Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2015

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System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4739952.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 2:27 pm on Apr 1, 2015 (gmt 0)

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My guess is: Google changed something when referring a visitor, not showing were they originally came from.

I saw this too. Freaked out big time when I saw the percent drop in Google referrers. I also noticed pages missing from the SERPS - but not consistently. Sometimes a particular page would be there and sometimes it wouldn't. And I don't mean just not ranking, I mean not indexed at all. Odd thing was, our traffic was up overall during this.

[Kratos]

Thanks. That makes sense. It does seem like Europeans do take Easter more seriously as countries like France started the holiday on Thursday and it is not uncommon to come back to normal life by Tuesday.

When can we expect Spring break in April? it does seem like it isn't fixed on a date for everyone, but surely there must be a range of days where all college kids are out and drunk, right?

[Kratos]

@Johan007 I may be wrong but I think Google has pushed big updates right before holidays. I say this because I recall lots of people complaining about some Panda update before a big holiday period, although I didn't take much notice as I only got good things out of that update. And they have certainly done tweaks that have left the webmaster community begging to know what it was while Google kept itself silent (e.g. during Christmas).

Also, doesn't Google have a fetish with pushing updates on Fridays to cause the most inconvenience to spammers?

There's a video of Matt Cutts somewhere on Youtube saying that they would rather not do big updates prior to holidays, but what they interpret as "big updates" and certainly "big enough" to warrant publicizing the update is anyone's guess.

I'm continuing with business as usual, but I would not be surprised if Google did something right before or during a holiday. Especially something that they didn't confirm publicly. Let's not forget how Google has kept its silence regarding anything but the mobile update and even then, the information about it is being drip fed to us by a guy (Mueller) who is a nice guy but sometimes creates more confusion than actually provide a useful answer.

[samwest]

@ Kratos - you are correct, they push updates out whenever they please, holidays included. They definitely pushed SOMETHING out around April 1st and it's stinking, I mean sticking. As far as "confirming publicly" - they claim to not do that anymore. We have to decipher the crash by the wreckage only.

Traffic down over 50% from March, sales non existent. Can't keep going much longer at this rate. Apparently I'm the only one seeing this drop so it's no big deal to G. They couldn't care less if it was 100,000 of us. I've survived every update since Florida, but this one is putting the final nails in my coffin.

[samwest]

This cruel joke of Google's continues...can't believe I got singled out this time. Apparently everyone else is doing just fine. Some traffic but no buyers. Just like a switch was turned off.

[Dave_Hybrid]

I love to hate Google. I also buy a lot of adwords traffic. Some days it buys a lot of stuff, some days it doesn't. This is the quality traffic you all keep saying they syphon off from organic to sell me... It's just traffic, some days are better than others, some days the local corner shop sells more cabbages than others. It's just people, habits fluctuate... long term trends are what counts...

[samwest]

If the corner store sells no cabbages for weeks, they go bankrupt. Usually happens when the street is closed months for repairs. Sound familiar?

[Dave_Hybrid]

Could be 100 other reasons, maybe the cabbages are bad, maybe there are bigger, cheaper, tastier alternatives just down the street. Or maybe mind altering drones are convincing people not to buy for some evil plan. The point is traffic quality fluctuates, and for many reasons. To say Google is deliberately hording buying traffic to sell via adwords and they randomly flick a switch some days and not others testing this is pretty far fetched, at least my adwords traffic compared to my organic does not suggest this is the case. The facts are the higher you rank, including Adwords will get you better traffic, traffic clicking 1 in SERPS is more likely to buy than the person deep down clicking position 30. That user is probably much colder, more patience, probably researching. So yes, Adwords will get you more traffic, probably better quality, but saying from one day to the next Google can mass filter buyers for their own gains is a stretch. Some days more people buy, or don't, than others.

[edited by: Dave_Hybrid at 6:05 am (utc) on Apr 6, 2015]

[Kratos]

@SamWest as unfair as it may be, when you play with Google, you're in for the good and the bad. Google gives, Google takes. Google also doesn't owe anything to us webmasters or at least that's what they think. When all it would take is for all of us to block Google on robots.txt to see how they'd contact every site via WMT to beg Google to let them back in. It's too late now, but I sure never explicitly allowed Google to come into my first site (when I knew 0 about SEO) and let them crawl it and index my context.

I am currently trying to diversify my sources of traffic even though my Google traffic is rising. I am simply not going to hope that a computer algorithm gets my site right every single time.

