages are just gone – and it is so bad I did a re-inclusion on the possibility it is a penalty for something. I included everything questionable and re-did or blocked or removed even the most trivial items in case they were hurting me.
    We will see and who knows, maybe things will get better down the road.

    And here is the kicker, there is some good news from Google – I have another site that was just released fully into the index that deals with freshwater specific content in the fishing sector and is ranking just fine. It ranks way above my saltwater site for the keywords that both freshwater and saltwater sectors turn up for. Keywords that both sites may have in common like ‘NC fishing reports’ for example (not one of my keywords).
    My new site has top tens all over the place, it is a good site in its own right but I will be the first to admit it has no darn business ranking above my original site – No business at all, it has less detailed info, lesser resources too, but I will take it.
    Thanks, Joe

  44. Matt

    As someone posted at WMW – Jagger3 just seems to be attempting to order results in a site:domain.com search – eg the home page at the top – do you expect that this ordering gets applied to the rest of the serps.

    Eg if I do a site:www.domain.com http://www.domain.com the homepage should rank ? or if I search for “www.domain.com” the page ranks ?

    GG talked about order level 1 and 2……. ?

  45. Hi Matt talking about spam cleanup have a look here
    http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:rqE-Ba1F0OoJ:www.reisebox.de/service/Alghero-billig-&hl=en&lr=&strip=1
    They are top in all Jaggers 1,2,3.

  46. 66.102.9.104 still has some spam issues with hidden text 🙁 Other then that, almost all those spammy and scrapper websites are gone!

  47. Not too happy so far as my site has vanished. If you search for the title of my site there are 4 websites that reference my own in the top 10 but mine is nowhere to be seen.

  48. You are absolutely right since we are seeing an upswing in our traffic right now though it is hard to confirm that through a basic Google search yet

  49. First positions (J3) on 66.102.9.104 – blogs, wikipedia, error 404 etc. LOL!

  50. It seems that 66.102.9.104 is still affected by what I call trampolines problem in a bad way. You can check this by just walking throuh the pharm’s `buy $drug’ google’s serps. Here are just to most clear examples:
    1) buy adipex #1,2.
    2) buy meridia #1,2,3,4. Btw #5 seems to be result of linkor.pl, but I’m not shure abput this one. I haven’t yet analized the whole linkor theme well enough to be shure. Hope I will write about linkor on my blog someday.

  51. Matt-

    In an earlier post you mentioned that Jagger3 was supposed to address Supplemental issues. Is that still the case?

    For any number of searches of just of our site on 66.102.9.104, the most relevant pages are buried beneath a slew of Supplemental URLs, most of which have been 301’d for ages.

    For example, this search — [site:trailspace.com the north face denali jacket] — returns what I would consider the most relevant page (http://www.trailspace.com/gear/the-north-face/denali-jacket) all the way down at #103, while the top 7 spots (and most everything else) are ancient Supplemental Results.

    This example is probably the worst I’ve seen, but other queries return similarly bad results. Also, for the first time I’m seeing Supplemental tags on some current pages (in additional to old, redirected URLs).

    Thoughts? (Yes, I have submitted a Dissatisfied report about this.)

  52. Matt,

    I always notice a flux after index updates that seems to “correct” itself, but I wanted to know if it is just my imagination.

    There may not be many listings that this applies to, but industries that are typically country specific (like insurance products, etc.) and not international. The sites offer content and products for certain countries and good sites try to develop partnerships for all visitors. I have noticed:

    Google offers those geograpic sites in the country listings (google.co.uk), but exclude the US sites. But at google.com they offer the US sites with the inclusion of the international sites. There is no option in the US to select USA only, like there is in other countries (search UK only, etc.).ies.

    It seems after an index update the google.com queries include a lot more international sites and then over time they are gone.

    Is there any truth to that? How do updates and index changes handle the international indexes? Is there any chance to have a US only search like in the other countries?

  53. can you give us an idea when jagger3-DCs will start to spread results to other datacenters?

  54. Wow! I’m liking this update. It looks like G is getting better at recognizing reality.

    I have a site that is 1yr old. I have never tried any SEO tacts other than a good meta title and description and a single H1 with a 3 word keyword phrase. However, I believe I do have great content and I’m adding to the site almost every day. At last check, Gbot visits every day too.

    Prior to Jagger 3 I was on page #5 of the SERPS for a competetive keyword phrase. Since yesterday, the same phase turns up my listing at #3 (Page #1). Another competetive phrase landed me on page #10 prior to the update, now I’m on page #2.

  55. David — where is the Dissatisfied link? I read that it was at the bottom of a search results page, but not that I can see. Anyone?

  56. I checked out 66.102.9.104 in my website neighborhood with searches on snippets from our site and the results are still sub-par. One typical search was the following:

    “IVR Application Software Toolkit ”

    Pre Jagger, our “Real” Home page was always number 1.

    With Jagger1&2, our site showed up #1, but with a very old copy of our non-www prefixed HOME page. Another copy of our HOME page appeared later with a tracking code. I’m assuming these were “canonical” issues. “Real” Home page was nowhere to be found. Our HOME page remains a PR5 with virtually all of our pages indexed by Google.

    With Jagger3, NONE of our pages appear in the first 10 results.

    1st result is a dead link, unauthorized complete copy of our HOME page that was cached in Sep 2004! Talk about summing up our frustration with Jagger. This catches most of my complaints about the results I’ve seen so far. Adsense spammming is the only thing missing in this result!
    2nd result is a “live” unauthorized complete copy of our HOME page from a different website.

    5 (yes FIVE) of the results are Google Adsense Spammers that copied all or part of our website as the “content” for its advertisements.

    The other three are “authorized” links from directories to our website.

    All 10 results are one way or another related to our website HOME page, mostly unauthorized copies.

    This pretty much sums up the problem we (and quite a few others) are having with this update. Google seems to have gotten everything backwards here. Spammers, dead links, old cached entries, etc. were unleashed with Jagger. Original content is now being penalized.

    I could repeat this test on many different search expressions.

    Right now my only hope is there is a Jagger 4, 5, 6, 7….??? until Google gets it right.

    In the meantime I’ve declared war on these Adsense parasites. The only successful way I’ve had them removed is using DMCA copyright complaints.

  57. [Quote:] What are canonical names? Everyone keeps mentioning this and I have no idea what it means.
    [Quote]

    Carol, canonical names is when your site is indexed with http://www.domain.com and domain.com. As you can see, the second example does not contain www. Sometimes they are viewed as different domains and you can be penalized for duplicate content.

  58. Matt,

    Our site has been negatively affected by Jagger. Therefore we just requested the transfer of 30,000 site wide links (paid in advance until July 06) to our main competitor who is currently ranked extremely well in Google for our main keyword.

    Our entire website is legit SEO so our site wide links are the only thing that could have caused such a drastic drop in our ranking.

    You guys have effectively created a new technique “Google Bowling” to eliminate the competition.

    I honestly don’t know what you were thinking but thanks nonetheless.

  59. Matt,

    Thank you for the previews and the updates. But this update looks like a big problem for me.

    For the #1 keyword search term for our site, Jagger3 has us on page 4, after we’ve been on page 1 for that term for years! The first couple pages are loaded with informational sites from foreign governments. This can’t be right.

    Is what I’m seeing now at 66.102.9.104 really what I’m going to see soon on the main google site?

  60. Paul,

    I am sorry to hear about your problems. Even with Jagger 3 our area is a mess as well.

    The unfortunate reality is that Internet companies cannot rely on Google results for their business. Google’s slash and burn technique during updates is ridiculous. Webmasters everywhere go into a panic completely clueless as to what Google is trying to achieve and after the smoke settles we just hope and pray that our site is still around.

    The reality is if you are right and Google’s results are poor then people will eventually look around for other search engines like MSN and Yahoo.

    Personally I am pretty sick and tired of Google’s ridiculous shakeups. Just like a lot of large companies who have skyrocketing growth. They have completely forgotten about their humble beginnings and now treat their customers like absolute crap.

    It is comforting that Bill Gates/MSN has its eye on Google. I would love to see Google’s monopoly in the search engine world take a hit. It would be sweet payback for all the pain and suffering they seem to enjoy putting us through.

  61. Tthe site that Adam Senour mentioned is also using hidden text links.

  62. Matt how do you deal with all this negative input?

    I do think a bunch of whiners have showed up at your Blog Matt. I can’t believe some of the comments here.

    “My rankings are down – google sucks…”
    and
    “My ranking are up – google is great…”

    Seem to be the two topics of conversation in this thread. Amazingly like some long threads at a well known webmaster forum that is known for webmasters whinining and crying about the google updates.

    For all you that ‘lost out’ – Build better sites, the kind google wants in its index and quit whining…

    For all you that gained – Way to go! Now shut up about it and go back to work.

  63. My own site does much better on J3 than it did on J1 or J2! That makes me very happy.

    The only problem I see with J3, is all of the spammy sites surrounding my listings. I guess that in a way, I’m glad they are all so spammy, because my listing sure stands out nicely among them.

    I’m talking about very blatant repeated hidden (and sometimes visible) keywords, gibberish text, doorway pages, duplicate sites, sneaky redirects…and what hurts, is that the sites are actually relevant to the search, they are just spammed to high heaven to achieve those SERPs. If they ALL removed their spam, they would probably rank about the same, relatively speaking!!!

    You guys at Google must get frustrated at how people continue to use these techniques. I know I would if I were you. Ah well….I guess it gives you something to do 😉

  64. Lots0, it’s good to see your still out there speaking your mind. That’s the Lots0 i remember:-)

    Where on earth have you been?

  65. Kelly Jones, that probably means that you don’t have any manual penalty. But the algorithms can still change and that can affect the ranking of your site. A reinclusion request doesn’t do much in such a case, because it’s the scoring that is causing the site to rank differently, not any sort of manual penalty.

    Eduardo Maio, if you see hidden text or spam, please let us know at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html and make sure that you use the keyword jagger3 in the description area.

    Stephen, site: pretty much selects a random sample of urls to show.

    Dave, Jagger3 ended up being less about supplemental results. I believe we may still do more on that in the future.

