July PR and Backlink Update

[imfeelinglucky]

Seeing new PR and BL
Yahoo now at 386,000 backlinks - 449,000 backlinks

[Nacho]

I don't see any changes yet . . . I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks!

[Marcia]

Which data center?

[Kristina]

I'm not seeing PR updated... ? Backlinks though... VERY weird.

[megri]

We are surprised to see that it is has double the BL of all our sites. Now in BL it is showing pages with PR0 PR1,2,3 What is the New move from Google

I have idea that the Back Link theory (PR4) is being removed by google , and now it is counting only theme based and there is no question of PR-0 or more. Question is theme of the page where from you are getting link.


Google seems to be baised with yahoo so far as BL are concerned

[Nacho]

I see the update now :eek:

Bad Google, bad Google !

I went from 415 to 357 backlinks on my homepage. It added one more inbound link from external domain and removed 71 internal backlinks. These 71 were PR4 pages before, so they could have lost rank and dropped.

I guess I have to focus on site architecture and link building a bit more the next few months.

Thanks Google for keeping me busy and a job :rolleyes:

[Dodger]

This is strange eh? I am not seeing anything right now. Although I am sure some of you are. But I reported seeing changes two weeks ago (see this post (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479)). As Kristina stated here, what I saw back then were additional backlinks being reported and I did not see any PR changes.

[Dodger]

Yep, I am seeing the backlinks now. Pretty much what I saw a couple of weeks ago.....garbage .... a lot of garbage links. I think Google is loosening up on their reporting for some reason. On one site, I gained over 150 alone and several of those are right here from SEW too. (not that I consider a link from SEW garbage).

[qwerty]

I have to wonder why links from here are showing up. The only link from this site to mine is on my profile page, yet Google is reporting three links from posts I've made here.

[Marcia]

I didn't see any from posts, but what I did see altogether for backlinks was one sorry eyeful.

[Dodger]

People are going to find out sooner or later. Do a view source of this page people. You have one link per post! They are in the old drop down menu for your profile. It is disabled, but the code is there for the line Visit Home Page. I found that out from Yahoo a few weeks ago. :D

But, like Marcia said ... there were a lot of crap links showing up. Some are copy-cat DMOZ directories, but those have disappeared (for me anyway). I have two forums that I am part of --and oddly enough a ton of forum siglinks showed up on those and so far they are holding steady.

There seems to be some PR moving on one of my sites right now (in the down direction...drats). I took a PR snapshot of some sites earlier this morning so I can compare when the dust settles. I hate clock-watching. ;)

[Robert_Charlton]

It appears to me that, for whatever reason, Google has flipped what it's showing. These are the backlinks that Google was not displaying before. I'm guessing that it doesn't represent a change in whatever backlinks Google is counting, but I've been wrong before.

About a week ago I noticed sort of a mini-update in the backlinks of a site I watch closely... The number of backlinks shown increased from x links to y links, roughly doubling. I'm now seeing a different group entirely, consisting of z links. None of these appeared in the y links... those have all vanished. What's interesting to me, and this is rough, is that y+z=(the number of backlinks currently showing on Yahoo).

These are remembered figures from one site only. I've not listed and checked off the links, and this is not to be taken as gospel, but I'll bet it's close to right.

[Mel]

Interesting to say the least! I am seeing lots of links from forum posts (here and elsewhere) that were never shown in the link: search before, plus lots more other links, and links from lots of PR1 and 2 pages even. I am not seeing any change in PR, or any ranking changes. Many (if not most) of the forum links are only partially indexed.

I do not see more sites linking to me with the @URL search, and so am concluding that this is only a variation of how Google determines which links to show with the link: search.

[Marcia]

Googlebot has a voracious, insatiable appetite, and it's safe to assume that any link anyplace of any kind that she finds - or even a reference to a site - won't go unnoticed by Google. What's worth anything, or how much or little, has little to do with what they show us though, imho.

I still don't see this as an update, to me it looks like a hefty dose of alternative medicine being handed out, maybe as part of an attempt to cure the SEO plague that's been running rampant.

