Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2010

[wmxpert]

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

We are in the same situation, since March 15, 2010 our traffic is continuously declining with the average of 6% every week. In current week it gets worst, approx. 15% decline!

Overall, 30% to 35% traffic has been reduced compare to peak week of January 2010.

"site:" is also showing huge drop in index pages, though it only provide the avg. not actual.

Don't know what's going on, Is it really the effect of Caffeine roll-out?

[edited by: tedster at 9:46 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2010]

[Shaddows]

What does this mean? Which filter has been applied to these sites when you couldn't not correlate the events because every keyword seems to has it's own timing?

Screenshots again. Then, when it settles down, compare to the mid-update, and the pre-update SERPS. Find whats changed- see if the bounderies of helpnow's classes have shifted to include/exclude new groups.

Once you do this for a couple of shifts you will see patterns mid-shift. Then, you can have "hunch-test" pages in situ for the anticipated system, allowing you to get a jump on the competition.

[physics]

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.

That's because they're using all of their resources to handle Tweets :p

[steveb]

"I am still wondering what is learned from watching G in the middle of a change"

Little, but one thing is seeing what sites benefit from the final/done version of serps (that is, benefit from the extra secret souce after the first dose of ranking) versus those that don't benefit, especially those that get filtered out from the junkier datacenter results.

[Whitey]

Not so! From Germany SERP page 1 is all English results, and from the US it is mostly German! Very strange "localization" there.

The localisation has been up the creek since inception IMO . Incidents like this don't suprise me , yet I don't hear anything public from Google.

On a more general level , there are surely things they can fix. On another post i mentioned " widget place " type scenarios seem to be governed by the origination of the vistors rather than the destination of the information. This doesn't work in global services.

Again if you are looking for shops and services in New Zealand , why not show them in .ca / US serps ? Google frequently isn't. They show sites with less relevance from within .ca / US instead of mixing them in.

Moral of the story , go to New Zealand serps if you want to shop there, you may not get what you want in another region. Same story all over the globe. Not good for SERP quality IMO.

[potentialgeek]

I didn't bother renewing a BOTW listing and seem to be higher in SERPs.

p/g

[JS_Harris]

With solid content my serps remained consistent and solid, if this was an update.

[trinorthlighting]

Mine stayed at the top as well due to the solid content. We never chased any links, do not pay any attention to page rank, we just continue to add solid content which is key to weather any serp update. CONTENT IS STILL KING!

[gouri]

I think Google is continuing to add datasets to the Caffeine index. I have noticed that for some of the keywords that I track, the number of competitive sites showing up when I search for them on the Caffeine datacenter have increased since last week and even the beginning of this week.

[curioustoddler]

I agree with you gouri. There has been a difference in no of search results in google.com and caffeine results. How much of that gap still remains?

[andydct]

Not so! From Germany SERP page 1 is all English results, and from the US it is mostly German! Very strange "localization" there.

I would actually do it that way in the US if somebody typed google.de. If you are in Florida and specifically ask fo the .de version of the search engine, then you probably do want German, otherwise you'd have asked for the regular google.com version.

I wonder if Google is pegging your google.de German search to be an American query....Maybe cookies, signed in in some way or possibly the structure of the query?

[tedster]

Good thought. I can see that logic in an American location reaching out to google.de. But what about a German location seeing almost all English results -- I wonder what that logic is.

[andydct]

Good thought. I can see that logic in an American location reaching out to google.de. But what about a German location seeing almost all English results -- I wonder what that logic is.

Well assuming they had no way of pegging you from cookies/browser/google toolbar, I'd have to guess it was what you asked for that triggered it or how you asked.

Maybe its as simple as how they handle regular queries, they look at the click through and return rate and saw that everybody who did that particular query picked an English result page. Is that possible?

The interesting thing would be if you allowed google to localization/personalization, at which point they would have started giving you the German results only.

[indyank]

It is thursday and the google traffic is slowing down...and this usually continues until the weekend...I notice this pattern for the last few weeks (from Feb or march). Anyone else experiencing this?

[TheMadScientist]

Hmmmm... Might be what you're seeing is more 'query dependent' or 'site dependent' even, because Thurs is almost always my busiest day on one (it's looking like today could actually be a record (a good one, not the 'is the site broken? #*$!' record) if it keeps up), but 'averagerish' or so on others. I'm not seeing a 'definite down' trend at all.

