The Inevitable Google is Updating Forum Thread

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It’s spring time in the United States. Flowers are a’blooming and SEO’s are stirring about the discussion forums and pollinating threads. Forums rock, but one annoyance I have is the same topics seem to get posted over and over. This is due to the way forum software is designed–threads asking/answering the same question descend into the nether regions of unbumped posts and eventually get buried.

As sure as the seasons, every SEO knows that Google updates toolbar PageRank and backlinks about 4 times each year. It’s quite comical to observe how one person, usually a newbie, posts a new thread in the webmaster forums announcing that he is not sure, but he may have discovered a Google update is underway. Lurkers chime in, questioning, rebutting, ridiculing in prosaic banter until finally everyone agrees that a Google update has occurred. Then, there remains only one thing to be said.

“Google is updating.”

“I’m seeing changes.”

“Me too!”

“I don’t see anything. Wait, now I do.”

“When is the next update?”

The inevitable “Google is updating forum thread” became such an annoyance at SitePoint that the Google Forum moderator posted a sticky thread explaining the frequency of Google PR updates and warning members not to “start any new threads asking about when the next update will occur.” I checked a few forums and quickly picked out the Google update threads. Like the seasons, I doubt that this ritual will ever change.

Emory Rowland

Emory Rowland is editor and keeper of the flame at Clickfire. He's a fanatical blogger, entrepreneur and builder of Internet things from way back. He's a founder of several blogs including Testimony Share, a site that encourages Christians from all over the world to write and share their testimonies (see his). Emory's love for social media and success with organic search lead him to start Leverable, a SEO consulting venture. Later, he joined a leading Atlanta search marketing agency where he currently develops SEO strategies for top online brands. Apart from the Internet, he could be considered by many as pretty worthless. More...

3 comments

  1. azrin March 23, 2007

    yeah, they hit out at popular blogs who Ping them too often.
    Make sure your sitemap is in order and all running A-OK or else….I suffered a huge drop last time.

  2. stacy May 21, 2007

    I am trying to find out when google is updating the pr. I have been a pr 2 for a while now and I have added a lot of backlinks and still nothing.

  3. Ken Durham July 27, 2011

    LOL – This subject always make me chuckle, seeing everyone bragging or complaining at update time. I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I manage to convince someone that has their eye stuck on that little green Google Bar, that they should instead be more interested in that traffic graph in their Google Analytics and in their sales/income report for that month. Frankly, aside from personal gratification, about the only good thing I have ever seen from a PR update is when trying to flip a site.

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