Google Updates and SERP Changes - Jan 2012

[londrum]

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

i tried to sprinkle different variations of one phrase onto each page

if the target phrase was "big red widgets" then the page might have a couple mentions of each of these

big widgets
big red widget things
big widget things
big red things
red widgets

plus an exact match in the <title> and <h1>

[edited by: tedster at 12:31 am (utc) on Jan 2, 2012]

[Whitey]

No new iteration from what i see. Still waiting on more reports per Lenny2 and my comments above on interim shifts.

[zerillos]

In my opinion it's not here yet, but it's definitely on its way...

[johnhh]

Nothing here in the UK

[crobb305]

I am not seeing any fluctuations as of yet. I am still astonished by the number of member profile pages and abandoned off-topic blogs that are ranking so well in the financial sectors. I've watched these for months with no changes. I sometimes wonder if G is deliberately letting some of the results deteriorate on certain phrases.

[gyppo]

I have a feeling that this next update will be a big one, there's a lot of things to fix with the results in their current state & there's been a fair space between the last major update.

[snickles121]

Im actually pretty excited about the next panda update, as I made tons of changes to my site content. However Im concerned they are gonna start penalizing ads above the fold soon and that may be a problem for me considering im still running one large adsense block at the top.

[Donna]

My guess is the next big one will be a new filter introduced to us which will get rid of all the clutter as crobb305 mentioned. You can name it " Big Landslide " from now if you want !

[crobb305]

My guess is the next big one will be a new filter introduced to us which will get rid of all the clutter as crobb305 mentioned. You can name it " Big Landslide " from now if you want !

I hope you're right. I've been watching that clutter grow since September, and I have been hoping that subsequent Panda (and other algorithm) iterations would clear it out. So far, nothing but more clutter. I thought they had "reviewers" who monitor the results? Many of the SERPS seem to be abandoned. No way they are being effectively monitored when they consist of member profiles and off-topic abandoned blogs. Nevertheless, I will update if I see any signs of improvement.

[tictoc]

I have been seeing the same junk in the serps for months. Crobb you hit it on the boars' head with the member profiles. How can they allow some of this stuff?

I feel they are putting penalties on so many sites that they have to fill the void with junk profiles and abandoned blogs.

[dunivan]

Not seeing any changes in january yet.

[Donna]

How hard is to collect the top 2000 web 2.0 and just cut their inner pages rankings ,they will instantly reduce the clutter by few billion pages. And please start with blogspot.

[onebuyone]

changes seen yesterday now got rolled back and still no change in traffic

[banditwmm]

Hello everyone, just registered.

I would like to add to this topic - since this morning my site getting
amount of organic traffic close to pre 25 Dec - at the end of day i expect it to be doubled versus last days .

To early to make conclusions yet i think, just for information.



P.S Some history :
I am not a seo pro and came to this forum while was looking for answers, why with all the Panda going around i still see what i see in serps.

Site got hit on april update,
site got completely rebuilt from scratch and all changes went live at once at the beginning of december - some loss on positions, probably because of completely new content on site.
At the mid december i have requested reconsideration - got answer what my site wasn't manually deranked and if i have issues its probably something else.

At 25 Dec got hit again - organic traffic loss was about 50%.

P.P.S English is not my first language.

[Whitey]

[webmasterworld.com...]

Feb 24, 2011
Apr 11, 2011
May 10, 2011
Jun 16, 2011
Jul 23, 2011
Aug 12, 2011
Sep 27, 2011
Oct 13, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 .... so called "minor update"

This is one of the longest gaps between updates we've seen. Anyone speculating on the scale and timing of the next update. Seems like a lot of computing power is sitting behind this one with slow indexing and a lengthly delay between "major" iterations. Perfect timing for something.

[SEOPanda]

i tried to sprinkle different variations of one phrase onto each page

if the target phrase was "big red widgets" then the page might have a couple mentions of each of these

big widgets
big red widget things
big widget things
big red things
red widgets

plus an exact match in the <title> and <h1>

What would you do if the keyword was two words instead of three?

