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]

[outland88]

I think the sites that see fluctuations are predominantly e-commerce and the current changes might not have have anything to do with Panda.

I agree. On the surface it looks like some new filter aimed at commerce sites. Again the caveat is if you have brand immunity and a zillion links. More and more of the results in my areas are looking like research work where the owner of the site could care if it is listed and most readers aren’t interested either.

[germanprisoner]

@tedster Hi over there! :D

@indyank @Shaddows Are your sites english?

I see drops on several high traffic portals (non-english) around the world. I can't really relate it to e-commerce sites in general. We were commenting here that these might be pre panda alterations just like it happend before the Panda release for english sites. For non english websites "happy times" might come within the next weeks.

This is a huge change and it's rolling out worldwide:

Tuesday/Wednesday
First small drops (5-10%) traffic loss on portals with 1000-200.000 visits per day in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Chile, Argentina, Brazil

Wednesday/Thursday
Bigger drops 10%-50%(!) (maybe due to time US/Europe with data with data from the day before)

Increases on some english sites (prior affected by panda) and some big increases in rankings on (also e-commerce) sites with good unique content.

So at the end it looks all a little bit strange over here in Europe. Some sites that normally would have been affected by Panda are only minimally affected so maybe this all are pre panda alterations also realted to different data centers countries etc.

The problem for webmasters is the traffic loss of 10-40%% "pre-panda?" ...

It will get interesting within the next weeks and months don't you think?

Do you have some similar strange things going on?

[tedster]

@germanprisoner, are you discussing ccTLD Google results (google.de for example) or google.com results as seen by a user within non-US countries?

[brinked]

some movement today. Traffic up 15% for US visitors. Some sites have moved down but overall seeing a lot of movement today.

[elearner]

Traffic at my website is fluctuating since last 15 days, in current week I lost 5% traffic and overall its 25-30% loss so far. I am unable to find the answer that why my google indexing is getting lower day by day!

On 13th and 15th google crawler gets crazy while after that it gets slower, even slower than normal ratio.

Google is giving tough time to the websites with UGC especially after panda.

[danijelzi]

Among various weird stuff in SERPs in the last months this is the strangest: I'm outranked by a Google Search page which is displayed as a search result:

Keyword - Google
[google.com...]

then you click on that 'result' and you are taken to a Google Search page, which again has a similar Google Search page ranked #2, and so on.

Their search is definitely broken or something is in progress.

[MelissaLB]

We're one of the sites that experienced an uptick in traffic on the 13th/drop on the 14th until now, still dropping.
We noticed today that our site:site.com indexing dropped by about half from 12,000 to 6,000 (approx.) today. Anyone else?

Also, we were crawled a bit heavier than normal a few days ago but not as much as the upswing in pages crawled pre panda the last 2 times and now WMT is showing an abnormally low # of pages crawled per day for it's last 2 days of reportage.

I havent noticed any change in actual serps that we are watching, other than the site indexing change and the abnormally low traffic.


hmmmmmm....

[walkman]

Overall, nothing has changed for me. Some hours is much worst, some hours a lot better. My non-Pandalised sites identical if not better than before.

Google is clearly working on something so any drops or improvements are likely temporary for a while. We also have to keep in mind that unless stats are shown any 'improvement' or 'drop' can be 1% or 99%. If you had a 70% drop on Panda 1/2/2.x and then gained 10% you haven't comeback, not even close. The same idea applies if you gained 50% on Panda and this week lost 10%...they sky isn't falling.

[tedster]

Just a note for future reference, as well as for anyone not following this other thread about the current update (which might well be Panda 2.2) [webmasterworld.com...]

[elearner]

@ MelissaLB - I also facing the same issues, indexing decreasing day by day. Initially google crawl ratio increased to double than it get lower, even 50% lower than normal and this trend is continuing since last 3 days.

Can you share what kind of website you are running?

[elearner]

Our google crawling decreased significantly, recent WMT crawling stats shows just 20% pages crawl of the normal ratio, shall I consider that our website is going to be penalized? Has anyone else experienced this?

[Jez123]

One of my sites that was fluctuating beween page 2 and 3 has had the main homepage disappear to be replaced by a inner page on about page 9 or so. Is anyone else seeing this? I haven't seen this from google for a couple of years now - well not for this long anyway. The page went missing in action about last weds.

[Jez123]

Ok, I just found the main page - on the botom of page 35. Does this sound like penalty or normal update mix-up?

[traffik daddy]

Seen some massive improvements with some of our SEO clients today here in the UK.

One of my sites that was fluctuating beween page 2 and 3 has had the main homepage disappear to be replaced by a inner page on about page 9 or so. Is anyone else seeing this? I haven't seen this from google for a couple of years now - well not for this long anyway. The page went missing in action about last weds.

