Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2010

[tedster]

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

There are many different kinds of ranking disruptions being reported right now - dropped domain roots, unexplainable traffic spikes and dips. These things often come right before some kind of algo shift. What do you think - is something brewing?

[edited by: tedster at 12:38 pm (utc) on Oct 1, 2010]

[walkman]

A site of mine (yellow page type) got clobbered on Oct 1st. Another one with similar content but many more links didn't.


I can't really complain since I'm not exactly setting the world on fire with them and they are relatively new sites.

[HuskyPup]

I am seeing weird metrics this week on some of my smaller sites, for instance one of my .co.uk sites has doubled its page impressions way beyond anything it has ever seen before whereas a .asia and a .in site have both seen their page impressions more than halved to levels not seen since just after they were first established in the SERPs.

I am using Google AdSense impressions for the comparison.

Has anyone else seen such fluctuations with ccTLDs this week?

[edited by: tedster at 2:28 am (utc) on Oct 7, 2010]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[tedster]

What I've been seeing, off and on in the past few weeks, might be related. This comes from private server log analysis, not a Google source, by the way. I see spurts of traffic on some sites that come from odd countries that are not normally traffic sources. These definitely go up and down in odd patterns.

[AG4Life]

Just saw a domain parking page overtake one of my pages in the results. It was for a website that used to have related content, but ceased operations quite a while ago, putting the domain name up for sale. Bing doesn't even bring up the site any more, even if you search for the domain name, but on Google ...

Looking at the Alexa graphs for this defunct domain, pageviews are up 50% in the last seven days!

[dickbaker]

Looking at the Alexa graphs for this defunct domain, pageviews are up 50% in the last seven days!

Wouldn't that mean that Alexa is also returning the domain in their results?

[dvduval]

Pretty weird stuff with Google Analytics today. I got like 85% of the google referrals in the first half of the day. Then the remaining 15% the second half of the day.

That alone makes me wonder if there is something amiss with the relationship between analytics and google SERPs. I am thinking carefully about using another powerful stats program.

[mslina2002]

My GA stats for the previous day, Oct 5, has just been corrected. It now shows the new traffic stats. Things are back to normal for that day.

Stats for today however are still stuck and not showing the correct traffic level.

[Hollywood]

During this process (last two days) I have had a hard time maxing out my budget on Google Adwords, anyone else having same problem? My total cost per day is down and hard to get enough hits.

[indyank]

My GA stats for the previous day, Oct 5, has just been corrected. It now shows the new traffic stats.

I too see it being corrected for one of the sites...not yet in others...

But adsense seems to have a glitch...reporting good number of impressions...but bad eCPMs...hope they correct this too :)

[louieramos]

I think the main reason of the traffic drop could be because some sites are ranked high in some datacenters and ranked low in some, I mean there's no consistency with the ranking. I can see this to about 5 keywords, it all started around end of August and its still going. Anyone know if Google have made some hint of whats happening? I tried to ask Matt Cutts via Twitter but as expected he didnt respond :)

[indyank]

During this process (last two days) I have had a hard time maxing out my budget on Google Adwords, anyone else having same problem? My total cost per day is down and hard to get enough hits.

You are probably one of those who is not paying me...lol..

I think the main reason of the traffic drop could be because some sites are ranked high in some datacenters and ranked low in some

I find it to be the method used to throttle traffic - You can read about it here - [webmasterworld.com ]

But what is discussed here is a real GA glitch and probably adsense (I am seeing a low here) and adwords too..

[AG4Life]

@dickbaker

Wouldn't that mean that Alexa is also returning the domain in their results?

Bing doesn't show any results from the "website" itself if you type in just the domain name, the second link it shows is actually just the Alexa page for the domain for example (the first is a robtex page). Google shows the "index" page and 3 indents to inner pages when you do the same search.

Bing does show around 40 results for the site if you do a "site:domain" though (Google says there are 800+ results).

The pages that do show up are the standard fare domain parking ones, with filler content/ads, and the site has URL rewriting turned on (so example.com/anypage.html show up the filler content/ads, instead of 404 or redirecting to root). It used to be a functioning website and still has a good number of inbound links (1000+ Alexa tells me).

Seems to me Bing figured out this site was dead and shouldn't be ranking, whereas Google decided just recently (yesterday actually) that this website deserves a second chance.

[Forbin001]

The SERPS are still hiccuping and burping, 3 straight days. Note to self, stay calm, link strength is good.


(meditates)

[scottsonline]

Whatever shuffle is or was going on suddenly some of te duplicate sites are falling which is good. It seems like when they make some changes filters come off and for a few days chaos ensues in our industry

[backdraft7]

Well, here's another MAJOR change that appears to be coming down the pike, see: [blogstorm.co.uk...]
Google is now testing SERP highlighting with a full page preview as you scroll through results. Looks like eye candy will be the new "optimization" tactic to lure users in.

