Google Updates and SERP Changes - Aug 2011

[zeus]

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

any news on Panda update, I know a lot of us are still stuck and haven't seen any real movement in serps even with changes made to sites.

Have we seen a roll back yet?
Is Panda update done?
Is it time to dump the sites and just let them flow on the net and make new once.?
will I shoot a goal at soccer today?

[edited by: tedster at 1:47 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2011]

[Forbin001]

One of my keywords got pounded on Saturday night. I think I know why. There was one competitor who beat me out, a big one, I havent built many links for that keyword in a long time and they drop kicked me from the first to the third page.

Time to build links, werd.

[muejl1]

Ya, we got pounded on Saturday night as well. We had actually moved up a spot during the early hours of Saturday.....but then Google made a change and fell down the rabbit hole again!

[bl4nket]

My site has dropped just recently 3 position lower... blah

[petehall]

Seeing slight changes today in the UK - getting very used to this now.

I'm almost becoming immune to fear of change we've been through so much recently...

[muejl1]

@petehall I agree......these seem to be weekly adjustments from G. I just wish we had better info to understand what the changes exactly are.

[ohno]

Awful week so far this week. Never been so quiet although circumstances in UK may be to blame too..........

[muejl1]

@ohno Ya, a bit of unrest in the UK will slow things down a bit.

So does anyone have a clue as to what caused this past weekend's SERP change? All I'm seeing are sites that have crappy paid links and little content skyrocket to the top. Way to go big G!

[Uber_SEO]

@muejl1 Amazes me on a daily basis how blatant paid links STILL continue to drive results on big money KWs

[ohno]

The simple fact I fail to understand is Google has always done updates yet we have barely noticed in the past. Since MayDay it seems every update they do affects things one way or the other to the EXTREME! It's either manic or dead, no in between. Since we have had this for quite some time now I guess this it is from now.....

[muejl1]

@Uber_SEO "blatant" is an understatement!

I know Google sort of walks a fine line with paid links.....there are different thoughts on if paid links are actually against Google's TOS. It almost seems like you have to buy links to rank anymore. I think the long term solution is to still find natural links.....b/c Google will make a change that will jumble the rankings once again, and I do think that sites that blatantly buy links will be penalized. As I tell the owner of my company....it's a marathon, not a sprint.

[Lenny2]

Update: since Thursday last week we've seen spikes at various hours (mostly from G). Overall an average of about 18% increase in traffic. The increase in traffic the last 3 days seems to be more consistent. With an average of 20% increase from G itself. Not sure if this is a "new" panda iteration... or just another G update. either way I'm not holding my breath because I know just prior to the original Panda update we had a spike in G. visitor traffic.

[Science articles]

A have a question to all. Is page speed load time affect serp rankings?

[tedster]

Yes, but right now its effect is rather small. I believe Matt Cutts said it kicks in on about 5% of searches, and mostly as a kind of tie breaker. That said, I do expect it to become more important over time. Google as a whole has always been obsessed with speed - and Larry Page personally has a big thing about it.

[ohno]

/\ Kinda ironic that their search homepage seems to be slower to load since instant was introduced!

[mrguy]

I'm seeing more of the brand pushing than I was before. For a lot of searches I do, sites like eBay and Amazon are dominating the first page. If I wanted those sites, I'd just go to them instead and search.

In contrast, I don't see the same thing on Bing. Instead it's what Google used to look like pre Panda junk.

If Panda is a group of PHD's idea of an improvement, I'd hate to see their idea of something that is not.

[suggy]

If Panda is a group of PHD's idea of an improvement, I'd hate to see their idea of something that is not.

Ahh bless them. They don't get out much. It's not their fault. How are they supposed to know everyone's thinking "WTF happened to Google?!" ?!

[Science articles]

My google traffic recover 80% :D my basic keyword get recoverd 1st position and other keywords gain traffic also. I think google change again its algo. Thanks a lot google.

[AG4Life]

I've seen a slight recovery as well. For my main site, Google referral still down 20% compared to pre-Panda, but it's the best week (so far) since April (when Panda first hit this site) - I'll take what I can get.

The interesting thing was that my non SE referrals are up by about the same percent, meaning some of the sites in my niche that link to me seems to have recovered at about the same time.

I didn't actually observe any ranking changes, at least not for my top terms. Must be long-tails.