[AG4Life]

Is anyone else seeing two sets of SERPs on 209.85.225.103, one with almost twice the number of results returned than the other?

[gouri]

I am seeing two sets of results on 209.85.225.103 and one of the datasets is returning a lot more number of competitive sites for a keyword search than the other.

I have seen one of the datasets return around twice the number of competitive sites for a keyword search compared to the other and sometimes even more than that.

[helpnow]

Yes, 209.85.225.103 has 2 different sets of results, same as IP posted yesterday.

small number results - old SERPs (1-2 months ago)
large number results - newer SERPs (2-3 week ago)

[helpnow]

P.S. Curiously, just checked, and... I can use an east-coast proxy, get the newest set of results of all 3 SERPs (compared to 209.85.225.103), yet, the number of results is the SMALLEST number of all 3 sets of SERPs.

Not sure if we're reading too much into the total number of results being returned - I do not see it positively coorelated to age of SERPs. I know the "number of results" stat is FUD anyway at the best of times, and quite probably buggy right now.

[gouri]

Can you please tell me how I might be able to find an east coast and west coast proxy to search from?

I see US proxies but I can't find them by coast.

[Garya]

Both results you are seeing on 209.85.225.103 are without filters. Don't think we will ever see this live.

[mromero]

This is very perplexing. On the data centers members have mentioned and using anon proxy one of our sites has dropped from 3 to 7, and instead of using the current site title and description which it was using previously, it is lifting the site name and description directly from Wikipedia which is like 5 years old. Anyone else seeing this?

Bing however is on the money with higher ranking and the current site name and description.

[internetheaven]

I didn't bother renewing a BOTW listing and seem to be higher in SERPs.

I've been growing suspicious of BOTW listings for a while now. We've had a few sites tank after buying a link from them (let's be honest, it's link buying, not directory submission) but rankings normally came back after a re-inclusion request even if we kept the BOTW listing. Maybe a scare tactic against link buying? BOTW inner pages keep losing Pagerank, soon it will just be the main page!

[gouri]

Both results you are seeing on 209.85.225.103 are without filters. Don't think we will ever see this live.

Is this why we are seeing a lot more number of competitive sites for a keyword search than we are used to seeing?

In some cases it is over 40 million more.

[helpnow]

east coast vs. west coast... ;) When you use a proxy, you will be using their IP. Just identify where the IP is located, and that will tell you the location of where the proxy results you are viewing are being served.

[aristotle]

I've been growing suspicious of BOTW listings for a while now. We've had a few sites tank after buying a link from them (let's be honest, it's link buying, not directory submission) but rankings normally came back after a re-inclusion request even if we kept the BOTW listing. Maybe a scare tactic against link buying? BOTW inner pages keep losing Pagerank, soon it will just be the main page!

Actually, some of the listings in BOTW are not paid listings. They have a free submission option for non-commercial sites. About two years ago one of my sites got listed after I made a free submission.And I don't think its rankings were hurt at all.

[edited by: tedster at 9:24 pm (utc) on Apr 8, 2010]
[edit reason] added quotation box [/edit]

[member22]

I am trying to see some of of the google results someone in New york sees ?

How can I see those results is there a specific google IP I can type to see the exact results someone gets in that city ?

Thank you,

[edited by: tedster at 9:22 pm (utc) on Apr 8, 2010]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[tedster]

Google's IP addresses do not correspond to localized search results, not even localized by country and definitely not down at the city level. The best way to see city-specific results is to visit Google with YOUR IP address being in that city -- either through a proxy server or a VPN.

[member22]

any free proxy or VPN you recommend I can't seem to find a good one ?

[internetheaven]

Everything I've read, everything I've seen and everything I've reasoned pointed to Caffeine having finished it's roll out this week.

I think something has gone terribly wrong and they are going to go right back to the drawing board. My sources indicate that it's being pulled back and will try again in a few weeks ... they've been wrong before though! Just saying, these results are getting beyond a joke.

[member22]

Give us your source ;) I think that on this forum a lot of us are making assumptions and having hallucinations :) according to me caffeine is maybe live but none of us are able to tell whether it is or not because it is something that google is changing in the background and that will not affect results and what you see when you do a google search ( at least 99 % of results )

The only thing we can see that is suppose to change and that I have been waiting for over 3 months now and that better change soon before I go nuts are the search engine rankings positions ...