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]

[chrislloyd515]

To add the october changes, I'm seeing this new form of SERPs all the time with places integrated into the organic SERPS and a floating map to the right, this is the 6th time I have got it today, in this case there are 16 "Organic" SERPS. but I have seen up to 19

Image - [twitpic.com...]

I think this maybe the next major update to the SERP pages as I'm seeing it more and more, very much like the pattern of testing before google instant was rolled out.

[Robert Charlton]

To add the october changes, I'm seeing this new form of SERPs all the time with places integrated into the organic SERPS and a floating map to the right, this is the 6th time I have got it today, in this case there are 16 "Organic" SERPS. but I have seen up to 19

I've been seeing various results certain kinds of geo searches... and hotels in particular... where it's appeared that Google is going in this direction, of returning some major directory-style sites, but increasingly being the über-directory itself. It goes a little bit with Google's not liking to return search results within search results.

I can see this organizational principle being applied to a huge range of queries, though, not just geo queries, and it would have seismic implications to e-commerce and directory-style sites if Google went much further in that direction.

I think that Google's branding algo is naturally pulling them this way.

[Robert Charlton]

chrislloyd515, a PS... where are you searching from?

[chrislloyd515]

I've been seeing various results certain kinds of geo searches... and hotels in particular... where it's appeared that Google is going in this direction, of returning some major directory-style sites, but increasingly being the über-directory itself. It goes a little bit with Google's not liking to return search results within search results.

In the last two hours every single "hotel" or "hotels" searhc I've done has brought that back in one of two forms... the first is like the screen shot above where there are places results taking up positions 4-? in the results, the other type seem to be showing the places results above the organic searches, but not showing a picture for each result. Example of the 2nd type - [twitpic.com...]

In my eyes the 1st type looks aesthetically much more pleasing, and is less likely to annoy the SEO community as the first 3 positions are still up for grabs... although sucks for those in 17th (but still page 1!)

[chrislloyd515]

I'm searching from Singapore, but using google.com (Not .com.sg)

[Robert Charlton]

I'm searching from Singapore, but using google.com (Not .com.sg)

Regardless of which tld you're using, Google is very aggressive about customizing geo-related searches based on where you're searching from, using IP and probably ISP information.

The second type of serp you show, for [paris hotel], have been the normal style of large [cityname business] results for a long time, and it's a style that's generally been independent of searcher location.

The style of serp you reported first, though, for [singapore hotel], which is a local search for you, was discussed in this thread, the title of which is something of a misnomer, as the Place flags confused the interpretation of what was seen....

Google Tests Local Search with NO Organic Results
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4186748.htm [webmasterworld.com]

In the US, around the time this was discussed in August, I saw brick-and-mortar-predominant results, as in your first [singapore hotel] example, for maybe 10-20 large US cities, but I haven't seen them recently. And I haven't seen anything like the number of results you report. It's almost as though they included the 7-pack map results in the middle column but shifted the map to the side.

What particularly raised my interest, though, is that I have been seeing hotel searches for some cities where I've felt the branding of the hotels was very strongly aligned with the [cityname hotel] query... so much so that it appeared that Google was on the brink of sorting data differently. Your post suggested this might be coming to pass.

Because of your location, though, I'm now interpeting what you're seeing as a further test of the local results discussed on the above thread... not a system-wide reinterpretation of queries.

The potential of what branding effects might do if taken this far has raised a lot of concern among many directory owners and ecommerce operators, and it certainly set off a bell in my head as I read your post and saw the screen capture.

[Jez123]

Google is going crazy here at the moment. SERPS all over the place. Jumping crazily from one refresh to the next. Something might be happening....

Too much caffeine?:-)

[Kristos]

@Jez123 SAME HERE!

[scottsonline]

I think an update took place in some areas as much as a week ago.

We are seeing totally different but stable results now. Changes were as significant as mayday, with the same horrible results for 7-10 days post change. Spammers very much won this round.

[wizardmansa]

I am seeing some wierd wierd stuff man! Very wierd.
I run a couple of insurance site in South Africa... Check this out.

Pages from the WEB - [google.co.za...]

Pages from South Africa - [google.co.za...]

It's wierd... totally different results!

[scottsonline]

The changeover seems to have rattled through the dcs I ended up on. Searches are no longer returning out of business sites. Amazon isn't always first. Other holiday type searches are still messy. I think they stagger changes now.

What is a bummer though...the sites that bought links from 250+ domains are rocking. That's 250 per term not per site. Magic number is somewhere north of 200, anything less than 50 doesn't move the SERPS at all.