    Martin, Jagger3 will probably move slowly over to other data centers. I was expecting it to stay for 2-3 days at one data center before it started to shift, and it first was visible on Friday.

    lots0, I’d don’t mind getting negative feedback–I like to hear what people are saying. And I try to approve most comments. Right now, if a person has been approved once, I believe I let them post from then on. So there’s a little bit of a backlog because it takes a while to wade into the non-approved comments and read them. If someone is negative but has something constructive/useful to say, I try to approve it.

  66. Hi Matt

    Thanks for looking at my question – perhaps I did not phrase it correctly.

    Yes site:domain.com search does tend to show random results (except on some DCs which seem ordered)

    But what I am saying is the Canonical page does not rank within a site search – eg:-

    http://www.google.com/search?hs=HN&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&q=site%3Awww.webmasterworld.com+news+and+discussion&btnG=Search

    Most relevant page is the Canonical – it is returned top.

    Against:-

    http://www.google.com/search?hs=MN&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&q=site%3Awww.mirago.co.uk+Mirago+uk&btnG=Search

    Where is the Homepage which should be the Canonical – it is the most relevant for that search within the site!

    You cant say that site:www.domain.com keyword is random – as that is how the Site search works on Adsense site seach and everything.

    Sorry if I was not clear 😉

    Thoughts ???

  67. Jagger3 results are just alot of scattered sites many are useless.
    66.102.7.104 has much better results.

  68. Hi Matt – I don’t understand whole lot about these things but can you please tell me why my site lost pretty much all traffic from Google?

    My main keyword is “Wedding Favors”. My ranking for that keyword moved up from 39 to 25 in Google but my site is not ranking at all for many other keywords. Say for example, for keyword “Pastel Favor Vases” I used to rank #2, now I am in Page 3 🙁

    I used to get over 600 visitors from Google (not for my main keyword) and now I am getting only 20 per day.

    Thanks for your time and advice!

    Sara

  69. Hi Matt,
    Thanks for this update and good to hear that you are also reading negative comments.
    Data center 66.102.9.104 is currently showing the following results for the search term Noni Juice:
    #1 – a MLM company
    #2 – a news site which wrote an article about the above company
    #3 – same company as #1 under different domain
    #4 – a news site writing a negative article about the same MLM company
    #5 – same company as #1 under different domain
    #6 – same company as #1 under different domain
    #7 – Amazon selling a book from the same MLM company
    #8 – Amazon selling another book from the same MLM company
    #9 – same company as #1, this time in French
    #10 – same company as #1 under different domain. Page title; New Page 51

    2.5 million websites showing under this search term – if I wouldn’t know better, I would say this company must be a major share holder of Google. I hope this result isn’t what Google had in mind with this update.
    Thanks for taking on negative feedbacks

  70. Matt,

    Thank you for your J3 update. I am looking forward to any next infos on your site. If it is possible let us know more details about keywords management.

    Marcin Frąckiewicz

  71. Hey Mad,

    greetings from Germany.
    Now Jagger3 is up on one DC, iÂŽd like to write down my disappointment anbout the serps.
    Sure my Side, clean, has been affect very heavy, but what i donÂŽt catch is why are Google going to list ebay stuff. IsnÂŽt ebay a search engine for itself? So Google donÂŽt have to present serps out of ebay.

    Next thing iÂŽd like to comment is that since Jagger1 , sides with doorways, linkfarming and linkbuying did a boost up to top positions.
    In my sector are pretty much of this sides up. Spamreports didnÂŽt help up to now. Even Keyword Googleguy + Jagger2 didnÂŽt help.

    This for now,

    wish all a nice start into the new week

    Greetings
    Martin

  72. Hi Matt,

    66.102.9.104 – this DC is now showing 3-week old ccache for my site. SERPs are as bad as during jagger1
    66.102.7.104 – are still good ones. clean and comprehensive.
    can you confirm thatJ3 will be more of 66.102.7.104?

  73. I have to say that the results in my area are looking very good on Jagger 3, with no spam or rubbish at all in at least the top 30 (and I’m saying this despite the fact that my second site looks set to drop 20 places!).

    The only way for webmasters to remain sane is to recognise that the Googlers are not out to get us – each update is an effort to improve quality, not bash us little people into oblivion. Conspiracy theories are fun but it’s usually the more mundane explanation that wins out IMHO, and it must be almost mind-bogglingly hard to sort the great from the garbage these days.

  74. Pascal,
    maybe becuase amazon doesn’t suggest that the juice will help you aginst the bird flu.

  75. Pascal, you wouldn’t happen to be in the….. ahem Noni Juice business? That is shameful, trying to get your competitors banned here. Bad show. Matt tank his site for being an asshole. I see your site is on the 3rd page mr noniz.com and that is what you do with your frustration?

  76. Matt, here’s an honest question for you. I see that the Jagger updated has had zero effect on signal42.com, Signal42.com is a linkfarm that has over 500,000 pages, all completely scraped from others sites and jumbled so it’ll have keywords to get to the top page of literally millions of listings. No matter what I search (I’m a constant Googler), I see signal42.com on a daily basis, polluting the results.

    Example, google this without quotes: pencil neck geek lyrics. #1 in Google. Look at the bottom text of the page, it’s all just mashed-up text to fool Google. Yahoo doesn’t show the signal42.com result on the first page. Neither does MSN. I know at least six people who have reported this through the Google spam form. Nothing ever changes. It’s quite frustrating.

    Other signal42.com #1 results (all with garbage pages):
    Spongebob Squarepants Band Geeks
    Othello Hypertext
    Village People Macho Man Streaming Audio

    I could literally type all year and not be finished with the examples. So I won’t. 🙂 The site has an Alexa rating (unreliable, I know) of 16,000, so they’re getting a LOT of hits per day, mostly from Google. Yet they provide nothing. Just wanted to respectfully ask for your two cents on this one. Thanks, and I’m a big fan!

  77. Maxd,
    It’s perfectly logical that Pascal would write about Noni Juice if his company or site is related to that term. After all, he’s probably very familiar with all the competition and the Google search results pre-Jagger. The point he made well was that the search results are now either “tricked”, irrelevant or duplicates.
    Remember the pre-Google days with some of the original PPC and search companies (circa 2001). A lot of small search engines and directories were flooded with duplicates and clone websites that dominated the first pages. Users got savy and when the results became irrelevant or repetitive to people using them, these small companies faded away. Google has a well earned rep. for producing quality search results.
    But some examples of “bad” search results need to be exposed, especially during a major update, and this seems to be a good forum to do that. If we chose to write up an example, please don’t question the motivation – just look at the results.
    If this forum becomes nothing but a cheerleader locker room of cronies then you’re right, there’s no place for any of us whiners.

  78. I have noticed that this update has given a huge boost to some sites I know of using the coop ad network, and they have come out of this doing even better than they were before (whatever happened to relevancy of links?).. This is not spam yet these sites are using a technique which does not adhere to the Google guidelines. Some things just don’t seem fair.

    I suppose I’m just bitter as my site is still in hiding…

  79. Good evening Matt

    I understand of what GG wrote that Jagger3 shall continue through out the next week, then followed by the flux.

    That means that we are not seeing yet the final Jagger3 and things might change during next week. Right?

    Thanks.

  80. Isn’t this how this Iraqi war started?…speculation and worthless debates? With respect to everyone here, I think we should all just chill. Your energy is better spent looking forward and planning your next marketing strategy. Wait until this update is over before laying any definite fault on Google and be thankful Matt is doing the best he can to keep us updated. I could only imagine what kind of “panic forums” there would be without a guy like Matt calming the storm and taking a little edge off the suspense. Many of us have been impacted negatively by this “Jagger” update, including myself, but, I say keep the faith and keep moving forward without to much fear and bitching. Things will come together in time. Find the “wrongs” after this storm has blown over and work on them at that time. “Upset”?, You should have been there done that by the end of Jagger1. It simply takes to much energy to be so upset for so long where this energy can be spent elsewhere in more productive way. Focus ;)! Good Luck Everyone. Thanks again for the updates Matt, keepum coming!

  81. I am not suggesting our product helps against the Bird Flu as clearly stated on our website. Please read the whole page Walkman – it’s called marketing.

    Maxd – of cause I am in the Noni business. I am not trying to get my main competitor banned in any way, which according to Google news just reached the $3 billion turnover mark in a period of 10 years. I just wanted to point out that the search results presented don’t seem to be what they should be in my opinion regardless of my own websites position. Matt pointed out in his last post that he doesn’t mind getting negative feedback – exactly what I am doing. I am sure Matt will tell me if I stepped the line.

    Thanks Paul for your comment! I am not at SEP specialist but just a small business owner who is trying to get some help and answers from forums like this one. I am watching my competitors very closely and accepted changes in the search engines over the years, but the latest update is beyond my understanding for what reason I post on forums like this one. I agree with you, examples need to be exposed so that they can be commented on and fixed if needed. No one is perfect – including Google.

  82. My site retained it’s pr, but backlinks dropped by 50% and rankings for most keywords got shot to hell. anyone else see this?

  83. I’m seen a page that is redirected since June to other in the results, this web page was dropped from results three months ago, and now is there in the serps of the DataCenter that Matt says, and I continue watching SPAM in Spanish Language results.

  84. The results are strange, I have seen html code into they:

    Foro Social Chileno
    . .

  85. Personally, I think the last people Google should listen to on SERP relevancy are those that have a vested interest the same SERPs. Having said this though, I guess Google could pass on the complaints to someone at Google who has no vested interest.

    Lotso, please don’t whine about the whinning AND the praise.

  86. Hi Matt,

    Thanks for this update during the weekend, it’s good to know that Jagger3 it’s visible, now let’s pray to survive this Jagger3 update !!!

    Have a great weekend to all…

  87. Dave,

    This type of talk fires people up, believe me!

    I made the mistake of calling a guy who mentioned that he has two websites, one a taco bell site and the other on HIV a spammer yesterday in a forum. He came back and said, “I am not a spammer, I am a guy with HIV who works for taco bell”. It looks to me like everyone today wants to know why they DO or DO NOT show up in the search engines. I have a few websites that I slave over for a couple adense dollars (to fund my backyard projects) but they are highly educational. My neighbor makes really cool gift baskets for dogs and I want the site I made for her to shine as well.

