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]

[HuskyPup]

any idea how long you've been seeing these types of results?

Almost immediately after Panda 2.1 was unleashed.

The Chinese ones are all relative trade widget directories with multiple company listings, the US ones are large widget trade wholesale and retail sites, again they are trade applicable but owing to the weight of my widgets totally useless results.

Sometimes there's the odd Indian trade directory site, again applicable, but for Joe Public purchaser totally inappropriate. Before Panda 2.1 in .com/co.uk/com.au/ca/ie, Google had a healthy spread of quality retail, wholesale and prime producer sites under each tld, now many of them have simply been wiped out or well-buried.

Just why they have done this is what puzzles me more than anything, it certainly has not affected my real world B&M businesses, in fact we're busier than ever!

[HuskyPup]

Insofar as Google.co.uk is concerned I have held off a few days posting about this for a B&M retail widget site.

It's not been affected by any Panda and no alterations have been made to any pages, in fact its uniques and page impressions have remained remarkably consistent however over this last week many of its product pages have risen through the SERPs with many now in #1-5 positions.

It is in the same trade as my main factory B&M sites which have loads of technical and trade details yet these on-page descriptions are deliberately light, some may say they're thin but to do the same would be a duplicate in my eyes and a bit pointless.

So, what's my point? Why has this site steadily moved up in the UK SERPs this last week? Are they trying new "settings" and/or are they now successfully removing some of the spam/garbage?

Has anyone else seen any UK movements like this?

[falsepositive]

I am seeing a lot of foreign traffic on my site. Still tons of scrapers and spam sites appearing in my niche (for my posts), copying only titles now. It's quite a serious mess TBH.

I even sent Google feedback to report scrapers of this forum thread. I figured we should do our part to complain about things we are seeing and I am now spending time using the Google feedback form where I see ridiculous SERPs.

[tedster]

FWIW, we now have a thread where two members are reporting a major drop in rankings [webmasterworld.com] after adding links from one of their sites to other sites they own - even though the links were reportedly added for the visitors.

[MrFewkes]

For me - I cannot budge UK sites I work on - ive spam linked them - updated them - left them - bought nice links for them - nada.
Nothing.

[HuskyPup]

I cannot budge UK sites I work on

I'm getting one of my niche widget .co.uk sites moving up, slowly but it's definitely happening however I am SEOing the nuts off it plus updating with pertinent new information, if any.

My .com in the same .co.uk SERPs has seen a little movement upwards but nothing to get excited about. Quite often where my .com in G.com is #1-3 it cannot be found anywhere in G.co.uk!

[imbckagn]

I'm not sure if anyone is seeing it but everyone of my 15-20 websites has moved up or down today. Some of these sites were hit by Panda and some were not. I am definitely seeing a larger than normal reshuffle of the SERPs.

[walkman]

imbckagn,
we're probably due for the latest Panda penalty giving iteration.
Feb 24th - Panda
April 11th - Panda 2.0
May 6-9th - Panda 2.1
June...

The last two didn't bring anyone back as far as I can tell, just trapped more sites in.

[Forbin001]

I got a serious bump in my keywords today also. Joy of joys.

[pervezalam]

@walkman
we're probably due for the latest Panda penalty giving iteration.
Feb 24th - Panda
April 11th - Panda 2.0
May 6-9th - Panda 2.1

Today (7-June-2011) i am seeing up-Down in Ranking...it seems its going panda update for June month

June-7-10 - Panda 2.?

[superclown2]

Quite a shuffle in my UK sector. My biggest mover was a site that has attracted some links recently, it fell ten places for it's main keyphrase. The more popular it is, the lower it ranks apparently ......

[superclown2]

Two of my sites that had been slapped are back in the SERPs today. They were fairly new sites, only a couple of months old, and they both dropped about 800 places to the bottom of their respective SERPs in mid April. Here they both are this morning with good positions for their targeted keywords.

My old main pandalised site is still dead in the water though.

[rowtc2]

@danijelzi
About a month ago site:mysite.com started to show random pages of my site on #1.

