June 2007 Google SERP Changes

[steveb]

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

And now it has all completely changed to a result set similar to what wwas around a week ago.. gone are all the trivial bits of nothing.

Seems like somebody woke up down at the 'plex... "Oh crap, forgot to flip the 'make the results better' switch."

(Again, this only really applies to one word searches.)

[edited by: tedster at 4:37 pm (utc) on July 1, 2007]

[outland88]

Yes and many of the what I call the "seeded results" go unbothered by the problems.

[littlelarry]

On our retail site I've seen some of the same things listed in this post.

We've consistently held very good placement (positions 1 to 3) for our main keyword, and many of our 2-3 word search terms for nearly 3 years. Then, early this year we were completely gone for our main keyword search. Not de-listed, but, basically nowhere to be found.....however, we still had the good rankings for our 2-3 word terms. This would only last a day or two, then we'd return to our previous listings.

This happened twice. Once around Jan, then again around mid May.

Now, as of June 10th, we took a BIG hit on most terms. Our main keyword search term went from 3 to 27. And, most of our other terms went from top positions to positions 40, 50, plus.

Usually it seems like G implements a new algo, then come back over the next few days/weeks and make tweaks based on info they receive from it (whether it's from usage data, or forums like these, or elsewhere). It looks like it may be an update that was fairly widespread, yet affected many people in different ways. Or at least our site. Has anyone else heard of a similar situation to ours?

Over the last year it'd be safe to say we were a bit hesitant to make any major changes to the site due to our great placement. Now, it may be time to test some theories!

I'll continue surfing these forums and others, and do some other investigating, to get a better idea as to what happened to our site, and what changes we should be making. I'm sure as this post grows, it'll only help in the investigation process!

[tedster]

We've taken 53 recent posts from this location to create a new thread. We're calling this moment with Google

Update Buffy [webmasterworld.com]

[Bhavin]

Hello All,

Google SERP Updated Last Night. I have seen My Few Site Ranking Updated.

Any body checking this.

[edited by: tedster at 6:06 am (utc) on June 20, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[Beachboy]

Hmmmm no changes on the keyword phrases I watch.

*** yawn ***

Boring.

< Editor's note: at this point we took a break from this thread
and had some more SERP discussions over at Update Buffy [webmasterworld.com]. >

[edited by: tedster at 6:41 am (utc) on June 23, 2007]

[walkman]

I still see changes. I am not sure if it is a specific filter lifted for me or the update but traffic is almost double from last friday. Still only at about 25% of the highest traffic levels though, and for the most part, I only rank high for secondary (in importance) terms.

[pdivi]

Changes here, too. G traffic higher across almost all sites over past 3 days. But last night I noticed a big jump in supplementals for a couple of sites, so we'll see what happens today.

[Patrick Taylor]

I've noticed an increase in supplementals too (using the site: command). Those pages seem to have been dropped from Google's index altogether, but are still being crawled. TBPR shows grey.

[synergy]

My index page has completely fallen from its ranking to nowhere found. When searching for www.site.com the index page is displayed with the company name as the title and no cache link or description. Below it is an odd URL that reads [badsite.com...]
with my title and description, a fresh date of June 22nd and cache that is not viewable.

Do you think this a domain hijacking or something else related to the update?

[Gede]

Well, that is from a bad proxy, putting your content in Google's cache.

May have something to do with your problem, maybe not.

Report it.

[asusplay]

I'm seeing some changes in the sector I've got sites in. It's not as disastrous as the shuffling at the end of May, (and the subsequent recovery) but I can see a decrease in traffic as from today as well as some new sites in the top 20 for the keywords I target.

Will wait and see what happens as in the past it has levelled out, but with this new so-called Buffy update I hope there's no knowing what will happen.

[walkman]

>> I've noticed an increase in supplementals too (using the site: command).

same here, but the gbot is extra busy. Usually, after a cycle is done they get a bit busier.

[blend27]

We have a competitor that dropped to #2 for the main "heart and soul" keyword of the whole niche. It is also their domain name since the internet was first created. It is being replaced with a want to be blogger site that just launched in sept. of last year. it is also a big embracement to a search engine ......

[mattg3]

In the last three months my IBLs are increasing. SEO DMOZ clones, some weirdo lyrics site that has me in their surftips and a video site.. and German MSN encarta has me listed.

Traffic though is horrendous...

Additionally the 2 year old PR4 site with
widget.example.com
widget1.example.com
widget2.example.com

keeps popping up on all my search terms.

