Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2009

[subway]

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

Any fool can slap their favorite keywords into the navigation, and millions do, and it doesn't work for them.

It depends whether you are talking money (competitive) keywords or just made up words / uncompetitive keywords. I agree with santapaws regarding the unique or made up words - you can be ranking in no time just by slapping them in the nav, title, h1, url, etc.

But... when it comes to the money making terms the theory still applies regarding the keyword in navigation but you also need an array of other SEO factors thrown in on top, i.e. high PR, matured inbound links preferably consisting of similar keyword anchor text as the phrases you’re targeting and for those links to be coming from similar themed sites, etc.

What I'm afraid *might* be happening with this update is that due to Google’s new more efficient file structure they are now digging deeper, scraping the very bottom of the internet barrel which is churning up lots of low quality pages (and in turn many more links) that once had to be disregarded.

So a site that has e.g. 3000 poor quality inbound links pointing to it is benefiting much more than a site with only 75 high quality links, which to me seems like Google has shot itself in the foot.

[edited by: tedster at 4:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2009]

[dertyfern]

These serps in the UK are way older than a month...seems to me more like two or three months old. Also seems that they're switching between indexes.

[drl1]

I definitely see two different sets of results. Roughly 20% of the time I can see a site I work on appear in page 1. The other 80% of the time the results appear similar to what I currently see on Google (for that particular search term)

[gouri]

I just looked at the SERP and it seems that Google has gone to an index from 1 month ago.

[eyeinthesky]

I have a site that went AWOL in Sept suddenly came back and stayed in camp for 2 days.

Now it has gone AWOL again.

Should have put him in detention barracks!

[sean22]

The SERP I'm receiving is also from a month old.

[drl1]

It's peculiar. The serp I see (approximately 20% of time) can't be from a month ago.
I've been working on a site that had a filter or penalty applied. The site was hacked, had navigational issues, excessive duplicate content in the footer, etc. Which has been cleaned up in the last month or so.
This site did not rank for multiple terms in the past month - which it does on that DC (again roughly 20% of the time).
Which makes me question if it's unfiltered results or something else. But at least in my location - mid-atlantic US - this is not from a month ago.

[helpnow]

Yes, something just happened here too - in the past 3 hours or so. I've been obsessing over my monitored SERPs for more than 2 months now... - these SERPs are definitely not from a month ago - they're just... different. Oddball shifts in the SERPs all over the place. Not a bad set of SERPs, but a game of musical chairs just occurred and everyone is now sitting in different spots - some up, some down, few in their original spots. We're located in Canada, for what it's worth...

[internetheaven]

Hope this makes sense:

I'm seeing the old index running along side new pages.

Its more of a visual gut feeling but for most searches, the ones that are searched for a lot and always have been: the index is old.

For long tails, unusual and trending searches I'm seeing really fresh results above the old index.

Is this just how caffeine will work ... ish? Anything out of the ordinary will be considered "fresh searching" and new pages from that day will be shown above the regular index? Any common search will be treated as before?

[sean22]

internetheaven,

This makes perfect sense and thanks for figuring it out. Here is my situation in light of your keen observation:

My main KW has slipped to page 2 where it was on page 1 (top 5) before this latest shifting. Naturally my traffic took a dive initially but today as I checked my traffic stats I was having a pretty good day. The overwhelming traffic was from longtails.

Although I do not know if this has anything to do with caffeine because I am ranking pretty solid on page 1 (in caffeine).

It will great if my main KW reclaims it's spot back on page 1 and with the longtails doing well like they have past 24hrs.

[dertyfern]

Major changes here in UK today. Seems almost like top 5 sites have been flipped with places 6-10 in many terms I follow.

Also seeing map place marker icons followed by addresses on some adwords ads.

[gouri]

I think internetheaven and sean22 have made great observations.

I am seeing fresher results for long-tail searches and for more popular keywords I am seeing an index which is about one month old.

I hope that they are showing fresher results for long-tail searches now and then they will also show fresher results for the popular keywords.

[barretire]

I have just noticed that what was on the presumed caffeine DC has rolled out across all data centers here in the US.

[whitenight]

I have just noticed that what was on the presumed caffeine DC has rolled out across all data centers here in the US.

The Holiday rollout i hinted at in the Caffeine thread, not exactly Caffeine datasets.

4 day Thanksgiving weekend in US has Goog testing all kinds of stuff.

