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]

[Shaddows]

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.

I think there has been a much better targetting of traffic, coinciding with Panda. Ted mentioned it recently too- a client who hadn't noticed the pandalisation of his site due to the uptick in conversions.

Losing 80% traffic but maintaining sales suggests to me that the "lost" traffic is just having it's intention more closely met elsewhere.

[edited by: tedster at 6:39 pm (utc) on Jul 23, 2011]

[falsepositive]

FWIW, I appreciate what the winners have been posting here, and find it unfortunate that we're not able to hear more about their side of things. For example, here are a few things I'd like to know, which a winner can confirm: are there any highly monetized sites in a competitive niche that are in the middle class group (1000 pages to 5000 pages) that escaped Panda entirely? Such a group isn't comprised of big names. What I'm curious about is if this kind of site can still thrive in the new G environment. Many sites in my area were considered of a similar profile as mine and were taken out. There were a couple of older sites that you'd lump along with our group but which survived, but the numbers were quite few. I'm also wondering if this is pretty much the end to affiliate type sites, and if not, what makes some live and some die out in this new search era.

At this point, we're not just grasping for information but also grasping for hope. I want to know that there CAN be a way out of this, eventually, and without the input of winners, we won't get that assurance.

[outland88]

I think there has been a much better targetting of traffic, coinciding with Panda.

And as I mentioned you won’t get away with that indefinitely. The only true thing you can say is there has been significant loss in traffic and as yet you are not seeing a significant decline in sales. Eventually comes the loss and your introduction to Adwords. The point being is you can’t just regain that traffic if some methods other than your own are enabling it.

[superclown2]

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.

Long tail is chaotic with loads of rubbish from Google Books. It looks as though they are trying to put lipstick on a pig.

[superclown2]

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"

I'm finding exactly the same thing. In a big niche I'm interested in 'brand' sites with rubbishy one-page efforts for the top search terms even outrank the two sites that they act as affiliates for - both of which are packed with over a hundred pages of highly relevant content - whilst my site, inevitably at no.10 for some reason, still gets lots of clicks with a high conversion rate. This can't last, surely the guys at Google must realise what a mess this is.

[gehrlekrona]

The title is Google SEO News and Discussion Forum ;) so what I am wondering how Google decides what is a site good enough to be on the first page. A lot of the sites doesn't look like quality sites but maybe I am too dumb to see that they have a quality that my site(s) doesn't have. here has been talks about Thin Pages. What is a Thin Page? A page with just a little content? Can a thin page be a quality page?
There's most likely a lot of people out there trying to figure out what we have done wrong and probably more that are trying to gigure out "What the heck Happened... I have got tons of traffic lately...."
I used to have a site where you could see when things were going to happen. That site suddenly got more traffic than usual. I think it still does but it is not as apparent.
I used to be really in to stats and got really upset when bad things happened, but I guess you get older and wiser, or maybe older and tired of Googles mess from time to time.
Enough of rambling.....

[koan]

If experts have thrown up their hands and opted out of the forum, then they miss the fact that there are 1000 eyes reading and only 2 instances of disrespect.

People need to toughen up a bit. This is still one of the most civilized forum on the web. The moderators are doing a great job. I can't imagine how they would react in the more rambunctious parts of the web.

[superclown2]

I don't know what Google's done but I woke up this morning to see the best results for months (and no, it's not because my own sites floated to the top <G>) with a good mix of brand and information in the niches I monitor. How long will it last, I wonder ......

[tangor]

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

In Google terms: "Mission Accomplished!"

Even Caffeine couldn't keep up with the explosive growth of the web... but since Caffeine was about infrastructure and how fast g can crunch all that data the new "metric" is (see patent as a possibility [webmasterworld.com...] it will be recorded hits by age by time less bounce divided by devaluedlinks plus whatevercontent...

The Web Monster is a difficult beast to index. More difficult to index with value to content... there's got to be some slippage incorporated to keep the machine greased. (Avoiding x+y=z since that doesn't work anymore)

The Wild West is becoming managed. Think US Agriculture, kiddies... that's Google these days. :)

Sad thing is... (love these guys, but can see it coming) Bing will most likely do same at a future date... but as long as they hold off there is a possibility of working that tired old magic over there. And, if we are all honest, most of what has "disappeared" or been "Chinese Raccooned" was appropriately sent to the dust bin.

