Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2010

[drall]

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

I have been watching all of my competitors which pretty much live off of large amounts of longtail traffic loose overall traffic the past 4-6 weeks and that includes us.

I dont know whats going on but for big sites in my section of the web site page count has been dropping at a constant decay and new content is coming in very very slowly and not nearly enough to counter the drops.

Overall traffic seems down about 8-10% for all of us and those drops are graphing perfectly to the drops in page counts since mid January.

At the same time the crawl graph in WMT and my local stats package show a flatline since mid Jan with no deep crawls and about a tenth of usual crawl activity.

All of this for us and our competitors started mid January
1. dropoff of the googlebot deepcrawl with a flatline stable crawl at a much lower rate.
2. daily reductions in pagecount across a dozen sites by exact same percentages
3. similar gradual traffic declines matching page count falls
4. uber slow new page caching and ranking

When I see this happening to not only us but many pr6-8 sites in my sector it gives me comfort to see that it isnt only us but also concern because it isnt only us.

Just going to keep chugging along, not much you can do but sit back and watch this stuff unfold.

[edited by: tedster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Mar 1, 2010]
[edit reason] split from earlier thread [/edit]

[brinked]

whitenight, Like you, I have also explained in full detail (in this thread) how one can see caffeine results. If people are too lazy to read through a single thread to find their answer, then they don't really want to know the answer that bad. You can only repeat the same thing over and over again so many times.

It looks like google is testing caffeine on more data centers during off peak hours, that's why we are all seeing it in the late-morning hours. For the very first time today I saw caffeine results on my home computer and on my iphone.

[mirrornl]

something new also:
I am occasionaly seeing instead of the url at the bottom of a search result something like:
www.example.com › Directory › subdir

[Shaddows]

And here's the nice answer :)

If you don't have your own cross-niche, broad-based database of disparate keywords, and no screenshots etc of the caff sandbox, you can't (with any certainty) know caffeine is being rolled out.

If you do, you don't need to ask.

If you are in the US, the changes in referals should be telling you a big, loud, clear story. Those of us in the Rest of World have a more messy picture. If you have longtail business, its clear enough though.

[1script]

4 days into this madness I'm watching as more of my sites disappear from Google. There is no correlation between them, different niches, servers, IPs, almost no interlinking etc, all run as separate entities which is what they are. However, the only ones still standing are the ones that have homepages' cache date older than March 13th.

Since all sites still have healthy Googlebot activity, the cache does update and as it becomes more recent than March 14th, the site falls off - Google traffic throttles down to almost exactly 1/10th and then deteriorates further over the following days.

Does anyone have any idea of what this could mean? I only have two sites standing yet, so I'm not sure for how long I can observe this horrible development on my own sites. Anyone else's seeing similar things happening?

[trakkerguy]

1script - Same happened to me last feb/mar, but my sites were interlinked quite a bit. I've never been able to figure if it was the interlinking G didn't like, or what. Most of those sites never recovered in G.

Since then, on other sites I've interlinked less, and no longer use analytics on most of my sites, and haven't had any similar problems, so don't really know if interlinking, analytics, or what caused the problem.

Do you use analytics or webmastertools on your sites?

[1script]

@trakkerguy:
Yes, I do use both G Analytics and WMT on all my sites but I know what you must have felt when you decided not to use analytics or WMT on your new sites - I felt the same (borderline paranoia) for years and have only added my best site to both GA and WMT 6 months or so ago. However, my line of reasoning was that if I have just one piece of AdSense code on my page, they already know everything they need to know about my traffic.
But, again, the general feeling is that it's not my sites being penalized (they are very different, why should they all fall in one week, most of them in one day?) but me personally through my Google account. If that turns out to be true, I will strongly support the idea that Google needs to be broken down using antitrust laws just like AT&T was 25 years ago [en.wikipedia.org ]. I just don't want to open this can of worms in this particular thread.

[trakkerguy]

@1script:
I forgot to mention that I also used adsense on my penalized sites. Since then, only use analytics and wmt on a few, and adsense even more sparingly.

