Has Google Changed the Way They Index Us JUsers?

where have my referrals gone?

Published on August 16, 2004 By Gene Nash In Internet

For a while now I have noticed my number of referrals listed down there at the bottom of the sidebar has not been changing. I wondered what was up with that. Then I noticed, as I scanned my articles, that the referrals for all my recent articles read zero. Now I'm getting really suspicious.

Last night I did some poking around. All of my articles (except the one on Google Bombing I just posted last night) are indexed. I went to Google and typed in some keywords from my more recent articles. None of my articles came up in the first 30 results. (I have Google set to give me 30 results at a time.) I found that odd. In the past JoeUser articles tended to rank toward the top. My articles are indexed, the keywords are in there, why wasn't anything showing up? I varied my keywords. I tried searches I was convinced should return my articles as a result. Nothing.

I started adding "gene" or "gene nash" to the search. Finally something showed up. Here is the curious part. I was getting the same result for all my recent articles: my blog's main page. The individual articles were not showing up as results. Very odd.

I poked around some more. I checked out Gideon's blog. He has not had a referral from a search engine since an article posted on August 3rd. I looked back through my articles. I also have not had a referral from a search engine since, not coincidentally, an article posted on August 3rd. Curiouser and curioser. I checked out Brad's blog. His most recent referral from Google was last Thursday August 12th,, but it does come from the forum version of the article, not the one served up as part of his blog. The last article I can see of Brad's that has a Google referral that points to the actual article is from August 6th.

After my odd experience with trying to get my article to come up in a Google search I decided to check out the progress of our JU Google Bomb on Fred Harteis. Nothing. I put "Gideon" in the search to force the page to come up. Same results as my blog: only his main page was listed, not the individual article. That's not good.

During my research for the Google Bombing article last night, I happened upon a page claiming Google Bombs were basically dead and making a big deal about a "Google update of July 16th." This got me to thinking. I wonder if Google made a change to their system on or around August 3rd that seriously affected the way our blogs are indexed. Checking the JoeUser.com pages that contain "Fred Harteis" shows all the articles (well all the articles that have the date of posting visible on the results page) were posted prior to August 3rd.

As my total referral thud shows, not having the individual articles indexed as before, if Google has truly made this change, is going to have a serious impact on our individual traffic. I find this fairly distressing.

Do you think they have changed how they index our articles? Have you seen a decline in the frequency of your search engine referrals? Have they dried up completely?

Comments (Page 1)

WiseFawn

on Aug 16, 2004

It's nice to see this article. One of the things I kept reminding people of when they were ready to quit JoeUser, was their referral lists. I noticed before I deleted my articles that they had stopped getting any referrals. It's been dead for some now. My brother told me once that he typed in WiseFawn and got tons of pages on me. So, I did it and got tons. Then another time I did it, it started only pointing to my responses on other people's blogs, none of my own articles at all. I have not typed it in for a while now. One time when I typed it though, it came up on a page called uninstall mywebserach.com wisefawn, but I couldn't understand a thing there.

Draginol

on Aug 16, 2004

I haven't seen a change. I think it depends on how specific the article is and how deep in JU it is.

My article on Owens Corning is #1 on Google still after nearly a year:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=Owens+Corning+Basement+System+Review

Gene Nash

on Aug 16, 2004

I haven't seen a change. I think it depends on how specific the article is and how deep in JU it is.

My article on Owens Corning is #1 on Google still after nearly a year:

From what I could tell it's not retroactive. The articles they had indexed individually (the "index.asp?AID=###") are still so indexed. I just couldn't find anything newer than say August 4th-6th that was indexed that way. My "index.asp?AID=###" articles from before that time are still listed, but nothing newer is indexed that way.

Your article from the 12th was the forums version. Everything else I could find was either aggregated pages (like the main blog pages or the featured articles pages) or pages where just the titles are linked (like the list of newest articles or the bloglist.asp pages). Of course, I only checked the few things I mentioned.

