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]

[sudhirmangla]

My traffic from google was reduced to 1/4 starting 1 june. But suddenly yesterday it was back to normal. Does anyone have notice something similar

[Reno_Chris]

My google traffic was up and down like a yo-yo from May 26 through June 21. I think these adjustments have hit may websites differently, but many folks have seen odd traffic changes. I am currently running about 50% higher than the traffic I was getting in mid May, but for me it seems to have stabilized.

[bhuckster]

Been lurking here for a year... Paid my subscription and now have a RANT.

I've seen a drop of my site but only for single word keywords ( most traffic ). Held #1 position on both for 2+ years and moved to #2 around Feb. Slipped to #3 beginning of June and yesterday dropped to #11. Seems all multi-word keywords not affected, YET... Still maintain page 1 on all.

This is what I really don't understand. All Datacenters show different than the actual SERPS. I thought all SERPS within a Class C group should be the same but now this is not true? If I look at the datacenters, I show #1 on 90% and #8 on 10% while on google.com I'm consistantly #11. Last week I showed 100% #1 on datacenters and #3 on google.com.. REALLY CONFUSED...

The sites that have moved up are terrible. Frames... Flash... No content.. Old.. Lower PR.. I'm really confused.

Hey Matt Cutts, is this what happens now for putting out good content on a good site and keeping it updated. We've been told by customers that our site is the BEST, easiest to use, and most informative on the internet for our products. It's the most popular on Yahoo Directory and highest traffic rank for our industry. Listed in DMOZ, Google, Yahoo and MSN Directories. Yahoo and MSN still have us #3 for both single words.

Will this affect our business? Sure.. Natural traffic on these keywords is about 5% so we'll probably have to increase our position on AdWords ( Give them 5 figures a month now ). We'll do OK but I feel bad for the guys who bust their butts, don't have the money for AdWords and tank because of an Algo change...

Sorry for the RANT...

What's Changed?

[workingNOMAD]

I dont understand why people rant about the SERPS. Do people will think that Google owes them?

[bhuckster]

Google owes me nothing except to put my advertisement on the page and at the position that I pay for when I advertise with AdWords. But that's not the point here.

Google is there because of good webmasters trying to follow the rules as set by Google. When you work hard and follow the rules, it is NICE to be rewarded so as not to have to PAY for EVERY person that uses their search engine SERVICE.

I've built a multi-million dollar ecommerce business by working hard, paying for sponsored advertisements and playing by the rules. It's just hard to take when the rules change.

[abhaykochar]

I was gettin traffic a week back like ny thing. bt last night it suddenly thrown me out..i was on #1 on some popular keywords but suddenly i was outa race..

[annej]

bhuckster - that is what I've watched going on since late May. One word results are bouncing around like crazy while 2 or more word phrases stay pretty steady.

Between this and some occasional -950 problems I've had it appears to me that being a good solid older site no longer gives the protection it used to. It must be some shift in what Google weighs up and down in their algos.

I really don't think Google is purposely trying to hurt the good sites, but it still happens.

[bhuckster]

annej - Thanks for the sympathetic ear.

I'll bounce back because that's what i do but I'm really confused about the DataCenter concept. Back in a true Google Dance, you could see the disruption in the SERPS and then they would all even out when they were done dancing. That was what the SERPS were, period... Now, it's up, it's down and NONE of the datacenters that I look at match the SERPS on Google.com... What's up with that? Anyone have a clue?

[trakkerguy]

bhuckster - Yes, a couple of the sites I manage have been showing different results on google.com than on the datacenters consistently for a few weeks now. I keep expecting the datacenter rankings to propogate out to google.com, or vice-versa, but no consolidation yet.

I hope your rankings for multi keyword search hold. It seems like a lot of the changes they've been making lately start with single word search, then they move those changes to multi keyword search.

[outland88]

>It seems like a lot of the changes they've been making lately start with single word search, then they move those changes to multi keyword search.<

Exactly, but they've really started clobering my areas tonight. It's like if you're not a Fortune 500 site they don't want you in their search engine.

[tigger]

I am seeing a big switch in the serps today back are the same old authorities ( THAT book site,wiki & news sites) gone are the relevant sites - mind you I knew the good serps wouldn't be around long before G puts its faith into just pushing wiki again for EVERYTHING

[night707]

It's like if you're not a Fortune 500 site they don't want you in their search engine.

Not true! For our main kw irrelevant sites and MFA link collections sit on top since ages. First quality result come on Google page 2.

[oasisfan]

Traffic rising steeply again.Google now giving 80% of traffic-wow

[frances]

For my single word keyword, serps gone back today to exactly what they were before the changes started.

[Northstar]

I woke up this morning to a 70% drop in Googe traffic. The exact same thing happen to me last year on June 27, 2006. I wonder what Google does this time of year.