For my worst hit site, it's still comfortably 50% off pre-Panda, but just like my main site, seems to have reversed the damage it took *after* April Panda/Panda 2.0 (so basically back to Panda 2.0 traffic, with a 5-10% uptick).

Hard to say what's responsible for the rollback, if it even is a permanent one, or one that actually cares about on-site factors. For the main site, I've changed a lot of pages since Panda 2.0, removed/404'd useless pages, and 301'd some slightly more useful, but somewhat unnecessary pages, plus a partial re-design focused on making it more usable to users (long overdue) - Google still hasn't completely finished processing the changes I've made in May (the processing stopped since June, but started up against last month). Bounce rate and time on page stats actually haven't improved much at all, but it's hard to do so based on the site's niche (which requires quick in, quick out type transactions - in fact, the sites in my niche with high 'time on site' stats are the ones that confuse users by making them click through several pages before getting to the good stuff). Page speed has actually decreased, due to added Facebook/Twitter/+1 integration.

[ckissi]

2 hours ago traffic dropped by 25%, It's the way to hell.
2 weeks ago it started to increase a bit, now its a past :(
I removed 3 ads, increased bounce rate. "G".. What do you want from us ?!

[Lenny2]

Anybody who is "recovering" notice any trends with their other metrics? Metrics like: time on site; bounce rate and page views?

I read on the Google analytics blog today that they "updated" their analytics system which may be affecting the way we "see" analytics.

I mention it because today we saw a 50% increase in "traffic" but our other metrics have gone to #$%%, I'm assuming the increase in traffic has to do with either the change in analytics or a glitch.

Has anybody else noticed that? This question is relevant tot his thread because I suspect that the recoveries we may be seeing may be due to the analytics phenomena versus an actual Panda recovery.

here is a link to their announcement: [analytics.blogspot.com...]

[grimmer]

Our google traffic had a surge yesterday noon, google traffic was up 36%, yahoo and bing up 10%, the pages/visit seems to be consistent. Not sure whether it is a "recovery", or due to analytics update.

[Science articles]

Now today i again lost 1st position in serp. My main keyword is down 1 to 13 position, and other keyword also down. I think google again update its serp algo.

[dirkji]

My Google traffic was up about 30% yesterday, seems like another update...

[williamfor]

I have seen a big increase in organic last few days. I am based in UK (london) so monday and tuesday was weak due to circumstances. Note worthy: the bounce rate and time on site are very poor to usual results (bounce rate highest i've seen in awhile). I am interested to see what happens next few days. Deep pages seem to have got most of the additional traffic (these have a high bounce rate anyway). Also noticed more 2/3 keyword searches instead of longtail... can attribute a proportion of this to negative variances in bounce rate....maybe?

[silver4dracs]

We have seen massive changes starting 8/11/2011 our visits have nearly doubled, pageviews have stayed the same, pages per visit have been cut in half, bounce rate has doubled, time on site has bee cut in half.

It seems that this maybe more analytics related then a Panda change, we did see a consistent 20% traffic decrease starting August 4th until 8/11.

Any thoughts?

[tedster]

8/11 was the date of an Analytics change that could account for what you describe: Update to Sessions in Google Analytics [analytics.blogspot.com]

[micklearn]

Something just seems off with the SERP's...perhaps, I shouldn't have declined the numerous requests via email for building 'profile links' to a site. That seems to be working quite well...

[Science articles]

A question to all, is intenet business permoter software helping a bit for powerfull link building or increasing serp rank in google ? And what you think about powerfull link building software now a day when google seo is so tough.

[SEOArnold]

Today I noticed on a large number of my small niche sites a drop of around 40 positions for all of them (they are all in the same niche).

I dont think this is to do with the backlinks being created so I wondering if its due to a Google update or there is an issue with my sites.

They all dropped at the same time today and dropped similar amount of positions.

I have a system set up where I blog on one site and it sends it out to all the other ones - perhaps this is causing an issue.

Any advice on this would be very much appreciated

[GifAnimator]

My traffic goes up and down like a yo-yo since the Panda Update.
It is over ten years old and is full of original widgets.
I see many sites with widgets collected from the internet and absolutely plastered with ads (MFA) doing far better than myself.
Panda has not affected all my pages and I have seen some recovery.
I'm lucky ... It is only a hobby and Adsense income has never been great.