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]

[onebuyone]

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.

They can measure many other metrics using data pulled from Chrome(15% market share already?), so you no longer can hide some facts about your website.

[walkman]

They can measure many other metrics using data pulled from Chrome(15% market share already?), so you no longer can hide some facts about your website.

No doubt, but the conclusion from those facts can be wrong.

Looks to me like Google has undone one of the many, many, many post-Panda changes.

[hairycoo]

No change here I'm afraid :(

[petehall]

Back to normal traffic levels but very few enquiries... very strange! I'm guessing market trend rather than G.

Unless the referrals are inaccurate eg. searchers aren't getting exactly what they are looking for. The site in question receives most traffic from long tail so this could be the case.

Can anyone else report issues with long tail accuracy?

[Jez123]

Back to normal traffic levels but very few enquiries... very strange! I'm guessing market trend rather than G.

I am seeing a very slow day too. Are you in the UK Petehall? Start of the summer hols today. I am thinking it's going to be a slow time - that coupled with everything else, no one is buying much.

[petehall]

Are you in the UK Petehall?

Certainly am - at least it's not just us then!

I know these holiday periods can be quieter, but when the forces that be @ Google are tinkering you immediately panic thinking something else is wrong.

What I don't understand is the same volume of people are still looking... just made me think the search is a might be a bit inaccurate at the moment.

[leeds1]

I am also in the UK - saw big changes in SERPS over the weekend.

Started well but had massive traffic dips between 12 and 2pm today - back on track though now to look reasonable - nothing great; nothing bad

[Jez123]

What I don't understand is the same volume of people are still looking... just made me think the search is a might be a bit inaccurate at the moment.

I have (as well as ohno and backdraft) have said this since Christmas. I did think it was google's doing but now I think it's just down to the economy. It slumped for me last year after the school summer holidays. If this is the same slump it's 6 weeks earlier. There may be trouble ahead!

[HuskyPup]

UK

What the heck's going on? Today I've already had double my average uniques and easily my most uniques this month yet page views are at 50% of average.

[Swanson]

Yes, there is something crazy going on in the UK.

All sites out of Panda - sites not affected by Panda up by 200%.

The last few days are the best ever days I have had by a mile.

I haven't done anything to any of the sites at all - all my "pandalized" sites have just sat there, now they are better than before.

They had been recovering over the past few weeks, and also my non-panda sites had been gaining traffic over the past few weeks also.

What is going on?

Actually don't answer it I just want to enjoy this before they all die!

[freejung]

Interesting... I'm seeing major ranking improvements on google.co.uk since the last time I checked (about a month ago), but so far no noticeable difference in traffic.

[indigojo]

Google now bringing back a lot more useful stuff for me this morning in Australia and also I'm seeing that 'nasty little hobbit' Wikipedia pushed to two or three with government, organisation authority type stuff sitting above it for once - IMO content that is good and worthy of the rank.

[ohno]

Something deffo happening in the UK. Yesterday we hit normal target for sales-on the 1st full week of the holidays?! Traffic was "normal" for a Monday too-infact within ONE visitor of what we class as normal (& that is traffic throttling normal without a doubt, if you look at our GA account you could draw the line for next week.....& the week after that..and..etc etc). The morning started well but we tailed right off on the afternoon. Maybe the test match?! :) Checking the SERP's our one .com site has gone up, the .co.uk remains where it was.

[Jez123]

Google's results are so poor when I am signed in that it's stopping me use google +. I mean, they are so ridiculous that if I want to use g+ I have to start IE so that I can search for things as well as use G+. Today they are showing me pointless inner pages - the sort you would normally see on pages 6 to 10!

[MelissaLB]

We're in Canada on a USA server and we noticed yesterday and continuing today that our google organic traffic is up by about 20% which is back to our normal year over year increase. For a month or two we leveled out and were matching what we did int he previous year. Hopefully it sticks. Conversions are going well for us too. It seems we are not being taken over as much by the big brands as we have been in the last few months.

I can't imagine this will last, but I can hope.

[HuskyPup]

Whatever the right hand gave yesterday the left hand is taking away today...it's not Sunday is it?

[Ummon]

Yea something happened today. My semi recovered pandalized site just got hammered again.

[ohno]

Welcome to new Google. Stability for more than a week(usually a day!)? Forget it!

[Ummon]

I have no idea what these bozo's are doing. Is it so much to ask for a bit of consistency?

[Dot_Media]

They can measure many other metrics using data pulled from Chrome(15% market share already?), so you no longer can hide some facts about your website.

they also have google analytics, lord knows what it's market share is.

[sean22]

Traffic for my site has recovered about 30% of organic Google traffic since Sunday. Today is the third consecutive day, it's early but traffic looking good. This is long tail traffic that saw a drop in traffic over the span of a few days (June 7-June 16). Previous to this, traffic was booming especially from Feb 19 to June 6th.

My competitor was also affected during the same time. He was ranking 1-3 (page 1) and we were replaced by e-commerce and brands, some e-commerce sites that haven't been on page 1 since Nov, 2009. Main KW suffering especially in US serps, okay internationally, long tails are coming back. Fingers crossed it continues.

[Mr3putt]

For the first time my main website has almost fully recovered it's traffic to pre panda levels (Feb 24th.) Traffic is up 40%. It's been on a steady incline since July 21st increasing about 5-15% each day.

Who knows how long this will last. It's nice to see traffic levels mirror where they have been for the last 5 years.

[joetek]

I too noticed a nice bump in Search Engine traffic in Google Analytics, but be careful how you interpret these. I also saw a big drop in referals from Google.com at the same time.

Clicks from Google Image Search and Google News used to show up as referring sites, but they now appear to be included as Search Engine traffic. Are you guys seeing the same thing?

[falsepositive]

Mr3Putt, did you do anything to your site as a reaction to Panda? I'd be interested to hear what you did to recover.

[danijelzi]

@joetek

You are right. In GA, they now include Google.com referrals in Google organic traffic. This means that there's no any recovery from July 23rd, as I previously reported.

[rc1320]

Anyone know why they are changing image traffic from referral to search? Any statements from G on this?


[imgur.com...]

[joetek]

@danijelzi

I wish I wasn't. I was all excited when I saw the search numbers going up starting on July 22, but it was close to offset by the drop in referals.

What I don't know is if there was *also* a panda update.

[rowtc2]

@sean22 , @Mr3putt glad to hear that. What changes have you made?

[Ummon]

Well I think I am hosed. I show up for the website name but almost nothing else that I can tell. Something is very wrong

[Mr3putt]

The difference is pretty much all in google organic traffic. For the past two days it's up 18% and includes a wide variety of keywords going to a wide variety of pages. Kind of like it always was before panda. Referrals from google.com isn't a factor in this.

As far as changes go, I spent about an hour or two making changes back in april and have left it alone since. Cleaned up the forum and blocked it from robots, had about 20 or so pages rewritten, added plus 1 about a week ago, removed all adsense except one small block at the bottom.

What's frustrating is revenue for the site is down 70% from removing adsense but user engagement hasn't changed hardly at all. With and without adsense bounce rate is a difference of 1%, time on site is identical, pageviews are .3 difference.