Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2011

[Shatner]

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

Here's what I am more interested in than anything...

How are all the cosmetic changes Google is making going to affect the traffic driven from Google search?

It definitely seems like Google is de-emphasizing the straight up search aspect of itself more and more and more. They're going out of their way to direct people AWAY from search with every cosmetic change they make.

That has to be having an impact on people who get a lot of traffic from search... I don't know I don't get any search traffic anymore since Panda took it all away.

If you do still get Google search traffic, how is this impacting you?

[edited by: tedster at 3:32 am (utc) on Jul 2, 2011]

[petehall]

maybe is because of beginning of vacation season in germany tomorrow.

First day of holidays here in the UK - can report all sites are much quieter today :(

So possibly not linked to Google for once.

[ohno]

Quiet doesn't explain junk foreign traffic though ;) Whenever I see that I know 100% Google are up to something, usually BAD!

[Martin Ice Web]

ohno - 100% approval, but mixed up with vacation it´s like double the problems.

[ohno]

Yep, true. I guess we need to look at sales/visitor data from 12 months ago. On the brighter side we usually see the 1st week of the holidays having an impact, after that normality usually returns :) We can but hope.........

[superclown2]

I'm in the UK and there are some definite movements in the niches I monitor today/yesterday

[leeds1]

@superclown - I see this also in the last hour or so - some big movements *again*

[falsepositive]

My Pandalized pretty site was hit again these past few days, while my unPandalized ugly site gained a lot and is sitting on record highs (same niche). It's really annoying, especially after spending countless hours fixing the Pandalized site and almost zero hours on the "ugly" site. I heard that "dead" sites in my niche are gaining lots of ground. People who've abandoned their sites are seeing more and more traffic on their outdated work. The interesting thing is that these dead sites (and my ugly site) have no social metric factors and many have no links. I focused all networking/link building/social media on my big site (and have been for a while). None of these made a difference. User metrics on the ugly unaffected site is much worse than the hit site so it's quite strange really.

[outland88]

I went down again last week.

Yeah, looking at my stats they started doing something on the 15th. Google seems to have kick-started every Tom, Dick, and Harry around into link buying or the purchase of directory submission packages to undo the Panda damage. It's a mess people trying to survive.

[walkman]

My Pandalized pretty site was hit again these past few days, while my unPandalized ugly site gained a lot and is sitting on record highs (same niche). It's really annoying, especially after spending countless hours fixing the Pandalized site and almost zero hours on the "ugly" site. I heard that "dead" sites in my niche are gaining lots of ground. People who've abandoned their sites are seeing more and more traffic on their outdated work. The interesting thing is that these dead sites (and my ugly site) have no social metric factors and many have no links. I focused all networking/link building/social media on my big site (and have been for a while). None of these made a difference. User metrics on the ugly unaffected site is much worse than the hit site so it's quite strange really.

It isn't content and it hasn't been since post-Panda. I am starting to look at Google as the Gambino crime family, they want a cut, but the Gambinos at least are honest about it and they tell you how much they want. Yet, they own at least 70% of share when counting AOl and partner sites. Instead of not depending on Google we should work on ensuring that no single company (especially a greedy /irresponsible one like G) has this much market share. The internet is too important to let one company manipulate it to satisfy their greed.

[agent_x]

My Pandalized pretty site was hit again these past few days, while my unPandalized ugly site gained a lot and is sitting on record highs (same niche). It's really annoying, especially after spending countless hours fixing the Pandalized site and almost zero hours on the "ugly" site. I heard that "dead" sites in my niche are gaining lots of ground. People who've abandoned their sites are seeing more and more traffic on their outdated work. The interesting thing is that these dead sites (and my ugly site) have no social metric factors and many have no links. I focused all networking/link building/social media on my big site (and have been for a while). None of these made a difference. User metrics on the ugly unaffected site is much worse than the hit site so it's quite strange really.

Do you not wonder if Google has sussed out your link building efforts and that is why your site is Pandalised?

