Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2011

[dataguy]

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

FWIW, my early change indicators are ringing, starting about 5 am CST this morning, and it seems to be Panda related. Possibly reverse-Panda related.

[edited by: tedster at 3:31 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2011]

[rlange]

Shatner wrote:
But it does get lifted... in theory anyway... when the algo reruns.

How is this any different from any other part of the algorithm that results in a page getting a low rank? Why is the interval the only thing differentiating this from anything else?

I strongly suggest that people rid themselves of this notion that Panda is any kind of a "penalty", because then everything else that doesn't result in you being on the front page must also be considered a penalty. Poorly optimized page titles keeping you down in the SERPs? Penalty. Content presented in a form that no one is looking for? Penalty.

It's an absurd and useless position.

--
Ryan

[walkman]

"FWIW, my early change indicators are ringing, starting about 5 am CST this morning, and it seems to be Panda related. Possibly reverse-Panda related. "

Dataguy,
any idea on how many DCs this is? Or...are you seeing an uptick /down-tick in traffic?

[dataguy]

This is based on traffic patterns, not necessarily on uptick or down-tick in traffic, though. But it's been spot-on for signalling every major change in ranking for almost 5 years now.

But incidentally, I'm seeing about a 10% uptick in traffic on my heavily Pandalized site. It seems to have been backed down since it started, but I haven't seen this since Feb. 23rd so maybe it's a sign of good things to come.

[rowtc2]

From a few weeks i see rising back in top 10 results networks of duplicate sites manually penalized few years ago. They did not changed anything.

Also, I see rising in results pages like keyword1.domain.com, obviously made in this structure with spam in mind.

Anyone seeing this?

[Tallon]

But incidentally, I'm seeing about a 10% uptick in traffic on my heavily Pandalized site. It seems to have been backed down since it started, but I haven't seen this since Feb. 23rd so maybe it's a sign of good things to come.

As of yesterday afternoon my main site (hit by panda 2.0) has seen a surge in traffic, seems to be sticking today. Serps checks do not reveal anything different but we all know that doesn't mean anything. I'm hesitant to get too excited since this could be related to a seasonal bump (summer long weekend Monday + Tuesday experience a bump annually for a couple pages on my site). Comparing Monday/Monday, some steady pages are experiencing a drop, others a lift, but this is consistent for my site over a holiday weekend.

For another site that wasn't touched by Panda, there's also been an uptick of traffic (since Monday), but it's slight. Could be seasonal related as well, haven't watched the site closely or dug too deeply (pretty much abandoned).

Both are info/content sites. We'll see what the week brings but crossing my fingers that this is more than a seasonal lift.

[tedster]

Given recent posts here. I've been on the watch for some kind of significant jiggling in the SERPs I watch - but so far it seems like business as usual. Of course "usual" these days involves a lot of natural jiggling, so it's not easy to sort out the signals.

Anyone seeing any unusual shifts?

[HuskyPup]

Yep, on my pandalised trade site I saw a 50% increase across the board much of it through my images gallery which was confirmed by a big increase in AdSense impressions but with an awful CTR which makes me wonder if it was a bot/spider that triggers everything.

My B&M sites are running at the same level but I've had to revise and remove 1,000 page impressions per day from my calculations owing to so many people looking for a secific image which also triggers AdSense.

[flatfile]

Yep, on my pandalised trade site I saw a 50% increase across the board much of it through my images gallery

Today, I've been consistently seeing a change in layout when searching for e.g "widget images". The results start with 4 column and 4 or 5 row block of images, the whole block behaves sort of like a mini version of the new image search layout without the infinite scroll. The images are followed by 6 result links instead of the normal 10. I've only seen this on Firefox though.

[trakkerguy]

As of yesterday afternoon my main site (hit by panda 2.0) has seen a surge in traffic

Yup, my site was hit by panda 2.0 also (april 11), and traffic returned to 60% of prior levels for affected keywords (up from 15%).

Throughout the day I sometimes saw the improved/returned rankings, but not consistently or often. So far today, traffic also good.

[walkman]

something has changed judging from the referrals, sadly traffic levels have not (Pandalized in Feb 24th here).

It's possible that Google may have run Panda again, meaning almost no hope for those that didn't return. The bar for those hit on 2/24 must be set so high that...

[HuskyPup]

Anyone seeing any unusual shifts?

I've been checking some of my sites independently rather than as a whole and they all had a surge in traffic and page impressions yesterday yet not one of them earned any more with AdSense.

I'm suspecting some kind of bot generating this activity since I'm certainly not seeing any improvement today, completely normal post-Panda 2.1 for me.

FWIW I'm considering constructing a brand new site, completely different registration and hosting it in the US since I'm getting well and truly pummelled by Chinese directorey sites hosted there, MFA sites hosted there and generally garbage sites hosted there.

As an aside I'm seeing US widget trade companies, none of which supply the UK market, starting to appear regularly in Google.co.uk

Thanks G, it's getting even messier.

[Shatner]

Not seeing any change here.

[chrislloyd515]

We have seen a change that hit us overnight, EMD domains all targeting different keywords blue widgets red widgets yellow widgets etc etc etc

Before last night each domain ranked position 1 for EMD term... now for every keyword between 6-11 random domains of ours rank between position 50-70 in a row, enough to fill one whole SERP page in most cases

Some domains even still have their multiple subpages below them like they would appear on the front page.

[outland88]

If anything they might re-run Panda, like Walkman mentioned, to see if the replacements are any better than what they bombed. There is an uptick in bot activity but nothing substantial from what I've seen after a holiday.