I have a site hit by Panda in the same situation, index was in 20# position, now is on 11#. What changes did you made?

[superclown2]

I made no changes to any of my sites. Other sites I own have dropped like bricks after receiving inlinks so it's very hard to decide just what to do right now.

[AlyssaS]

I'm seeing a jump in traffic too.

I might be wrong, but I don't think this is to do with panda (which seems to me to be about on-page stuff).

I think it's an update of G's algo change from early Feb where they changed the way they looked at links - see this old thread [webmasterworld.com]. I'm seeing competitors drop who had a lot of links from article sites and what looked like blog networks.

But this is just a guess at the moment - has anyone else got any data to confirm or refute this hypothesis?

[walkman]

I got a burst of traffic increase but in very early morning. Now looks like Bing and Yahoo are catching up to the 'normal' numbers compared to Google referrals. Yesterday afternoon I got higher than (new) normal Google referrals too.

edit: AlyssaS, it's Panda time, Google has been running them every 4-5 weeks but last 2 no one came back (as far as we know). Either way it's probably too early to see what the change was about, the serps are still moving around.

[tedster]

I'd say Google has been "adjusting" the Panda algo every 4-5 weeks, but I think they are "running" it (without changing it) a good bit more often than that.

[dazzlindonna]

I'm seeing some major shifts, which include possible big signs for returning from Panda. Each browser is showing me a different result (not logged into Google in any of them), but 2 of 3 browsers look very very promising. In Google Chrome Incognito, a main phrase that was pandalized from top 3 to 20 or beyond, is now #7. In Firefox, that phrase moved to #2! Woot! And in IE9, still at #20. There's hope!

[tigger]

seeing a lot of changes but everything bad as its ranking sites that haven't been touched in years - one site has gone from nowhere to 3rd and I've not added links or content for 5 years! another thats been sat around for 3 years with nothing added. Can't see this lasting as its rewarding sites for having nothing done

[walkman]

dazzlindonna (and others), how's your traffic today? Is this translating into better traffic? If so by how much?

[rooo]

I saw some rankings improvements last night UK time - back to page 1 and a spot or two below pre-panda levels. Traffic still low for longer tail searches though, but a good sign.

[dazzlindonna]

walkman, my site is seasonal, and this isn't its season, so it's useless for me to check traffic, since there's virtually none to check, no matter how well the site is doing, at this time of year. my only recourse is to look at rankings for this site. luckily, the rankings i see when not logged in, generally correspond to the health of the site's traffic. In other words, I'm not generally seeing rankings that are too personalized or localized, historically speaking. As long as I search, logged out, the results I see tend to be reflective of the traffic levels I'd expect to see if those same results were shown to most everyone.

[danijelzi]

@rowtc2

I have a site hit by Panda in the same situation, index was in 20# position, now is on 11#. What changes did you made?

there were many changes, including removing some ad units, removing wordpress tags, and other things most pandalized webmasters did, but it looks like return of the index to #1 was caused by removing links to monthly archive pages. Maybe archive of the last month and index were considered as duplicates, which they actually are - both display the latest posts in the same way.

[walkman]

still in spurts but much better ranking for quite a few very good keywords. Something is not settled, since it makes no sense to stay this way. I have to wait for real improvement across the board or the same as the past 3 months.

[Forbin001]

Google is seriously heaving and churning right now.....refresh it a few times and see.

[gyppo]

I'm seeing 60% more organic referrals from Google today on a severely pandalized site.

[arikgub]

@superclown2

Same thing. Few experimental and new EMD sites that dropped after receiving the first few backlinks, are now back and ranking high on page 1 for their respective keywords.

[superclown2]

Same thing. Few experimental and new EMD sites that dropped after receiving the first few backlinks, are now back and ranking high on page 1 for their respective keywords.

So the moral may be: launch the new sites, get as many backlinks as possible, accept the drop to oblivion for a while. It may well be worth trying.

[zeus]

hmm with some searches i just get 6 results per page, I dont hope thats something new be cause that would really be annoying

[walkman]

I lost whatever keywords I was getting referrals from. Traffic back to Bing level