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]

[steerpikegg]

@ohno

We usually see a fair bit (lots of pages), but if I look back over the past few weeks where similar activity has happened, there are massive spikes in the crawl stats graph in WMT

[internetheaven]

Surely there has been some catastrophy at google that they cannot tell us about

It really is starting to look that way. Most of us have seen a decade's-worth of Google updates. This doesn't look like a roll-out, it doesn't look like a "software update", it doesn't look like AI with a learning curve, it doesn't even look like progress despite the new flashy layout.

It looks and acts broken, with glimpses of repair work being attempted and roll outs being quickly followed by roll backs. But, like a broken clock which is right twice a day, it's not broken enough to lose more than a couple of percent of users to Bing. And Google's PPC results are incredibly good, better than organics in most cases.

[tessmac]

The more that I look at this the more that it seems that old results are being served. I am checking out a one word, ultra competitive keyword on G.co.uk.

1. Lots of newspaper articles...all old, the most recent being 2009. None with cache..
2. Some really awful bebo type pages.
3. Whole bunch ( 40% ) of hacked and redirected authority sites.
4. Top 10, reasonably consistent with what should be there, but these are aged sites with a strong backlink history over several years.

This would also probably account for the decrease in traffic from some sites reported here. It would seem logical that your rankings would hopefully increase with time, and hence your traffic, but if old results are being served, the rankings would be as they were 3/6/9 months ago.

This could also account for the reports here that recent backlinking seem to have been discounted....

If this is the case ( old results )then sites who have recently obtained the majority of their links would suffer the most, with the older sites seeing less disruption albeit at lower traffic levels, regardless of their recent link building history.

If there is a problem G may be serving the last stable results they had,as they have to serve something.

I am kind of hoping this is the case, or we may have to employ Scooby Doo to figure this one out.

[edited by: tessmac at 1:02 pm (utc) on May 24, 2010]

[Andylew]

Another week on and no change for us, although things have been consistent this month which is kinda encouraging I might mean that at the start of next month we might get all of this months crawled pages added to the index which would be nice!

One thing we have done over the past 72 hours is order up a new server, ooo brand new sparkling ssh window! 2 reasons, google is obviously now looking at speed although it is hard to know how much this will effect positions and second if the bots are going to keep up this relentless hitting (1.3mil hits so far this month) I dont want the hardware to limit the speed at which they crawl.

Dont however misinterpret my move! Although brought on by mayday I do still belive google is broken! However I do thing this is a good strategic move - anything that give an edge over the competition is worth every penny!

[arizonadude]

And Google's PPC results are incredibly good, better than organics in most cases.

In your mind the equals broken but since those PPC results pay the bills and drive profits which in turn drive the stock price, sounds to me like it's just daily corporate business in the works and is probably exactly what the bean counters who now run Google wanted.

The sooner people get over the fact the profits drive Google, the better of they will be.

[freejung]

Regarding the two hypotheses being kicked around - connector words and older results - both would be consistent with my lack of change in traffic. My rankings have not changed much in the last six months, though I was expecting some changes recently. My most common connector word (of) is included in my titles.

Can anyone provide counter-evidence for either of these hypotheses? For example, is there anyone who has lost traffic whose traffic had not changed much (until now) in the last six months?

[Reno]

The sooner people get over the fact the profits drive Google, the better off they will be.

I don't know that anyone will be better off, but they'll certainly not be living under the silly notion that everything Google does is as pure as Ivory Snow. I have to admit that "Do No Evil" press release was an absolutely brilliant stroke of public relations -- it has blinded much (most) of the public, and given them tremendous latitude to do pretty much whatever they want... which they continue to exercise on a daily basis.

"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow." ~ Aesop

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[Shaddows]

In your mind the equals broken but since those PPC results pay the bills and drive profits which in turn drive the stock price, sounds to me like it's just daily corporate business in the works and is probably exactly what the bean counters who now run Google wanted.

