Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2010

[Hissingsid]

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

I've been trying to work out what happened on May 17th and May Day. I seem to spend a lot of time analysing on-page factors and back link profiles for my own ranking pages and those of competitors but have fallen into the trap of focusing on a few big traffic volume terms.

Recently I've been looking at some second tier terms and this has been much more enlightening. This has also made sense of what is happening for the big volume terms.

In site linking seems to be out ranking external back links if done in a particular way.

The pattern I'm seeing is this, when all other factors are roughly the same, pages on sites where the site is organised in such a way that there are a large number of back links containing the keywords in anchor text within the site. ie Sites with many pages each page focusing onto one page with the same anchor text and very few back links from external sites are out ranking those that have a better external back link pattern.

So sites that have Javascript or CSS drop down navigation systems with the same links on every single page seem to be doing very well.

The other thing I'm noticing and this may confirm what I'm saying above. I'm seeing SERPS loaded with home pages.

Anyone else noticed similar patterns?

Cheers

Sid

[edited by: tedster at 11:32 am (utc) on Jun 1, 2010]

[Martin Ice Web]

Was there an other tweak from 31 May to 1 June? We fell off another 20%. If Cutts says, they want to bring up more quality pages, does he mean small pages with nearly no content and many adsense on it?


Allmost all of the places up to 20 are price searching and comparing sites. It seems like goog tweaked it to have much incoming links and have much outgoing links but have less inner links.

I can remember that this was the same case when they startet with big daddy. Suddenly pages with no content ruled and price comparing site were all over the place. It took about 3 month for google to get it right. Hope it will be the same this time.

[tedster]

Allmost all of the places up to 20 are price searching and comparing sites

From what I've seen on this kind of SERP, it's mash-ups, feeds, and recycled content of all kinds. There's not an original contribution in the bunch. Today they call themselves mash-ups to attract investors. But we used to call them scraper spam.

[walkman]

I asked if Caff is live and was told no (at least not 100%) by Vanessa Fox. This [209.85.225.103...] is different for me and this is the original caffeine DC. As painful as this is, we need to hold on.

[Andylew]

Whoopie, just woken up to the best news in a month. Site: is now reporting a much reduced number of pages to what it has over the past month but critically it is a number that I would call accurate based on past stats and current traffic (it is also the number that I found .se reported a week or so back, see one of my earlier posts).

It is the first major shift for us in a month and although downwards (in site: returned pages not actual traffic) it does now correlate with our traffic numbers, hopefuly it is the start of something.

[Hissingsid]

Tedster,

If you look at those scraper sites they fit exactly what I'm seeing on the sites that have moved up the rankings. Very few backlinks, even fewer to the pages that rank, very well organised internal link structure with many internal links duplicated on every single page.

Either external link weight is being counted much less or internal link weight is being counted much more or a combination of both.

IMHO this is either an error on the part of the coders or it is a phase we are going through while they rebuild the link map of the web.

Cheers

Sid

[gethan]

Please correct my understanding if wrong;

Three major factors influence the organic traffic we get from G. (ignoring keyword considerations)

- Index (caffine) - the pages included in G's index.
- Algorithm (mayday) - the order in which the pages are placed in the SERPs.
- Layout (jazz) - amount of extra stuff that pads the organic result


During April 28th - ongoing we have seen;

- Index change - re-indexing of all pages to new infrastructure that has been rolled out despite many pages that previously were indexed dropping out. Hints at this site: and WMT count plummeting during this period.

- Algorithm - on May 1st - Mayday was rolled out - major tweaks as confirmed by MC in his video - leading to positions changing.

- Layout - jazz interface - with all it's options, organic results further from the hot parts of the heat map, sometimes below the fold, leading to a lower % click through.

Is this a fair summary?

[gethan]

Gbot is still re-indexing larger sites from scratch as I noted weeks ago, HENCE many sites are still showing under-ranking due the latter fact, not enough indexed pages and pages linked to them are also being re-indexed = lower rank factor until all is re-indexed. When I pointed out what I called the Total-Recall, is basically a recount, re-index, re-rank

Absolutely agree dusky - I operate a large site that has seen a huge drop off in indexed pages - from ~5M to ~500K (least using site:)

I noticed today that WebmasterWorld went from ~700K to ~3.5M - I've started using it as a control site only during this period - but it's seems from memory to be a historically average number.

MC hints that the algo is now more sensitive to long tail terms... but I'd also think that for large sites - the pages optimised for long tail terms are further down in the tree... thus long tail traffic would be lower for two reasons.