It seems as these masses of new links keep me down.

I started now a new site that has 12 IBL's that ranks with an XML feed before the 10 year old PR 6 site..

Beyond a joke.

[edited by: tedster at 4:21 pm (utc) on June 24, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[SEOold]

I been following this thread since it started. My site was one of the sites that doubled in traffic during this update and today it seems to be at its lowest ever even before the update. Has any one else seeing this fluctuation either over the weekend or today if you get real time traffic reports?

[SEOPTI]

Yes, I think this fluctuations happen because Google plays with their supplemental index.

[languageusa]

I got penalized by Google (I think). My website (language translation) has been in existence for over 10 years, and all those years it has been (mainly the home page) in the top 3-7 positions for almost all relevant search terms one could imagine. A couple of weeks ago “that happened!”. While my website is still found in SERPs on the first page for some (less significant) search terms, the site has evaporated from SERPs or is found on the 7-8th page of the search results for my major, most important search terms. The indexing or PR of my pages do not seem to be affected. (I am still fine with Yahoo! and MSN.)

I can only suspect one reason for the penalty, and that possible reason is totally unintentional. In the middle of January I exchanged home page links with a major European seller of home appliances present in 26 countries. They placed my link in their footer, and the link got duplicated in their hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) pages. I did not ask for that. I just got it. Five+ months later I am getting this penalty. I assume this is for an “unnatural” jump in the number of incoming links. Plus my link to them is not really relevant to the content of the page it’s sitting on. It has taken that long to have happened (unless the reason is something else I am not really aware of).

I have discontinued the link on my home page and advised them appropriately. They are still keeping my link(s), though.

Now is the question: What shall I do?

Shall I sit and wait for months until Google reverts the situation, if they indeed do that? What can I do to make them like my site again? Should I apply for re-inclusion, and if yes, when is the time to do that (I have never been out of their index, though)?

Please advise and please suggest any logical steps that I can take to remedy this situation. I will be deeply thankful.

[thecityofgold2005]

I was at glastonbury festival for the past 5 days and have come back to discover:

30% increase in total results number for my favourite keyword.

myself dropping down the index due to more spam and scam sites.

it looks like google has re-admitted some pages into the index.

not an improvement!

[Gede]

for languageusa:

What anchor text was use for your footer link?

Maybe the same as the term where you have dropped for?

[mattb]

We saw a significant increase in traffic for one of our sites from June 11th - June 21st with the peak on June 18th. Since then, our traffic has gone down to below levels prior to June 11th.

-Matt

[languageusa]

> What anchor text was use for your footer link?
> Maybe the same as the term where you have dropped for?

Basically yes. Would it matter? There are more key words/phrases that do not do the work anymore.

[Gede]

G doesn't like overdoses of anchor (anymore)

The "miserable failure" effect, I think..

It is my guess that if something like this happens you are dropped for the overdose, and maybe given another little push down as well as a bonus...

[languageusa]

> you are dropped for the overdose, and maybe given another little push down as well as a bonus...

So, what do I do to correct the situation?..

[tedster]

languageusa, open a Google Webmaster Tools account for this domain. First, see if it gives you any direct feedback about the penalty (that can happen). Then use the reinclusion form, explain what happened and what you did to fix it.

[Gede]

I am just speculating here... I know nothing for sure, but I seem to be in the same situation.

I also have some sidewides, but not with so many pages as you. I have reduced the sidewides as far as I could, and asked people to change anchors containing my "banned words" if they cannot change the sidewides, quickly..

These changes happened in the last two weeks.

I don't see any changes in the serps yet.

I did file a reinclusion.

[edited by: Gede at 7:50 pm (utc) on June 25, 2007]

[potentialgeek]

What was your PR when this happened? (And what is the PR of the other site's home page?) Just wondering if high PR can protect a site from Google reacting to site-wide footer links. (I think there are some sites that do this with high PR and get away with it.)

p/g

[languageusa]

>What was your PR when this happened? (And what is the PRof the other site's home page?)

Both PR7.

[oasisfan]

Just want to say that what happened to us is very similar to what happened to some othere here ie June 10th Our traffic almost doubled and stayerd great until a week or so ago when its dropped to same as when this hit us (whatever it was..) Nice while it lasted

[Drew_Black]

ie June 10th Our traffic almost doubled and stayerd great until a week or so ago

I'm in the same boat.

[BillyS]

We had a big increase in mid June and we continue to get around 4x the traffic.