Reconsideration requests brought 2 back to life, but no more. Good luck - hope your case is just a temporary glitch.

[outland88]

A little off topic but for a short while I was getting Spanish results in my Google Adwords account. Convince me they know what they're doing at Google. I think they're just plain screwing up in many areas.

[tedster]

Well, anyone who works with huge sets of data does screw up. Anyone who hasn't gone live with bugs present is probably not launching early enough for today's world -- and they're also not working on anything very complex or large scale.

I'd say Google does know what they're doing, in terms of being technically knowledgeable. I don't always like what they're up to, but they are clearly quite savvy. They do have a tendency to go live when serious bugs are still present, and they just recently received heavy duty criticism from an FTC member [webmasterworld.com] for that tendency with Buzz.

I don't think there is anything we can use as a benchmark that even comes close to this Caffeine migration. It's a highly ambitious project - I'm not holding my breath for the full roll-out and it doesn't keep me up at night.

[edited by: tedster at 7:51 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2010]

[nrep]

whitenight, Like you, I have also explained in full detail (in this thread) how one can see caffeine results. If people are too lazy to read through a single thread to find their answer, then they don't really want to know the answer that bad. You can only repeat the same thing over and over again so many times.

I've read through all your posts in this thread and I've not seen a single mention on how you actually can tell you are seeing caffeine results. I know people are using proxies to view different Google datacentres, but my point was how do you know when you are viewing an apparent caffeine result. If you've mentioned this directly in this thread, then please link to it and I'll eat my words ;)

If you don't have your own cross-niche, broad-based database of disparate keywords, and no screenshots etc of the caff sandbox, you can't (with any certainty) know caffeine is being rolled out.

Thanks Shaddows - that is a big help. I'm not US based, and I've tried a handful of proxies and see very similar results in my niche... hence the confusion. I wasn't sure if there was a way to discern between the data and how to tell which is which.

[cangoou]

Oh, the ´ is back on caffein (which means: Some filters are lifted if you search for Widgét instead of Widget). That was gone for some time in the "old" SERPs. But I still got no clue which filters that would be...

[brinked]

nrep: [webmasterworld.com...]

3 quarters of the way down.

[whitenight]

I've read through all your posts in this thread and I've not seen a single mention on how you actually can tell you are seeing caffeine results. I know people are using proxies to view different Google datacentres, but my point was how do you know when you are viewing an apparent caffeine result. If you've mentioned this directly in this thread, then please link to it and I'll eat my words ;)

Im honestly not trying to be rude here, nrep
But its YOUR responsiblity to "catch up," not mine to repeat the same information over and over again
(with less degrees of patience each repetition) which tends to annoy some admins/mods and the "whitenight-is-a-bully" crowd.

As stated before, Ive given full, complete POLITE(NICE) explanations in past threads
(the last 3 monthly threads to be sure and other monthly threads going back 9 months now)

Below is a BRIEF summary of how to find Caff datasets,
(you'll need to go back and re-read past 3 months for further clarification)

-----------------------------

Caff has consistently been on [209.85.225.103...] for about a week and half now.

Pick 10-20 terms, related to ur site and random and take screenshots.
Analyze the difference between that dataset and say [64.233.179.xx...] datasets, so that you have a control to compare what others are seeing when they report Caff is live at xx etc.
See?

It's obvious to me everytime i see it as i have "control" keywords/SERPs that are radically different from "regular" SERPS
and yet nearly exactly the same as the SERPs that were on sandbox.gorg 9 months ago.

(Yes, with the updated link/PR/etc calculations included in those datasets)

This is not even including the control keywords that would only receive the traffic they are getting if Caff datasets weren't live "somewhere"

Ie. SERP #50 on regular SERPs = no traffic
SERP #3 on Caff dataset = tons of traffic

[nrep]

3 quarters of the way down.

Thanks, had I spotted that in this thread then it would have answered some questions :). It looks like it was split off at March for this current thread, which was when I joined in. Hopefully this will help others like me :)

[outland88]

And you don't think this is their intended result whitenight!

