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]

[Jessica97]

@walkman Same situation on this end. Had a bump yesterday, back to same old poor traffic level today so far.

And Search Results Still Lacking Relevancy: Spent almost entire day yesterday having to go to Bing to try to find some specific info re: air conditioning units and parts. Google results were useless. Not saying Bing or other search engines are perfect, not by a long shot, but what used to take minutes to find using one search engine ie: Google, now may take me 1/2 of a day using multiple ones. So overall search results still lack relevancy. Not looking for warm mangos,(like Larry Page). Just air conditioners and parts and you'd think that the new algorithm would know how to return relevant results for that type of search since most of the country is experiencing a heat wave. But I guess if Larry Page can't find what he's looking for either, maybe, just maybe the Google engineers will take another look at what they've done with search.

[dazzlindonna]

Same here. Bump yesterday, same old post-Panda rankings today. I am still taking it as a hopeful sign of possible change to come. (Hey, a gal's gotta find hope somewhere, anywhere!) :)

[dickbaker]

I know that Google's failings with this algo have been discussed ad nauseum, but I just found another result that made me laugh.

I was searching for a retail store that advertises on my site. The second result was the retail store's website. The third result was the retail store's ad on my site.

The first result was a post from a niche forum I've never heard of. The title is "Avoid (name of retail store)". The description is, "These f*****g people are crazy. Last week I ordered a...", then it continues.

I don't know how the "f-bomb" got past Google, or how a forum post (especially one with the "f-bomb") ranks #1, but it's funny.

[falsepositive]

I don't know how the "f-bomb" got past Google, or how a forum post (especially one with the "f-bomb") ranks #1, but it's funny.

I agree, some of the results are pretty laughable. I've seen "XYZ Scam" ranking higher than actual "XYZ". But I also noticed that in less competitive SERPs, the results looked much better.

[thirteen]

I was searching for a retail store that advertises on my site. The second result was the retail store's website. The third result was the retail store's ad on my site.

dickbaker,

Was the retailer's ad on your site just a banner ad or did you write up a content webpage about the retailer?

If it was just a banner ad, did you use Google's nofollow attribute on the banner?

If a banner ad can help you move up on SERP, then you might hit on something on how to deal with Panda.

[rlange]

My company's main website saw a 50% drop in traffic in mid-March. The majority of the traffic to the site was foreign and to some unmaintained pages (the online version of a booklet we no longer publish).

Monday and Tuesday have shown a drastic increase in traffic (+84%), and today's traffic (as of 2:00pm) has already nearly matched that of Monday and Tuesday.

The weird thing is that the traffic we lost in March was from one section of the site and the traffic we seem to have gained is to a different part of the site.

I've made no changes to this site.

--
Ryan

[HuskyPup]

Oh...now what do I write?

For my single most important product line my .mobi site has just moved up to 9th position in the .com SERPs!

My regular trademarked, keyword domain, full informational site is still #1 & 2 but my .mobi at #9 !?!?

[Panthro]

Take what they give you and run.

[MelissaLB]

I've been seeing a lot of minor but strange and very frequent fluctuations in serps for the past 3 days. What I mean by very frequent is after I do a search and hit refresh I will get a different set of results! It seems to be changing minute by minute!

I havent really checked anything else such as video, news or image results but I've been seeing this in regular serps and shopping results.

2 things I'm basically seeing:
-In some searches I'm seeing a shuffling of the top 10, all the same sites just 3 or 4 of them in another place in the top 10
-1 site being dropped off the front page moving everything else up 1 spot (sometimes even the previous #1 site is being dropped and everything else goes up)

I've been checking about 10-15 keyphrases and on any of them I could refresh 5 times in 15 minutes and get a different result each time!

What is going on? is this just happening in my niche? I cant seem to get a good handle on my sites placement as we are one of the sites that are moving all around!

[dickbaker]

thirteen, I have fairly lengthy descriptions of retail stores on my site. By lengthy, I mean maybe 300-500 words (which is a lot for an ad). These aren't banner ads. Searching for a retail store's name once showed the store's page on my site as the first result, but now every store has a website, so their sites usually come first. Not always, but usually.

I think I've found the secret to ranking #1, though: use the f-bomb in the first sentence on a page. ;)

[falsepositive]

Something certainly happened and I got a 10% to 20% boost on June 9 which is holding. I read in other GWT forums that there was a tweak released to handle scrapers. I've also been doing major changes from Day 1. At any rate, it's the first time since March that I've seen any traffic improvements for my site. Until now, it was a steady decline and erosion. I have a site that is constantly scraped and I continue to file DMCA notices weekly for new sites that pop up scraping my affected site.

[Shatner]

I'd been slowly increasing just a little bit in Google traffic over the past week.