    You see, we are not all gamers and marketers with high paying clients, but even the “big boys” should show up in the results yes? If I am buying a cool gadget at Best Buy I want to search in google and find it, then compare at Circuit City, Pricewatch, Ebay but not before reading a few blogs by regular folks who know their sh*t when it comes to electronics, eh?

    I just hope that while Matt sips soda and listens to drunken spammers blab about their craft the other ear is open to those who believe Google is still relevant and a

    REALLY

    USEFUL

    ENGINE — TOOT! TOOOT! 🙂

    -Thomas

  88. Thomas Jefferson once said that the man who will trade liberty for security deserves neither.

    I would add that a search engine that would trade relevance for less spam deserves neither.

    The results I’m seeing are filled with weak directories, links pages dedicated to the search phrase, single pages related to the search from big sites offering almost nothing, affiliate sites with large page counts (listing tons of public domain articles on an internal blog, active message boards used to increase rank on any marginally related term, then of course 1,000s of affiliate product pages), and niche sites that are ranking for reasons I can’t grasp yet.

    But less spam overall. Just at the cost of a lot of sites actually related to the search terms.

  89. RE: ““I am not a spammer, I am a guy with HIV who works for taco bell”

    DOH! 🙂

  90. LOL @ Dave, Yeah sad and iky at the same time dude! 😉

    I spam your blog, sorry! 🙂

    -Aaron

  91. What is the definition of spam? Is too many links one of the issues? Is this one of the Jagger spam issues you have sought to resolve?

    To get top of the search engines you need to have the best onpage seo, the best onsite seo, then if you are still not top even with a powerful website, you need links, and specific links for that page. Then there are all the vagrancies that can spoil best efforts. How is one to get such links in such a way that does not offend your search engine? Especially when you have many pages that are competitive phrases, and so you need many links for each.

    Reciprocal links are hard work and so many of the pages on offer are low value. But then to get recip type links for many pages is a big ask. What if you are involved in non web savvy industries where people are not giving links. Many in my industry have so few links even after being around for years.

    Why would getting many links be an issue with you? Why would purchase of links be an issue? How else are you to get to the top of competitive phrases? Why can’t it be in the end a competition as to who can afford or get the most links? If you can afford it, you surely have a product that can afford that expense, or can afford that time involved in getting links? How is it different from being able to afford high adwords payments? Why would there be a preference that someone got an SEO to get recip links for them from related sites, rather than get a smaller number of paid links and so cost less time ie similar cost.

  92. The people who are unhappy about drops in rankings are fortunate that they can do things to improve the situation. Some people are not as fortunate. For instance, I have a site that always did well in Google until a short time ago when it was penalised. A few weeks ago the problem with the site was sorted out, and the penalty was lifted. For a very short time it ranked as it did before the penalty – as it’s done since Google first crawled it, but it now appears to have been penalised again, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I can’t do anything about the rankings, but those people whose sites have merely dropped in rankings can take steps to deal with it.

    And yes, this *is* intended as a “what’s up with the site now, Matt?” post 😉

  93. RE: What is the definition of spam?

    Anything outside the SE guidelines.

  94. Stephen, I know that mirago.co.uk had a lot of search result pages, so there might be something different going on with that site.

    Harith, there is definitely still some flux to go.

  95. RE: but it now appears to have been penalised again.

    “appears”, or is? If you supply the URL I think many here could let you know.

  96. I dont understand why google isn’t using the results that are on:

    66.102.7.104

    These are by-far the best results…

  97. Hello Matt,

    I just like to say something , this update clearly focusses on backlinks and sorting backlinks as negative, good, authoritative,

    We know some areas which google thinks as negative areas for backlinks, Sites which got backlinks from these areas got completely booted, We are going to run a test to see if competitors are loosing their rank the same way,

    We have access to some 100,000 negative area backlinks and we are going to point those links to some competitors and see how the system works,

    will post here after the test, 🙂 good luck

  98. I agree with scott fish 🙂

  99. Hopefully there are still some flux’s going on because they are looking a bit shitty from my end.

    Not too bad but I know some of the sites in the top for a phrase I research should not be there.

  100. I have been monitoring daily now over the last 4-5 days and must say that overall positioning in Yahoo improved – Google fluctuated a bit but only keyword that I cannot find this site for is searc term Bulk SMS.

    It does not worry me too much as we focus currently on streaming SMS and for that I am no.1 in Yahoo, Google and MSN at this stage.

    I have a hunch that there is some link to higly bid for or competitive keywords. Everybody in the SMS business tries to position their sites for search term bulk sms.

    I launched new routes this week end which became available regardless of the updates taking place as it is very important information for my customers.

    I will continue to monitor the changes to see what the end result is.

    Thanks for such an informative blog Matt

  101. Dumb question.. Are you definitely penalized when you don’t show up for your own web address? When I search “widgets.com” in get “Sorry, no information is available for the URL “widgets.com”

    Just a few notes, my home page has a PR of N/A after being a 6 (some internal pages are still ranked), and I do show up in some searches but usually on page 6 thru 10. Finally, I think I’ve been penalized pre-jagger1.. Wrote several emails to Google, made corrections, and nothing!!

  102. Matt – do you think Ale 8 is every better than Noni Juice?

  103. So is it pretty much consensus that Jagger 2 is the best of the 3?

  104. It was Benjamin Franklin (not Jefferson):
    “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

    I’m wondering my three years out-of-date page with practically no content (“This page has moved”) and only serves to point to the corresponding page at my new URL ranks 40 places higher than my real page with all the content . . . ?? (And the new page shows two using “link:” and the other shows one site with “link:”—yes, tiny amount of links, most sites link to my main page!)

    —Andrew

  105. Okay, an open comment and then a question.

    First of all, to all of you who are asking “why did my keyword positioning fall off the map” or “why did my site drop in SERPs”…take a long hard look at what you’re doing. You’re asking an employee of a search engine that indexes over 10 biillion pages to take a look at yours and tell you why your site isn’t performing like it used to.

    There are millions of people out there that are all in the same boat. I’m sure Matt would love to spend the time to help each and everyone with legit, honest SEO intentions improve their rankings but there are a few problems there:

    1) How does Matt distinguish who’s legit and who isn’t?

    2) How does Matt deal with everyone’s requests and still manage to get his Google work done to help contribute to the improving of the product?

    Cut the guy some slack and, if you’re going to ask a question that in some way has an impact on the quality of the engine as a whole, try to make sure that someone else receives a positive impact from it too.

    Okay, I’m done ranting, and on to my question, which I will openly admit I’m asking for partly selfish reasons. But, as you will see, I’m asking it because it could conceivably affect someone else too. In fact, by reporting it, I could conceivably be hurt by it (loss of an IBL), but it’s still something that should be addressed.

    Now, on to the question.

    Via a Google query, I recently stumbled across a site that I had nothing to do with the development of at http://www.coldfusion-tools.com .

    The article on the site’s home page is my own article, which someone has taken the liberty to reproduce (which I’m not complaining about, because she did so legally, and I don’t even know who this person is). But what’s odd about it is that it IS the entire home page content. In other words, it’s a low-content site containing nothing useful, and certianly nothing related to ColdFusion tools.

    This article/site remains on the Jagger3 update.

    The question then becomes twofold:

    1) (Asked purely for clarification): This isn’t something I or anyone else that happens to have the same thing occur with an article of theirs get punished for, is it?

    I would suspect that it falls under the idea of “you can’t get punished for an inbound link, since that site’s controlled by someone else, as long as you don’t link back”, but I just want to be sure. And I’m not the only one affected by this either; if you click the “Site Map” link, some other guy’s article appears there as well. So there are at least two affected parties.

    2) Is this something that will, or even can, be taken care of in a future update?

    The unique thing about this form of spam is that it does contain a large degree of legitimate content. As someone who has done some programming in the past, I can’t see how you’d shake out this particular pages vs. the millions of other pages which contain this and other articles I and others have written.

  106. The best results they are in 66.102.7.104

  107. Well i think this jagger 3 update should finally come to an end, well my site site is back to its normal rankings in some datacenters an hope the final flux will move it up further; and as proposed google has been able to do away wd some spammy sites. But me too would be very much thnakful if someone could explain in details about the canonical issues. Hey Matt how about you giving an answer??

    Thanks,
    Linda

  108. Matt,

    I noticed some sites that lost 90% of their indexed pages, but now seem to slowly return into the index (couple of pages per day). ThatÂŽs great, but what I don’t get is the cached version dates,… they seem old (as far back as january this year I saw).

    Doesn’t it hurt the quality of the results if Google uses old pages in the index?

    Thanks,

    Peter

    PS. Great job on the misspelled words!

  109. Matt,

    Thanks for letting us know of the Jagger 3.

  110. hi folks, what do you think about this theory about the whole cannonical thing.

    for me this post seems to be a great appendage.

    http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31888-40-10.htm

    msg400 from g1smd

    greetings
    hobo

    …..sorry, but my english is not so good….so i only mentioned the necessary informations.

    …………thanks matt for keeping us informed 🙂

  111. Hello Matt,

    today, 7 November it`s my birthday. The best present comes from Google, my website, who had very heavy problems after the Bourbon Update, is slowly coming back in the Serp`s with very good positionings.
    Thank you, googlers!

  112. Argh not 66.102.9.104 🙁
    I am on the first page of every other datacenter but this one 🙁

    Well 9th for one keywords (3rd on others), but 34th for another main one (5th now on others)..
    What mostly annoy me is the #1 top site on all keywords related to our topic who is blatantly using frames to show a content to google and another to the customer … is this allowed ? this site at the top on query “bijoux argent” ..the source is just filled with links and all possible keywords

  113. Here’s a weird one-

    Google.com searches-

    Type in: overseas travel
    Type in: armchair travel
    Type in: virtual travel

    In the 3rd case, the screen is SPLIT into 3 sections!

    What’s this all about?

  114. Dave > “appears, or is? If you supply the URL I think many here could let you know.”

    I don’t want to make the site a topic for discussion here, Dave. My post was just my way of asking Matt if it had been penalised again.

