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]

[mkassets]

This is one of those days I am debating to throw in the towel and get back onto a corporate job.

In my niche, everyone has been pushed below the fold, outranked by Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy. Some Walmart pages do not even have a single word of unique content, and in my niche their selection is very limited and consists of the lowest end China made products. What a shame ..

I am the only small guy who is still holding to #1-#2 positions for at least a few popular keywords. But I am worried.

As I read the press about how the small businesses in America are struggling and the Wall Street execs are taking home record bonuses, I am pondering over the parallels in the online world. Just think how many small e-businesses will default this year ... And Amazon is doing better than ever. Will report record sales, make the shareholders happy and distribute fat bonuses to the management.

[roodle]

I noticed a significant drop in traffic yesterday. Monday and Tuesday are normally the strongest days for this particular site and today looks like being even worse than yesterday...

[tigger]

@roodle

agree seeing some heavy drops but when you consider the mess the serps are in its no wonder - I just looked at one of my money terms that was ranking 3rd now 8th and nothing to do with other sites coming in but G is displaying results from the same two sites taking up 7 places ! how do they really think showing multiple pages for a site is a good thing

JOKE !

[mrguy]

I'm actually seeing a lot of those registrar holding search pages show up in the top listings for stuff.

The SERPS do seem to be messed up more than normal lately.

[Spencer]

I'm just seeing a load of directories in our particular niche. It's been a long while since I last saw so many. I think we're the only actual company in the listings for our particular search term.

[tigger]

yep year in year we get this every Nov / Dec then a fix will come in place in January. How to spoil a webmasters xmas.

I'm just hoping they remove these silly multiple listens, whilst the serps is in a mess things like multiple pages being displayed is a change in the display structure and I believe this does nothing other than making the serps look spammy

[Bewenched]

the serps for google are so messed up I've been using bing more and more to find what I'm looking for personally.

Hello... Google, are you listening?

[brinked]

today is awesome for me so far. Traffic up a whopping 50% on my main site. Too bad its not converting too well. Apparently google feels if you sell blue widgets and green cars you must also sell green widgets and blue cars! My site is even ranking for a popular medical related term in canada (have no idea how that happened since my site is not at all medical related and doesnt even have this keyword on the site) which is pretty cool since I have no problem with canada traffic, too bad they will cause my bounce rate to skyrocket.

[Jez123]

@brinked. Me too. Busy day today. Probably means it will be dead the rest of the week though :(. Yesterday was appalling, slow traffic and no conversions. Today has been the best day since I was hit at the start of September. I am surprised that I still have a business frankly.

[indyank]

Jus read these comments of two friends on facebook...and I couldn't stop laughing at it or sharing it here...

This is shared to raise the spirits of those who feel bad at what google has done to its SERPS...and to keep them lighter... :)

Note that these two are not SEOs or online marketers...just ordinary search users who google often claims to be important for them...

Friend 1: Google is Not Soo Great...It Couldn't Find My Remote or my missing sock...

Friend 2: it could find if someone starts selling ur socks in ebay.. wait till they post it..

ROFL...

[AlyssaS]

In my niche, everyone has been pushed below the fold, outranked by Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy. Some Walmart pages do not even have a single word of unique content, and in my niche their selection is very limited and consists of the lowest end China made products. What a shame ..

Everyone is acting as if Amazon, Walmart BestBuy etc are completely passive in this.

They are not. They depend on the web for their earnings, especially Amazon, and of course they've done work to ensure that they outrank their affiliates and anyone else selling products they stock during this Christmas period.

The days when the big companies were completely clueless about seo and the small guy could overtake them are probably drawing to a close.

[indyank]

The days when the big companies were completely clueless about seo and the small guy could overtake them are probably drawing to a close.

Who said big online ecommerce corporates were clueless about SEO? They were always good at it and now google is aiding them for sure...

and the other big corporates who don't do business online, still don't care about SEO...and they still are clueless...

[brinked]

indyank, thats funny, that has actually happened on more than one occasion, just not with socks.

Alyssa, Of course they generate many sales from search engines. I think the point many people here are trying to make is that they rank for a lot of terms that are not useful for the average searcher. Some things you look up you just cant buy at a place like amazon, but if amazon happens to have that particular word somewhere, they will rank well for it just because of that and it really helps nobody.

[AlyssaS]

Brinked - what I'm trying to say is that people are blaming Google for the sudden surge in Amazon rankings, and yes they may have tweaked a bit too much. But it's as likely that the Amazon team sat down and decided they were really going to go for it this Christmas and made all sorts of changes themselves too that propelled them up the SERPs.

Nobody is passive in this. Not everything is just down to Google. It's like multi-player chess.

[tedster]

AllyssaS, you make a very good point. In the past big players weren't so good at SEO - they often paid little attention to it, and if they tried they were very clumsy. That is definitely changing as the "big site SEO" session at Pubcon demonstrated. Their SEO challenges are as big as their businesses - but they have been learning.

[scottsonline]

Tedster but taking a flat file from a manufacturer and putting it on amazon doesn't make them good at seo. It's duplicate content that would get the rest of us penalized.

Amazon was up 27% yesterday. It's clear where all our traffic is going courtesy of google.

[tedster]

I work with enough mega site clients to know that they don't have an easy time - Google doesn't just give them a free pass to the top. However, when they do their SEO job well, they certainly do have some serious power to throw around.

If you think it's easy for them, check out this humorous "SEO Oath" from Microsoft's Derrick Wheeler [derrickwheeler.com]

[brinked]

When I am buying something online, I never use google to search for a product. It is so bad it is laughable. Google is actually very bad and very outdated, but its pretty much the default right now so everyone uses it. It is comparable to internet explorer back in the days. Just because 95% of people who own a computer use it doesnt mean its great. If I search for "buy blue widgets" I will get articles on how to buy blue widgets, a clever article on why blue widgets are so great, meanwhile my intent is to clearly buy something, I did not search for "how to buy" something. But until the rest of the world stops using google, we have to accept their terms.

I really think people are panicking too much recently, this always happens at this time of the year. Google is trying to get the most relevant results for searchers during the holiday season. If they are doing a poor job its not because they are trying to. They do not care about your business, their focus is on the every day searcher.

[Bewenched]

Wow, just looked at our traffic, I'd say we are down nearly 60% in traffic today vs what we normally do for a tuesday.

[aristotle]

In the past big players weren't so good at SEO

There are still a lot of .edu and .gov domains that are very poorly designed from an SEO viewpoint.

[Discount80]

I am completely destroyed by what ever is going on. We ranked between number 1 and 3 on page 1 for about 5 of our most important terms and now we are nowhere to be found. For one night for about an hour we were back in number 1 spot and then gone ever since. We have been on the 1st page for these keywords for almost all of the 13 years we have been on the web. This is bad.

[hapyd]

Finally closed the month with a 50% drop in traffic. Rankings for all the keywords completely lost. Worst time in 2 years. Hope Google's listening.

< continued here: [webmasterworld.com...] >

[edited by: tedster at 6:50 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2010]