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]

[myindiahub]

i have read Alexa blog and i am always curiosity that why is Google and other search engine prefer to Alexa rank

[Shaddows]

myindiahub, welcome to the forums

I don't think the search engines care about Alexa. Alexa blogged because it has a gigantic dataset to hand, and noticed clear patterns in Google referals, and by implication, rankings.

[ohno]

Something new I noticed today, Google has linked our two seperate domains in the one box results-rather than list the same products(which had different descriptions)it now says from 2 stores. Clicking on the link no longer takes you to our pages but a Google page with ADWORDS at the bottom!

[indyank]

Clicking on the link no longet take you to our pages but a Google page with ADWORDS at the bottom!

does that google page list results from your site? What does that google page have other than adwords?

[ohno]

Google list the 1 site as the 1st organic result as well. The page is like a product search page with reviews etc. Adwords appear at the bottom.

[indyank]

wow...great strategy to make users surf through more of their pages and good one for the "reviewers".

[mrguy]

Google is the Internet.

That's funny, I had a web design business before Google even started and guess what, I'll have a web design business when Google is gone.

People like you who have based their business and success on Google are the ones who will be looking for new jobs.

[Jez123]

My traffic is approaching normal levels again but sales and therefore quality of traffic is still not good. I hope that they are continuing to tweak.

[Andylew]

My 2 cents for this week...

The past week or so I have been a lot happier with google results for personal searches 'quality' seems to be returning to level pre mayday imo.

In terms of my own site which was heavily affected by mayday things do seem to be improving but the game has changed. I do feel our site was perhaps misjudged and is now being seen for what it is - a good resource and as such seems to be inproving in rank and pages listed.

I dont want to be too harsh to the people who have lost income as this is obviously a very emotive subject. However, I get the impression a lot of contributors who have seen traffic losses run affiliate sites? have you really considered what your site gives a visitor over and above the next affiliate site? I think it is good that google is weeding these out, it is all too easy to take an affiliate feed of products and throw a site up, i belive that these sites are amongst those have been targeted (and rightly so) if this is you then things are unlikely to change back in your favour. You should devlop your site into a real worthwhile resource with the affiliate links being second to something that makes your site useful.

For all those who dont fall into this category belive me I feel your pain with the loss of income my fingers are crossed for all of you with genuine useful sites which have been affected.

[Jez123]

@Andylew: Mine is not an affiliate site. Almost the opposite, dealing with truly bespoke items that we actually make ourselves. Though having said that I do have a couple of related mini sites with affiliate content within the domain. Time to hit the delete button on those I suspect.

[Kelowna]

Is anyone noticing that sites that in the past that were using article submissions for a main percentage of their backlink efforts losing spots in the rankings? I have one site that is slowly losing ground in the rankings when in the past it was moving up at a steady rate by having a steady flow of new article submissions, just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if it is just a coincidink.

I am also seeing sites with lots of interlinked blogroll type sitewide links moving up... kinda spammy looking backlink profiles but seem to be doing well... for now anyways.

[networkliquidators]

If you look at blogger which is Google controlled, all blogroll links don't have a nofollow. This tells me, this is a spot Google intends for you not to place advertisement links, but sites to good sites related to yours.

If you are selling links in your blogroll area, you may get caught, but my point is the intent of the section. It does sucks that people abuse parts of a site buying links.

[tigger]

Mine is not an affiliate site. Almost the opposite, dealing with truly bespoke items that we actually make ourselves. Though having said that I do have a couple of related mini sites with affiliate content within the domain. Time to hit the delete button on those I suspect.

don't do a knee jerk just because some are bashing affiliate sites - if you have good content theres not a problem with affiliate links

All my sites are affiliate based and some have dropped, others have increased which is something most are seeing

Just because you are an affiliate doesn't mean to say you use the content / feeds that sponsors provide "some" affiliate marketeers do work with there own unique content

[Jez123]

"some" affiliate marketeers do work with there own unique content

Hi Tigger, yes, mine are my own unique content too. Regardless, I think I'll get rid of them as they are simply not selling much.

[Andylew]

Indeed if you have unique content with affliate links you should be ok, however from google pov I would guess they should be able to see your site for the information before the affiliate side, its just a matter of the weighting towards each aspect.

Has anyone else seen a massive jump in site: reported pages in the last hour? This has been across all of our sites.

[jimbeetle]

Is anyone noticing that sites that in the past that were using article submissions for a main percentage of their backlink efforts losing spots in the rankings?

Yes, very definitely. Three of the four affected sites I've been able to look at were very heavily into article marketing.

I am also seeing sites with lots of interlinked blogroll type sitewide links moving up... kinda spammy looking backlink profiles but seem to be doing well... for now anyways.

And I'm seeing the exact opposite. All four of the sites I've checked have this same backlink profile and all have slipped quite drastically.

But then, as always in this business, observations are one thing, proving cause is quite difficult.

My gut feeling is that this is all a result of a simple downgrading of certain types of links / links from certain types of sites. Might be a turning up of the trust nob.

[indyank]

You are right Jim.I too notice the same.

[ohno]

@ Jez123-we are the same, we saw a massive return to normal today (Tuesday), traffic down on yesterday(slightly, but yesterday was well UP on normal!) but quality seems better. One thing we do notice is certain key words seem to switch on and bam-we get traffic & conversions. The one box results also target a very specific search term that contains what could be deemed a brand name that is used to describe a lot of things!

