Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2011

[zerillos]

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

Here's another fail:
One of the major manufacturers in my field launched a new product today that generated quite a media frenzy. The name of the product is made up, but G treats it like a spelling error for some other word. When searching 'brand product' you get the 'did you mean' option. I know of more than 20 big media outlets that reported on this new product. Unfortunately, g has only 3 and a half pages of results on it, half of which are not related. All the other reports about this product, all legitimate, are nowhere to be found in the SERPs.
Big fail. I guess their machines are down at the pub, instead of learning...

[edited by: tedster at 4:42 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2011]

[walkman]

stevelibby, they are ads and ads. The graphic, in house, ones get a pass IMO, since you need to have 'good' content to sell ads. The Google (and other text) ones on the other hand are for everyone, including the cr@piest 'content'.

On another note: Googlebot has so far today gotten 50% of my pages. Indexing has not slowed at all during these times.

[indyank]

I haven't seen anyone post this but did anyone see a huge spike in traffic before it dropped?

This is typicsal "pandalish" behavior. Several have reported it and almost all sites that got hit had seen this. Since this is so unique to this algo, I had to coin the term "pandalish".

It looks like the huge panda lifts the sites above its head and then drops it hard. I have seen wrestlers do this and panda looks to be a wrestler.

But technically I found something interesting in this. It looks like G has some site wide traffic filters in place for every site.This is loosened when panda reaches the site and then the pandalish behavior takes over.Are these the traffic throttling filters that people always wondered? No idea.

But it definitely looks like some filters are removed and then a fresh set of "pandalish" filters are applied.It might even be that G already had a few quality rules in place and these are replaced by the new panda rules, during this two day event.

If anyone untouched by panda sees a sudden traffic increase and the traffic burst is organic and is seen for all pages, run for cover as panda is on your site.

[asabbia]

@indyank:

I think that happened to me too.

I saw a big spike on 13 Mar and 17 Mar, few days later -20% traffic

[dickbaker]

I remember a number of people reporting traffic surges right before Panda. I saw a big surge to 30K+ page views on Sunday and Monday (2/20 and 2/21), then the drop began on Thursday the 24th with Google page views dropping 42% by Friday the 25th.

Perhaps it's been postulated here before, but I think the surge may be designed to expose as many pages as possible to as many visitors as possible to gauge visitor behavior. Perhaps that's one of the last pieces of the algo to be applied.

[indyank]

Is anyone seeing improvement in rankings for any affected pages? I know that none have reported recovery yet (except for two sites) but are people seeing recovery for at least one or two pages in terms of
1) SERP rankings
2) Traffic (this has been separated as sometimes people might see an improvement in ranking but not the traffc).

I am not seeing anything despite making many changes.

[Pjman]

@indyank

Not seeing any improvement on all pages of 8 affected site.

[stevelibby]

Indyank I have a huge spike in December and then last week took it all away last week plus more.

[kd454]

If anyone untouched by panda sees a sudden traffic increase and the traffic burst is organic and is seen for all pages, run for cover as panda is on your site.

Yes this happened to me with Panda #2, was getting huge traffic then cut down by 75%, same thing happened with Panda #1.

[potentialgeek]

@Robert

I've recently been seeing, beginning roughly Thursday (April 14), that, for a given query, Google appears to be shifting the entry page it returns for a site to pages that it's deciding are more useful. It could have been happening sooner.

I've been seeing the same thing--even for WebmasterWorld. I used to type in webmaster and get the home page for WW in the top ten SERPs. But lately it's been offering this page:

Webmaster General:
Got questions or comments regarding your site not covered in another board?. WebmasterWorld Webmaster General.
www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/

[walkman]

I haven't seen anyone post this but did anyone see a huge spike in traffic before it dropped? on a few of my sites I saw a 30% increase in traffic for 2 days, april 5th on 1 site and april 12th on another. I was excited and thought yes finally google is recognizing the hard work I've put into unique content. Now for this past week those same sites have dropped 30% from my original traffic levels!

For as long as I can remember it has been this way. Filters come and go, SERPS shifts etc during an update. That's why people say wait till SERPS are settled.

