Google Exceptionally Slow Index Times?

[Michael Martinez]

I'm not sure it's Caffeine that is causing the apparent delay. Bill Slawski may have identified a complex issue in Google's listings that could possibly relate to all this (you really need to read through all the dozens of comments on that post to see what I mean).

It seems like Google is gorging itself on data and may not exactly know what to do with all that data.

[jdwanchalk]

Would it be fair to say that Google is in the middle of some major changes? I would say it was a better search engine, overall, six months ago than it is today.

[Michael Martinez]

Well, as I have dug deeper into the current Google climate, I have found many people complaining of similar symptoms:

• Huge drops in reported indexed pages
• Drops in Google referral traffic
• Google seems to be slow to update cache images of indexed pages

This is actually quite common during the Fall. Every year since 2002/2003 (except last year), starting sometime around September or October, Google search results have gone through immense turmoil with forums and blogs lighting up with complaints similar to those I've outlined above.

The situation usually settles down after a couple of months. I have come to call this syndrome Google's Fall Flurries.

Usually, doing nothing won't hurt you. Your content gradually comes back, apparently as Google crawls the Web and rebuilds its index or whatever it does.

However, I have found (and others also seem to agree) that publishing new content pages works best for getting through the Fall Flurries. That is, just adding content to a site and changing nothing seems to be the best strategy.

Now, that doesn't mean that everyone is suffering from the same issue. After all, all the normal stuff continues: people accidentally screw up their sites, people change out their sites or content, Google dinks with its ranking algorithm on an almost probable daily basis, Google develops new filters for links, etc.

So there could be other things happening and the Fall Flurries might be masking some people's issues. You just have to be careful about drawing conclusions on the basis of little information. I would be skeptical of anything at a time like this, but one should still take prudent courses of action.

Always have a Plan B ready, and always be working on a Plan C.

[Sebastian]

I heard that Google is running low on server batteries because of component shortages in Taiwan, which is where they import from. Eric Schmidt is ordering some more triple AAA batteries though.

[Guerreiro]

Just started a new project, no submission to Google, no pinging, no nothing. Indexed and ranked top ten after three weeks on URL keywords. Granted it is a unknown niche, but still. So maybe Google is getting selective in their pickings these days? Btw, I did not even use Wordpress (What?!), yeah you heard me.

[Lech_Walesa]

if you have indexing issues and don't have bulit in CMS pinging module you can do this via sites like: Pingomatic or PingDevice and don't forget to submit yours RSS feeds to Blogdigger and other similar sites.
Good indexing influence have Twitts with links to your content.