The sooner people get over the fact the profits drive Google, the better of they will be.

Mmmm. Organic brings in the traffic, PPC pays the bills. How many Adsensers would trash their sites just so people would click on the ads? Very few, and those that did would realise their folly in short order.

Poor organics means long-term decline in traffic. Most corporations think on longer timescales than their detractors.

[freejung]

Here's an interesting wrinkle on the "dog training" search: In addition to the usual suspects, I'm now seeing this in the #2 slot:

www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/dog.htm

Talk about old results! The page footer says: "Copyright © 1996 - 2001. Last major update 4/22/01."

[Shaddows]

Yes, I see the same result from G.com from UK

.edu boost? Stunning recent link devaluation? Truely massive venerable link boost? Or just some weird algo glitch?

[walkman]

" Stunning recent link devaluation?"

I vote for this one, in my case it's like a 110% devaluation

edit: That particular site is a PR6 , .edu (trusted due the links of the main .edu domain) and does plenty of links for dog training and mentions it quite a few times.

[freejung]

Walkman, I'm not saying the page is spam, but it wasn't there before, and it is very old. There are plenty of new sites with updated content that could rank in its place.

Sure, .edu pages are trusted -- but should we expect to see all niches overrun by pages some prof put up in the '90s? That would be a big change!

[arizonadude]

Poor organics means long-term decline in traffic. Most corporations think on longer timescales than their detractors.

In a normal situation, I would agree with you however Google is not your normal company. They operate under the assumption that they alone know what we want and their going to give it to us whether we want it or not.

Since most average people who use Google are like sheep, the average person is not going to notice anything and in fact a whole lot of average users don't even know what a sponsored link is. They just click the link on the page that best matches what they looked for. I've ran into many people who thought the sponsored links were just regular links and they said they always clicked those first. They had no idea that clicking those was costing somebody money and making money for Google.

There are still many webmasters who live in a fairy tale world that Google really won't do evil and they just want what's best for us.

[walkman]

"Sure, .edu pages are trusted -- but should we expect to see all niches overrun by pages some prof put up in the '90s? That would be a big change! "

This gives credence to the theory that google is discounting (or has yet to calculate) relatively new links.

[gford]

last night after watching the finale of lost i typed into the BigG "lost" and ABC was ranked #3 behind a puppet site and wiki. Ironically, it is #1 today, the day after lost was over..

[cien]

Things are slowly getting better now. I'm starting to rank well again for old long tail terms I used to before March. I really had lost hope before. Hope this is not temporary.

[nethead]

We've seen some of the keywords comeback but traffic is still down about 40% on our biggest site. I hope things come back or improve soon.

[Reno]

in fact a whole lot of average users don't even know what a sponsored link is.

It wasn't that long ago that I had intelligent people say to me "Isn't AOL the internet?"

Now a lot of people are thinking "Isn't Google the World Wide Web?"

AOL is still around, but they made some bad decisions and things changed in such a way that now they are a minor player. I can only hope that the same thing will eventually happen to Google -- I don't wish them into oblivion, but their power is too great so if they eventually get down to 30-40% of all searches, the online world will be a healthier place. Whether this latest incarnation is going to be their "Time Warner merger" is open to debate, but given the reviews from the professional webmasters at this board, it may not bode well for them.

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[Shaddows]

You know, I would feel a lot more comfortable if members were to avoid these type of statements:
1) Google SERPs are awful, I've lost traffic
2) Google results are improving, I'm ranking better.

Really, honestly, conflating your performance with general SERPs does you no favours analytically, and just adds noise to the thread. Change does not necessarily imply either improvement or decline.

I've noticed quite a few people making this mistake, with a corresponding chunk of people arguing the results are fine because they gained traffic.

Seriously people, try making an objective analysis of quality, rather than considering your site the Gold Standard that Google should be rating #1.

FWIW, our organic revenue is slightly down (longtail traffic down lots, midtail up a bit, conversions up overall), our ROI on adwords is up. Try not to go conspiracy mad.

