March 2007 Google SERP Changes

[rawley2]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

"I think some of us are seeing a different variation. I know my site and at least someone else on this thread ranks # 1 if you type in their domain name. Or domain.com. Back actual pages by title, those that used to be in the top 10 SERPS are now about 10 pages back, in the 100+ range. "

This is exactly what I'm seeing. I'm holding many keywords fine but all my big keywords are gone most of the time.

Our site is swinging up and down all day long. Sometimes I search for red widget and we are not on page 1 but we are in the top 4 pages then a search an hour later and we are blasted back to the bottom of the results.

Other keywords seem stuck at the bottom.

As a result our Google traffic is down more than 80%.

We have lost many keywords that we have held #1 on for years. How can we go from #1 to the bottom or not even showing over night?

I have done nothing to deserve this and cant seem to figure out why this happened.

[edited by: tedster at 7:17 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2007]

[stiffpicken]

i'm seeing massive changes in the SERPs as well. my Google traffic is down about 80% from where it 'normally' would be on a monday

[leeds1]

I saw some big changes last week on .co.uk but it seems to be back to the previous week again now for the industry I watch.

[thecityofgold2005]

For me there are small changes every day across different terms, and this has been the situation for more than a year at least.

Hence this thread is useless! The era of mass-updates is well and truly over.

[trinorthlighting]

We are not seeing any changes except the everflux.

[Devendra Mishra]

If you get one way links for your website more than 10, you will see the changes. If you want take a risk, you can.

[ntanase]

Devendra Mishra:

What you are saying is a non-sense. So if I want to hurt another site I'll make 1000 websites and I link to his website?

my 2c,
Nicu TANASE

[Silicon]

Over the weekend both our websites and our competitor's index pages have disappeared for a highly competitive keyword. PR, Site command, Link command all seem to be fine for the site. Just the root domain is not listed which brings in the most traffic.

Another thing that is strange is that for most particular keywords that the index page used to rank for, the results are identical to the allintext: keyword command. Our index page is still showing and ranking well for allintitle & allinanchor but nowhere to be found for allintext.

I've done some research here and it seems this maybe a Google glitch since all other vitals appear to be normal. Is anyone else having the same trouble recently? Has anyone else lost their main domain (not subpages) for a lengthy period of time never to recover? Is this a technical issue? Our root site does not appear to be hijacked...

[edited by: tedster at 8:45 pm (utc) on Mar. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[Spine]

I've seen many of the "quality" sites in my sector having their index pages bumped to around page 10 of SERPs the past few days.

[SEOPTI]

" If you get one way links for your website more than 10, you will see the changes."

Where have you been living, in the jungle? :)

[Silicon]

Hmmm...thinking we may have tripped a google-bomb filter for our home page? Knocked down the root URL only? all of the top 10 results look a little too hand done, you have wikipedia and gov sites only...11-20 seem like the usual FFA.

[Andy217]

Would this affect my Google Pagerank?

[edited by: Andy217 at 9:24 pm (utc) on Mar. 5, 2007]

[lfgoal]

" If you get one way links for your website more than 10, you will see the changes. If you want take a risk, you can."

By your reasoning, would I be extra safe if I asked everyone who ever gave me a one-way link to recode it as a nofollow?

[kidder]

Something unusual is shaking things up right now - My domain name alone would return about 1000 results "domain name" - It's picking up the on text - What I see now it's down in the 700's on some DC's - there is no logical reason for this other than it must be updating or pushing a whole batch of new data or something. We are right out of the serps right now - a week ago we were in then out... Yahoo and MSN are driving us more traffic than ever - even MSN which is often all over the place seems bankable by comparison. Vista might just be driving some more inquires and from where I stand that is a good thing. Maybe the time is coming when we will see google results "powered by MSN & Yahoo" now there is a laugh. I had a chat with an "end user" the other day and he complained about not being able to not find the sites he used in Google any more - users will quickly train themselves to bookmark sites or switch engines.

[renomart]

Now, more than ever, I see my sitename being searched for in Google a great deal as people can't easily find my site anymore...

[angiolo]

I think that there is a "targeted" google bomb filter: it seems to me that the filter doesn't penalize the full site, but only the "targeted keywords"; and probably Google refers to old data... I had been penalized for a two keyword phrase I targeted more than one year ago...

Another factor seems to me the clicks you receive and the behavior of visitors. If you receive clicks for some keywords and visitors vill "stick" with your site, your ranking for those keyword goes up!

[followgreg]

I am not sure what they are playing at right now, but if this is intentional someone explain me why.

If this is targeting websites that "target" keywords then Google must start asking themselves what the benefit is to rank websites that DO NOT target keywords....maybe because they are NOT relevant!

Right now, on most queries: most spammers are super stable on top, most link buyers/sellers are ultra stable on top.
It is certainly not about relevency, certainly not about related backlinks as I see real estate sites helping internet marketing businesses ranking high for example...and much worst.