Perhaps it's been postulated here before, but I think the surge may be designed to expose as many pages as possible to as many visitors as possible to gauge visitor behavior.

Sure but someone got 20-25% less traffic no, so they can't expose everyone's pages that much? Unless they do it for borderline sites alone.

[walkman]

I've been seeing the same thing--even for WebmasterWorld. I used to type in webmaster and get the home page for WW in the top ten SERPs. But lately it's been offering this page:

Webmaster General:
Got questions or comments regarding your site not covered in another board?. WebmasterWorld Webmaster General.
www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/

Makes Perfect sense. Brett is telling Google that the site has a lot of things and /webmaster is for webmasters. Perfectly logical.

[Robert Charlton]

Makes Perfect sense. Brett is telling Google that the site has a lot of things and /webmaster is for webmasters. Perfectly logical.

In the example I described, the catalog page had better navigation to the rest of the site than the home page did, and therefore I felt that Google had made a sensible change.

In the case of Webmaster General, I can see how Google arrived at that... it's a direct keyword-to-keyword match, and it's logical, but I don't feel it is a good choice. It will be interesting to see if Google observes visitor behavior and re-calibrates.

Perhaps it's been postulated here before, but I think the surge may be designed to expose as many pages as possible to as many visitors as possible to gauge visitor behavior. Perhaps that's one of the last pieces of the algo to be applied.

dickbaker - Every time I see a bunch of multiple results returned from a site, that's what I feel that Google is doing... gauging visitor behavior. I'm thinking that Google may be calibrating its own interface as well assessing the site. Can't describe the math they're using, but I'm thinking they're looking at these results from enough different angles that they're assembling a multi-dimensional model.

[asabbia]

< The following 4 messages are duplicated from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4303214.htm [webmasterworld.com] >

I am noticing improvmennt.. Up to like +10% today. has something chagned again?

[edited by: tedster at 6:53 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2011]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[walkman]

I am noticing improvmennt.. Up to like +10% today. has something chagned again?

Something has happened /is happening. I can't tell at the 10% level due to adding /removing pages but something's up in the air. Also noticing heavy and deep crawling this weekend and today.

[rlange]

OK. Newbie question... (I hope it's not too out of line to ask it here.)

asabbia wrote:
I am noticing improvmennt.. Up to like +10% today. has something chagned again?

walkman wrote:
Something has happened /is happening. I can't tell at the 10% level due to adding /removing pages but something's up in the air.

How are you folks checking this? I know that Google Analytics allows you to check today's numbers in real time (more or less), but is there some way to easily compare, say, "12:00am through 12:00pm today" to "12:00am through 12:00pm average of the previous 30 days"?

Or are you using some other tool altogether?

--
Ryan

[walkman]

I have an internal referral thingy, I can see numbers and keywords from Google, Bing, Yahoo and all. I also compare raw log size, most of the time (barring a major scrapper) is about right.

I got excited last week too though, so I'll wait.

[backdraft7]

I am noticing improvement.. Up to like +10% today. has something changed again?

Something is ALWAYS changing...

April had a few bumps in the road, but the past few weeks have been OK. Normal patterns are re-emerging.
Knock on wood...

[crobb305]

from [webmasterworld.com...]

Google makes changes daily or better - so we maintain a regular thread for discussing those changes.

Ted, we were discussing Panda improvements. Most of us know that Google "makes changes daily". There's really no need to smack us on the hand. I'll refrain from making any additional statements as my recovery occurs.

[outland88]

I got excited last week too though, so I'll wait.

I've seen some pretty wild swings in the past 36 hours outside of the high traffic keywords Panda seems to target. This is mid-level terms not long tail. Panda IMO also seems to escalating targeting the long-tail in the past week. As you already know this can change in the blink of an eye.

[edited by: tedster at 7:42 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2011]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[MrWumpus]

Just saw that we gained back our ancient #1 position for the important keyword we lost to a new kid affiliate back around the 7th. We changed nothing to try to get it back.

[tedster]

no need to smack us on the hand. I'll refrain from making any additional statements as my recovery occurs.

crobb305, I've been appreciating your ongoing reports very much as I'm sure others have, too. I hope you will continue to share here.