[Robert Charlton]

Google is now testing SERP highlighting with a full page preview as you scroll through results....

Is Google Experimenting With Full Page Previews?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4212402.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[directwheels]

AG4Life: Just saw a domain parking page overtake one of my pages in the results. It was for a website that used to have related content, but ceased operations quite a while ago, putting the domain name up for sale. Bing doesn't even bring up the site any more, even if you search for the domain name, but on Google ...

Looking at the Alexa graphs for this defunct domain, pageviews are up 50% in the last seven days!

Saw the same thing. Parked domain ranking in top 10 of a competitive keyword.

[directwheels]

scottsonline:It seems like when they make some changes filters come off and for a few days chaos ensues in our industry

Ditto. I have a niche price comparison site with all scraped content. Every so often, the filters would come off and traffic would 5x for a week or so then calm back down due to the duplicate content being filtered.

[Submit_Age]

My site has taken a deep hit. I was in the top 5 for a competitive keyword and now at the end of 2nd page. Years of hard work down the drain. I don't know what would I do. Do you have any ideas, I have been doing every SEO practice in the book, dont know why lost the ranking. First a google dance and now this. Hoping for google to get to their senses. Ranking is good in Yahoo/MSN/Ask but a straight screw you from google.

[freejung]

Hmmm... GA data seems to have fixed itself, but now adsense data for today seems a bit wonky. Either that, or I'm having a _really_ good day, here's hoping it's not a glitch this time!

This might just be part of the same glitch, though. I feel a great disturbance in the Force...

What's interesting about all of this is the implication that all of Google's systems are intimately interconnected in such a way that one event could trigger problems with all of them at once. Either that, or it's all a very odd coincidence.

Maybe they had a huge party at the 'plex and someone brought some very interesting refreshments?

[graeme_p]

Would love to see another product that competes GA

There are many alternatives, but most of them make you pay for premium services to give you what GA gives you free.

You could also just use log file analysis.

[johnnie]

Wow, Google certainly seems a lot 'snappier' recently when it comes to picking up changes and reacting to them. I've seen pages really surge up the ranks only a day or so after making important technical changes. New keyword-rich (exact also) domains get picked up and start ranking competitively in just a matter of days.

Almost makes you long back to those days of instant infoseek :D

[freejung]

I've just thought of another possible reason why I'm having a good day. I get a lot of ads for Bing on my site and they seem to pay well. It seemed to me like there were an unusually large number of those today. Hmmm... Google has glitches, and Bing ups their adwords bids, that makes sense. Gotta like that!

Sometimes cause and effect can be quite complex.

[Forbin001]

@googleanalytics (twitter) just had an update. Here it is:

We are reprocessing the data and expect to have it all corrected by early next week. More updates to come.


Now pardon my naivte' here but....what does this mean exactly. That they will repair the blitzed rankings?

[tedster]

There is no connection between analytics data and rankings - honestly, none.

[HuskyPup]

Firstly I do not use GA, no connection as tedster says.

For all of you suffering from this what domain extensions are you using?

My .com/co.uk sites are more or less about right, the .coms a bit lower than normal but well within normal fluctuations HOWEVER all my non .com sites have taken a pounding this week and lost traffic and earnings between 50-70%.

I have no .net/org sites therefore no idea if they are affected but my .asia/.cn/.in sites have been severely affected with seemingly no difference in their SERPs.

If, I stress if, Google can throttle non .com/co.uk sites at the flick of a switch like this then some serious questions need to be asked surely?

[HuskyPup]

Update to the above - My .com/co.uk stats look lower since further investigation has shown that some of those sites have been hit hard, some up to a 90% loss of traffic, several in the 75-80% range!

Furthermore a couple of non .com/co.uk sites seem to have been unaffected so far however I'm not holding my breath, G is up to something and it is not at all pleasant and I have absolutely no idea what or why.

Insofar as I am concerned further analysis indicates that this all actually started On Friday 1st October, kicked-in over the weekend and has run riot across my sites all this week.

G has suddenly gone down in my estimation greatly.

[freejung]

For me, at this point, everything including adsense has gone back to normal. I did have a good adsense day yesterday, but not outside the normal range. As far as I can tell traffic, impressions, clicks, revenue and rankings are all roughly the same as last week.

[HuskyPup]

Now I do not seem to be getting hardly any organic traffic from Google.com whatsoever even though my SERPs seem normal.

I'm totally and utterly lost as to what is happening. How can I be there yet not get any traffic?

[scottsonline]

Keep the faith because whatever they were doing as usual within a few days it filtered through. Same pattern...normal traffic, bizarre patterns and a decrease in traffic and then a return to a new level in this case higher.

Our conversion rate jumped to all time highs wed-Friday. Traffic was perfectly targetted on a level not seen since pre mayday.