Ie. SERP #50 on regular SERPs = no traffic
SERP #3 on Caff dataset = tons of traffic

You don't think this isn't already driving new users into Adwords.

[azn romeo 4u]

My site dropped like from getting 70k pageviews per day to 45-55ish. And sometimes going back to 70k. I lost about 30% of my earnings. T_T

It's so sad. I thought it was something weird that I did...like installed OpenX and using them for adsense. Right when I did that, traffic plummetted.

Hoping for better days. For year my traffic was increasing. From 20k all the way up to 70k per day. Then suddenly this month...down to 55k. T_T

[whitenight]

And you don't think this is their intended result whitenight!

hehe, im sure you already know how i feel about this outland.
I think i've given all the rants about Gorg's "intentions" i can give.

Years ago, i was a "conspiracy theorist"
Then slowly, i became a "Gorg hater"
NOW, more and more people are starting to "get it" as Gorg's intentions become brutally obvious and upset more and more people.

Those rants are rarely needed now (as ppl wake up), and frankly, it was tiring for me to make them the first 50-100 times. :)

One day, people will realize that im giving/gave this information so that they SUCCEED in their businesses regardless of what Gorg does or doesn't do, and i could care less if i'm liked or thought to be a "nice guy"

Let someone who's trying to sell them a membership, book, course, etc be the "nice guy", ya know?

[outland88]

I lost about 30% of my earnings.

That's what I'm hearing across the board in many instances. Many seem to be judging Caffiene on the here and now and what they can do about it immediately. That’s why I am monitoring more of what Adsense and Adwords users are doing and not just the changes in what may be endless with Caffeine. It may be a wondrous change by some of the most tech savvy people available but the rent collector doesn't seem to be working under Google's clock.

[outland88]

Those rants are rarely needed now

According to the grapevine they snatch the bodies late at night so I had to make sure.

[arizonadude]

Let someone who's trying to sell them a membership, book, course, etc be the "nice guy", ya know?

Whitenight, you got an ebook?

Out of all the junk I've seen, if you did have one, yours would probably be the most valuable one a person could read. I've followed your postings over the years and you seem pretty darn on target with your obsverations.

Put me on the list for your eBook when you come out with one :)

[1script]

To all you conspiracy theorists out there, I have a quick counter example:

Most of my forum sites are down to just a 10% trickle of Google traffic since March 15. AdSense (which I use on most sites) revenue is WAY down. However I have this other site, also a forum, on which AdSense stopped showing ads about a year ago. I could never figure out why, so I removed it and installed YPN instead. That site does not have any issues with Google traffic!

So what do they stand to gain by killing sites WITH AdSense and leaving one WITHOUT? Makes no sense. Well, I guess, most other things about this week's traffic debacle don't make much sense either...

< See this thread to discuss 1script's forum ranking situation [webmasterworld.com] in more depth >

[edited by: tedster at 4:48 am (utc) on Mar 21, 2010]

[Shaddows]

Counterpoint to your counterpoint. Gorg doesn't care about Publishers (apart from as ad real estate). It's Adwords they care about.

Tanking AdSense pages means little. Odds are it will be replaced by another AdSense page, and one earns the same as the other.

[MLHmptn]

Noticing caff on 64.233.179.104 for the first time ever (that I've seen anyway). Maybe another sign of things to come? I just wish this would be over with already.

[internetheaven]

Odds are it will be replaced by another AdSense page, and one earns the same as the other.

Too true.

All these examples of "my forum" or "my adsense site" are all way too speculative for me. With billions of pages across hundreds of countries and languages I can't see Google changes being as simple as some of you are making out.

And I've seen nothing but good things for forums on Google lately ... good forums that is. Ones with fresh content, lots of users and threads. Google is evolving in to a twitter/facebook/ppc/flickr/organic/news/map/yellow pages hybrid. If you are not designed to live in that kind of environment then evolution** is going to delete you.