I see Expired, unrelated craigslist listings ranking above our sites for core keywords - not to mention the whole forum, empty about.com categories, bookmarking sites where pages are not even related to the search anymore, and more...

As a user as well. For the first time in my life I find myself looking up to page 7 ...YES page s-e-v-e-n.
I have also rarely seen so many pages with so little content ranking instead of websites they actually link to (or simply talk about very briefly which is even worst.)
My mouse is red hot clicking and clicking and clicking and still not finding.
What do I have to do? change the way I type queries? Someone explain me....I must be too dumb to use the new Google apparently.
do I have to go to Yahoo now? I hate Yahoo...but if I am stupid enought not to find my stuff on page 1 anymore then I may change my habbits.

Why did they do that? They had a fine index a few months ago, even 4/5 weeks ago. Is this corporate suicide or does it really bring some good adwords $ juice? :)

I've been a big Google fan for years, but now I just don't get what they are after exactly.

[cyclic]

I fully agree. I am seeing search results in Google up to page 7 which is unheard of. The first two pages for my keywords are nonsense results with little to no content. My MSN searches have doubled and it is no coincidence that this started around the same time as this latest Google dance.

[kidder]

Ok so look at it from the Google perspactive - they don't want to serve trash into the organics at a time when Vista is ramping up. They are smarter than that you would have to think - perhaps the whole things has just blown out of their control, they operate in massive scales of data management that is pretty much an experiment in progress.

[JoeHouse]

Lost over 2000 links....Traffic WAAAY down.

Does anybody know if this is a temporary situation? What is going on?

[lfgoal]

"users will quickly train themselves to bookmark sites or switch engines."

I think that's already happening based on the comments I occasionally hear from average joe user.

"I think that there is a "targeted" google bomb filter: it seems to me that the filter doesn't penalize the full site, but only the "targeted keywords"

Why does everyone always think in terms of penalties? From where I sit, google seems to be getting a LOT MORE SPECIFIC about the results that a search will deliver. In other words, if your page generally addressed a topic and pulled a nice chunk of traffic based on pagerank and other ranking factors, that may no longer be the case. Now, you have to work five times as hard by creating pages that address every little search parameter because your page that concentrated on one topic and "sort of hit all the other topics" just won't cut it anymore. This seems (to me at least) to point to a weakening of page rank as a ranking factor in favor of just pure a$$ backlinks, internal and external. I've been noticing this trend for quite some time.

Unfortunately, this does have the effect of:

A. allowing more spam to creep into the results

B. allowing inferior pages to creep into the results

C. making it more difficult for users to find quality sites that, under older ranking criteria, used to be found at the top of the search results.

D. making life miserable for webmasters, PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO RUN ECOMMERCE SITES.

[Bewenched]

This morning checking webmaster tools I noticed that their external links listings are now only showing the spammiest links to us. We have very good links to the site, but now the webmaster tools links tool is just as useless as their external one .. :(

[Devendra Mishra]

"I think that there is a "targeted" google bomb filter: it seems to me that the filter doesn't penalize the full site, but only the "targeted keywords"; and probably Google refers to old data... I had been penalized for a two keyword phrase I targeted more than one year ago".

This is what I meant.

[lfgoal]

"I think that there is a "targeted" google bomb filter: it seems to me that the filter doesn't penalize the full site, but only the "targeted keywords"; and probably Google refers to old data... I had been penalized for a two keyword phrase I targeted more than one year ago".

This is what I meant."

That wouldn't make any sense at all. If it did, every single wikipedia page would come crashing down.

[Fritzms]

On 1 of the main keywords i monitor in the UK we have totally disappeared from Google web, but in the same position when i do a UK search?, we had this once before as we have a .com web address
Looks like someone at the plex has been playing with the knobs again!

[beren]

In my main area of concern, Google seems to have removed many of the top ranking sites that were using paid links. Which is a relief, because these sites have been beating us (we stay white hat).

This is a very good thing. I'm sorry I doubted you, Google. You are back on your game.

[Liane]

Don't go off half cocked and change your sites because of this. It is a typical Google shake up which happens from time to time. Some engineer somewhere just tweaked the wrong filter. In my opinion, It will settle down eventually and there will be a roll back. We all just have to ride it out for a few weeks.

At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it ... for now! :)

[lfgoal]

"In my main area of concern, Google seems to have removed many of the top ranking sites that were using paid links."

I really wish I saw that happening in the areas I watch, but its not. Just the usual. Buy lots of links and enjoy the clicks.

[lfgoal]

" Don't go off half cocked and change your sites because of this."

Sound advice.

[trinorthlighting]

Looking across the data centers, I am seeing two sets of data. Right now its a 50-50 split. Looks like an update is coming....

[Biggus_D]

"We all just have to ride it out for a few weeks."

How many weeks?

I've been enjoying the random SERPS for a month and some people for several months.