[sanjuu]

I've seen some changes in the UK for various verticals. The results are still full of garbage (including lots of US and Australian sites that are useless to the UK-buyer in the market I'm looking at).

A site who was hit badly by Panda (one of the top 100 'losers' according to a list published on several sites) has started ranking for a particular search that they didn't rank well for before Panda. What's interesting is that they are ranking very well for every brand and colour of widget for this search combination and their site isn't actually relevant for these searches! The phrases they were ranking well for and suffered a drop after Panda haven't yet recovered to pre-Panda levels.

Not sure at all what this means, but there are still lots of changes happening from what I can see.

[HuskyPup]

In Google.com I am definitely seeing some shuffling for some of my product keyword descriptions several regaining quite a few #1 and #2 positions however I am also seeing further losses with other keyword descriptions seemingly disappearing altogether!

@sanjuu - I agree, Google.co.uk is terrible at the moment for my widgets, comparing to com/ca/ie/com.au/in/it/de/es I simply cannot believe it's the same company, it's as though their index/database has not been updated in years and at the same time deleted many UK companies.

Damned this is so frustrating to watch!

[danijelzi]

About a month ago site:mysite.com started to show random pages of my site on #1. Since yesterday, index page is again on #1. That's the only change. Everything else is the same: low google organic traffic with almost identical number of visitors per day, a spam blogspot page without any content outranks me for a keyphrase, etc.

Another thing that is interesting is that pages that got a lot of natural backlinks after feb. panda update are nowhere to be found, whereas pages with a few or no backlinks can be sometimes found in the first 2-3 serp pages.

[conroy]

My site that gained 100% with panda 2 just got hit back to pre panda levels. I made no changes to the site. Too bad my sites that lost 60% with panda 2 weren't reverted.

[indyank]

conroy, did this happen today?

[Roolio]

I've seen some changes in the UK for various verticals. The results are still full of garbage (including lots of US and Australian sites that are useless to the UK-buyer in the market I'm looking at).

A site who was hit badly by Panda (one of the top 100 'losers' according to a list published on several sites) has started ranking for a particular search that they didn't rank well for before Panda. What's interesting is that they are ranking very well for every brand and colour of widget for this search combination and their site isn't actually relevant for these searches! The phrases they were ranking well for and suffered a drop after Panda haven't yet recovered to pre-Panda levels.

Not sure at all what this means, but there are still lots of changes happening from what I can see.

I think a lot of people need to realize that the Panda update is not finished yet. Google is constantly testing and tweaking until they are satisfied. It's ok to keep track of the changes from time to time but it's too early to make a final conclusion on the SERPS. One thing is for sure, this update is affecting a lot of sites with duplicate content or other bad quality sites. So if you have one of those sites, you better change your site (or better, write your own original content) instead of keeping track of all the little changes the entire day.

[conroy]

indyrank - Looks like it hit right at end of day June 1.

[walkman]

Yeah, something has changed on end of May /June. Traffic still horrible--worse maybe?--for my pandalized site, same for one NP (non-pandalized) and way up for 2 NP. There was a switch going on for a few days.

[outland88]

Yes it began during those times. It’s like they're doing some recalculations (not for the better) in some areas not all. Still it being the beginning of June after a holiday plus Google employees coming back to work who knows. I’m seeing a drop in traffic but don’t know why.

As a side note I’m seeing quite a few really nasty viruses emerge from Russian and Far East sites in my stats. Since I’m seeing a jump in Google traffic from those areas it makes me wonder.

[MelissaLB]

Just thought I'd pop on here and add my 2 cents about what we've been seeing change.

The most noticible change we've seen starting late may (23rd to be exact) is an unusually high number of UK and other non USA sites in Google.com searches. These are searches that would result in e-commerce site listings and we've been seeing the top 5 results being dominated by co.uk, .dk, .au sites on 4 out of the 5 listings. This seems very odd to us. In fact, we thought it was a major mistake and something that google would fix but so far no change.

One thing I noticed in common about a lot of these UK sites that are ranking above regional (us sites) results are the landing pages are FULL of text (copying entire wiki pages on the popular subject in relation to the product they are selling OR a long paragraph at the bottom of the page full of keywords (borderline spammy looking). Having said that, should these UK sites still not be dominating over sites in the US? Seems that users (especially ones looking to buy) would rather see results from stores at least on the same continent?

[HuskyPup]

Seems that users (especially ones looking to buy) would rather see results from stores at least on the same continent?

I'm in the UK and for my widgets have been seeing precisely the same but with US and Chinese sites predominantly featured...quite simply the results just look silly.

[MelissaLB]

Husky Pup, any idea how long you've been seeing these types of results? The UK sites that we are seeing have generally always been placing on the first page but never like this so they didn't appear from nowhere, just seem to be very strong all of a sudden.

You're right, it's just silly... hopefully it's another google mistake that will be fixed. it's coming up on 2 weeks though and I've submitted a spam report (it was the best method I could think of as I guess it is considered spam as it is unwanted and unhelpful results) but no sign of any change yet.

[tedster]

At the bottom of every search results page there is a link that says "Give us feedback" - formerly named "Help us improve". That could be another reporting avenue, especially if you make sure you are logged into your Google account when you use it.

[MelissaLB]

thanks, I will be making use of that! The more I look through other niches and personal searches I am doing not regarding our site, The more i am noticing the same: Lots of UK sites (with co.uk and .com), .dk, .au and even some .tk sites where they just don't belong.

[zeus]

some of you are talking about the images, there has been 3 changes the last 1-2 month, with some big changes and also when you search for images you get 5-6 rows of images.