[Dodger]

About a week ago I noticed sort of a mini-update in the backlinks of a site I watch closely... The number of backlinks shown increased from x links to y links, roughly doubling.

So I was not the only one who saw that. It was more than a week, right about on the 4th. And it resembled pretty much what is going on now, except the settling part.


I still don't see this as an update, to me it looks like a hefty dose of alternative medicine being handed out, maybe as part of an attempt to cure the SEO plague that's been running rampant.

That was one of my thoughts too. Google just playing with the links: reporting to make us think there is something there that isn't. Besides just signature links showing up, I am also seeing Guestbook entries and links from PR0 and PR2 link exchange pages from one of them (ahem) services -- all pretty much the classic "taboo" type links.

Having signature links in the mix is something to think about though. If they are showing the other type at will, then you have to give pause to them showing signature links at will also -- in other words they are very detectable.

I do not see more sites linking to me with the @URL search, and so am concluding that this is only a variation of how Google determines which links to show with the link: search.

The @: search is the same as a #:, $:, %:, or a : search. All of those characters are ingnored (like the hyphen) unless it has one of their shortcut queries preceding it. Thus, @:domain.com is the same as domain.com and clicking on the link "contain the term" domain.com.

[jan]

BL more than doubled and random set shown.
Don't know if this is because more links or changed algo.
No PR change so far.

[trafficsmack]

New Guy Here, but been in this business for 5 years. From what I can tell, Google changed their Backlink Algo to kill link exchanges. I noticed small changes last month, but big ones this month. My sub pages - pages that are not linked to by my main index page, but link back to my main index page were counted as back links, but pages directly below my main page were not. Also, I have a few link exchanges in place with high PR sites. Not link exchange directories, but traffic exchanges. Their relevant High PR Page for my Relevant High PR page. Zero backlinks. Maybe its too early and I am wrong, but it looks like they are trying to squash link exchanges for PR.

If so, I think this has major repercussions and I agree with the reason that they are doing it, but I think they should have looked at "local rank" rather than just reciprocal links.
:eek:

[Marcia]

trafficsmack, they're showing some recips even on a couple of sites that are practically cross-linked - and yet some quality one-ways aren't being shown.

There's no rhyme or reason to some of it; if Local Rank were prominently in the picture it would be more comprehensible than some of what's being shown now.

[Mel]

The @: search is the same as a #:, $:, %:, or a : search. All of those characters are ingnored (like the hyphen) unless it has one of their shortcut queries preceding it. Thus, @:domain.com is the same as domain.com and clicking on the link "contain the term" domain.com.

Sorry but I am not talking about that term dodger I am talking about the @URL search where the @ character is NOT ingored

Examples:
link:search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com returns 154 backlinks, most of which are now showing forum sig links, but many of the them are internal links.

@search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com returns: 619 results all of which contain the url on the page somewhere.

search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com returns:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com

[trafficsmack]

Hi Marcia,

I am seeing strange results too. Maybe we are in the middle of the Algo change and we need to let it settle. At the very least, I did find 1 common characteristic. This go around - Google really likes in-bound only links. This would explain why sub-PR4 pages are getting credit for backlinks. I have 2500 Backlinks to one of my sites. At least half are sub PR 3.

I really hope this doesn't impact page rank inheritance when the sub-page links back to the top page!

We'll see. Anyone else have a theory?

[Mel]

Hi Trafficsmack;

I really don't think that the new backlinks update is showing an algo change, just a change in the way Google selects the portion of backlinks that they show us with the link: search.

The link: search has always shown only a more or less random sample of backlinks, and now they are choosing differently from the same pool of links.

[trafficsmack]

Mel,

I REALLY hope you are right!!, but I am seeing something strange that may indicate otherwise.

I placed several new links on a PR6 main page 1 month ago. Under normal circumstances, these would at least be a PR4 if not PR 5. However, they are PR 0.

One exception.

I run another site that is complimentary and relevant to one of the sub-directories that I created. I placed an inbound link to this one subdirectory only and the PR on this one subdirectory is now a PR 5. All the rest are zero.