[errorsamac]

All of my pages for a particular topic (which didn't rank well to begin with, they were on pages 3-5 in the SERPs) fell to -850 in the search results. Is anyone else pages around result # 850 (not 950).

[andrewshim]

Welll this is ridiculous.

My site's been on page #1 for a major key phrase for the most of the year and suddenly it's MIA. Not even 950-ed. Not anywhere.

Sigh.

And the only thing I did? I removed ONE instance of the key-word from the homepage a week ago, reducing the KW density by approx .25%. I wonder if they detected this as an attempt to over optimize.

Sigh.

[edited by: tedster at 4:29 pm (utc) on June 29, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[Drew_Black]

I noticed that my drop in G traffic a few days ago coincided with what appeared to be a glitch in Sitemaps. G was fetching my sitemaps once every 12 hours or so while the traffic was up.

The day things dropped off I checked Webmaster Tools a few times and the Last Downloaded field had a dash in it instead of a date. (I've been using the same, validated feed for over a year.)

I started monitoring the last downloaded field. About 5 hours after it updated I noticed a spike in traffic. (I'm going to miss the old G Alalytics interface, I can check today's traffic by hour with the old system and not the new one.)

It's been over 24 hours since G last fetched my sitemap and for whatever reason organic referrals are down to about 50% of what they were in early June when things were buzzing along nicely. I have no idea if this is all just an odd coincidence but any times I've seen big swings in daily traffic from G they usually appear to be related to Sitemaps.

[Northstar]

I had a large drop in Google traffic last year on June 27 2006. There was a huge thread at the same time with hundreds of people saying they lost keywords at the same time. The google traffic came back around the end of Sept. 2006 and so did most other peoples traffic.

Now one year later and the same thing happen to me only now my traffic dropped 70% on June 29 2007. I'm have confidence every thing will return to normal in a month or two but this is very frustrating.

Have any of you experienced this same occurrence this June or last?

[edited by: tedster at 6:42 pm (utc) on June 29, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[outland88]

I’m amazed that many more people aren’t reporting issues. There seem to be major changes going on all over the place in my sections.

[bhuckster]

Well at least all of the datacenters that I just checked have finally gotten the same data ALTHOUGH it doesn't match what the SERPS are on google.com!

[edited by: tedster at 1:49 am (utc) on June 30, 2007]

[Miamacs]

OK this keeps coming up in the logs and I can't ignore it anymore.

Do you see any traces of Google using different SERPs within the SAME day?

I see a switch that occurs about every 3-4 hours during the day. One kind of SERP favors some sites I run, and brings them more traffic, the other doesn't favor them ( they're not penalized, just not that good ) and brings in much less traffic.

This kind of A/B testing isn't happening on a weekly/daily level, much more like an hourly thing, gets switched on early in the day, runs for a few hours, then gets switched back.

...or so the logs indicate.

Sites with no problems, penalties, and with good ranks in general, that produce pretty stable stats. Other than this phenomenon which has been around for about a month.

...anyone else seeing this?

[outland88]

>Do you see any traces of Google using different SERPs within the SAME day?<

Most definitely. I've seen serps totally change in a thirty minute time period. Since I'm recording it I've had to go back and scratch my head when an hour earlier earlier I had recorded the site at another position.

I've also highlighted 10 sites in a range and seen them jump all over the place for a keyword in less than a day. One page of spam that is fascinating me has worked its way from 200 to 16 in about three days. Trust me that page shouldn't even crack 1000 for the keyword and it isn't even targetting it.

[pdivi]

I run a handful of sites, all focused on very different niches, but all SEO'd by yours truly. Some of the sites are content/ad revenue, and some are ecommerce. All of them sit on the same server and use ASP as the code base.

For some reason, all the sites got a huge lift (20-40%) from Google June 19-22. Apparently, something I'm doing consistently -- regardless of site content or vertical -- is triggering a suppression that got lifted June 19-22.

Did anyone else see a move during this timeframe. Did you notice any patterns to where it had an effect? Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[edited by: tedster at 4:17 pm (utc) on June 30, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[trakkerguy]

pdivi - Your traffic went up 20-40% for a few days, then fell back? I don't understand why you think you're doing anything wrong...

[foxtunes]

Changes are indeed afoot on a few keywords I monitor.

[night707]

... Northstar

since last year we were also worried about June 27. But this year we did not get cut off from G traffic.

The biggest changes made since then:

1. Code does now comply with w3 100%
2. No more copies of widgets.com to widgets.net or widgets.org

Nevertheless, adsense revenues are the lowest since ever, but traffic has even gone up after 27.

[rednet]

Guys, could you please say what happened a year ago on June 27 and how it has been ended (or not)?

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[edited by: tedster at 4:38 pm (utc) on July 1, 2007]