    The site had the hallmarks of being sandboxed, even though it’s been in Google since Google began, or it could have fallen foul of a large increase of pages profile (the new pages are the workaround for the previous penalty). But in 66.102.9.104 (J3), the site’s homepage is suddenly ranking near where it has always ranked. Until I just looked it wasn’t ranking ‘properly’ in that DC or in any other. It was in the high 800s, and a lowlier inner page was beating it. I’m happy now 🙂

  115. Jagger is a joke: Look at all the hidden text. Haha Google.

    http://www.facemaker.ca/

  116. Personally, I’m glad that Google is finally addressing the canonical name issue, but I think properly architected sites should simply 301 the bad domains with mod_rewrite; I mean, c’mon guys. I’ve been doing this for YEARS.

  117. I cried tears of joy, I’m actually finally ranking after a little over a year in the sandbox. I just hope this sticks, thanks for all the help and advise I’ve gained from this blog. I’ve made so many changes recently I wish I knew if it were time or a change I made.
    John

  118. For the flux-watchers:-

    Not all apparent flux is actually flux. Google normally diverts traffic to different DCs, even when a specific IP address is used. It’s done to relieve load, or when a DC needs to be out of action for a while, or both. So we don’t always get the results from the DC that we query.

    Matt can correct that I’m if mistaken, but I’m sure it’s no mistake.

  119. Dave, you stated

    >Personally, I think the last people Google should listen to on SERP
    >relevancy are those that have a vested interest the same SERPs.

    I must respectfully disagree. A million set of eyes, each familiar with their own neighborhood would be an incredible asset to help Google with the quality of its results. Yes, there is going to be competitive whining and reporting, but who better to spot spam or sneaky link farms and techniques than those view it in their daily jobs.

    With this will also come a responsibility. If an SEO with a vested interest moves up in ranking because of his report, he better have his own house (website) in order.

    I look at this as being nothing more than an electronic “block watch”.

    BTW, I would really like to see a Google “report dead links” program. I’ve reported dead links several times but they still show up in SERPs. I know Google has automated this, but websites that have been dead for several years still remain only because another old active site has a link to it.

  120. I like the similar/related sites to 66.102.9.104. Does this give us a heads up on Google’s new direction(s) 🙂

    http://www.google.com/search?q=related:66.102.9.104/

    includes
    Smith Scale Speedway – Slot Car Hot Rods, 1/32 Scale Slot Car Customs (slotcar.7p.com)
    Dance Music Directory: DJ Music Sites – Dance Mixes (www.trugroovez.com)
    Free Development Tools Downloads (www.freedownloaddevelopment.com)
    Another Adult Board – The Board that Pays You Back? (www.anotheradultboard.com/board/)
    Dogpile Web Search Home Page (dogpile.com)
    Google Italy (www.google.it)
    and… Yahoo! Canada (ca.search.yahoo.com)

  121. I think that this whole Jagger series will be all for naught, if AdWords revenues suddenly plummet when it’s done. After all, Google is a public company now.

  122. Hi Matt!
    Quick question: I have a clean site and write my own articles. In the
    start of the Jagger update my site dissapered for all its keywords and i
    can only find it when i search for “my website name” or
    MyWebsiteName.com. Does this mean anything? Also, when i do site:mywebsitename.com some of my URLs dont have www in them. Should i put in a 301 redirect asap? From what i discribed do u think my site may return by itself if i dont put in a 301? thank you for your time Matt, it is much appreciated.
    -Jamie

  123. Is it still usefull to report spam while using Jagger3 in the description or can we safely assume that all spam reported after Jagger2 will be verified and taken into account ?

  124. Suddenly today we are kicking butt on 66.102.9.104 . . . I guess this is called flux. Results are appearing better too.

  125. Yes indeed!

    I see good things for myself and others on .104, a balance between .edu, .org, .com, .net and geocities.com — very fair and honest results in the informational fields.

    For my product site (I can not thank Google enough) #1 for my rain barrels again and again which is cool cuz this one is who I am really. 🙂

    AND for my friend Peter up above I see that his lost index is coming back, 600 pages re-indexed and only another 600 to go.

    Impressive!

  126. Some comical observations regarding Romanian language searches. If one searches on that datacenter (66.102.9.104) for “stiri” (“news” in Romanian), it will find in top-10, 2 dead websites (last updated centuries ago) and 1 semi-dead (last published news was on 7th June). When it searches for “jocuri” (“games”), the third position is occupied by… God and Holy Virgin help us… a religious (catholic) website that has nothing to do with games.

  127. Site PR6 308 BL
    35700 page indixed, until today 5000 unique visititors…
    after this tragedy called jagger3: 800 visitors.

    With some(all) hotkey my postion dropped to 900° from 3°

    AHHHHHHHHHHHH ;((((((((((

  128. Sorry. I’m not a person interested near a particolar site. But now in Iyaly after this big update google have give a big help to spammers. In the keywords that I study , I observe a the top of serp the biggest spammers that i’ve just comunicated to google, but they are now at the top.

  129. Matt – you said:-

    “Stephen, I know that mirago.co.uk had a lot of search result pages, so there might be something different going on with that site.”

    Yes, and I know that this is something that you obviously do not want to have in the index (eg the link to your own serps situation) – but Ask Jeeves (UK) also has the situation but the homepage can still rank within the site. EG:-

    http://www.google.com/search?hs=1aD&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&q=site%3Awww.ask.co.uk+ask+jeeves+uk&btnG=Search

    Ok, moving on from the Mirago example.

    I am still seeing sites that if you do a site:www.domain.com http://www.domain.com search the http://www.domain.com does not rank…….These sites dont appear to have a penalty (eg Googlebot seem to be happy to crawl internal pages within the site – just not the homepage, eg the internal pages seem to have more value than the homepage – some work on this to be done by Google ? – or is there a possibility that this might improve as Jagger3 evolves – eg a crawl required – more flux still to come?)

  130. jagger3 put spammers out ??
    a pratical sample
    http://66.102.9.104/search?q=hospedagem+gratis+fortaleza&lr=
    this a search for webhosting free fortaleza in portuguese language.
    n1-spam redirect
    n2-spam redirect hidden text and links
    n3-spam hidden text
    n4-hidden text
    n5-spam hidden links
    the first non spammer user is
    yahoo directory
    i don’t know if it is because isn’t in english, but brasil is a big market.
    Rui

  131. Hey Pascal,

    That was a very interesting case you mentioned. From a human perspective, there’s also a very interesting research paper exploring two cases of liver failure likely caused by Noni Juice ingestion that also should have had a shot at page 1. I’ve been studying some areas that I think have similar algorithmic difficulties.

    Here’s a wacko amateur theory you can try out if you get really desperate. Suppose, due to the volume of pages by, for, and about the “tahitian” noni juice, that Google has decided that “tahitian” (root: “tahiti”) is highly relevant to “noni juice”. If this wacko theory were true, it might rank your home page lower because it fails to contain any mention of that word.

    If you get bored, and are still in the dumps after this update has finally settled, try jamming in several mentions of “tahiti” and “tahitian” just for giggles.

    Of course, maybe you just took a hit for having so many, shall we say, not entirely organic inbound links. But testing that theory would take a lot more work 🙂

  132. Is that it!

    One of our sites has gone like this over last three weeks.

    PR5 – IBL 40
    PR6 – IBL1900
    PR4 – IBL4

    Which one is correct? We reckon about 100 is right – had been showing 40 for over a year. Where did the 1900 come from (and go) Now settled at 4 links but I know there are at least fifty as I can visit them but why are these not showing up?

    Seems that other sites I watch have all had the number of links decreased by a factor of ten or so – but not sure on what basis! Even huge the huge tesco dot com shows only 50k links compared to Y! – who show 500k which is probably more realstic. Not sure whats goning on – why the huge reduction in IBL – they can’t all be bad.

    This all leaves me thinking – is google going anywhere with it updates – is there a prupose or are they just going round in circles – chasing spammers! I think they should spend more time on improving the relevancy of SERP for the vast number of users/ publishers who are not spammers!

    (Originally posted on jagger2)

  133. Ok… Now I like DC 66.102.9.104 !! 🙂

    It looks like a mixture of the good from J2 and J3 updates.

  134. Matt,

    Why is it that when I do a site search for my site I get only around 340 results (IÂŽm in Brazil) while when somebody in the USA does the exact same site search, he gets about 600 results? (both in Google.com)

    Am I not allowed to see the same results, just because I am in Brazil?

    And the even strange thing, when he coppies that SERP URL into MSN and I click,. then I do see the 600 results,… but it is the exact same URL.

    ItÂŽs a bit confusing.

    Peter

  135. Looks like Jag 2 results on that datacenter, dont see any Jag 3 results anywhere

  136. ah never mind that question. My friend in the usa did the site search without the www and I did with www.

    still strange that that gives different results.

    Peter

  137. site:knowledge-finder.com ( shows 625 indexed pages )

    site:www.knowledge-finder.com ( shows 338 indexed pages )

    That is what I am seeing over here Peter.

    Anyone?

    Thanks,

    -Aaron

  138. Hi Matt,

    Any idea when 66.102.9.104 will propogate to all of the google dc’s? it doesn’t appear that my geographic area is being served by a jagger3 updated server yet. can we assume that the SERP on 66.102.9.104 is pretty much teh final rank when jagger3 has fully propogated?

    Brad

  139. Aaron & Peter,
    Try the same thing using 66.102.9.104 and the results are getting closer.

    site:knowledge-finder.com – 352
    site:www.knowledge-finder.com – 346

    I’m going to hazard a guess that Jagger3 is now getting a better handle on this canonical issue and now associates www and non www pages better. I’ve seen the same effect on one of our sites as well.

    I’ve also seen fewer tracking code duplicates in some of my searches using this Google test site.

    Double slashes still seem to be common, however.

    http://www.databasesystemscorp.com/demonstrations.htm
    http://www.databasesystemscorp.com//demonstrations.htm

    both still appearing in same search result.

  140. I don’t understand this update. I have a real estate website and was was #1 or #2 for “lido key real estate”, “longboat key real estate”, “bird key real estate” and other numerous phrases before the update. Now I am not even in the top 100. How does that make any sense? I don’t do any black hat SEO stuff either – content, links, blogs, etc. – Nothing tricky. Am I being penalized or something?