Edit here we go again. Last 45 minutes all our traffic is from other countries.

[Kristos]

google serps bouncing more quickly now here.
last week one of our sites would be #2 then the next day #54 then the next day #43 or so.
this morning was #54 then 4 minutes later back at #2, now back at #43
ergh

[indyank]

last week one of our sites would be #2 then the next day #54 then the next day #43 or so.
this morning was #54 then 4 minutes later back at #2, now back at #43

does it take these three positions alone - #2, #43, #54. It then looks like there are three different serps that google is testing hard.

[setzer]

My site dropped from a strong PR5 to PR3 last week. Unsure what caused it. We have around 200K inbound links. None of these links were bought, nor do we engage in link sharing.

Anyway.. I'm not complaining since search traffic is up about 20% since the drop in PR. Go figure.

We did, however, buy out a competitor recently (about 3 months ago) and 301'd all pages to our site. Perhaps this caused it. They had a PR3. Still strange though..

[Kristos]

@indyank
yeah that's it.
stable at one of these 3 positions!
ARGH
i know i am gonna get me a google skin...
(we may be hunters living in the mountain of the grid- but we are HUNTERS on the INTERNET AS WELL!)

[nuthin]

Seeing missing cache's today on sites that have obtained fresh links from sites that are frequently crawled. In theory; the site should be updated with it's new cached version after 48 hours (normally this happens).

This particular site has been waiting 1+ week.

Maybe Google's not updating these sort of sites at this minute... but no reason explains the dropping of the cached version.

[Lame_Wolf]

There is one SERP that I check many times per day. It normally gives results for 12.3 million. For the last few days it has shown 4.9 - 5.1 million results.

For the same Keyword, Bing states 45 million, and Yahoo states 46 million.

[scottsonline]

Im pretty confident the update at least for our niche is rolling through. It may be a data merge, more dcs, an algo update, filter update or whatever but something clearly happened. Many results are now better but there are some...where 2 of the top 5 were from hacked domains with temporary spam content much like the pill sites we all see. Also the branding thing seems to have dialed down a bit. They seem to distinguish between a search FOR a brands site versus a search for a brands product.

It's migrating through, would love to know what it was but I doubt we will ever know for sure.

[dataguy]

We add about 300 pages of UGC daily. Normally we get traffic from Google to at least 100 of these pages in the first 24 hours. In the past 24 hours we haven't had traffic to any of the new pages added in the past 24 hours. Traffic to the rest of the site from Google is stable or up.

Just trying to see if anyone else is seeing this or if this is unique to us.

[jalicia18]

i haven't heard yet about the google serp changes. I think matt cutts will post the updates of google serp on his website.

[tedster]

Hello jalicia18 - welcome to the forums.

To help you understand our discussions a little bit, Google makes about 400 changes to the ranking algorithm every year and they also are testing up to 200 changes to the results page layout at any one time. Matt Cutts doesn't talk about most of them - when he does we do appreciate it (and we try to read between the lines a lot, too).

So we keep this thread going every month to compare our observations and ideas with each other for all the things we see - not onbly the ones that Matt Cutts or John Mueller or whoever at Google says something "official" about.

[Kristos]

@indyank
yes

[scottsonline]

New result set this morning.

For the first time g live returns different results than hitting enter. New experiment.

Whether it is throttling or testing of positions who knows. What stinks and whatthey haven't considered is making so many changes day to day is tough on people looking to buy things. Buy today because tomorrow those results may be gone

[pelizden]

@dataguy
similar here, two of my frequently updated sites haven't been crawled at all yesterday and today, and new content is not included in index, with older pages everything is OK.

[scottsonline]

Doesn't the lack of indexing usually occur as updates are rolling? With mayday I remember similar reports in advance.

Searching for the same terms at different times today returns totally different results. Amazing the changes being made.

[epmaniac]

pages have gone missing of my site on serp for many keywords

they are simply not appearing

are u noticing it too?

[epmaniac]

my site has simply vanished from pages

it was pr6 site and quite popular

[epmaniac]

the subdomain is ranking but main site is gone

do u guys think its the sign of a penalty or usual google problem and it will be back to normal soon?

[chrism]

epmaniac,

We've had a site cycling in and out of the serps for a few months now - and there is a subdomain of that domain which is unaffected.

The main domain disappearance tends to last around a week at a time and then it returns for approximately a week and the cycle repeats.

[epmaniac]

but why would a main domain disappear?