Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2010

[indyank]

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

Here is alexa's take on the the oct 21-22 debacle..they do see a significant shift...

[blog.alexa.com...]

but wait, there seems to be one more tweak that happened this friday, oct 29. This could either be a reversal or yet another tweak...google is enjoying the tweak game and one thing for sure, they are trying to achieve something for themselves via the tweaks...

[edited by: tedster at 2:18 pm (utc) on Nov 1, 2010]

[FromBelgium]

My keyword ranks 1 in organic search, but I have now to pay for clicks to regain my top position in the "pink" zone.

[indyank]

Is anyone else seeing inclusion of very old data in their WMT missing pages report ?

Yes I think I noticed and reported it here a month back.It started towards the end of october, when google started publishing old data (404s etc) for the current dates.When you actually click through the current date, you will find that google would have discovered those 404s way back back in 2009 or early 2010..

This tells me that they are tinkering with GWT after a long time and this could also be the reason for they now pushing through those owner confirmations for both www and non-www versions of a site.I did confirm the same and I now notice the same data for both the versions.Looks very stupid to me...

[Spencer]

Hi Indyank,

I saw it start a month or so ago too, but today noticed a whole new batch, dating back to May 2009 in some cases.

[tantalus]

My keyword ranks 1 in organic search, but I have now to pay for clicks to regain my top position in the "pink" zone

Funny I'm seeing the top position ads appearing and disappearing on .co.uk right now.

[aakk9999]

Is anyone else seeing inclusion of very old data in their WMT missing pages report ?

Yes, seeing the same and in fact were happy to see that data since it allowed us to set up redirections for these URLs that were from previous-previous site redesign to appropriate pages on the new site. Not only we got some backlinks from it but we now noticed traffic arriving from these very old URLs.

[backdraft7]

We got absolutely destroyed by Google today. It's the worst Thanksgiving sales in 5 years. Dropped from #1 and #2 positions to 4's, 5's and worse.

[tedster]

Ouch! Backdraft, do you see any pattern for the types of sites that took over your previous top positions?

[backdraft7]

@tedster - since I'm currently suffering from an L-tryptophan overdose, I have yet to do any pattern research...I am hoping I wake up tomorrow and find it was all a bad dream. It never ends with these changes. Right when you think things have settled out, it all goes haywire again.

[hapyd]

Google completely destroyed us. We rely on one keyword from which we get the maximum traffic. Rankings have gone complete haywire since the end of October. Yesterday checked the positions. Gone from 6th to 65th. Absolutely clueless.

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, hapyd - so sorry about your wipeout. I hope you find some ideas around here that will help relieve that clueless feeling. There are a lot of smart people posting here.

You might get some ideas from our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

[Jez123]

My great start to the week was short lived. Gone back to listening to the snow falling...

As far as I can see my positions in the SERPS are stable. I went through the drops a while ago. I expect them to be back though. Traffic maintains steady at "normal" levels. Crazy.

[scottsonline]

We got hit too. Comparing last weeks keywords those that are missing were replaced by junk. They aren't competitors. It's a relevancy filter or adjustment to tone down exact matches.

Large red widget with feathers would have returned our site and a bunch of others last week.

It now returns a blog post about using red feathers to tickle someone because the word widget is in the sentence, a bunch of weird scraper domains, and other totally irrelevant garbage. Worst results since mayday.

Not surprisingly though the adwords are uneffected. Funny how that works isn't it? Google organic can't tell what I'm looking for but adwords nailed it. Sure it's not intentional, all one large coincidence I'm sure.

[Jez123]

@Scotts - are you basing what you say on your main SERPS or is the the longtail ones that are affected? I am not seeing my SERPS move (which is odd in itself after getting used to them jumping anywhere from #1 to #10 at any given day). Even after checking them through several proxies so that I am not getting an IP based result.

The only thing I can think is that the longtails that I am reliant on are being affected. There are so many it's difficult to track them easily (and know where they were in relation to where they might be now.

[backdraft7]

Scotts is right on with that analysis. I am seeing scraper sites and wiki (again) overtaking our site and our competitor sites. If it is indeed a relevancy filter, it's return less relevant results, I agree that it's the worst since May Day.

[fred9989]

Sorry, totally off topic, but saying this makes me feel better!

Does the following quote sound like the logic of a company which is behaving rationally?

"Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search. If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second."

I just wonder if some kind of creeping corporate madness has overtaken Google.
LOL!

[brinked]

today a big brand took over the #1 spot from a client of mine. This big brand does not even have said keywords/phrase anywhere in their website. They have no business ranking for said phrases yet my client is an almost exact title match and offers what people are looking for. He only took a slight hit since people know his site has what they want over the #1 listing, but this is a pretty bad sign if google keeps this up.