[johnhh]

Anyone speculating on the scale and timing of the next update.

could be major taking in spam reports, DCMA's etc , timing I guess around 12 Jan, as no major googlebot activity currently. May even be a Panda roll back , opps , sorry.. improvement.

No one here has discussed any changes in how the googlebot sees a web page and records it.

[crobb305]

could be major taking in spam reports, DCMA's etc , timing I guess around 12 Jan, as no major googlebot activity currently. May even be a Panda roll back , opps , sorry.. improvement.

I am still baffled at the role of Google reviewers. I mean, these member profile pages that are ranking for extremely competitive terms in the financial sector are out of control. Dozens of them. I haven't submitted a spam report in years, but when I tried to do so in this case, the system sent me in circles. Google doesn't make it easy to submit feedback. So what role do the Google reviewers play? (I know that's off topic, so I am just asking rhetorically). The reviewers aren't making a positive difference as far as I can see. So regarding fluctuations/updates so far in January, all I can report is an increasing numer of member profiles, new/spammy domains, and abandoned off-topic blogs (many of which don't even have the phrase anywhere on the page).

[johnhh]

Something going on, just searched for [uk place name] keyword keyword and got a snow report shown on page one for a resort in New Zealand, no mention of [uk place name] keyword keyword ! Crazy.

[crobb305]

this morning, 4 new member profile pages have appeared on the search I am monitoring (a single word in the financial sector). The member profile pages are all identical to each other and all seem to be associated with legitimate websites, which makes me wonder if those website owners are unknowingly victims of a hack. Google seems to love it though and has shown no interest in cleaning up the mess since it started in September.

Also new to the ranks today: a domain that redirects to a Wikipedia page, a page that prompts a Google warning about security, and several new pages with content consisting of a jumbling of words that make no sense. This is a total of at least 10 new junk pages, all in the top 70 results.

[zeus]

no.1 in my category is a site from india where people can also post comments to there gallery, EVERY image comment is spam with spam links and I would say on the site it must be about 400.000 comment/links which is spam, that site is NO.1 of 66 mill results. I dont think you can top that :)

[falsepositive]

@crobb305,
We are definitely due for another major sweep. I think a lot of junk pops up in between these updates because they are able to slip through the cracks before a quality check. It feels this way, based on the stuff I've seen. I also had a dreadful experience shopping via Google this year (for the holidays). I used to find great holiday oriented sites via search, but this year wasn't fruitful at all. I switched to Bing and also checked old orders and POs to find out where I got certain merchandise and shopped that way.

[crobb305]

I just clicked a search result that immediately downloaded a file to my computer. I guess we have to be more careful than ever using Google these days.

[renomart]

I just clicked a search result that immediately downloaded a file to my computer. I guess we have to be more careful than ever using Google these days.

I did too. Never had that happen to me before.

[zeus]

maybe you have got a new google tool Now :)

[renomart]

Oh goody!

[rash001]

My site's traffic has also dropped from mid December. How am I going to recover that? Any tips?

[Munster]

Does anyone ever make big traffic gains after an update?

[tcsoftware]

I just clicked a search result that immediately downloaded a file to my computer. I guess we have to be more careful than ever using Google these days.

I did too. Never had that happen to me before.

There are a number of PHP files on our site that for the last few months at least have appeared in Google's index. The files are sent with the HTTP headers:

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=myfile.txt
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

This of course triggers the browser to attempt to download the file as soon as the user clicks the link in Google.
It only seems to do it if the mime is set to text/* as I've never found the binary files in the index!

It of course looks extremely suspect to the user

[JuneBug]

We saw traffic and revenue drop by 10-20% since January 1st. No new changes have been done to the site since November. I think there was certainly some kind of algorithm update.

[reseller]

@JuneBug

I think there was certainly some kind of algorithm update.

Me too. I think there was a Minor Panda Update around Jan 5, 2012 ;-)