I have seen this with my friends website that I optimized. It appears to have something to do with Google rewriting the titles, or so it seems. I built his website with Wordpress CMS and I originally thought it was some coding causing the problem, but I went digging and found that Google was introducing title rewrites for maybe over-optimized or irrelevant titles.

His website has still not recovered yet, but when I make changes I have to wait for the recache before I can see if it fixed the problem. I have recently shortened the titles in hope it will fix the problem.

Another client we had was 10th for a big search term only for him to want a blog creating, again we introduced Wordpress. Google rewritten one of the pages titles in the blog and it replaced the homepage for that keyword, but it was ranking in the same position. We removed the blog url and did a redirect to the homepage and it fixed the problem.

I recently written to Google and was surprised when I got a reply, and the reply was that there should be no reason why the website is not ranking, which is not what I wanted to hear. However, the website is not ranking and they told me nothing so I am now left with the headache of trying to sort it out.

I could be wrong, but everything I have looked into is pointing to this title rewrite that Google is enforcing. Does anyone know how to stop them from doing this?

[edit]

I would like to point out that the domain is an exact match domain - however, the website was created into a profile website with 7 pages and good content.

[Jez123]

I haven't noticed any title changes. I am hoping it's a glitch and that it will return to how it should be at some point. There are so many worse spam tactics than titles anyway! Why not tackle some of the people with duplicate sites on spare domains? This seems to be g's Kryptonite!

This too is a WP site so maybe I'll redirect the replacement and see what it does. It's not a main site but it is / was my strongest backup doing OK in its own right.

[traffik daddy]

Its certainly a strange one and I share your hope that it is a glitch in the algorithm.

One thing I have removed today is a testimonial in his sidebar, maybe causing duplicate content issues over the other 6 pages. I wait and wonder.

[germanprisoner]

@tedster Both. I have weired results for google.com and all other country domains google.de, google.es etc.

[MelissaLB]

@elearner we run an ecommerce website. In fact, our site:indexing actually popped back yesterday. It is only slightly down from normal (a few hundred less pages) but is sitting at around 12,800. Curiuos, did you see yours pop back?

[elearner]

@MelissaLB, thanks for sharing the information and I am glad to hear that your indexing popped back.

We are in very difficult situation, indexing is still down and google crawl ratio horribly decreased during last couple of days. Earlier google crawl my home page on daily basis but this time it has not crawled it since 3 days.

[ohno]

Two of our sites saw a spike in traffic yesterday & Google Shopping one box results is back for our main products!

[ohno]

Shopping box still there but traffic going down again, well down today. (30%)

[danijelzi]

My pandalized site site ranks much better on results for signed out G. users than for signed in. Also, there are much less scrapers in results when signed out.

[MelissaLB]

We started to see our traffic go up on the 20th but it sunk again starting last night. We saw a pretty wild fluctuation on June 10th when we saw all the co.uk/.au sites that had been outranking the USA based sites (in google.com search) move to the bottom of page one or page two.

We thought GREAT! things are back to normal for us!

Unfortunately, either last night or this morning, those same exact results are now showing again in all of the keywords we were checking.

I don't think our site has been pandalized, however I do see movement in our traffic and in our crawl rate around the times when panda is being rolled out but I have a good feeling that the movement we are seeing is due to other sites being effected bu it.

Anyone else see the same unusual results they were seeing in early June pop back today?

[MelissaLB]

cont'd...

@All the UK ecommerce guys: Are you seeing USA and Canada sites pop back up in better placement in the serps like earlier this month?

I remember hearing that the folks int he UK were seeing the opposite of what we were experiencing in the US search.

[potentialgeek]

What's up with Google now putting a site with a four-letter swear word in its title tag in the top 3 for a major search word with Strict Filtering on?

And this is a term searched by many kids...

[Forbin001]

My site is doing well, getting good traffic and sales but several big keywords dropped today. I havent built any fresh links recently, and google does do this right? Drop your site for not building fresh links even though its doing well? ack

[ohno]

Something really bizzare on a UK search, item search term is a popular product, one site sells it but underneath the page that comes up in the SERP's is directions to a place in the USA!

[HuskyPup]

directions to a place in the USA!

This seems to be one of the problems since Panda, I keep seeing US retail sites in the UK results from companies I know cannot supply whatsoever. It's not for all my widgets but certainly 50% of them are pointless results.

[ohno]

This is a UK site though with .co.uk domain, what on earth the directions to somwhere in the USA are about I really have no idea!

[tedster]

and google does do this right? Drop your site for not building fresh links even though its doing well?

Google doesn't expect you to actively "build" links - they expect that a good, active website will naturally show some signs in links, or mentions, or other types of citations. This expectation appears to be quite different for different types of websites, too.

Unless your site has not acquired any new links for many, many months, it's more likely the ranking changes are related to something else - even an algorithm change of some kind.