    Aren’t the results supposed to improve? Here is an example:
    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=&q=sarasota+florida+real+estate

    #1 – crappy site, gathers leads and sells them to Realtors.
    #2 – good site
    #3 – good site
    #4 – crappy site, little content, never updated, very little information about search phrase
    #5 – ok site, duplicate content issues with #6 result, stale information, rarely if ever updated, generic realtor template website.
    #6 – ok site, basically identical site as #5, stale information, rarely if ever update, generic realtor template website.
    #7 – Good site, lots of original content, easy to navigate, updated frequently, frequently used blog, #1 in allinanchor links for numerous search phrases (my site)
    #8 – ok site, duplicate content issues with #5 and #6 (see sitemap). Basically #5, #6 and #8 are the same exact websites.
    #9 – A website about Venice, Florida. I thought I searched for Sarasota, Florida. Venice, Florida is 30 minutes away from Sarasota. That is not what I seached for and who wants to live there? It is just a link site anyways.
    #10 – Probably the best site in the top 10, most user friendly site on the list, great original content, tons of links.

    Sorry if I sound a little bitter. I can see all of the time I put into making a good website has gone down the drain. From the looks of search results #5, #6 and #8 I should get a template site, with the same exact content, get a few websites to link to me and I will rank well.

    Thanks for letting me vent Matt. 😉

  141. The time it took me to write the above comments the search results for that page changed. However, not for the better. Page #5, #6 and #8 are now page #3, #5 and #10. Does Google like duplicate content now?

  142. Adam,

    Google created the greatest content theft machine the world will ever witness with Adsense. I doubt most people had ever heard of or considered a DMCA complaint prior to the introduction of Google Adsense. Google is not the least bit interested if somebody is stealing your content even if Adsense advertising appears on it. They are though required to do as federal law mandates when a DMCA complaint is filed with them. The law on the other hand does not protect you from retaliation by Google when you file the complaint. Since Adsense is the predominant income of Google they will protect their turf whether it encourages content theft or not.

  143. Green Lantern,

    I apologize because I should have made one thing completely clear and I didn’t.

    The article I wrote isn’t stolen. It’s free for redistribution as long as the backlink is maintained in my author bio. In this case, that was done and I was given credit. From a legal standpoint, the “webmaster” (and I use that term very loosely) didn’t do anything wrong.

    So I’m cool with that. I’m even more cool (and in a twisted way, somewhat honoured) that someone I’ve never even heard of would use part of an article I wrote as what would seemingly be the primary content of the opening page of the site.

    My concern, albeit a slight one, is that if and when Google picks up on things like this as the spam/lacklustre effort sites that they clearly are and ban/penalize them, do the webmasters that indirectly supplied the content get punished as well, other than the very slight drop in PR caused by the loss of a backlink?

  144. Hi Matt

    Do you have any idea when the update will be finished? My client site is still out of top SERPS and I need to start giving them explanations. What would you say is a good explanation for me to give them? Anyone else can pitch in, I’d really like a reference to a good informative article or discussion than will calm my client down!

    Regards
    MtraX

  145. Marc, those sites look very informative to me. Everyone is biased, so am I and you.

  146. RE: “What would you say is a good explanation for me to give them? Anyone else can pitch in, I’d really like a reference to a good informative article or discussion than will calm my client down!”

    Probably impossible to say without seeing the site, what’s the URL? I would tell your client that until Jagger3 settles down any ‘tinkering’ yo exsiting pages would be counter-productive.

    Also, no site should be so reliant on one keyword/term. The more you can rank for the better you are insured against algo changes etc. That is, it’s better to get 1000 hits from 100 keyword/terms than 1000 hits from 1-10 keyword/terms.

    Content is still King 🙂

  147. Adam,

    Google has always remained evasive on the issue of whether duplicate content penalizes any or all domains that use the same exact content. The answer though is rather simple, it either does or doesn’t. But Google refuses to answer the question which arouses suspicion. To take it a step further if you created a 1000 page domain and then replicated it with 20 other domains you would assuredly draw a penalty or a ban with some search engine. Would it not stand to reason that somebody who was granted or not granted permission to duplicate your content could not in effect lead to penalization or banning of your domain. It’s a money question in the end.

    Google remains quiet on the issue because there is a likely a financial advantage to do so. That financial advantage comes from the fact much of that duplicated content contains Google Adsense ads. Some would argue that Google isn’t divulging trade secrets but who would argue that duplicate content somehow increases the quality of the Internet as a whole.

    Right now I’m dealing with 1000 Google Adsense scrapers and I watch my rankings tumble with every update so what can I say more.

  148. Please stop all your updates as it is making mess of results for example when you search for false cellings when get results from air india and some thing like that. It is almost a month and good websites are no where despite having every thing so good no spam etc, and those websites are in results are only those website which have nothing to do with trade but they have make one page for products and placed links related to that products and enjoy good rankings because they are much older then us, Is that good update?

  149. When/if Google encounters duplicate content, no easy feat with 10 billion + pages, it usually keep only the one it encountered first.

    Having said this, I believe it’s unlikely Google (or any SE) can spot duplicate content from different sites, let alone know who the righful owner is.

    Frankly, I don’t think it’s Google’s job to protect our content, that is up to the owner of the content. To say otherwise is like holding Google responsible for a Google searchers that gets bad code/info from a page in its Index!

    JMHO

  150. Hi Matts,

    I would like that you look the follow searchs, a lots of spams, and with Jaggers 1, 2, 3 not change:

    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=&q=spanish+school+in+spain

    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=&q=learn+spanish+in+spain

    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=&q=spanish+courses+in+spain

    Thanks a lot,

    Enrique

  151. Definitions of Canonical Name on the Web:

    The real name of a host. Used in CNAME records, PTR records, NS records and MX records. A Canonical Name is something of a fiction because many servers have more then one equally valid name. Basically, any domain name that has an A record.
    customersupport.websiteproviders.net/glossary/c/

  152. Dave & Others,

    This concerns me as well because my new website on water gardens uses a RSS feed which serves up fresh content to scrapers and spammers. What if someone with an older site copies all my stuff and google crawls them before they crawl me? If google was to ignore this spammers would rule so I think there is a way to detect.

    What I do immediately after I add some new content to my site is I send the sitemap.xml to google, in root I have a bar code on my ass but it is mine right?

    Do not ignore all the tools google is offering you, they are here for a reason and I can not say enough good things about their “intentions”.

  153. Our site has dropped off the map for our main keyword phrase : uk web hosting. We’re not spammers.

    However if you type in “uk web hosting” , note the speech marks, there we are back in the results.

    My questions
    – can we expect to come back for both results?
    – if ‘flux’ is in effect, how long does this continue?
    – in a nutshell, has anybody made a list of the key features of the Jagger update?

    If we don’t come back then I can honestly say that we are screwed 🙁

    Any help & advice really welcome.

  154. Hi Matt

    Can you tell us what’s going on!! Our site seemed to have survived any major shifting in JAG1and 2 We went from #2 position on our #1 keyword to # 11 That’s livable, But now as of today we are back on the 5th page when yesterday we were back on the 1rst page. Many sites that are listed on the first page have NO PR at all and we maintain our PR of 4. We don’t understand at all!! Please can anyone explain this ?

  155. Sorry. But am I censured?

  156. Answer for canonical? I didn’t know what it meant and I thought this definition shed some light. However, anyone with a laymen’s definition for canonical in the context for this specific message string would be welcome!

    In programming, canonical means “according to the rules.” And non-canonical means “not according to the rules.” In the early Christian church, the “canon” was the officially chosen text. In The New Hacker’s Dictionary, Eric Raymond tells us that the word meant “reed” in its Greek and Latin origin, and a certain length of reed came to be used as a standard measure. In some knowledge areas, such as music and literature, the “canon” is the body of work that everyone studies.

    The terms are sometimes used to distinguish whether a programming interface follows a particular standard or precedent or whether it departs from it.

  157. Meant to ask: It looks like all the DCs are stable this afternoon.

    Does this mean J3 is now done?

  158. Regarding Jagger 3:

    A search for ‘beach wedding’ gives:

    Result #1: an online store for wedding favours. Barely relevant
    Result #2: The *one* page out of 12,000+ in this site that relates to the topic
    Result #7: Blatant keyword stuffing in hidden text.
    Result#10: A page of links to wedding vendors in California. Barely relevant
    Result #11: Totally irrelevant to search topic
    Result #12: The one page out of 32,000 pages of spammy articles on this “Internet Safety Tips for Parents of Children in India” that relates, barely, to the topic at hand.

    Are these *really* the sites that Google thinks are, without fail, the most relevant pages on the net with regards to ‘beach weddings’? If so, God help Google.

    Or are they just the ones making the most obvious use of the spam techniques Google ‘officially’ doesn’t allow?

    And yes, all the examples above that are using misleading tactics to mess with results have been reported to Google once a week, every week for several months.

    Sorry to rant, but these results pretty much show that Jagger is utter rubbish, for this key phrase at least.

  159. I agree with benji. Jagger 3 has some serious problems. When typed in the name of the restaurant I did a page for “Orleans in Davis Square” the first result was a page that hasn’t existed for over a month, and then second was a sub page. It’s kind of freaky really.

    I think that the new updates are focusing more and more on deep linked pages. If so time to do some work to increase the deep link ratio.

  160. Hi Matt

    Do we have some sort formal contact point within Google to highlight site’s that have been hit heavily with the Jagger updates? Our site has been virtually wiped out by these updates. It has been on page one for last few years and is an establised provider in the field. We went thru a bad patch a few weeks back and after we’d cleaned up the code a bit, it reverted back to its high ranks. But now we are again virtually wiped out even though the site is clean and tidy in all aspects.

    The original coding was first class as the site was coded to be viewable in various onscreen media. We felt that reason for our last bad patch was due to misunderstanding of various aspects of CSS (for other on screen media) We took that compatibility out. The link exchange script we’d just installed was also deleted entirely from the site.

    But now despite all these changes the site is hardly ranking for any of the keywords relevant for the site.

    Cheers

    IanC

  161. Nobody on any forum to date, I have seen, has ever said Google is responsible for stolen content. But it’s a whole different ball game when Google provides a vehicle that is being used primarily for stolen content. That is Google Adsense.

