Traffic Increase After A Suspected Manual Review

[kidder]

I noticed a Mountain View IP the other day on one of our sites, it was a specific search term they came in on. A few days later our organic traffic has almost doubled so I am guessing we got some sort of rubber stamp from Google, the site is a good quality one but only about 6 months old. I can't see where the extra traffic is coming from, just more traffic coming in from major terms we were already ranking for. There is no reason for the sudden increase in traffic from external factors such as marketing or news media so I suspect Google is in fact serving us for a greater percentage of the total searches. Any thoughts?

[tedster]

It's great to hear a member report of traffic increases in the midst of the negative reports coming in. It does sound like a manual review, but the curious thing here is what kind of switch got thrown? Or maybe what kind of flag got lifted, eh?

I occasionally see a search term pop into a high position for a short time, and i always hope it will "pass the audition". Looks like yours did.

[edited by: tedster at 11:51 am (utc) on Jun 15, 2010]

[kidder]

I still suspect the answer lies in the percentage of total searches any given site will appear for.

[maximillianos]

I would say it is more likely the visitor was not from Google, and just a visitor who lives in Mountainview.

There have been a lot of serp changes lately. It may be coincidental.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Too many changes, it's about time we learn who benefited from this.

[aristotle]

our organic traffic has almost doubled so I am guessing we got some sort of rubber stamp from Google,

It sounds like you might have received the Google Seal of Approval!

Actually I don't even know if there is really such a thing as a manual Google seal of approval. I've read that Google employs about 10,000 manual reviewers (mostly in India), but that they are mainly used to check SERPs, not individual sites. But who outside of Google knows for sure?

[Robert Charlton]

The manual review guidelines that I've seen... and I'm sure they've changed since I saw them... classified pages into several relevancy/quality categories that I thought were ingenious as an approach to quality certification. The categories were very broad and I felt eliminated certain kinds of subjectivity that might creep in.

It's likely they're not used on their own, but are used to cross-check other factors. Conceivably, kidder, you were already poised for greatness and they were double-checking your gate pass. ;)

I can't see where the extra traffic is coming from, just more traffic coming in from major terms we were already ranking for. There is no reason for the sudden increase in traffic from external factors such as marketing or news media so I suspect Google is in fact serving us for a greater percentage of the total searches.

When you say "ranking," do you mean #1 for all the terms you show increased traffic for? If so, the most likely change I can think of might be #1 for a higher percentage of personalized results and the like that you're not aware of. Or, maybe you're getting all the longtail traffic that everyone else is losing.

Is there any change in the demographics or quality of the traffic? Eg, does it convert more... has it also increased time per user on the site, etc? It's an interesting enough example that finding out what kind of change it was would be worthwhile.

[kidder]

When I say ranking I mean we have been sitting at #2 for a few high volume terms, we are still in the same positions as far as I can tell but the traffic has increased. I will add its a big percentage increase more so than a huge flood of traffic so there is always the possibility that an external factor I've missed. I just don't think its likely. And some more information just confuse the issue from the keyword tool.

Local monthly searches = 2.24 million
Exact match = 165,000

Highest traffic is coming from another search term that reports just 27,000 searches...

Actual traffic does not yet come close to reflecting this data so I suspect we still have a way to go. Confusing yes.