[hapyd]

@tedstar : Thanks
@scottsonline : I''ll have to agree with you on the relevancy filter & the exact matches.We were ranking on the one of main generic terms which was a good source of traffic for us.Now the results have gone haywire & the sites that are actually ranking have nothing but bear the search term in exact matches in either its meta title, description or content. Related keywords have completely lost their significance have been pushed down the search results. No matter how good they are.
@Jez123: Jez in our case it's just not the longtail keywords. It's the generic term. We've been ranking consistently on the same position for the past 1.5 years for the same keyword & now suddenly it has been pushed to 65th position.

[scottsonline]

The biggest spammer in our business is dominating.

I guess it's true, Matt Cutts team is busy doing other things and while they're occupied spammers are running wild. Maybe if they can make 3 billion this reporting cycle they'll be able to hire a few more people to work on spam?

Btw tying into another thread. The one overtaking us all has 123k new links from forum profiles.

Adwords works great. Funny that organic results are always tweaked but adwords seems fine.

[Jez123]

Adwords works great. Funny that organic results are always tweaked but adwords seems fine.

Yeah, but if I was an adwords customer I would be pretty p!ssed off that instants doesn't preview my site and potentially saved me the cost of a click! A real show of greed IMO. Personally I think they are making everyone bend over and touch their toes and take it. Searchers too.

[scottsonline]

Yeah interesting that they "care" about the non paying organic searcher but not adwords. Of course if they did improve that user experience it may hurt them and help us.
I've kept silent about the lack of instant on adwords but it stinks of monopoly power. If this is such a great feature why hasn't it been rolled out to adwords? The answer is, it would cost them money! Google becomes more evil each day.

Where is preview for adwords?

[pontifex]

Well, here we go again... yesterday was slow, about 10% less traffic, but I guess that is not a surprise on Thanksgiving... yet today is even 15% down (measured at the same point in time) to last week and something is up now.

Thought the drop was holiday related but now I start to wonder if there are other reasons.

I see my site strong and solid in the long tail I monitor. But frankly: it is impossible to monitor it right (30k to 40k different search terms per day!). So I have to sit it out, gather the data and then let the scripts run a few hours to tell me more.

Guts feeling: about 15% drop... no obvious drops for the search terms... long tail again? major shuffle? provider outages? No idea yet, but something is not right!

P!

[dickbaker]

My traffic is still staying about the same, although I have phrases for which I've dropped 1-3 spots and, for some phrases, much worse. I can't possibly track all of the phrases, though.

Earlier I mentioned one of the top results for a phrase I've been ranking well for being one of those generic directory sites with links for "cheap watches", etc.

Today I checked another phrase of mine that I've always ranked well for, "Acme 456 Widget". I've been #3 to #6 for that.

I'm now being ranked by a site with the title "Acme 456" and the URL Acme456.info. There's one page on the site, which has the manufacturer's spec's, and then three obviously fake testimonials. Every four inches or so there's a link that says "Click here for the best deal on the Acme 456 Widget".

Clicking on the link takes the visitor to a page with this message:

"The link is not currently active.

There are a number of reasons that you may have received this message. The most common is that the merchant who was advertising is temporarily not-actively promoting that program. If, however, you feel you have reached this page in error, please let us know. SomeAffiliateMarketingPlace.com does not tolerate or send any SPAM mail to anyone. If you feel you have been targeted by a SPAM message, we would appreciate if you could forward the message to us at abuse at SomeAffiliateMarketingPlace.com.

SomeAffiliateMarketingPlace.com manages the relationships between advertisers and affiliates, which is why you were directed to our site. Since the link that you clicked is not currently active, you were not redirected to the site.

If you are a new affiliate, your links will not be active until SomeAffiliateMarketingPlace.com gets a chance to review your account - you will receive an email when your account is approved and links are activated. This process generally takes around 24 business hours.

Checking the domain name, it was registered in June of this year. Somebody obviously was trying to exploit Google's new love for keywords in URL's.

I just can't understand how Google can keep throwing these kind of results at users before the users go elsewhere.

[mrguy]

Maybe if they can make 3 billion this reporting cycle they'll be able to hire a few more people to work on spam?

The last thing they need is more people. To many people with their hands on everything is part of the problem now.

They have ZERO focus anymore and are just basically throwing you know what up against a wall to see what sticks.

[brinked]

keep in mind today is black friday. A lot of people are out doing their holiday shopping today, traffic is down across the board even from non search sources. Dont panic if traffic is down today or even for this weekend.

[mrguy]

keep in mind today is black friday. A lot of people are out doing their holiday shopping today, traffic is down across the board even from non search sources. Dont panic if traffic is down today or even for this weekend.