** I suppose there is also as standpoint for search engine creationism with Google as God?

[cangoou]

Today on the German Google-blog:

[google-produkt-kompass.blogspot.com...]

Translation of first paragraph:
In December, we introduced to our English domains a number of innovations in the search function to enrich our search-results with real-time dynamic content from the entire Internet. We are pleased that this feature is available immediately worldwide at Google, in 42 languages.

So, we all were wrong! Caffeine was live since december! Who would have thought...

[hugh]

Isn't this reference to the twiter serps?

[BillyS]

With billions of pages across hundreds of countries and languages I can't see Google changes being as simple as some of you are making out.

It would be very difficult, if not nearly impossible for an outsider to really know what's happening. Observations are useful, but the conclusions people draw are often flawed.

Someone about a month ago gave me a "LOL - I told you so" and predicted my traffic would go up by a factor of six when the new infrastructure rolled out. Apparently this was because I saw an increase in December and was part of the Caffeine test servers.

Well, I see all these reports of the new rollout and my traffic hasn’t budged one bit. Tedster mentioned this point a couple of days ago too. I’ve personally managed through a $160M Go Live project involving a massive database change. Unless you knew exactly what we were testing, no one would be able to figure out what to look for in the test environment.

[barretire]

Good morning all. I am seeing caffeine on the main serps at the moment here on the East Coast.

[1script]

@internetheaven

And I've seen nothing but good things for forums on Google lately ... good forums that is. Ones with fresh content, lots of users and threads.

I suppose you are talking about Google's definition of "good" and not your own, right? I mean, those forums that tanked on March 15th were good enough for me and for thousands of users that were registered and posted there. Fresh content indeed. More to the point, they were good enough for G to rank for a wide range of keywords for a long time.

When a site sinks 150+ positions in SERPs, does that mean that there are suddenly 150 sites that are better? Where have all these sites been all these years then? I don't believe the algo convulsions are necessarily for the benefit of the universal "good" not the least because there is nothing universal about "good", ever.

But, philosophy aside, I have an unfair (to me) advantage of having 10+ sites tanked so far and so I can compare them and also some of the other sites killed around the same time that other users here have sent me.

There is almost nothing that all these sites have in common. There are commonalities between two or three sites and there are links between just as many but there is nothing that is the same across all. Considering that I'm looking at other people's sites, even the only common denominator I thought of before - my own Analytics and Adsense codes has to be thrown out since not all people use them.

I cannot claim that I've analyzed all 200+ parameters of Google's algo for all these sites. I don't know them all or even most. Raise your hand who does! However, this being such a dramatic drop, it had to be something very important. Links are very important to Google as far as I know, and so I concentrated on links.

Incoming links are hopeless - most (but, as always, not all) tanked sites have 10,000+ links (according to Y!). Some junk, some very valuable including the likes of NASA and other reputable government and industry organizations and any number of types of links in between. Some new, some 9+ years old and everything in between.

There is a glimmer of hope (if you can call it that) in the analysis of the outgoing links: although there are no (readily discoverable) links to "bad" or "fishy" sites, all tanked sites I've seen so far have a policy of NOT converting links submitted by users into proper HTML "clickable" links, "no-follow" or otherwise. Basically, out of the fear of accidentally linking to the proverbial "bad" sites. There are also very few out-links outside the forum sections of those sites.

Do you guys think this finding warrants further investigation? I guess, it could appear to someone in the "plex" that this is somewhat unnatural - having 10,000+ pages and maybe just 100 links to other sites.

Since the trouble is not over, for me anyways, I'm still looking for more data that anyone here could contribute, and of course fresh ideas!

< See this thread to discuss 1script's forum ranking situation [webmasterworld.com] in more depth >

[edited by: tedster at 4:47 am (utc) on Mar 21, 2010]

[cangoou]

Okay, than again: As Google now officially claims that Caffeine is now online and as at least some people here are seeing differences in SERPs: What is different now in comparison to "before-caffeine-time"? Or in other words: Why are some of the sites I watch rising and some of them falling?