Searching on "Brad Wardell" brought up

Opinionated Techie - JoeUser.com: blogs from the average joe
DesktopX widgets of note. Konfabulator on Windows? By Draginol Posted Saturday,
August 14, 2004 on Opinionated Techie Discussion: OS Customization. ...
draginol.joeuser.com/ - 101k - Aug 14, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

Opinionated Techie - JoeUser.com: A working history for Brad ...
A working history for Brad Wardell. Why I think anyone can make it. By Draginol
Posted Saturday, July 03, 2004 on Opinionated Techie Discussion: Business. ...
draginol.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=20053 - 50k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from draginol.joeuser.com ]

See how the first one is your main page, and the second one is an article posted July 3rd? When I used to do that in the past (to anyone's name) it would have the latest individual article there, not the main page. I clicked on "[ More results from draginol.joeuser.com ]" and looked at a few pages but I couldn't find any individual articles cataloged from the past week or so, even though you and Gideon and me were all indexed on the 14th. (Granted, I didn't look very far through that list of your articles, but I did look at everything that came up for me.)

Anyway, I hope you are right and they haven't stopped cataloging the articles individually. Sometimes I like to be wrong.

Gene Nash

on Aug 16, 2004

Okay, try this. I Googled "JoeUser mafia" because at the very least my article about Tammy Pescatelli should come up, right?

On page two, we find

Random Thoughts - JoeUser.com: blogs from the average joe
... accept Sicily? "Italians aren't Mafia," they tell me, "that's the
Sicilians." Nope, we real Italians are saints, martyrs even. See ...
randomthoughts.joeuser.com/ - 101k - Aug 14, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

The quoted text is from the Tammy Pescatelli article, but the link is to my blog, not that specific article. All the other links that came up in the search were to specific articles, but all those articles are older. The most recent one was from Anne Alogy and it was posted... August 4th.

Ooooo, I hope I am wrong.

WiseFawn

on Aug 16, 2004

Just wanted to let you know, when I signed on tonight, two of my articles had one referral each!

historyishere

on Aug 16, 2004

I got a referral from getting to a comments page for my blog through google....

Gene Nash

on Aug 17, 2004

Just wanted to let you know, when I signed on tonight, two of my articles had one referral each!

Yeah! And from Google, yet!

I looked at the search pages the referals came from. Unfortunately, as with Brad's article, they both came from the forum threads.

I do hope some start pouring in from the individual articles (which were posted after August 4th-6th) being indexed.

While functionally a referral is a referral, what concerns me as that if the forum thread scrolls off, there won't be anymore referrals from it. The referrals were much more likely to come from the individual articles being indexed right off the blog. Some of my articles I don't even put in the forums!

Congrat's, WiseFawn. I hope it is a promising trend and that Google also goes back to indexing the blog versions of the individual articles.

Gene Nash

on Aug 17, 2004

I got a referral from getting to a comments page for my blog through google....

historyishere,

That sounds good! Was it from an article posted after August 6th? I hope.

I'll go look at your blog.

Update: Whoops. All of your articles are posted after the 6th! I'm checking it out now. be back later.

Gene Nash

on Aug 17, 2004

politicalmachine.com Forums: Thread "Are you a Neoconservative?"
... Reply #5 By: Draginol - 8/12/2004 5:19:16 PM. My result: Realist. Realist. ... Thank you
HistoryIsHere. ... There is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States. ...
www.politicalmachine.com/Forums.asp?MID=3&AID=24328 - 68k - Cached - Similar pages

The Political Machine
... Posted By: Draginol Date Posted: 8/12/2004 5:19:16 PM ... 8/13/2004 3:45:42 AM Thank you
HistoryIsHere. ... There is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States ...
www.politicalmachine.com/ Articles.asp?MID=3&AID=24328 - 78k - Aug 14, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.politicalmachine.com ]

Are you a Neoconservative? - A JoeUser Article
... Reply |. Reply By: Draginol, Posted: Thursday, August 12, 2004. ... Thank you HistoryIsHere. ... There
is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States. ...
historyishere.joeuser.com/articleComments.asp?AID=24328 - 93k - Aug 14, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

Interesting. (I was surprised to see all your Joe Schmo referrals came from Spike TV. Not one from Google. Also interesting.)

Okay -- well if a change was made I do not think it could have been as late as as the 12th. Surely Gideon would have had something with as frequently as he posts. I wonder if it has something to do with you being a new user?