I meant nothing punitive or personal to anyone in this move. I've been struggling with the need to regain some thematic structure in the forum for about a week. My purpose is only to improve organization, so there is no need for cross-posting - and the duplicate content issues that creates ;)

At this point Panda is subsumed in Google itself. All we can know is how the Google algorithm as a whole responds to our changes. We need to share observations in a centralized place to sort out whether our changes improved rankings or whether it's the result of another algorithm change, and that has long been the purpose of this thread.

[hungry]

My traffic is up 25% but rankings don't seem to have improved on the main keywords - then again, it's the first day back to work from a 4 day sunny bank holiday weekend in the UK so sure enough there is probably more people online... :) some longtails are improving though, slightly.

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, hungry - sorry I didn't get to welcome you in the other thread.

Others have been describing that kind of strangeness (major increase in traffic, no apparent improvement in rankings) at various times in the past year. It'd hard to understand how that could be - clearly more traffic should mean your rankings improved for at least one query term, you'd think.

Can you see if your increase in Google traffic was across the board, or confined to just a certain search terms or landing page on your site?

[hungry]

Thanks for the welcome tedster and wow that is a lot of posts! Looking at the stats there are 3 search terms which brought in the majority of the extra traffic. 1 I was ranking for at the same place already (just more volume today) and the other 2 I have popped back in on the first page but not as high as they were previously.

Another thing I noticed today is that I have the wordpress gocodes plugin installed and it was set to noindex all links that use the plugin. I can't remember when exactly I turned that on but I'm sure it must have been within the last couple of months. I only hide affiliate links with it (simply so the links look more appealing to the visitors) and it does a simple 301 redirect to the offer but noticed today in webmaster tools that it is blocking lots of the links to the spiders. I don't overuse affiliate offers, I actually put far less on my site than my competitors but I'm wondering if this is contributing at all to the drop as it may throw a red flag to Google that I am saying "Spiders - STOP!"

[asabbia]

My traffic is up 25% but rankings don't seem to have improved on the main keywords

let's hope this is not temporany. let's update ourself with the people that gained today in the next days

--


condisder i moved out some pages from my domain to a subdomain. (site:www.website.com now reports fewer pages)
tho i don't think this is the cause of the gain

[edited by: asabbia at 9:50 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2011]

[crobb305]

crobb305, I've been appreciating your ongoing reports very much as I'm sure others have, too. I hope you will continue to share here.

I'm Sorry I took it the wrong way Ted.

I will share more about my improvements if the ranking changes I am seeing right now actually stick (or get better). I really want to see full recovery (not just phrase-specific improvements) before I say too much. As always, I am reluctant to get too excited, so I am taking it one day at a time. My 40% increase in traffic today is a good step in the right direction.

[johnhh]

My traffic is up 25% but rankings don't seem to have improved on the main keywords - then again, it's the first day back to work from a 4 day sunny bank holiday weekend in the UK

We are in the UK and have seen some rising traffic today ( after a 50% Panda hit ) and - more importantly - some actual revenue. However it is an odd time here with another double bank holiday to come.

Also likewise I can't see any real movement in the SERPS - which for us is our "evergreen" first positions are maintained but some pages that were lurking positions 6-11 have still dropped by 30 places - nicely out of the -50 penalty, if it existed.

But it is too early to say if this is a trend. Hoping it is.

I guess everyone who has been affected is "on edge" and at panic stations which is understandable given the effect

_{Tedster - thanks for pulling the threads together - it was getting a bit confusing to follow!}

[AlyssaS]

My competitor duplicate guy is back in the SERPs. It's possible G is gearing up to making another change as he seems to reappear everytime G lifts it's filters temporarily.

[walkman]

Here's where I stand: I did get some long tail referrals (something I actually have on my pages) and it's obvious that there's a change, but nothing to jump from joy.

It could also be that Google has temporary removed a filter or two or the SERPS are temporary. However, something has changed or will change since this is the telltale of an update (odd SERPS, deep crawling and site:domain a mess)

[edited by: walkman at 11:56 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2011]

[AlyssaS]

walkman, I agree. It feels like there is another algo update coming.