[falsepositive]

Agent_x, maybe, but my link building was pretty conservative. I only work with media sites and authority sites and do it the old fashioned way -- with networking. I write for many known media sites in my niche and have columns with them. I doubt that is the problem. I am simply highly networked through my Pandalized site and I have a recognizable brand. I can very easily defend it face to face. The issues are more to do with monetization, I believe. The space I work in is extremely competitive and so Google is probably citing what I'd call the recognizable "middle class names" in this niche. I am thinking they are holding such sites to a different standard (and have higher expectations) than others in the same niche that are not monetizing in the same way.

Which begs the question: can different sites in the same niche be held under different standards based on certain parameters? For example if you are classified as a "review site" by Google, while another site in the niche is not, then the standards for your "review site" are much higher.

[walkman]

@falsepositive
suggy has mentioned something like this. Maybe a longer description or customer reviews might make you an article /review /blog site, even if you only sell shoes? Imagine the stupidity of this.

Either way, something's rotten in Googleland, that much is clear. Until they figure it out perfectly, they shouldn't let theorists test their ideas on live sites, for five months straight. Especially not if what they experiment on takes away 60-95% of traffic.

[gehrlekrona]

Feb 20th, 3100+ unique
Feb 21st, 1500+ unique
June 17th, 1100+ unique
July 1st, 900+ unique
Today so far 600+

If they continue like that, there will no web site left of mine :(

[dickbaker]

Google seems to be throttling traffic on my site, in addition to having Pandalized it.

Every day my Google referrals are the same in my stats, plus or minus just a little bit. Meanwhile, direct traffic, Yahoo traffic and Bing traffic move up or down depending upon the day of the week when traffic is higher or lower, as well as other factors.

[ohno]

Traffic throttling has been around for ages IMO, I can look at GA and see the same amount of visitors on each day of the week +- 10, sometimes +- 1 and sometimes 100% THE SAME! With this latest algo we also seem to get spurts of traffic, dead all day then 10 sales in an hour.

[Martin Ice Web]

located in germany, today we get referrals from Japan, Russia ...
crazy

[Martin Ice Web]

SHORT QUESTION:


if traffic now goes elsewhere, there must be some winners in this game. Cause U all are very smart, someone should have had the idea of making a brand new ( crappy, grey hat, silly or ugly ) site? Just to proof some of the thesis. Did someone something like that and what is/was the result?

My thesis goes somewhere to the point, that if the page is to perfect ( almost perfect HTML, CSS, small-fast loading files ) that would be a sign an SEO is onboard, witch now is something goomazon is defending, except u are amazon or a brand.

[suggy]

Panda is an experiment that seems to be failing. But it's been set free and it's calling the shots. The two questions now are:-

1) Will Panda ever really learn to discriminate between good and bad sites/pages (because currently it get's it wrong a lot)?

2) How long will google stick with it before there's one less giant Panda in the world?

Google may well congratulate itself over what's been banished from the SERPS (article spam). But, that's only half the picture. They surely can't be happy with what is in the SERPS these days?!

I see article spam + false positives (that are actually good sites) replaced with... well... junk.

[Zivush]

The big question is: Who are the winners and what they did right?

I have started mapping those winner sites on my niche thinking of buying some of them. Thought they might have the chosen formula that I missed/lost.
(My niche is a big niche and my site dominates it with some Million uniques a month).

All of these winners are small to tiny traffic sites.
Looking to their content before contacting the owners, it was amazing to realize that these are crappy sites.

Why so many crappy sites went up the SERPs and took advantage of these four Panda updates?
What is the so called “quality score” of these small sites with their completely nonsense and rubbish content.
Did they escape the radar? Why did they escape? Is it because they were too small to get noticed by the algo?
On the other hand, I have some small sites, less than 10k uniques, that got the hit.
So what is the catch 22 here?

[indyank]

All of these winners are small to tiny traffic sites.

There is the clue.They haven't been pandalized and there isn't any quality score for them.In other words, they would be having the perfect quality score.

Did they escape the radar? Why did they escape? Is it because they were too small to get noticed by the algo?

This is run separately from the normal algo and not all sites are pulled into this. If you have a page for a reasonably popular keyword (top 12% of keywords or something beyond that now?), then your entire site gets pulled into this evaluation.

[graeme_p]

@Martin, the winners do not bother with SERP changes threads.

I won a little (not significantly above my usual growth rate), and I am only looking here because I noticed some (low quality) competitors seem to have lost recently, and I wondered if it was permanent.