I'm leaning, these days, to full articles (less pagination) for the simple fact that the three sites where I have done that all along (different categories, two are commercial) have not only NOT been hit, have advanced to page 1, 1 & 3 and 2 for their categories. 1,3 are the commercial ones.

I have a feeling that g wants us to SHRINK our sites, distill them, make them best they can be... then penalize us for having the same INFO (which is not duplicate content) as the other ZILLION sites out there doing the same freakin' thing. Those of us old enough to have BEEN THERE FIRST are getting hit (usually) worst as that age/authority thingie is not working. And I'll bet I've overstated this stream of consciousness for this thread. Apologies in that regard. But if not here, somewhere else...

[tedster]

significant loss in traffic and as yet you are not seeing a significant decline in sales

One of my clients saw exactly that effect with Panda 1 - and it has remain stable for five months,

[trakkerguy]

@superclown2 - Also woke up to some big moves up today. Not all sites, but several.

Must be something to do with how they evaluate links. Those that moved up most were not my sites, but 2 client sites I pointed 30-50 good links at a few months back.

Those clients are local, low comp keywords and don't do any other seo or changes to their sites. Both moved up several spots to #1-2.

[minnapple]

Seeing positive movement today on sites I monitor.
Enough to give me some guarded optimism.
I have seen this in the past, mostly on Saturdays, and then it is back to the old positions on Sunday.

[walkman]

slightly + for me but it's from a very low base.

Optimism before an update never was nice to me though, so ;)

[outland88]

One of my clients saw exactly that effect with Panda 1 - and it has remain stable for five months

As you already know with any type analysis there are always exceptions and even multiple exceptions but that doesn’t make the initial hypothesis invalid. I doubt many, even brands, can sustain a large decline in hits for long periods and not suffer. What’s frightening is the capacity of any entity to do just what you mention and it not raise multiple eyebrows. It’s almost a type of bandwidth throttling in my eyes. If you craft Adwords accounts well you can advertise for a month and pull the advertising the next and still see steady results for a few months. After that it tends to decline if it is a smaller businesses. Then again I doubt those who strictly advertise during the Christmas holidays are still deriving the benefit of less exposure via Adwords in July.

Bottom line I’m not debating whether this isn’t taking place. IMO it does. I just doubt Google’s predictive skills are good for many areas unless a large amount of data is being fed to Google. It’s a disturbing thing to me.

[walkman]

@outland88
I can get 10 visits and if each converts I'd be extremely happy, and no need for the rest. But that's not a good sign because you can lose them in a heart beat.

It would be interesting if an increase in traffic was tied to adwords. And highly unethical, and possibly illegal too, IMO.

[edited by: walkman at 2:59 am (utc) on Jul 24, 2011]

[outland88]

Must be something to do with how they evaluate links.

The only things I'm seeing move up relate to getting links. You gotta remember the guy who is now back at the helm started Google on this principle. He'll allow some tinkering with the formula but not so much it dethrones his initial beliefs.

[outland88]

Absolutely Walkman that's the whole point. The thing you should be really worried about is what process enabled this to happen.

It reminds me of the advertising for ring toss at the carnival they’ve been running on TV locally. The little girl walks away sadly because she can’t put a ring around the bottle. The barker then hands her a gigantic ring and she walks away smiling after winning a gigantic teddy bear in one toss. The final shot shows a very happy little girl and paints the barker as having a heart of gold. The reality was they showed it was a rigged game.

[superclown2]

Also woke up to some big moves up today. Not all sites, but several.

Must be something to do with how they evaluate links. Those that moved up most were not my sites, but 2 client sites I pointed 30-50 good links at a few months back.

Yep. All the movement I saw was with sites with strong link profiles. The only fly in the ointment is that one of them has gone from no2 to no78 this morning for an important keyphrase! Playing ten games of chess simultaneously must be easy compared to fathoming this out.