Some commonality that I have found.

Page 1 <--reciprocal---> Page 2 cross links are not showing up for me.

Page 1 ---Link------> Page 2 ---Link------> Page 3 ---Link-----> page 1
Are showing backlinks from Page 3 to Page 1

If you have any explanation for this, I am all ears. It would stink if they really did change the algo and not just what is being displayed.

Thanks.....I look forward to your reply!

[Percept]

This certainly is a strange "update". Anyone else noticing that Google now doesn't seem to show backlinks from directories anymore.

edit:
I also dropped out the top 1000 in the serps for 7 of my main keywords ( and I'm checking my ranking on dutch-pages-only which makes it even more unbelievable that I've totally disappeared out of the dutch top 1000 )

[qwerty]

I'm actually seeing some smaller directories show up as backlinks for the first time. One of my sites went from 35 to 52 reported backlinks in this update, and of course almost all of the pages being reported weren't reported at all before the update. Close to half of them are internal pages, but a few are coming from Yeandi, WebSavvy, World Wide Wub, and gbg.bg (Bulgarian).

[Dodger]

@search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com returns: 619 results all of which contain the url on the page somewhere.

search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com returns:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com

That is odd. I get 616 with the @ and I get the page with your domain on it the other way. It is returning results over here. Take a look (http://gonzo.ipupdater.com/misc/mels-google-query.jpg). Then I hit the link for containing the term and get the same 616 as in the @.

Maybe you need to use that for some reason where you are at ??? That is pretty strange, don't you think?

[Mel]

aaahh...
When you search using the

find pages that contain the term... link

You are actually performing this search:

"search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts. +com" or in other words a quoted text string with the suffix com broken out but required, which is equivalent to searching with the @, and is quite a bit different than searching for the URL
search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com.

The @ search also returns internal links using this term as can be seen from the first listing.

If you only want to see IBLs then this search does the job:
@search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com -site:search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com which in this case only returns 540 links, none of which are internal.

If you use the search allinurl:search-engine-optimization.commercehosts.com you similar (but not exactly the same) results but they are ordered in a different way.

[megri]

I have Noticed following changes in BL's( bacwards links)

1. Dmoz and Google directory Links are missing from backlinks, for many sites.
2. Links from PR0,1,2,3 are showing as backlinks.
3. Google motive could easily be to disrupt the link buying/exchanging programs which is going on with full throttle nowdays.
4. Several instances of PR being reduced to 0, are seen for sites having very good PR lately

There is definately a big change is coming in google Algo and method of calculating BL's.We have to wait for more two day to get final conclusions.

[Dodger]

1. Dmoz and Google directory Links are missing from backlinks, for many sites.

I noticed that as well. But the cases I was looking at, it was due to a restructuring at DMOZ. The page for that old DMOZ link does not exist any more and got moved. I watched the backlink in the last update go to just showing the url in the title and no cache link. Now it is gone altogether.

I would imagine that Google is structured the same way, and thus the disappearance of those links as well.

[dannysullivan]

I have to wonder why links from here are showing up. The only link from this site to mine is on my profile page, yet Google is reporting three links from posts I've made here.
So when I look at Google for your backlinks like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.raisemyrank.com&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0

That brings up 5 pages that are indexed and one page that Google knows about though links pointing at it but which it hasn't actually indexed.

Let's deal with the 5 indexed pages first. Why would they show as pointing to your site, if you have no links on them? I think the answer is because at one point, you did have links on them. These look to be all older threads, where signatures would have appeared for a short period of time.

We shut off signatures on or about June 7. All of these threads showing up in the backlinks report had posts that happened from you before that date:


http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=94
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101&page=2


This means at the time the pages were indexed, you had a direct link from them leading to your site.

You might notice that the Google cached copy of these pages no longer shows the links. So why do the backlinks still show? Because Google may still be using older backlink data. That would be my guess. It's supported by the fact that you've had plenty of post here since (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/search.php?searchid=11753) that data that don't appear to be showing up as backlinks.