    If Adsense was a legitimate program then material evidence in the form of thousands of DMCA complaints wouldn’t be present. It’s a smoking gun. It is a vehicle that Google knows is encouraging copyright infringement they are profiting from. You can’t divorce yourself of a conspiracy charge or allegations of a criminal enterprise if you receive direct proceeds from the wrongdoings. And in this case astronomical proceeds.

    The bottom line is once this Adsense program is targeted by some state attorney general how many pensions will suffer from this inflated stock. Winning lawsuits is about simplicity. Pose the “smoking gun” concept to a jury and “they’ll come back with the answer,“If Google’s so dang clean why so many DMCA’s.” I certainly wouldn’t want to be insulting people’s intelligence or ethical values replying to the question. Life goes beyond yourself. You have an obligation to defend those who lack the ability.

  162. IanC,

    I’m not Matt. In fact, I don’t work for Google. So you may well not listen to me.

    But I can tell you that there are errors in your code, and you’d be better served to post your question in a web design/development board where someone can give you answers.

    http://www.webproworld.com
    http://www.webmasterworld.com

    There’s a couple to get you started.

  163. Google does/continues to terminate and AdSense participants that break the AdSense Terms and Conditions. Sure, some last longer than others and some probaly never get caught.

    But to say Google encourage the stealing of content simple because they have AdSense abusers is as niave as saying Smith & Western are encouraging gun deaths.

    ONLY if it is PROVEN that Google turn a blind eye to scraper sites running AdSense can anyone say Google “encourages” content stealing.

    RE: “Google provides a vehicle that is being used primarily for stolen content. That is Google Adsense.”

    No, AdSense is being used on some stolen content pages. It is not a vehicle being used to primarily steal content. Cars are used in Bank robberies as are masks etc…..

  164. Amen @ Dave! 😉

  165. Dave and Green Lantern,

    I have to agree with both of you on certain points.

    Google is responsible for this bad behavior by opening this program up with absolutely no verification or approval cycle – it doesn’t look at the web site nor care. When I’ve complained in the past about copyright violations, I was always passed off to DMCA because even today, that is not grounds for termination from Adsense. You have to violate one of their other terms to be removed. Google has written me twice telling me that what an advertising partner puts on their site is of no concern to Google and if there is copyright violation, it is a dispute between two website owners, not Google.
    The problem with that argument is that there is absolutely no reason for this abuse other than to make money with Google. A reasonable person can deduce that if you let anyone into a program without some basic qualification or adherence to standards, the natural result will be these types of abuses. It’s like selling a gun to anyone without checking their criminal background, age, etc. and saying I have no liability when a person commits a crime. And when a copyright violator is reported and Google doesn’t terminate the agreement, its like selling a gun to criminal while he’s in the ACT of commiting a crime.

    Google IS trying to act more responsibly by removing some of the more flagrant violators. If you report a violator who is using spoofing or redirects, Google does remove them with a big red “A” on the website saying they are no longer providing ads to this website because it has violated its terms and conditions.
    Google has modified its terms and conditions to include more offenses that can get these sites banned.

    Copyright violation is still not one of those offenses.

  166. I think if Google does/did take responsibilty for AdSense being used on ‘scraped content’ they would be opening a Pandoras box! Yahoo etc likely have the same policy.

    I agree with Google that content scraping/stealing is not their responsibility.

    If your content is stolen, seek the proper legal advice.

    BTW. I think you will find that Google does look at sites before aproving/dissaproving them for AdSense.

  167. Matt,

    I’m confused and thought you might have some insight.

    Why is it that even though Google owns Blogger, and every blog on Blogger does not have a WWW prefix in the url, Google still treats http://www.illusionsetc.blogspot.com and illusionsetc.blogspot.com as different pages?

    When I do a site search in Google I get the following:

    site:www.illusionsetc.blogspot.com – 1 result

    site:illusionsetc.blogspot.com – 287 results

    But Google currently caches http://www.illusionsetc.blogspot.com, this means my actual url illusionsetc.blogspot.com which is a PR6 gets bounced out of the search rankings.

    Is there any way to filter out or remove http://www.illusionsetc.blogspot.com so this url is never cached?

    Blogger has thousands upon thousands of blogs that this occurs to. Why hasn’t a solution been implemented?

    Thank you for your time,

    Walt

  168. A 301 redirect will have Google see these as the same. Something like below in a “.htaccess” file

    Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

  169. Paul I liked what you had to say in that it dealt with facts instead of hypothetical emotional issues to bend the argument

    Dave I think it is a lack of knowledge and TV programs that lead a lot of people to believe that many things are allowed in court rooms that are not. If you bring up these hypothetical arguments about what Smith and Wesson do you’ll be shut down and lectured by a judge so quickly your head will be spending. He’ll let you know right quickly that Smith and Wesson isn’t the subject of the lawsuit. Somebody getting away with something or not has no bearing in a lawsuit or criminal case unless you can show a direct relationship to have that evidence introduced.

    The facts are Google has had thousands of DMCA complaints filed with it. The fact is why are so many of these complaints in the possession of Google. I suggest you look at today’s decision against Grokster and see what the court defined as a “vehicle” for conspiracy to violate federal copyright law.

    Google is dead against copyright law because it hurts their ability to become even more profitable. They’re going to challenge every avenue of the law for that purpose only.

  170. Facts are still facts.

    You can spin it anyway you like, the fact still remains that Google is not responsible for content theft. This is includes site that use AdSense.

  171. Google AdSense is as responsible for content theft as Gutemberg for porno magazines or as Henry Ford for the deadth of Lady Di…

    “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”

  172. Hi Matt
    Can it is possible that google removes all duplicate results from google search results so that 1000 websites can be incorparated in search results and visitors will have more choices. Currently what is happning is that few websites are repeted again and again.

  173. All I can say is this Jagger Updates keeps all the legitimate sites out and now listed all the SPAM and unrelated sites on top of the results. 🙁

  174. Hey my site came back after 24 hours! Woo Hoo!

  175. Hey Walt,

    The reason blogger uses urls with no www is because your account is in a sub-domain of blogger.com. Just like adwords.google.com. This is the correct way to show a sub-domain.

    For your canonical url problem you are having with the www. I found your site has a link on lemon.beeplog.de pointing to your site using the incorrect form of url with the www. Change your links on other sites to not use www.

    To correct this problem use a 301 redirect. There are different methods to get this done, depending on your server.

    Hope this helps, Good luck!

  176. I have just been reading some issues from people at different places that I check out and I think Google has really made a bad mistake. Not only that a lot of sites that used to rank very highly are now stuck in 500 purgatory, but that some results that are being returned have nothing to do with what was searched for. As professionals we know how to search to get what we want, but do Ozzie and Harriet know how to get what they want. They will search for “industrial markings” and get returns for “markers at a summer camp”. If this continues they will go elsewhere. It has become easy to see which engines use google, because their returns are in left field. They better get it straight, and soon!

  177. Hy Matt,

    now Jagger 3 is on?!? there a totaly spamy results.
    Just to keep you up. Looking for something here in Germany meens
    to get the first result: ebay! Next 10 results are known spam sides and
    scrappers. No fun to search. You want to find something, donÂŽt use google. I donÂŽt know why donÂŽt you engineers canÂŽt filter keyword stuffing or redirects? These results are worst than ever.

    Matt, sorry but you are then only to talk to, who has an ear for googlers.

    One thing. If i search “only in Germany” i get result from spain, italy …

    Maybe you guys are lost in your own results, so you donÂŽt see the exit.

    Greetings from Germany
    Martin ICE

  178. why in Italy, spams sites are the first?
    Why in Italy, unrelated sites are the first?

    Best regards
    Renato Mazzotta

  179. Google WAS always number 1 in every one of my clients site STATS, but now it is coming in way behind MSN, AOL and Yahoo.

  180. Thank you for keeping us posted on J3!

    It would be great to hear how it is progressing as of today. Since your original blog post the DC 66.102.9.104 has shown some MAJOR changes since the 5th. Trying my best to remain unbiased 😉 the original J3 results on the DC have my vote over the current results.

    Have a great day!

  181. Dave,
    I must repectfully disagree with that comment. No, Google is not actively encouraging content theft and technically not responsible for this activity. But it appears to be turning a blind eye to it. Google as a responsible public corporation with a market leadership position does not take the high road with its Adsense program when it comes to content theft and copyright infringement violators. It should have a zero tolerance for this type of bad behavior in this program. That seems to be the biggest complaint so far by website owners. I’ll give you a specific example.

    http://www.autodialers.org

    and this page

    http://www.autodialer.org/ChemicalAlertsandWarningAtion.htm

    This website had decent PR and was ranked well within Google SERPs. Problem is they stole 130 pages from our website and pasted Google Ads on them . They violated no other Google Adsense T&C’s. I filed a DMCA which was reviewed by Google and the site was removed from the search engine. It still, however, displays Google Ads with my stolen content appearing on these pages. I copied Adsense Support on every correspondence that I sent to DMCA. BTW, I firmly believe that the Adsense support are sympathetic to this situation – a change needs to come from the top to allow them to remove these parasite websites.

    For Google to continue to receive revenue from this type of site (and there appears to be quite a growing number of them) is simply irresponsible and is not a good reflection on its business ethics. These sites are polluting the internet with spam and worthless pages that are there solely to generate Adsense revenue.

    Regarding the checking of sites, an adsense advertiser can place ads on any site it wants to. I’ve found the same “Google Account Id” pasted on 20 – 30 different URLs, each identical, and each scraping content from other websites including ours.

  182. Sorry for a typo.

    I typed

    http://www.autodialers.org

    and it should have been

    http://www.autodialer.org

  183. What does it mean if Google is using DMOZ description of your site now instead of something from your site?
    I keep hearing the update is settling down. I sure hope not as I only have a few keywords back up where they were, out of the many I had at the top. I am so discouraged. Seems hardly worth it to have a web site if we have to go through this sort of thing every time Google updates. So far every update for the last three years around Oct and Nov has shot me to the bottom only to come back up again shortly after Christmas. For a retail site this is death. I may just sell everything and give up.
    Carol

  184. Paul,

    I sympathize with you because you have reached the lawsuit stage. Most people don’t realize if your web site becomes anywhere near popular it will attract hundreds of Google Adsense thieves. Also if you don’t have any real text content that attracts visitors you’ll probably never be bothered by the problem.

