3: Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2010

[tyler756]

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

I have been attempting to follow this thread to the best of my ability but must admit there is information in here that is a little out of my league.

Has anyone been able to do anything to help increase rankings? I lost rankings for 3 my keywords (I am not ranking for a ton of them yet) and these 3 drive a lot of my traffic. I dropped down from the 1 spot to position 5 and 6 for two of the keywords, and from the 3rd spot to the third page for the other major keyword. I am not sure what to do and we are about to enter the "slow months" for my industry and my traffic is dropping every day.

Just thought I would post to see if anyone is having any luck

[edited by: tedster at 7:41 pm (utc) on May 22, 2010]

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, tyler. Have you analyzed the pages that jumped past you on those three search results?

[tyler756]

Thank you Tedster. Yes I have to the best of my ability. One of the keywords we lost our number 1 spot (after ranking number 1 for 2 consecutive months) - the new number 1 has the keyword as its url, but that's it, their site is not that well optimized and them as well as the sites below it (until you get to mine - ranked number 5) do not have nearly the amount of back-links and other SEO work as I do.

The other keyword that I dropped down to position 6 for is a more competitive keyword, but again we put a lot of work to get to that number 1 spot and now its seems as if that work does not count anymore. Our back-links dropped from over 7000 to 1500 (according to Yahoo site search). The other websites do load faster than ours, maybe that is my main problem? and most of the sites are older than mine.

The 3rd keyword is the most competitive keyword and we were ranking before major chain companies before MAYDAY, I am not sure why we dropped from 3 to the middle of the third page but that has hurt traffic a decent amount.

[chms]

Today I saw the same DNS error in GWM, also about 1000 errors.

The number of my indexes pages are very low, I think Google is reindexing the web.

[tkik]

Who would like to startup a closed selfhelp group with me ?

After more than 4 weeks waiting I would like to change whatever it takes, but although i dont miss experience, i have no idea where to start this time. I am seeing in this thread that a lot other webmasters are also seeking for reasons and help after they have been hit by this update.
As it is forbidden to discuss the needed information here and i learned that the google support forums arent helpful at all and i dont want to go public with my problems, i would like start a personal google wave where the group can safely put their facts on the table and where we could compare so we hopefully learn what we could do. Please send me a PM if you want to join.

[londrum]

best advice is probably just to wait, and sit it out. you have to let google settle the index down first, before you know where you stand. otherwise you might be changing something that doesnt need to be changed.

[mcdarwin]

@tkik - Very good initiative!

Beeing able to look at a larger number of sites affected is exactly what we need to get a better understanding of this and move forward at this point.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:59 pm (utc) on May 21, 2010]

[pontifex]

@tkik : a GOOGLE wave? Start a closed wiki, a closed site in general or do something outside of gmail addresses, etc.

Don't work at a gun factory, if you hate weapons!

And, on a side note: 4300 DNS errors in WMT on the 17th - maybe they were busy coding pacman games instead working on their core business?

[tkik]

pontifex, i dont share your paranoia, i refuse to believe google employees are scanning whatever is entered there; if they would and there is only one leakage, google would be DEAD. But if there are concerns under participants, i am not sticking to it; a closed ning commununity would probably also be as useful, but doesnt offer the same features.

[pontifex]

oh, you got me wrong here: it is not paranoia, it is a question of style... like: if you like colorful cloths, do not shop @Armani :-)

[backdraft7]

If you run a business website and business is slow right now, I wouldn't necessarily blame Google. This is historically one of the worst weeks for sales in the entire year (unless you sell warm weather apparel or sporting goods). If your traffic is still the same and you've done a broad check on your long tail and it's all intact, then just sit back and pop a cold beer or whatever you prefer and things should get back to normal in a few weeks. One the other hand, if you've been dropped completely from the SERPs, then go read the GWMG and make whatever changes you need to end any "bad" site characteristics. Simple as that! (?)

[maximillianos]

One the other hand, if you've been dropped completely from the SERPs, then go read the GWMG and make whatever changes you need to end any "bad" site characteristics. Simple as that! (?)

I would probably wait a few more weeks, maybe a month or two even... before making any big changes. It seems as though G is rolling something out still... and it doesn't quite seem done yet.

We've had stable traffic for years, and we are seeing some fluctuation still to this day. We are not making any changes yet. Plan is to see how things look in late June and go from there.

Of course we are not as bad off as some. We are down about 15% in traffic at this point. But oddly in the last 3-4 months (since January) we were up about 20% from our norm. So we are kind of just balancing out back to where we were at the end of 2009.

[tkik]

backdraft, maximillianos,

you propably missed a point in my post from yesterday (11:02 am on May 21, 2010 (utc 0)) here in this thread...
I'd really prefer to sit down and do nothing about it, but i simply can't afford it anymore.