[cbpayne]

I am seeing lots of reports in a number of forums of sites improving today ... BUT, no one is reporting any sites dropping! (yet) ... don't figure.

[trakkerguy]

I am seeing lots of reports in a number of forums of sites improving today ... BUT, no one is reporting any sites dropping! (yet) ... don't figure

Same here. Very strange. Usually we always hear from those who lost ranking (understandable).

Why no news of lost rankings yet? Maybe it was the removal of a filter/downgrade or something that now allows some sites to move up, but not a recalculation for everyone.

[disspy]

Same here. Very strange. Usually we always hear from those who lost ranking (understandable).

As I stated already a few days ago, we experienced significant drop starting slightly on July 12, and sharp drop on July, 19 (50% traffic lost already). I don't know what are the sites you are talking about, but I talk about a reputable high-traffic website. Most SERPs key phrases moved from first page to second or third SERPs page. I see SERPs flooded with spammy, almost irrelevant youtube, facebook and blogspot results in front of us. Since we couldn't find anyone else talking about this, we inspect potential competitor "blackhat serp nuke" or a tech problem on our side.

[superclown2]

It looks as though brandspam is being cut back in the areas I monitor.

[HuskyPup]

I've just seen the most incredible set of results for a trade widget 3 word search - starting at #2 19 of the top 30 results are from the same company, most of them with th same page BUT under a different domain name such as:

nnnnn.word-word-word-word-word-word-word.example.tld or

example.tld/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word.html ...honestly, one of them has a 33 word-word.html string!

Nothing wrong with that then is there?

[superclown2]

I've just seen the most incredible set of results for a trade widget 3 word search - starting at #2 19 of the top 30 results are from the same company, most of them with th same page BUT under a different domain name such as:

nnnnn.word-word-word-word-word-word-word.example.tld or

example.tld/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word/word.html ...honestly, one of them has a 33 word-word.html string!

Nothing wrong with that then is there?

You have obviously misunderstood the results. This is, after all, a search engine which is light years ahead of the opposition.

[gehrlekrona]

I have seen the web page keyword stuffing too and when I have been searching for widget templates for examples, I see a lot of pages from widgets templates.com and other sites that doesn't have anything to do with what I want to find.
I think all that was way behind now but I guess not.

[george_1]

I can see some movements in co.uk and other European TLD's of G the last 24 hours

[trakkerguy]

@disspy - I was speaking only of this most recent change that started late on the 22nd/early morning 23rd.

Seems like it is continuing to build. Not like a switch was thrown, but more like a change to weighting (of backlinks?) that ripples thru the databases.

I first noticed on a handful of my sites, but now several more are moving up as well.

Haven't noticed any dropping yet.

[danijelzi]

I'm also reporting that starting morning 23rd Google US and Google EN language referrals doubled. For example, on my pandalized site downgraded in February, April, and June, I had about 1500 EN language visitors pre-Panda. From mid-June til July 23rd I had about 250 EN visits daily, and yesterday and today its about 500 per day. However, still far below 1,500 pre-panda.

The weird thing is that after 23rd I have an increased number of visits via very competitive keywords in my niche, for which was impossible for me to get on the 1st page pre-Panda. When I perform the same queries via Google Adwords Preview Tool, I'm not on the first a couple of SERPs (I haven't checked further). I wonder if these visits are real people (maybe using Google while logged-in) or some bots. If they're bots, than the increase in traffic on 23rd is not double, it's rather about 30%.

[Whitey]

One of my clients saw exactly that effect with Panda 1 - and it has remain stable for five months,

It makes me wonder if Google is automating the optimising and throttling of sites by monitoring bounce rates etc. and interpreting this in the outcome as a better user experience.

[outland88]

Disspy is right on the dates. I can't judge the 23&24 yet because it is a weekend but there are notable drops.

the top 30 results are from the same company, most of them with th same page BUT under a different domain name

This phenomenon seems to be growing and it seems brands and especially the big boys can push their interests up the rankings fairly easily with interlinking.

I’m beginning to think “Panda” is quickly turning into one hunk of junk.