    In my opinion any time content theft is reported to Google the Adsense account should be immediately frozen. If a DMCA complaint is also filed the proceeds from the frozen account should be returned to the DMCA filer. Google though has created a system that skirts the law and allows itself and the infringer to profit excessively from the infringement.

    The only way Google is going to take copyright law seriously is if their Adsense program is penalized legally for it. Once word spread to spammers and Google that they are going to be loosing money they’ll clean up their act quickly. Crime with few penalties isn’t going to deter anyone. This type of enforcement provides real tangible evidence. Currently what you have is a PR machine and Google worshippers espousing anecdotal stories of enforcement. Little if any evidence is ever provided and if you challenged most people they couldn’t produce it. If the enforcement were real then the complaints wouldn’t be all over the Internet.

  185. Carol join the thousands who are getting sick to the stomach of Google for the same reasons. You spend the year boosting your chances for profit and then they readily alter the results for their own benefit during peak buying seasons. Spammers though love it when the results are turned upside down because they profit equally with Google.

  186. Green Lantern,
    Why do you speak of ” Google Adsense thieves” ? , they are just “content thieves”.-

    I have a site and we expend a lot of work writing original content, for a number of reasons including to make money with AdSense and other programs …We found a couple of sites using anauthorized copies of some of our articles, and one of them appears before than original in SERPs, but we do not think that Google has anything to do with that..is our problem with the pirates.-

    The only thing I expect from Google is that they continue with the improvement of their general quality detection algoritms as they did until now.. in the while , let evolution work, and keep fingers off.-

  187. Hi Matt,

    A good job with this update. I am not seeing adsense-only sites providing no information but only ads on auto-generated pages on page1.
    My sites are not as high as they used to be, but there are some good sites above me. On the keywords I deserve to be high, I am.
    Also, SERPs are comprehensive. I am seeing sites of all types up there. Providers, affiliates, reviews, information sites and a site or two that I know from TV and perhaps do not need google top positions to survive, but it is ‘political correctness’ to put them there.

  188. Concerning Copyrights:

    A copyright gives the owner/author exclusive rights to that content. That includes income and distribution of that material. The site that stole the content is more than likely trying to produce an income from that content. If they display Adsense ads then Google is also making and income. This income is the sole RIGHT of the OWNER of the copyright. In other words your content is producing an income for the content thief and Google, not you. We are told that it is our responsibility to monitor our sites and find content thieves. I agree with this. I also understand that Adsense is NOT our responsibility either. It is Google’s responsibility to monitor their program so that THEY do not VIOLATE our RIGHT to INCOME as well as the DISTRIBUTION of content. Much of the time it is hard for Google to totally know what content belongs to whom and who has given permission to who for use of their content. In other words they may honestly not know that certain content may be violating rights
they are ignorant to the fact. But when complaints are filed and brought to Google’s attention, Google is then knowledgeable of the fact that such content is stolen/used without permission. If they willfully continue to supply ads and generate revenue from the stolen content, they are indeed in violation of the copyright owner’s right to income. In other words the revenue it generates is the copyright owners by right. (Unless other arrangements were made).

    I am not complaining about Adsense nor am I saying that Google is participating in the conduct of “willfully” producing an income from stolen content. I am just shedding some light on the subject.

    Concerning Content Thieves in Search Results:

    I really do not believe any this content thieving is the fault of Google as many site owners complain. I also think this much of this finger pointing is a bit misplaced. Most site owners JUST want SE’s to tighten their grips a bit more as this may help “starve” content thieves by eliminating their much needed traffic to produce an income. This problem of content stealing is far out of control and even out of the scope of many small and mid-sized site owners. It has turned out to be a full time job dealing with all this mess. I guess what I am saying is webmasters need help attacking these content thieves by hitting them at all angles. Taking away content traffic and taking away their income source will help cut off what they need to thrive. Doing so can help put this back into a scope where individual site owners can then deal with it a bit better.

  189. If someone tells Google that site “B” (who runs AdSense) has stolen content from their site, site “A”, should Google just believe the person making the accusation? No, of course not! If they did, as some here seem to want, it would be open season for all to ‘screw’ their competition.

    Surely it is up the owner of site “A” to take legal action and have site “B” shut down.

    Once you have proved site “B” (that runs AdSense) is stealing your content I bet Google would stop their AdSense campaign in a heart beat.

  190. Carol Said,

    November 9, 2005 @ 11:47 am

    >>I keep hearing the update is settling down.

  191. Carol Said,

    November 9, 2005 @ 11:47 am

    “I keep hearing the update is settling down.”

    GoogleGuy posted this morning on WMW that Jgger3 is spreading to other data centers and there is still FLUX.

    I.e Jagger hasn’t setlled down yet at all 🙂

  192. RE: November 5th comment, “My hunch is that sometime next week I’ll put out a call for people who believe that they have canonical name issues”

    Hi Matt,

    Can’t thank-you enough for making Jagger a true collaborative effort!!

    Just wanted to touch base and confirm that you would “put out the call” on this page. If not here, please leave bread crumbs. . .

    Best,
    Sarah

  193. Dave,
    The DMCA is a 3 – 4 week review process that culminates in the removal of site “B” (all or in part) from the search engine if the Google lawyers or staff determine that the complaint from site “A” is valid. What additional proof is required? Does Google Adsense not trust Google DMCA lawyers? There is a huge fine for filing a false DMCA complaint.

  194. Hi Matt,

    did you know when ends the update??

  195. arubicus,
    You and I are in agreement. Removing the financial reward starves this growing class of copyright violators. There have always been scrapers who want a quick website to get into a market or a competitor who simply can’t write or generate unique product descriptions. This is a finite group that has always been there, even before the internet. This new Adsense class of violators is MUCH bigger.
    The “solution” has to come from Adsense and the monitoring needs to occur with the site owners. Google has absolutely no way to determine if someone is stealing anothers content. Small business website owners do not have the resources to combat these theives alone. I have written Google Adsense with several suggestions.
    1. Institute a review and acceptance process (Ads up and running in 5 minutes is an open door for fraud).
    2. Establish an Adsense quality assurance and complaint department that has the power to review and remove violators including copyright violations. Provide feedback to the complaintants. I do agree that account payments should be suspended and then forfeited if the complaint is validated.

    I don’t subscribe to lawsuits. I would hope someone within the Google managment team take a serious look at these problems and implement reasonable controls. I think that if nothing is done, Google will suffer damage to its image and credibility and the confidence placed in it as the market leader.

    Dave,
    More than half of the sites that are scraping our website are registered and operate over seas. As a small business, we could never apply the resources required to stop this ourselves.

  196. Thanks, Matt, for all your help! We’ve been reading your blog daily over the last weeks.

    Do you have an estimate of time when Jagger3 will be over and everything settles?

    Thank again!

  197. “Once you have proved site “B” (that runs AdSense) is stealing your content I bet Google would stop their AdSense campaign in a heart beat.”

    Yep they would pretty much have to and this is the effect of what I was saying. I maybe should have put “proper complaint” in my earlier statement. (Proper as being providing the necessary proof). This is probably the line where Google cannot and will not cross. Google can claim innocence before the fact but after the fact they cannot.

    But the question is what would Google accept as proof? Isn’t a DMCA complaint enough? Or would it require Federal Copyright Protection, court documents…? How about a poor man’s copyright? Burn your new content on a CD and mail it to yourself? Send that to Google?

    “Surely it is up the owner of site “A” to take legal action and have site “B” shut down”.

    Yep and for us this seems to be the quickest and best way to go. A nice little email from legal-department@sitesomethingorother.com seems to get real speedy results!!! But sites overseas are a bit of a problem sometimes.

    Ok sorry for interupting the update discussion 🙂

  198. The point I have always tried to establish is Google knew from the get go that Adsense was going to become a “vehicle” for content theft and copyright infringement. They could argue they didn’t see things going that way but they’re well aware of it now with the number of DMCA complaints. Why ask webmasters to constantly patrol a system that has shown itself to be 95% rife with fraud and stolen content. Do you think knocking out a dozen scrapers today will immunize you in the future? You don’t treat the symptoms of a disease if you’ve got the cure. Adsense sites have flooded the Internet with worthless content, stolen content, and spam just for the profit of Google and gredy webmasters. In fact it shows how full of themselves Google is when they penalize spammers but have created the greatest deterrent to quality there is with Adsense.

    Bottom line is Google is so dependant on the profits from the theft and thieves are so tied to it somebody’s got to pay big time in the end. That as history as shown will be many good webmasters and senior citizens whose pension funds are tied to this boondoggle. It’s like Bill Gates says “What has Google got other than this program for generating profits”

  199. RE: “The DMCA is a 3 – 4 week review process that culminates in the removal of site “B” (all or in part) from the search engine if the Google lawyers or staff determine that the complaint from site “A” is valid”

    If they are removed from the SE what else can Google do? That stops the site making money from AdSense on stolen content. Surely Google have then filled their legal obligation??

    RE: I think that if nothing is done, Google will suffer damage to its image and credibility and the confidence placed in it as the market leader.

    I don’t think we can say “nothing” is being done by Google without knowing all the facts. As you suggest, Google probably has a LOT more to lose on this than anyone nad I would think they are wiley enough to know this.

    RE: “More than half of the sites that are scraping our website are registered and operate over seas. As a small business, we could never apply the resources required to stop this ourselves.”

    Oh I fully agree it would be nice if Google did take on the onus of content theft. However, let’s be realistic, no business (big or small) is going to tie up money, time and resources to help a totally a unrelated business fight its legal battles. As I said earlier, if they did it could well place them on a slippery slope.

    The problem stems from the thieves themsleves, not Google AdSense. Sure they might be motivated to steal content and then use AdSense. I dont however subscribe to the theory that the innocent should pay the price for the guilty though.

    Should an company producing Whiskey be held accountable in anyway for a drunk that kills on the road?

  200. In all seriousness, what’ll kill the AdNonSense scrapers is a few good stories in the press about this.

    Once a big chunk of advertisers realize what they’re getting charged for–and decline to participate in the AdSense program (sticking to Google results only, no partners), this problem will mostly take care of itself.

    Is there actually anyone reading this who still DOES pay Google for ads shown on their “partner” sites? Am I crazy?