It's a sad reality that has really taken home with me in the last 6 months as I have seen some awesome sites (not mine) wiped out as collateral damage. We also suffered a neg.SEO attack that impacted a site negatively and this was a big site too with strong natural links. The SERPs are just too dynamic and can be really fragile.

Also don't give up just yet. Wait for the last 4th week of April. I won't be making any SEO decisions until mid May or so when I think we will all be able to tell what has gone on with the mobile update and anything else that Google does or has seem to be doing since mid March.

[Babadook]

Dave, respectfully, you need to take the red pill...

[samwest]

Dave thinks I just fell off the turnip truck. I've been at this for 15 years and pioneered my niche. Not like that means anything. What bothers me the most is the "unnatural" patterns I see every day. Prior to 2010, my daily variation was quite large, as it was allowed to peak naturally. In statistics, I believe this is refereed to as Kurtosis or "peakedness" and basically it describes a natural distribution. Since 2010 that "peakedness" has been (at least in my data) slowly clamped (flattened) as G moved toward making a profit.

When I see 10 weeks in a row where Sunday has 1000 unique visitors and each week the variation is +/- 5 visits you start to wonder...or maybe think you should go hit the casino slots. I have so many examples of this it's not funny.

If you think G doesn't move it's own interests above the fold (especially in my vertical), you've been living on the dark side of the moon. When they go up 20% and we go down 20% the math is pretty easy. Everything above the fold and most recently on page one is an ad network partner. They have stripped over 14k key phrases per month...leaving less than 1k...and that continues to slowly dwindle.

Mean time, some garbage article on about dot com ranks above the fold across the board on every search, even though the keyphrase is nowhere to be found on the page.

@bab - that's a good one! it's always great in wonderland.

[Babadook]

Samwest, I like you have been at this a long time, and I agree that the flux makes no sense and even that which shows up on page 1 has a low percentage of conversion. I don't use anything G anymore, no search, no analytics, no adwords, no plus, no YouTube and have removed them from my phone, I have thrown out my Chromebook too, recycled it. Everyone must do a deep cleansing of this web cancer. This doesn't even take into account that they are in bed with the government spying on us. This has gone nowhere but down, and now that we're at the bottom, it's time to switch to rebuild a new web life without G. They favor scrapers, big corporations, the ads don't work, break even at best. Don't be evil? Get real. They make Microsoft look like the good guys in white hats, so that's where I've gone to.

[Babadook]

Oh yeah, no WMT either, the info there is always inaccurate. It's like a web colon cleansing!

[rish3]

@Babadook: This has gone nowhere but down, and now that we're at the bottom, it's time to switch to rebuild a new web life without G

Does that mean your secret isn't working anymore?

@Babadook "I think it's sad to see what most are going through in regards to Google. After many problems of my own and reading between the lines, I found out the secret to the problem everyone is having. It has worked wonderfully. There is a way out."

[bwnbwn]

rish3 beat me to it. +!

[samwest]

For the past few hours all I get on GA is: "An Error Has Occurred
We're sorry. The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes." Did they forget to pay the electric bill or is the system really screwed up now?

[ken_b]

For the past few hours all I get on GA is: "An Error Has Occurred
We're sorry. The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes."

Same here. Intermittent though, and "real time" get giving a message that they'd try to reconnect.

I finally gave up for the moment.
.

[Babadook]

I didn't say I wasn't making it work, I do. Do you see the secret now? We are at the bottom and it's right there in plain sight. Didn't say it was a goldmine, just a way out.

[samwest]

More bold moves overnight. Big change on a long time phrase that I ranked #1 on for years. For the phrase, it moved from #1 down to #6. The new #1 result is a block of "Shop On Google" photo ads. Plans for filling every orifice.
Who said Google doesn't "deliberately horde buying traffic"?

At one time scrapers and those who game the system were the bane of the serps. Sadly it's become Google themselves.

[EditorialGuy]

Today, our Google organic traffic was up about 40% over last Tuesday--probably because of mobile search, since our mobile PVs were up by a similar percentage.

(Information site, English-language, international audience.)

[Furqan]

this changes is sgine of an update but now days google Used to change rankings without update any algorithm....

[anand84]

One local business website I am working on did not see any significant change in the past 3 months, but saw a decent jump for a lot of its keywords this past week. The update appears to have happened right around Good Friday.