[Martin Ice Web]

@graeme_p

thats right. But like you other winners must be reading this thread and if i was a winner, I "think" I would give poeple my two rows.

-> I just spoke to one of our suppliers. He told me that there have been only 3 to 4 real customers left that sell on amazon. Further he told me, that there seems to bee no remaining sellers with relevance to their business market or revenue.
If it is like this, then i do not have do wonder , why nobody says "here i am, i am a winner", cause they do not have a shop, website except amazon market place.

[ignatius]

hi,

anyone noticed any major ranking changes today? my sites (both in US and Europe) increased a lot in rankings for competitive keywords all the same day. I also noticed some major movements in SERPs happening yesterday (sites dropping, new sites showing up in Top5...)

I'm just wondering if someone noticed something similar in US and/or Europe?

[petehall]

Noticing HUGE shifts in the UK, results looking really all over the place.

What is it with all these changes !

[superclown2]

Noticing HUGE shifts in the UK, results looking really all over the place.

Ditto. I'm watching sites with lots of old backlinks coming in again to decent positions.

[petehall]

Ditto. I'm watching sites with lots of old backlinks coming in again to decent positions.

How are you finding long tail searches?

There seems to be no logic to many of the results I watched, more random chaos with completely random companies ranking for different searches.

[petehall]

I'm also seeing multiple listings for the same site, not next to each other they have listings such as position 2 and position 6.

Seeing a lot of home page listings instead of relevant / target pages as well.

Hmmm... I'll take what I'm seeing as unfinished as it's very messy indeed...

[walkman]

This is run separately from the normal algo and not all sites are pulled into this. If you have a page for a reasonably popular keyword (top 12% of keywords or something beyond that now?), then your entire site gets pulled into this evaluation.

I think you have something there. My non-Pandalized sites are simple and do not have any ads for them. My pandalized site even for "my domainname" has dozens. So that may have saved them, not popular and not too commercial. But then many keywords that article sites didn't have popular keywords, in fact their strategy was to mostly target the orphan queries.

1) Will Panda ever really learn to discriminate between good and bad sites/pages (because currently it get's it wrong a lot)?

2) How long will google stick with it before there's one less giant Panda in the world?

Google may well congratulate itself over what's been banished from the SERPS (article spam). But, that's only half the picture. They surely can't be happy with what is in the SERPS these days?!

Five months and I'm 100% sure something is rotten. My site may have been a lot of things on February, but sure it isn't worst now, yet I now get 50% of what Bing alone sends me. However they are measuring 'quality' is failing badly.

Panda may be a success for Google because they measure it differently. Google has changed, IMO they have realized that their days are numbered so let's use search to loot as much as we can and to promote other Google related junk, hoping to extend their life. All Google has it's search, nothing else to fall back to. Yet with FB, apps, MSFT, Apple and others (anti-trust on both sides of Atlantic) going after them, they feel the heat so they are removing even the 'do no evil' mask. Google peaked in 2009-2010, it's all downhill from here. Sadly, we're stuck in the middle and have to find a pocket or two to make a living.

Notice how many local searches show now, Youtube videos, how many (totally unrelated) G books show up for sentence searches and how many Blogspot sites show out of place. And then notice the ads and the top SERPS for most commercial results. See how many are from the same companies. It's not a conspiracy theory, check them out for yourself and wonder if it's a coincidence or not.

Maybe they fear that there's something in the anti-trust complaints so they are rushing as fast as they can? One thing is clear: Panda sucks and it's a huge break from their past actions. Yet, on month 5 we have to ask why it's still picking winners while killing others? Google could have very easily given Panda less clout in SERPS, not to essentially kill sites, but they did.

[leeds1]

I can relate to the above

I have a site in the UK completely decimated by panda and slowly dying (from over 2k per day to 400 now; loads of #1 positions now #8 to page 2) but I am making more sales than ever.

Visitors notice the crud above my site and by the time they get there they must think "thank goodness, a site that answers my questions at last"

Crazy

[petehall]

I run some test sites which have little optimisation or links to them, when these start ranking I know that we have an issue.

They've been around a while, just have very few links, no page titles etc.