Yesterday Google hit the reset button again and I went right back to my Panda lows.

This marks the 4th time this has happened to me since Panda 1.0.

Every time I start to see any, even slight recovery at all Google hits a reset button and I'm reburied.

[tedster]

Sorry to hear you went back, Shatner. I was just speaking with a client who is now seeing the first dramatic increase in Google Search traffic since Panda 1.0 originally hit them.

[walkman]

My G traffic is up for some reason too. Compared to Bing /Yahoo it's probably 15% or so more and better keyword$ compared to a few days ago. Of course the % increase starts at a really low base, but I'll take it.

Something has happened on June 6th, lots of sites were demoted and some came back up. They are other non-Panda things going on as well.

[Shatner]

>>>I was just speaking with a client who is now seeing the first dramatic increase in Google Search traffic since Panda 1.0 originally hit them.

@tedster Let me know if you're looking for any new clients. I'm out of ideas.

[tedster]

I can't claim any special sauce with this client. They've been doing all the same things people talk about here - eliminating thousands of shallow pages, getting away from manufacturer's descriptions, reining in auto-generated BS.

I think it's more like they caught the wave of this new incarnation of Panda that rolled out this week. And they're still not all the way back, either - just looking better.

[walkman]

Is it possible that G relaxed the international Panda? My G traffic *looks* a bit more international. The US one includes the true content farms and anyone caught in that will suffer more IMO, as Google does not want them to escape.

[sobole]

yeah Google!

[thirteen]

This week been a roller coaster ride. June 8th and 9th, my Pandalized site unexpectedly came back up to pre-Pandalized level. It came back to page 1 & 2 on SERP. Then on June 10th, it was nowhere to be found. I click through 10 pages and still can't find it. It went from hero to zero in 3 days.

[MelissaLB]

We've been battling a loss of serps since March 23 and yesterday at around 6pm, all of our serps popped right back in place. We'd made a few minor changes to our homepage and how we linked to the categories that had lost serps, but at this point until I look at the next WMT update, I'll be unsure if we came back as a result of something we did to improve or just as a result of the never-ending Google Churn.

Either way, happy to see the change and happy to be back. UK sites are no longer outranking us in our own domestic market. I don't know how long it will last, but for now, our serps make sense again.

[superclown2]

Several of us in the UK saw sites pop back a couple of days ago then disappear again this morning. Don't be too disappointed if the recovery is short lived.

[tigger]

agree Superclown2 - I lost 20-30% of my traffic on tuesday and it then pulled back yesterday but vanished again today on both new and old sites - right now its a case of head down and keep doing what your doing till G stops messing around.

[arikgub]

@superclown2

And today, the "new" sites that re-appeared in the index few days ago, are gone again! See this too?

and in general, a very serious shake up in serps, and I am not talking about some crappy sites. Very well established sites moved +/- 10 positions overnight in the niche that has been pretty stable till now.

[outland88]

In the areas I have watched through the years Google has always done re-arrangements in early June as if it signified the beginning of summer to them. Even though most of the sites were non-seasonal the gyrations came and went for about 2-3 weeks. In other words if I was hearing these reports in any other months it would catch my eye. Again Google is what you wake up to each morning. They’re tracking so much data now it’s obvious they’re tracking a “hot” factor among many.

[walkman]

something major must have happened. I keep an eye on Google support forums and two new, undoubtedly good sites have reported huge losses.
Danny Book reviews [google.com...] 10+ year old site with just a couple of Amazon links on the bottom of each review and Scidev (PR8) [google.com...] (Scidev has canonization issues but who knows why they dropped this much, at this time..)

[falsepositive]

Thanks walkman. Looks like quality trumps authority and reputation at this point. Again, unless you are a very strong brand.

[Shatner]

@falsepositive Walkman said those were quality sites. How are you defining "quality" ? Quality = brand name?

[Panthro]

Has anyone with very small sites been affected by all this? I mean something like 10-20 or less pages? Or is it only large e-commerce and UGC sites being affected?

[falsepositive]

@Shatner,
I was referring to "quality" as in what Google refers to or understands as "quality". It matters not what we think is quality (it's subjective). There is a quality score that Google has developed and whatever THAT is, it's what's ruling right now over authority/reputation/age of site. With the 2 examples cited, I can only conclude that this is how the formula is weighted. My site is old, has a reputation in all other channels besides Google and is clearly an authority based on my existing link profile and in my specific niche. Yet it's been punished, but from what I see, it's for reasons that are different from those that brought down those other sites.

When you are a strong brand, perhaps the link profile or user metrics may be so strong that it can help prevent the Panda tipping of a site.

[mhansen]

I was referring to "quality" as in what Google refers to or understands as "quality"

I guess we need a new word in the dictionary then...

"Guality: [definition hidden]"