[Babadook]

The root issue with things like serps is that they reflect a disregard for any moral underpinnings. What am I saying? When the US federal government runs over our laws like it's a speed bump, many other entities do too, like corporations. They follow in lock step thinking, "if they don't care about people, then why should we?" and then they dive into seeking cash as a end to itself. So what that means for us here is that no one should pay any attention to anything search engines say. There is nothing you can do to change how bad the results are until these people have a spiritual / moral epiphany and genuinely CARE about the people they've hurt. You have to ignore all the talk about this update or that update and realize that companies like G have lost their way. This happens all the time, but in this case, they turned on and smashed the very people who brought them success, the little guy. So my friends, the only way to change this is to stop using entities that don't represent your best interest, and are in fact opposed to you. Stop playing their game and start playing your own. Use them only when it makes economic sense, other than that, dump them like a bad habit. We live in times like I've never seen, people have lost their minds and are spiritually bankrupt. This is reflected in search results and what these companies are trying to do, control our free Internet.

[RedBar]

and genuinely CARE about the people they've hurt.

Unfortunately they do not give a fig, and this has been happening for many years, and they ain't going to change their ways simply to placate us since they're hand-in-hand with all those who proclaim moral high standards yet when push comes to shove they're as bad, if not worse, than anyone else.

Do not expect any changes from the Gorg anytime...soon.

[Babadook]

I agree with you 100% RedBar, and the only way change will come is when we all stop using them and encourage everyone we know to do the same. Wouldn't it be nice if reviews applied to them, talk about a 1-star rating they would get.

[Babadook]

I just dumped my gmail account, woooo! Don't need it, don't want it anymore. It's all part of a web soul cleansing. Will it help Google search results? I don't know because I don't use their search either and I don't care.

[RedBar]

G search results in my widget sector for the UK are so bad that they're pointless, for their .com searches they are very iffy and as for image search, it's lovely to see all my 15 year old images on brand new useless scrapers!

[samwest]

@RB - being in a very similar vertical and being an ecom, we seem to be experiencing very similar results. Any time I find my images, they are on a scraper site. I suspect this is because I filed a few DMCA complaints through G back in 2012. Since then, they refuse to index ANY of my new images....unless of course it gets stolen and posted on a scraper's MFA site.

I am still seeing another ridiculous pattern that has manifested itself in 2015. Nearly every day, I get one sale (conversion) at between 6am and 7am. Most times it's 6:30 +/- 10 minutes. How precise is that? I wouldn't think much of that, except that after that time frame, I am SHUT DOWN for the rest of the day. It's as if they switch data sets during that time and I get a very brief period of "lucid" traffic. Looking a big zero traffic right now at 9am.

They really seem to have this vertical targeted for assimilation. That or as one now departed & respected moderator once suggested, these sites are targeted as test subjects.

I have a few client sites that are seeing slight traffic upswings since April 1st, but they are in unrelated markets.

[EditorialGuy]

There is nothing you can do to change how bad the results are until these people have a spiritual / moral epiphany and genuinely CARE about the people they've hurt.

Not every page can rank in the top 3, or the top 10, or even the top 100. Even if the search engines' algorithms were perfect, there would always be winners and losers.

I can remember when, even in the days before e-books, American publishers were churning out 50,000 or more books per year. Few of those books got reviewed by PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY or THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW or made it into bookstores' display windows. They were simply lost in a sea of competitors, just like most Web pages in today's SERPs.

[rish3]

Not every page can rank in the top 3, or the top 10, or even the top 100. Even if the search engines' algorithms were perfect, there would always be winners and losers.

Who is it here, exactly, that you think doesn't understand this? I assume you're aware that platitudes like that just come across as condescending, rather than serving as some sort of food for thought.

If you'll just give people the benefit of doubt, and not assume they lack intelligence, you might interpret "how bad the results are" to mean that they feel top ranking results are one of the following

- Not relevant to the query
- Pushed down by ads, widgets, KG entries
- Spam, or otherwise artificially boosted

Assuming that the person that says "how bad the results are" thinks that when a good result moves down, it gets replaced by empty space isn't really helpful.

If your opinion is that the SERPS are actually better than they used to be, it would be more helpful to offer something that backed that up.

For example, if the organics have improved in quality over the years, I would expect that percentage of organic clicks would have risen over time, as compared to PPC clicks. There's some publicly available data you could extrapolate to try and show that, and perhaps that would be compelling.

[Babadook]

@EGuy - that's got nothing to do with it. What I mean by bad results is the effectiveness, not WHERE it is. Respectfully, quit giving a pass to G like it is some kind of benign or hapless being that doesn't know what it's doing.