This one is weird:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22&goto=nextoldest

I can't see how you would have ever posted to it. Perhaps Google is simply confused. Perhaps someone else can shed light on it.

This page:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=164

Is the one Google doesn't show as indexed. However, it may have been indexed before. If so, then any backlink from it to you might have been counted and still shows up in the backlink data. It's also weird because it's the only post you have where a signature shouldn't have been showing, since you posted June 12.

What could have caused that? Honestly don't know. But it leads into what Dodger posted:
People are going to find out sooner or later. Do a view source of this page people. You have one link per post! They are in the old drop down menu for your profile. It is disabled, but the code is there for the line Visit Home Page.

What he means is that apparently the forum software inserts VB code to allow pop-up menus when someone hovers over a poster's name, allowing easy access to click through to options like sending them email or visiting their home page, if they've placed that info on their profile page. We apparently haven't enabled this pop-up functionality, but the software writes the code anyway, and Google at least does index it.

So for that last page, this info appears in association with your post:


<!-- post 1942 popup menu -->
--snip--
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="member.php?userid=81">View Public Profile</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="private.php?do=newpm&amp;userid=81">Send a private message to qwerty</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="sendmessage.php?do=mailmember&amp;u=81">Send email to qwerty</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="http://www.raisemyrank.com/">Visit qwerty's homepage</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="search.php?do=finduser&amp;userid=81">Find all posts by qwerty</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="profile.php?do=addlist&amp;userlist=buddy&amp;u=81">Add qwerty to Your Buddy List</a></td></tr>


The key part is this:

<a href="http://www.raisemyrank.com/">Visit qwerty's homepage</a>


It suggests that Google (and perhaps other search engines) are seeing a link to you like this: Visit qwerty's homepage (http://www.raisemyrank.com/) for every post you make.

It's possible, but the evidence isn't suggesting that this is what's happening. For example, look at this:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D60&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&strip=1

If the VB code were being read this way, then you'd expect to see the actual links showing up in the cached copy. They aren't.

That's my take on things at the moment. If others want/can shed light, love to hear it.

[qwerty]

Try looking at the page you wrote about in the lynx viewer (http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.searchenginew atch.com%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D60). You'll see the following if you search the resulting page for "qwerty":
qwerty
View Public Profile
Send a private message to qwerty
Send email to qwerty
Visit qwerty's homepage!
Find all posts by qwerty
Add qwerty to Your Buddy List

Every line apart from the one just containing my user name is a hyperlink. That's the contents of the popup menu. I'm certain spiders can see and index that content.

[dannysullivan]

I'm certain spiders can see and index that content.
Some may; some may not. If I view with NCSA Mosaic 2.0, I don't see the material. Using a browser to similate a spider is a way at guessing at what's seen, but you still don't know exactly what a particular spider will do.

Instead, cached copies are the best way you have to see what's really being indexed. As I said, for Google, the cache isn't turning that info into links, even though the info is recorded as part of the page. The same seems true for Yahoo.

Perhaps they are behind the scenes still recording links. If so, then I'd still expect to see you having many, many more backlinks than are being shown.

By the way, even if backlinks ARE being recorded, it's not an issue that we're necessarily worried about. We didn't turn off signatures just to prevent backlinks. We turned them off primarily because we thought they were distracting and secondarily because people might abuse them to build pure link popularity, do a lot of posts just to get the links. (and discussion about the policy is over here (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=135)).

If these links are being indexed, then that secondary issue somewhat returns, though people pretty much don't get to have the context they want. IE -- getting a bunch of backlinks in your case may help you do better for a search on Qwerty, since that's your user name and part of the backlink. But more likely, someone would rather have some descriptive text take part of it.

We'll certainly look at the code -- it may make sense to see if we should set things up to enable the pop-up or hover menus for the user name, so that people could more easily navigate to some of these options without having to click on the user name listed.

[qwerty]

Google's cached copy of a page is not going to take an element with a setting of style="display:none" and change it to make it visible. As such, the cache is a visual representation of the code that Google has cached, and anything that's hidden will remain hidden. That doesn't mean it isn't there.