Maybe some of the longtail traffic that we seem to have lost - will follow what appears to be a growing inclusion count.

[ohno]

Indexed URL's for our sites are going up & down all day everyday, still no where near all pages indexed. Re:the bursts of traffic/sales others are seeing, we see the exact same. Nothing all day then BAM! Sale after sale.

[tolien]

one of my websites took number 1 position for 24 hours on saturday, then got demoted back to 2nd sunday evening. this is very irritating

I also noticed some offshore sites showing in the UK serps too while this was happening.

[Super_Chunk]

My website, which has had a bad penalty for 18 months, jumped back yesterday and Monday with a great hike in traffic and sales, plus the number of reported pages in the index. Unfortunately today it is gone again!

[ohno]

This is what is becomming annoying, why is it so up & down?! Those who have said in these threads you need to adapt, adapt to what?! Changes like this DAILY?!

[Andylew]

This is what is becomming annoying, why is it so up & down?! Those who have said in these threads you need to adapt, adapt to what?! Changes like this DAILY?!

Hang tight, indications are (for us at least) that this is reaching some sort of conclusion. It is the first time in a month google is starting to make sense, 'something' is happening.

[ohno]

I'm seeing a lot of foreign traffic this week. I hope you are right Andy, even if it settles down with us not where we were at least when the goal posts are static you can start work!

[tedster]

adapt to what?! Changes like this DAILY?!

Yes - because that is the reality. In Webmaster Tools, almost every keyword I check shows 5 or 6 different positions, often ranging from #1 to down on page 3. We may not like it, and it certainly is not like the Google of old, but that's the way the game is being played today. So yes, we adapt or we die.

[walkman]

Yes - because that is the reality. In Webmaster Tools, almost every keyword I check shows 5 or 6 different positions, often ranging from #1 to down on page 3. We may not like it, and it certainly is not like the Google of old, but that's the way the game is being played today. So yes, we adapt or we die.

Probably just wait it out until this update is over. It makes no sense for the algo to rank the same page #1 one day and the next #31, unless they are playing roulette.

For the person receiving foreign traffic: me too and with good keywords ranking. Maybe caffeine is there and not yet in USA?

[edited by: tedster at 12:22 am (utc) on Jun 3, 2010]

[Reno]

So yes, we adapt or we die.

I admire & respect your candor Tedster. If this New Google is complete and what we see is the way it will be, then I think it's fair to say there will be a lot of bodies on the road. And many if not most of those bodies will be webmasters who played by the rules.

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

[edited by: tedster at 12:21 am (utc) on Jun 3, 2010]

[arizonadude]

I admire & respect your candor Tedster. If this New Google is complete and what we see is the way it will be, then I think it's fair to say there will be a lot of bodies on the road. And many if not most of those bodies will be webmasters who played by the rules.

You have been around long enough to know that's they way it's always been since the first dance. If this is the first time you were hit hard, then welcome to Google.

[Reno]

If this is the first time you were hit hard, then welcome to Google.

Believe me, I've had my ups & downs like everyone else when they've done an algo update. In each case I dealt with the changes and managed to keep on keeping on.

What bugs me about this latest G* incarnation is how blatantly they are pushing aside organics and quality sites in general, to direct their own visitor traffic to the paying ads. There is nothing that I or you or anyone can do to impact a change to their own webpage design, so from the start of MayDay I have joined with Brett and everyone else in saying that is a reason in-and-of-itself for the huge traffic drops we are seeing. Google has gone from being a sort of "partner" to being a sort of "competitor", and it's not a happy change because they're the bull elephant and we're the china in the room.

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

[tedster]

To make space for discussing the Google Updates and SERP Changes this month, I moved the more philosophical discussions and opinions about Google to a separate thread: Google's Current Incarnation [webmasterworld.com]

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Site: is now reporting a much reduced number of pages to what it has over the past month but critically it is a number that I would call accurate based on past stats and current traffic

I'm going to check a few accounts and see if that's happening more widely. If so, it would be extremely welcome news.

[gethan]

Heads up - site: just stopped returning any numbers - just gone from the interface - on my personalised version of google.com

Non logged in - browser IE shows the number.

[MacSeth]

@Dusky While I am still hoping you are absolutely right, I have heard Mr. Matt Cutts say that there is absolutely NO reindex, what is there is there... full stop.
I have lost 95% of traffic (for the record... I am NOT wining or complaining or whatever since organic results are gifted and not a absolute right) and it seems I will stay in the bottom regions for some time.
However... there must be SOMETHING wrong still since a spanish NEW index is still doing good enough while it is the youngest site.