That's a good point. If however on Monday which is Cybermonday the largest online shopping day of the year and you are still seeing a decline in traffic, then it's time to panic.

[scottsonline]

Dickbaker good example. Same thing has happened to us.

Example: custom flexible widget we were 1st.

A week ago we went to second replaced by a site with 100k forum links using that anchor text. Yesterday we went to third. #1 is a site customflexiblewidget dot com. Here's the best part, clicking on that link it's just a rehashed site for brand xyz. They aren't hiding this fact, google 2011 is unable to differentiate the redirect from a real site. Keyword tool says it's about 75k searches a month on this term.

We lost 25% in google this week, gained 30% in bing and yahoo.

We don't cheat or steal and we lose because of it. My bosses are kicking themselves now for listening to the misinformation on duplicate sites, doorways and everything else from google. It does pay and if we were allowed I bet we could post 1000 examples here in a few hours of junk at 1-3.

One of our competitors that put a brand name in the URL is driving another 10k uv in traffic for the same products on his main site. He ranks 1-2 a lot of times for the same item on each site with different name structures. Google is unable to tell what is clear to a five year old....the site even says this is xyz company. If they cannot detect what is out front in the open there's little chance for any of us.

Live preview not being active on adwords says it all.

[tshirtdeal]

It certainly has me feeling cheated for trying to do business "the right way" which Google has stated...

If I could spend 6 years building something to have it all taken away overnight for no reason I certainly would have been more interested in black hat SEO...

I now have my questions about what these changes are doing for their short term PPC revenue... If G could they would get a piece of every dollar spent went going through their business. They can't with organic results because it has a direct effect on their user experience. They can't pump in horrible sites just because they use their PPC program and let great sites go by because they don't. User don't care, they just want the information they are looking for.

[Spencer]

I just think that this rings of the usual Thursday update, which always starts out buggy and then finally settles in on Sunday. It always gets a nervy reaction at first, then G tweaks out the blatant problems and we're back to waiting for January the 1st. So the cycle of everlasting scrabbing for business begins again.

[scottsonline]

Spencer true but I see only one or two winners which is different. Most are dropping. The affiliate sites (amaz buy beyond sears etc etc) are all way up in the rankings and like I said before why does google think these sites are experts in everything? Should amazon really be ranking first for aircraft engine parts? Really? When did sears become the authority on parachutes and scuba diving equipment? It's idioitic. But they're big, googles "quality testers" can't seem to find these problems everyone gives high fives, job well done team goog and they move on to the next twack. That's my new name for all these changes, twacks. Tweaks fix problems, twacks are tweaks that slice away our traffic.

What's funny and blatantly hypocritical of google today is how differently they handle adwords. Two huge negative impacts on organic are the branding four spots and previews. Adwords has no previews. They don't want to lose any revenue on wasted clicks that's their bread and butter. Nevermind it would make life more profitable for advertisers and if it increases the user satisfaction in organics don't tell me it won't in adwords.
Second the four listings. If this is such a great feature instead of giving mini sitelinks to adwords #1 like they should have for organic #1, give the first adwords payer all that space for three more free ads. That's what we want right? That will help us find what we want? It will take away some revenue but this is all about making searchers happy right?

Adwords now blends right in on many lcds. How can it be good for organics and not for adwords?

[mrguy]

We don't cheat or steal and we lose because of it. My bosses are kicking themselves now for listening to the misinformation on duplicate sites, doorways and everything else from google. It does pay and if we were allowed I bet we could post 1000 examples here in a few hours of junk at 1-3.

This is actually nothing new. I've been targeting Google since the day somebody showed them to me in 1999 and there has never been a complete spam free index since. Some days are better than others and some days are worse. Just all depends on what algo is the flavor of the day.

In the beginning, I was so pro Google it was sickening. But as time wore on I noticed something. The blatant spam was getting popped most of the time but the grey area spam was having a field day and to this day there are still many methods to use to get ranked.

Now, what I consider spam may not be what you consider spam so the definition of spam is really a moving target.
I never outright use spam with techniques that we all could agree is spam, but I do use methods that I have researched and tested on my own sites and found them to be effective. I would never post any of those methods in a forum or even tell another person in the industry because once it’s public, that method may not last long.

What I did was setup a bunch of different sites for different things and started testing. If a site got toasted, so be it, it was only a test site and now I know what method not to use.

I feel for anybody who has to answer to a boss and try to explain the ins and out of SEO and that’s why I work for myself and on the rare occasions I do SEO for a client, I have them sign an agreement stating that I do not guarantee anything since I can’t control what the search engines do. That way, I over deliver and they are more than happy.