Return of the Google Glitchy

Over the last week or so, I have been spending a great deal of time in Google's Webmaster Tools. I am working on the finishing SEO for new sites, and redesigns pretty intensely. Unfortunately, Google has been a pain in my optimization. Back in Mid September, you might remember when the "Google Glitchy" was wreaking havoc in Webmaster's Tools. SEO Scoop kept a pretty close watch on it, and reported it fixed on Sept. 19, 2007. The official explanation was an "issue on Google's end", reported by SEO Scoop.

So recently, I am seeing some of the same...Ugh. I currently have 15 sites in my tools, and 5 of them for no apparent reason have required revalidation in the last week. Some sites, this blog for example have no crawl stats showing anymore. I have has 3 sitemap errors, for sitemaps that were in place more than 5 crawls previous with no changes. I wasn't even able to resubmit them, I had to generate new ones. It's odd, because I use the same program for all 15 sites, and only 3 were erred. I have had 3 pages reported "404" in my summary, that were allegedly blocked by robots.txt. However, every one of these sites is using an untouched robots.txt for more than 3 months now. I even checked, on my server and Google's copy in tools....These pages are not blocked. Not a big deal, as long as they are read correctly, on next crawl. I am also seeing freaky "unreachable" pages. For example, one of my site's main pages was "network unreachable". I run tracking software, the site was not down. The main page is a full CSS / XHTML page, that loads quick as hell. So, I can only assume with the other issues, that the "Google Glitchy" has returned to the SEO world.

I don't mind Google's "FREE" Webmaster Tools might have some data issues, or related bugs. However, I don't like having to re validate sites and jump through hoops checking robots.txt. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I really don't rely on Google's SEO data, but clearly using the tool set is an advantageous decision for any webmaster. Let's hope Google gets "Glitchy" back in the cage soon, and the problems get resolved.

Peace and SEO

Melanie Prough
"Baby"


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