[Mal_Jones]

Ohno are you based in the UK?

[ohno]

Yes. Interestingly our .com domain has seen massive falls for quite a while now. The .co.uk has been up yesterday & today.

[edited by: ohno at 9:18 pm (utc) on Nov 9, 2010]

[Mal_Jones]

I'm confused as yesterday you posted at 1.30pm that traffic was dire but today you state different? I quote "(slightly, but yesterday was well UP on normal!)"

[imbckagn]

He posts something different every day which makes this thread impossible gauge what's going on.

[frank72]

My traffic is up. Too up for this season. I dont know if to be happy or not. Yesterday I had a lot of clicks but my earnings were down.
Another thing is see is that a spammy site which scrapes my content and it is using all black hat techniques such as keywords stuffing, cloaking pages etc is outranking some of my own articles but..listen to this. If I go to GWT the default page is the spam report form!
I submitted the website to Google...let's se what happens.
Again I dont really know how to take these wonderful but scaring results. In a matter of 20 days my traffic is almost doubled.

[edited by: frank72 at 9:14 pm (utc) on Nov 9, 2010]

[ohno]

@1.30pm(up to) traffic WAS dire, however when checking the logs this morning (so 24 hrs data) GA showed as well up. The quality yesterday was poor compared to today.

[williamfor]

@Andylew : We are a British based company and manufacture our own luxury goods in Italy(high end of the market). We are not an affilate site and lost 35% of traffic 2.5 weeks ago.

I have no idea what is going on.... However, the last 3 days are slowly improving in terms of traffic. As stated before, bounce rate is down and page view are up (which is positive). Its difficult to compare from week to week, as we are going into our busy season and its hard to judge sales improvement on quality of traffic improvement.

I seem to be in the same boat as ohno at the moment.

At this stage i can not work out what the issue has been. i have several tests running at the moment and will come back with results in a few days.

[ohno]

I post something different every day because every day IS different! Do you not get that yet? TBH I'm done with some of the smart arses on here, good luck, I aint wasting any more of my time posting what we experience.

[Mal_Jones]

He posts something different every day which makes this thread impossible gauge what's going on.

Well give him / her a chance to respond as this could be significant. If his site gained all his traffic after his post then this points to an increase in rankings. As in all updates, the final positions become static after a series of ups and downs with the ups becoming more static.

[supercyberbob]

@ohno

I think some people get frustrated because there aren't detailed metrics to your reports like rankings in the serps, keyword/google referrals, visitor data etc.

It's all good. Chill, have a beer, or 30.

We still love you long time.

[AlyssaS]

Hi People. I posted back in the October thread that one of my sites had taken a hit on 20th October (it had gone back 380 places) and that I was making some changes and would report back if they worked.

Well, my site is back ranking where it was.

Because each niche is unique, I think I'd be best off describing the method I used to diagnose my problems, rather than simply say what changes worked for me.

First of all, if the site operator is returning all of your pages, i.e. you are still indexed, then your ranking problems are because you have tripped an automatic on-page filter. It's nothing to do with manual penalties or backlinks.

Next, by definition, the sites ranking in the top ten have passed this on-page filter.

Therefore what I did was to load each of the top ten urls in my browser, viewed source code and counted the tags. i.e. I did a count of all the h1s, h2s, h3s, h4s, a hrefs, strongs, bolds, italics etc, etc. Be thorough when you do you count - i.e. even innocuous internal a hrefs should be counted. The bot is a machine and not a person who can evaluate quality, therefore view things like a bot would. Counting in this manner is tedious, so write a script to do it by all means, just make sure that yoru script includes every possible tag in existence to be checked.

The next step is to view the source on your own page and make a similar count.

When you are done, compare your site with those that are ranking in the top ten. Something will leap out - you've either got too many links or have used some tags too much.

Once you have identified where you are out of line, then reduce this element on your site.

Next you need to get the googlebot to re-spider the pages in question. I found this most frustrating bit - viewing cache, I found the bot was intermitently re-caching individual pages on my site but ignoring the home page. Do what you have to to get the bot's attention - twitter, facebook, google buzz, writing an article linking to your site on one of the heavily spidered directories like Ezine, or getting an authority site to link to you.

Once the bot has re-spidered and picked up your changes, you should come back in the SERPs.

P.S. I recommend keeping a log so that you know every single day what changes have been made, and what the cache date is, so that you can track pinpoint exactly what has made your site move and when it was picked up.

Hope this helps.

[AlyssaS]

Also - it appears that a lot of sites that were hit by Google's October adjustment to filters were so-called "white-hat" sites.

I think the problem is that in recent years white hat has come to mean not doing any backlinking at all, and relying purely on maximising on-page factors. And black hat has come to mean focusing purely on backlinks and ignoring the on-page stuff.

The problem is that Google sees on-page SEO as dirtier than off-page SEO (because it's easier to do and therefore easier to overdo).

I think people need to forget about hats, dial back on the on-page stuff, and start doing some mild backlinking. There is absolutely nothing wrong with issuing a bunch of press-releases to various sites and promoting your page.

Not doing so is akin to someone opening a shop and refusing to issue fliers, or tell the local paper where the address of the shop is. That model hasn't worked in a good 500 years and isn't working online either.

Just my two cents.