I had originally wondered if my linking style had somehow penalized me with Google's new algo, but Gideon doesn't use many links, so that couldn't be it. If it was the linking -- even just from the sidebar, you'd think you'd have been penalized too.... Unless it has to build up and you haven't tipped their scales yet.

I'm just trying to make sense of why the article versions of the other blogs I checked (including mine) don't seem to be individually indexed, not even the comments pages. Even searching on "tammy pescatelli" gene reply MacLeish didn't bring up a comment page. It brought up nothing actually. The last individually indexed article of mine that I can bring up is, "Waiting for Something Good," posted on August 4th. (Similarly, while trying to bring up your Joe Schmo article, I just kept getting the "Are You A Neoconservative" article. Could being featured on the front page have affected it?)

Oh well. Probably at some point things will be back to normal (assuming they aren't still normal and the irregular results aren't a fluke) and I'll relax and be happy. Till then I'm still poking around. (See, this is what spending hours researching search engine wonks's arcane attempts to divine Google's every little twitch will do to a person. Don't write an article about Google! It is contagious!!

)

Thank you historyishere. Okay, that looks like one. Is there anyone else out there? Hopefully someone who didn't start their blog after August 6th (so I can eliminate that possibility)?

Dusk411

on Aug 17, 2004

Actually, I noticed a dip in referrals myself. My older articles still get referred, but all of my new ones have zero referrals.

chiprj

on Aug 17, 2004

I did a google for my 11 Aug Korean vocabulary quizz (the words contained in them are pretty unique due to the Korean to English transliteration system) and I got a positive hit for my main blog page, but not the individual article. So, I think the referal will go to my site, but not in the stats for that particular article.

When I did a search based on a word from my 22 July Korean vocabulary quiz, I got a hit for my main page again (the link took me to my front page, not the actual page the post was on), but google also had a link for related results (since it had grouped all positive hits for that word under the main result - my main blog page). When I clicked on the related results, the link to the individual article appeared.

Don't know if that helps, but that's what I have found in my limited googling based on this post.

My google referals continue to go up day to day, but I have noticed that no recent articles have specific referals.

Just throwing my two pennies at ya...

Gene Nash

on Aug 17, 2004

Dusk411
Actually, I noticed a dip in referrals myself. My older articles still get referred, but all of my new ones have zero referrals

chiprj
I did a google for my 11 Aug Korean vocabulary quizz ... I got a positive hit for my main blog page, but not the individual article. So, I think the referal will go to my site, but not in the stats for that particular article.

... my 22 July Korean vocabulary quiz, ... When I clicked on the related results, the link to the individual article appeared.

Thank you Dusk and Chip. That's pretty much in line with what I have been seeing, with the pre-early August articles being individual and the newest one being only the main page. (With the exception of historyishere, whose featured article's comments page is seperate.) And, of course, some but not all of the forum versions being listed. (My articles I checked didn't have the forum versions indexed.) My referrals are creeping up by 2 or 3 a day, but it is nowhere near what it was before.

I really believe they have changed something. The problem I have with this is that the main pages are so large and Google lists how big a page is. When I see a 100+k page, I don't click on it! I look at the more reasonably sized pages in the results. If others are like me, they'll skip right over us.

I also suspect it is having an impact on how high the pages lists, because a single article page is more relevant to a search than when the information people are looking for is burried in with nine other articles.

historyishere

on Aug 19, 2004

I just got a referral to "Are you a Neoconservative?" from Google for the article itself.... second on the list after the actual page that inspired it. Of course, the search term was the actual title of the piece, so that might need looking into.

About the Joe Schmo 2 piece... well, the reason that there are so many referrals from SpikeTV is because there is a link in their show blog comments. But I have been getting hits from google about that article as well, and as it has no comments, it must be going to that article. Either they've retweaked it, or the system is adjusting to the changes.

Gideon MacLeish

on Aug 19, 2004

Interesting that you bring this up, Gene. I had figured my LP platform posts would have more hits from outside JU (not that that's why I'm posting them). Interestingly enough, it's been light. Maybe it's just a phase...lol

historyishere

on Aug 19, 2004

I think the new algorithm for google is taking some time to integrate new articles... and when you search for your name, you have to unomit duplicate type responses to find some of them.

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