[aparraga]

"And, on a side note: 4300 DNS errors in WMT on the 17th - maybe they were busy coding pacman games instead working on their core business? "

LOL! :)
Come on, pontifex, you don't understand that the pacman is part of the rollback plan: the pacman keeps people playing in the home while they are rollbacking the monster they have released :)

[aparraga]

Seriously, even if they have released a better algo (which I believe coming from G), things may change in terms of traffic since now results are not accurate and everybody knows that.
In the other hand, what I suspect is that traffic won't come back in the same proportion as before the MAYDAY update, just because they changed the algo.

[eljacko]

I have just notice a page of my website dissapear, I think it's to do with the index as it has been slow but not sure, it was there yesterday but not not in cache or in results what could this be a penalty? the rest of the website is fine.

[eljacko]

the page still has a pr of 5

[backdraft7]

the page still has a pr of 5

I wouldn't worry about PR. According to MC, it means nothing.

[Reno]

I'd really prefer to sit down and do nothing about it, but i simply can't afford it anymore.

So what are you going to do -- start changing your site? How? Unless you know the destination, any route you follow is at best a guess. As Tedster said, there's never a reason to stop adding quality content, so yes, most certainly continue doing that. And diversify your traffic sources as deep & wide as you can. But unless you know something the rest of us are missing, any changes you make in an attempt to rank better at this point in the G* transformation is only a guess as to what might do any good. There are a LOT of quality sites that were created by very experienced white hat webmasters that are feeling this pain. Many of those people forget more every day that I can hope to know, and THEY are standing still wondering which way to turn. When I see those folks take a direction, I'll open my sails too. Until then, I'm keeping my eyes open and waiting to see which way the wind blows. I'm the first to admit -- I have no idea how to respond to this storm, so I'm sitting patiently until the time is right, then I'll make my next move. I just hope the "time" is sooner rather than later, because like you and so many others here, this is hurting.

...................

[eljacko]

backdraft7 - does this mean it's a penalty or a reindexing?

[eljacko]

How to resolve this matter as I can not afford to be banned and if a penalty how do we lift it?

[tedster]

One page disappeared, but the rest of the site is still indexed and getting traffic? That's probably not a ban, sounds more like a temporary bug. Use your WMT account, first for information and then possibly to submit a reconsideration request.

[imbckagn]

I'm trying to figure out if I was hit with a penalty or the Mayday update as well.

May 4th 3:00pm EST (same day Google interface changed for me) my 5 main keyword phrases dropped from 1st position to 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th and 140th. My longtail traffic was effected as well. What's weird about the longtail traffic is I'm getting about 20% less now but it's totally different longtail phrases than before the May 4th changes. Overall traffic is down about 75% and continues to drop.

I have no other signs of receiving a penalty. Still rank for www.example.com, example.com, have 8 sitelinks, have 4 extra links under my main keyword phrase searches.

Googlebot went crazy on my website for a while but seems to have dropped below "normal" now. Google started indexing all kinds of pages I disallowed in my robots.txt but now seems to be correcting that. According to Webmaster tools there are 63 pages I disallowed still in the index out of the 1500 that were indexed.

In my niche it seems like the SERP's are very old at least 1yr except for 2-3 websites in the top 20. I check specific keywords in this niche several times per day for about 1.5 years now. The websites that are currently ranking in the top 20 with an exception of 2-3 are very similar if not the same as 1 year ago.

The SERPS have not changed much at all since May 4th for the keywords I monitor. It's as if they are stuck back in time, 1yr ago give or take. This is a highly competitive niche and keywords.

So I'm stuck between a new algorithm, old stale SERPs (waiting for reindex?) and/or I received a penalty of some sort.

[edited by: imbckagn at 6:17 pm (utc) on May 22, 2010]

[tkik]

@Reno
your not the first to admit having no idea where to start... I said it before you did (see above :-P ) The only thing that is for sure is that MC made 2 comments last thursday: 1) There is no update that needs to finish. 2.) Mayday update is de facto an algo update

[edited by: tedster at 6:27 pm (utc) on May 22, 2010]

[linux]

the german domain name server at denic was down at 12.5 so maybe this is the problem with the dns errors?

[Plan_D]

PR people are supposed to give the best and most advantageous spin on things no matter what has happened or gone wrong.

[MacSeth]

I think that "waiting out" is a good option... however... Google is changing like stated before.
It is not the new layout only: they stuff the index more and more with localized results, realtime results, video's, images and not to forget: adwords adwords anddddd adwords.
So... what will be left of the top 10 results as we have known for years? Nothing!
You can wait things out and hope for the better (which is maybe a good plan in some respects) or you can get yourself together and get yourself advertised in different ways.

[walkman]

The only thing that is for sure is that MC made 2 comments last thursday: 1) There is no update that needs to finish. 2.) Mayday update is de facto an algo update

When /where did he make those comments?

I'm at 6 months traffic and keywords. IMO it's like nothing happened in the past 6 months.

thanks

[tedster]

When /where did he make those comments?

At the Google I/O conference, I believe - that was on Thursday. I didn't watch the live feed and I don't know of an available archive, at least not yet.

[jojy]

Since May 17 we lost up to 65% search engine traffic from Google, this is major hit by Google :(

[edited by: tedster at 9:56 pm (utc) on May 26, 2010]