  201. Agree Micheal. If enough AdWord users stop their ads showing on other sites Google would basically be forced to do more than it’s legal obliged. However, I guess that is not happening.

    I too do not show our ads on other sites and only allow them on the Google SERPs. The reason I did this was down to the poor conversion rate when showing on other sites.

  202. Hi, Matt!

    Thanks for keeping us informed…

    Just one question: is there any plan for letting the user set some personal preferences about the profile of SERPs he want to obtain? for example more or less comercial or more or less academic , or more funny o more serious, etc? I think that embrasing diversity is always the best solution.. ( I understand that it could be prohibitive in terms of computing power resources if Google has to mantain a lot of diferent databases, but enabling or disabling a filter ? can you do that for an individual query from an user or such a setting is server or data center wide? .

    Best regards, ( and please excuse my poor , Tarzan like english)

  203. All I know is Adsense pays me the couple dollars I need to continue offering free informational websites on things I find amusing. It is this relationship that “creates” quality content and keeps me within the guidelines. I am over my concern about scrapers, someone made a good point in my new http://www.seobuzzbox.com blog that if people want to scape your website via rss feeds who cares, they usually link your site and it can’t hurt really.

    Jagger1-3 has pushed scrapers down to the bottom of the pond where they feed on mispelled words and other waste products from a broken web. Well, let them, it’s so much easier to have success by following the rules.

    Don’t sweat the small stuff and those who are threatening legal action need to get a life.

    -Aaron

  204. I am glad, that Google now finally makes suicide. So maybe Users will use the better Serach Engine like Yahoo faster.

  205. All,
    This content theft and copyright violation issue has been a good debate and thanks all for keeping it on the “high road”.

    Dave, several points. Google does have other criteria it uses to remove Adsense spamming and my entire issue here is why not include copyright violation, particularly when their DMCA department has reviewed it and removed the site from Google SE. The other search engines still pick up these sites. If a site employs a sneaky redirect, it gets removed from Adsense but if it copies someone else’s works (and its proven), it doesn’t. This simply doesn’t make sense and is quite frankly NOT right.

    You keep feeding me with good examples 🙂 If the Whiskey manufacturer knowingly (or turns a blind eye) sells its product to an underage individual and that individual kills someone in an accident, you better believe they will be held liable in our society.

    I did verify yesterday that Yahoo! is going to do a site and partnership review on its Partnership Network members (not just the beta participants). (I think you made reference to that in an early post).

    Aaron,
    I’m seeing the opposite – lots of spammers and scrapers near the top. Its not small stuff to us when we find search results with our trademarked products and descriptions appearing in Google results and people clicking on them, only to be directed to one of these parasite Adsense websites. What makes it worse is when our “original content” page is buried because of the duplicate content filter.

    http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2005/10/splogs-scraping-adsense-fraud.php

    I started seeing this late last year and the problem was a nuisance then. Now its far more wide spread and a lot of people are seeing it in their neighborhoods as well. The worst part is the proliferation of websites with hundreds and thousands of useless pages on the net.

    Add now the new blog builder technology that promises to create thousands of pages instantly – soon the net will be no better than our email systems without filters.

  206. Hi Paul

    RE: “Google does have other criteria it uses to remove Adsense spamming and my entire issue here is why not include The other search engines still pick up these sites, particularly when their DMCA department has reviewed it and removed the site from Google SE. The other search engines still pick up these sites.”

    Are you positive the Google keeps them on AdSense when/if it has proven by DMCA that certain pages are in violation of copyright? Remember, it will likely only be SOME pages, not all. If you have an example I would love to see it.

    Also, as Google DO dump proven violation of copyright pages from their index, isn’t the issue also with all other SE except Google? I find it hard to believe Google would maintain AdSense on pages they have been dumped from their index due to *proven* copyright violations.

    RE: “If the Whiskey manufacturer knowingly (or turns a blind eye) sells its product to an underage individual and that individual kills someone in an accident, you better believe they will be held liable in our society.”

    There a saying here, ‘IF my Grandma had balls she’d be my Grandpa’ 🙂 Whiskey manufacturers sell to wholesalers, who in turn sell to the public. Only when a bar-person knowingly serves a drunk person Whiskey, who in turn drives home and kills someone, would they (not the Whiskey manufacturer) be held accountable in some way.

    IF Google approved AdSense on a page/pages which have been *proven* to be in breach of copyright your anology would be fitting. However, I would need to see proof that Google have knowingly done this.

    Sorry for being a killjoy on the conspiracy theories 🙂

  207. Hi Dave,
    Here’s the example I gave in a previous post:

    http://www.autodialer.org

    and one of the 130 pages I reported with our material copied.

    http://www.autodialer.org/ChemicalAlertsandWarningAtion.htm

    Note on this page, even our graphics were used (right click the missing jpg) and you will note our website reference. No question about content theft here.

    Google Ads still appear. This site was removed from Google via our DMCA filing.

    Your Whiskey analogy assumes 4 parties (manufacturer, retailer, driver, victim).

    Here there’s (Google, Copyright Violator, victim)

    No conspiracy theory, just very poor business judgement and ethics. It’s just not right, Dave.

  208. In that case is true, I agree! I wonder if Matt can tell us why Google allow this?

  209. Hi Dave,

    Can You help me on DMCA? Sorry. I’m italian and I do not Know if DMCA operate in Italy. But What is DMCA?
    Second. Afeter J3 update, my site is nomore first in Serp against its keywords. The content of my site is mine and unique. Now after J3 my site is at 300 page of serp and other sites with my content replicated are first. More. These sites are first and the link to mine?!

    Best regards
    Renato Mazzotta

  210. Hi Renato

    DMCA= Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998
    http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

    If you post your URL I’d be happy to give you some free advice.

  211. Hi Matt,

    You said you might ask for canonical name issues.

    We have the site names nz.com and http://www.nz.com. nz.com was put up in 93 before the www prefix was used. We changed to use the prefix in the late 90s. Lots of people have linked to the site over the years and the links are split between the two names.

    Last week we went from page 1 #8 for a key word search on New Zealand to page 2 and then back to page 1. Pre Jagger, the search returned the site nz.com (Page 1 #8). When on page 2, the http://www.nz.com site is returned. I checked tonight and we’re back on page 2 with http://www.nz.com. (I also checked on 66.102.9.104).

    We’ve dropped 10 places. Obviously, I’d like to be back where we were (or higher). Anyway, I suspect that the older links to nz.com are not being given as much weight with the name change. So I’ve been thinking about changing the name back and dropping the www.

    But then again, the naming might be a red herring. Most of the sites on page 1 and page 2 well-known, have lots of content etc.

    So anyway, can you comment on this?

    Regards,
    Ross Brown

  212. Hey there,

    I have a question. I own a website which has been listed on page 1 in google for all keywords relating to “Download Movies”, “DivX Movies”, etc… It was the official DivX search engine and information website.

    Now since 25th of October I get no google traffic, my site has been completely dropped and even searching for its URL brings up 0 results, my page rank also went from 6/10 to 0, and all this happened overnight. This is by the way a daily updated website which has been up and running for over 5 years.

    Any input would be much appreviated.
    Stan.

  213. Would this be a good indication of having canonical issues going on? I have no subdomains. If this is a canonical issue I have no idea how to fix it or why it is this way. I do know that when I publish with FrontPage that it publishes to the domain name without the www. Would I need to change that or does that depend on the host requirement? I did change hosts a couple of years ago also had to recover my frontpage off a crashed computer and it is possible that it got changed then. Probably too much info here. Sorry, just don’t know what would be needed.

    Pages Indexed 644
    (includes pages of EVERY subdomain, eg. *.forget-me-notgiftbaskets.com)

    Pages Indexed 448
    (includes pages of ONLY http://www.forget-me-notgiftbaskets.com)

    Thanks,
    Carol

  214. Didn’t mean to have an active link, was posting what I copied from a tool. Are we not supposed to post domain names here?
    Carol

  215. From what I’ve seen so far, Google has re-engineered several aspects of its algorithm. Amongst other aspects I will know as things roll out, I believe it has altered the impact of the following:
    1. Value of incoming links
    2. Value of anchor text in incoming links
    3. Content on page of incoming links
    4. Keyword repetitions in anchor text
    5. Age of the incoming links
    6. Nature of sites linking to you
    7. Directory links
    8. Speed and volume of incoming links created
    9. Value of reciprocal links
    10. Impact of outbound links / links page on your website
    11. Sandbox effect / age of your site, domain registration date
    12. Size of your site’s content
    13. Addition and frequency of fresh content update
    14. Canonical / sub domains, sub-sub domains
    15. Multiple domains on same IP numbers
    16. Duplicate content on same site or on multiple domains
    17. Over-optimization, excessive text markup
    18. Irrational use of CSS

    The big question is when will this update finally filter down to all respective datacenters…any comments?

    Thanks,
    Rick
    visionefx.net

  216. Hi Matt talking about spam cleanup have a look here
    http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:1mWHiWauGMsJ:www.touristikboerse.de/+touristikboerse.de&hl=de&lr=&strip=1

    They are top in all Jaggers 1,2,3.

  217. I am very worried. I am just getting started and looking for how to rank in Google and it looks like I am fighting an uphill battle with spam. Is this a if you can’t beat them join them kind of thing?

  218. Hey Matt —- I’ve got a site for a client that has gone supplimental… I was expecting it to fix itself with some time, but seems like it is just not happening —– I know you can’t answer any specifics and your busy as ever, but this was the first place I thought of to get it to someone at Google that would know what I’m talking about…..

    If you can squeeze a minuete take a look:

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.pearsonspromise.com

  219. Hi,

    i have been doing optimization to my site for 6 months.
    Just i want know why the results are showing differently if we search in google.com ang google.co.in.

    In fact it’s showing better results in google.co.in than google.com
    But our site is hosted in USA and the domain name end with .com.

    So probably i could expecting better results in google.com instead of google.co.in.

    Could you Please let me why the results are showing like this……….

    Regards,
    D.Siva

  220. today i noticed that my site got a good position in serps, for a long time was away

  221. Hello Matt,

    I am just concerned about all these changes, but thanks so much for the updates, have been really helpful for me.

css.php