However, now that Google is also making available the "cached text" of a page, I notice that the links in the non-displaying menus do not show up there, so you may be right. Then again, it's possible that cached text of a hidden element would also remain hidden there.

In any case, if the issue is not whether posting here automatically gives the poster a backlink (no matter what its anchor text may be), then this particular question is moot. I suppose that if you choose not to make the menu visible, you could probably find a way to remove the code that generates it and make your pages a bit lighter.

[dannysullivan]

Then again, it's possible that cached text of a hidden element would also remain hidden there.
The same thing would be true for Lynx. The code is supposedly set to display:none for Lynx, but the example you posted shows it displays the code anyway and turns it into hyperlinks.

The main reason why I think this code is not being indexed by Google as backlinks remains the fact that you don't seem to have a lot of backlinks for your more recent posts.

As to removing the code, we'll certainly look at either doing that or switching the display to be on. There's no reason to carry it, unless it's actually doing something. But it could be that some setting in the forum software simply uses display:none as an easy way to turn the links "off" if you don't want them.

[Mel]

Hi Qwerty

Some DHTML menu systems use the hidden attribute to control the menus and appearance and I can verify that links on such menu systems are read and the links followed, and indexed as links.

You can also look at the page source of the google text only cache, where you can see that while elements marked as "hidden" are not displayed in the text cache, they are nevertheless in the page code links and all, and so presumably indexed.

[qwerty]

The code is supposedly set to display:none for Lynx, but the example you posted shows it displays the code anyway and turns it into hyperlinks. That's because Lynx, as a text-only browser, is incapable of dealing with display settings. It reads the code and displays it as it sees it, so settings that involve positioning and visibility are not just ignored; they're beyond its capabilities. The Lynx Viewer is generally used to show an approximation of what a search engine spider sees.

However, what googlebot sees and what is displayed in Google's cache are not going to be the same thing. Google's cached copy of a page is the code spidered and indexed by the bot, but displayed in a browser that is capable of showing graphics, CSS positioning, etc. So googlebot spiders a page and picks up hidden elements regardless of the fact that they don't display in a graphical browser, but it also picks up the code that tells a graphical browser not to display it. All of that gets indexed, and Google's cache will show the page with the hidden elements hidden.

[Dodger]

I just did a search for "Find all posts by qwerty" (http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=%22Find+all+posts+by+qwerty%22) in quotes. Third listing is a post from this very thread at SEW.

If you look at the cached version of the page, it says that it is highlighting that term. In this case since it is in quotes, the highlight color is solid yellow. But the term does not visually show up on the normal or the text cached views.

Googlebot does not read the display:none (or does not understand it, much like JavaScript). There are a number of CSS attributes that Googlebot will not pick up on, but will still read the anchor and it's text. One common method is setting the position of links to -X and -Y coords so to the browser they are not viewable, but to the spider they are. Setting font-size: 0px; in the stylesheet is another method -- not that all of these methods are used for devious intentions I might add though.

Update on my links. All of the SEW backlinks have disappeared. Bummer. :(

[rustybrick]

Just like to add that this is the second BackLink update of SEW Forum's history. :) :rolleyes:

[bethabernathy]

Hi There - It looks like they are dropping a certain ratio of internal page back links. I have lost alot of good external backlinks. It seems like anything with PR of 2 or 3/10 only remains. I had one 6/10 and it is gone.

[Dodger]

It appears that the backlinks have settled down at Google and are back to normal, or depending on your viewpoint -- abnormal.

But over at HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/) which uses Google supplied results, their LINK: query is showing the over-inflated pre-settled results.

Not all sites are reporting the higher garbage included totals. However, the sites I am seeing with the higher totals are the same sites that showed a backlink adjustment back on July 4th.

[bethabernathy]

Hi - So far it looks to me like they are keeping only 1 or 2 internal back links per webpage and then keeping only external backlinks with a 4/10 or below. Doesn't look like PR is changing. SERP's seem to be fairly consistent.