We will change things in order to get more traffic from other places and to be honest... we should have done that years ago and should not have focussed on Google.

[dertyfern]

Hissingsid,

I'm not seeing increased relevance due to internal linking, in fact, I'm seeing the exact opposite: heightened weighting for off-page, keyword rich anchor text--sadly, from just about any type of website.

I'm also seeing major increases in rankings from playing with title tag/domain/<hx> combinations.

I'm pretty shocked at the quality of sites that are gaining in organics and maps from Mayday.

[dickbaker]

I'm watching several phrases in several very different niches. What I've noticed in the last week or so is that all of them seem to have stabilized. There may be some movement from #5 to #4 and then back again, and a new site popping up on the first page for a day or so, but there's not the level of churning that there was two or three weeks ago, where half of the first page was disappearing and being replaced with something completely different.

Sadly, these stabilized results still have sites that shouldn't be on page one (MFA, cloaking, etc) in stable positions now. I hope they're not here to stay.

It seems like the sites on page one are either well-established sites with lots of traffic and links, or smaller sites that have the keyword in the URL. Some of the keyword URL sites are outranking sites with more traffic, pages links, etc. Seems like a cheesy way to get to the top.

[Gshaughn]

This morning my top 3 word keyword phrases improved dramatically - better than ever. Anyone else seeing a resurgence?

3 Word highly competitive phrases:

#39 to #2
#16 to #3
#24 to #3

Highest they've been since 4/23/2010. The DC's I checked showed steady #4 for the first phrase (up from #39).

[gford]

This morning my top 3 word keyword phrases improved dramatically - better than ever. Anyone else seeing a resurgence?

I have seen an improvement (slight) for the last 3 days. Many KWs sent to oblivion have been inching up on a daily (hourly?) basis. This could be due to my increased efforts or just a tweak by google, either way it is a good sign.

[ohno]

Ok, anyone checked site speed in WMT lately? I've just checked ours and when this all kicked off the tool claimed we were SLOWER than 90% of sites. Now it claims we are FASTER than 66% of sites?! One other site is still claiming to be slow(same server and setup). The faster one was updated June 1st though, slower one has not been updated since April 28th for some reason?!

[dusky]

MacSeth, MC also denied a lot of things before and they proved to be true, including the update for the algo in relation to caffeine.

The proof is in in the logs, searches and SERPs. When you watch G*'s movement for years, you learn from a lot of mistakes, but you also become familiar with at least a generalized pattern regardless of the times updates take place. Updates may differ, but there was and still is a similar pattern, the only difference this time, the new infrastructure which is the largest so far they have acquired. what I meant by re-index is going round spidering all links, adding to them as they go while most of the stale links in the index are stripped from their filter and trustrank until they re-appear in the new index (caffeine). Once they appear again, they'll have their new calculated rank and backlink profile (this is also diffrent from all previous updates). What MC means (not read anywwhere his denial by the way) is we don't have any data that has been lost resulting in re-indexing the whole thing again.

Yes, there was a shift in the site: and inurl: command numbers today on G*.com. The was also a shift up and down of the link: command (backlinks).

So things are still changing, increasing and decreasing and with all that a ranking process according to new algo rules!

[pontifex]

@dusky: seems you are right on track! with "site:" my number just ten folded - lets see if that stays stable. It shifted back shortly, but I am significantly up in the amount indexed pages. That number kept dropping slowly in the past 4 weeks.

Something is up with the index and if there is an significant jump within the next 3 days, I will vote for "dusky update" :)

cheers,
P!

[sean22]

I think blogroll links have been devalued. If so it is a welcome change. Maybe it's elementary to many webmasters but I have always wondered about blogroll vs in-content (which is better).

[dusky]

pontifex,

Something is up with the index and if there is an significant jump within the next 3 days, I will vote for "dusky update" :)

When my cage has been rattled with close to -$00,000s in the last three months, I guess I should be proud in at least predicting some of my own sites downfall!

Yes, things are dancing, just checked now, site: and inurl: reverted to yesterday's numbers, probably what we thought weeks ago, dayshift / nightshift SERPS so to speak. WebmasterWorld for example jumping from the millions to less than one million in searching for webmasterworld (About 879,000 results) at the moment, whereas few hours ago, it was 1.7m+.

Likely now once the new algo is in place are concentrating on the proper infrastructure move, the dance from historical observations always indicates major DCs shift from one DC to another.