[anand84]

Things are slowly getting better now. I'm starting to rank well again for old long tail terms I used to before March. I really had lost hope before. Hope this is not temporary.

Ah..same here. Google has been hitting my site like crazy for over 12 hours now. Nevertheless, visits too have marginally increased today. One of the long tail (yet popularly searched) keyword where I used to rank 1 had disappeared altogether from rankings sometime back. Today it's back on 1.

I just hope things get better now..It's been a long time waiting..

[CRaja]

Due to Google MayDay Update, our site long tail keywords are dropped to various positions, like 3 to 6. Now it changes daily at every position. Our ad-words long tail keywords are also affected. My Question is whether Google made changes to only long tail keywords or else they made also changes to back links on this Mayday.

[edited by: tedster at 4:50 pm (utc) on May 24, 2010]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[internetheaven]

How many Adsensers would trash their sites just so people would click on the ads? Very few, and those that did would realise their folly in short order.

Poor organics means long-term decline in traffic.

Google is not a website. Google is a search engine. PPC ads on Google and ads on a website couldn't be more different really. People use Google to find websites related to their query. If the PPC results are relevant then why would a user care that the organics are not top notch? Makes no difference to them. Google only has to maintain the non-commercial organic SERPs which is probably why we're seeing more effort on long-tail matching and freshness.

And for all those continually harping on about "Google is a company and business is business", I agree with arizonadude's sentiment.

[Reno]

Google is a search engine

...and, it's a search engine that owes its very existence to the unwritten agreement that it had with website owners, which is to say, we'll take/present your content and in return we'll send you visitors. Win-Win. Next they offered Image Search, and now they've included screenshots -- both of which mean they must display copyrighted graphics, which is still fine for most of us if it remains Win-Win. BUT, if it's Google long term plan to push more traffic to sponsored ads, or to its own retail marketing services, then it's no longer Win-Win. Rather, it Win-A-Lot / Win-Once-In-While (if you're lucky).

Somehow, that shift does not seem very appealing from where I stand. But hey, that's just me.

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[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, CRaja. You asked:

My Question is whether Google made changes to only long tail keywords or else they made also changes to back links on this Mayday.

That's what we're trying to sort out in our discussion. I see possibilities in both areas - and in fact maybe the answer IS "both".

It may not be just changes in backlinks (as in "yes it counts" or "no it doesn't") but more changes to the way PR is now calculated. If that's part of the shift we're seeing, we won't have new public PR numbers to even guess with until mid-summer. The reason I suspect that PR calculation may be in the picture is that it was one of the topics mentioned last week at the Google I/O conference.

[OrganicPop]

Wow, I'm seeing 5 spammerific 301 redirects in the top 10... something just isn't right.

[jojy]

After a week finally I am getting back traffic from Google :)

[sGroup]

After a week finally I am getting back traffic from Google :)

Is that for high volume KW's or low volume long tail KW's

I am wondering if others here are also seeing drops from 1st page to 2nd page on high traffic KW's for the last 2+ weeks.

[jojy]

For high volume keywords. My site was dropped from 1st page to 4th, now its back again on 1st page though position is not same but I am happy with that. I am closely monitoring the positions of long tail keywords for a week or two. Hopefully it wont repeat again.

[JoeSinkwitz]

The quality of backlinks amongst some of the newly ranking sites is disappointing; I realize the attempt is to discount sidebar/footer style links, especially of a more temporal nature, but at the expense of contextual and language relevancy? A few simple filter tweaks and the makeup of the SERPS will vastly improve; I'm sort of expecting them to do it by Memorial Day, but have no way to back up why I think that.

[seonewbie]

I just wanted to see if there is anyone who has seen a dramatic increase (>200%) in image referrals after the mayday update? we haven't done any changes to the content of the pages that has the image.
On a side note, we too had a 20-30% decrease in our web search referrals after the mayday update. Almost 80% of our traffic is generated from long tail keywords.