Whether it sticks or not after Monday, will see.

[drl1]

The results I now see on 209.85.225.103 are slightly different from what I've seen over the several days - even from this morning.
And I see consistency on 209.85.225.103 now, not the two different results I saw previously. No more flickering to use whitenight's term.

[jack81]

We have seen a huge drop in traffic since tuesday... Did anyone experience such losses? Could this be the caffeine related?

[Frank44]

I am experiencing the same issue. i have lost around 900 daily visitors in a matter of 4 days . First drop occurred on 20/11/09 Second drop on Thanksgiving. It is rather weird and frustrating. No link exchange no black hat techniques...nothing. I have only updated my blog with posts regularly and nothing else.
Is this a caffeine side effect mingled with Thanksgiving? (a deadly mix indeed!) Gonna be permanent or is just a fluctuation? Please help!

[jack81]

Hi frank44. We've lost around 30% of visitors. Traffic at the moment is from keywords that are not competitive.

The effect is getting worse over time and seems permanent.

Could anyone shed some light please? Frank44. Did you traffic got worse yesterday and what percentage did you lose? Can you see degradation of quality keywords?

[Frank44]

Hi Jack. My main keywords (not a lot indeed) are still there and the landing pages are still there. It looks like i have lost my long tail and this has caused the drop. Before 20/11/09 my traffic was OK. Yes, yesterday i lost a lot around 30%. A cause is thanksgiving for sure. I am also sure it has to do with caffeine but i do not know if it is going to be a permanent shift...a nice comment from some guru here would be nice.

What about you? may i ask you to provide a little more details about your experience? Thanks

[BillyS]

I wouldn't judge traffic based on yesterday. We started losing traffic around 1:00 on Wednesday - but that's normal. Yesterday traffic was down 50% week over week - but I'm not even blinking. People in the US were enjoying time with friends and family.

[Frank44]

Thanks BillyS for sharing your experience. As for me, i started loosing traffic on 20/11/09 and it was all organic from Google.

I understand thanksgiving but i was trying to determine if there was something which had to do with Google Caffeine and all the updates people are reporting from all over the world.

It looks like Google made some change and rolled out something which looks like caffeine during these days.

Are these changes (if they really took place) affetting traffic? Are they permanent? These are the real questions!

[jack81]

Frank, I think it is related to caffeine and changes might be permanent. 30% loss is organic from google and traffic is not good quality. Traffic drop has nothing to do with the actual thanksgiving day because the drop was not only from USA.

[SEOPTI]

I've checked different local long tail phrases throughout a few industries and don't see any changes at all. (State,City,Business)

[BillyS]

>>I think it is related to caffeine and changes might be permanent.

Sorry, no such thing.

We also know that once we hit late November, habits start to change. People do more shopping and less research. You can go right ahead and push the panic button - be my guest. Me? I'll worry about traffic again in January.

[Frank44]

You can go right ahead and push the panic button - be my guest... LOL! :D

OK thanks for this clarification. So your best bet is that what I am experiencing is just "human behaviour" at work, right?
...Mmmm maybe... i will keep a close eye on this. If you are right my google traffic should go up during the next days since we are leaving the Thanksgiving area...

However, on a more hilarious note, Google has to stop messing around with its code. I am too old for this all and my heart could not make it!

[sean22]

I think the latest Google update introduced instant indexing. It is beyond incredible, as soon as click post it goes live in the index. Wow. Literally instant as in less than a minute or as long as it takes to post and then do an immediate search for the URL.

[barretire]

I am actuallt noticing this as well. If I make an update it seems Google updates the change much quicker then usual.. Thought it was just me..

[cangoou]

Well as long as you ping back it's really fast. For me, normal indexing seems to be as slow as ever when google is busy updating something.

[Hissingsid]

I think the latest Google update introduced instant indexing. It is beyond incredible, as soon as click post it goes live in the index.

How often is your site being spidered? Or does clicking post ping somewhere that Google picks up?

Cheers

Sid

[sean22]

Sid,

My site is spidered throughout the day some days more frequent than others. I'm using WP so it's probably the CMS pinging Google. I've never seen nor thought instant indexing existed. And it's only been recent.

[Hissingsid]

I've seen almost instant indexing on major "authority" site forums but not on smaller sites. I was just interested in the mechanism in your case.

Thanks

Sid