Google Updates and SERP Changes - Mar 2012

[Hissingsid]

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

Something very odd just happened. I searched for my top keyword term. We have been at #3 since Panda, previously #1. My listing had disappeared completely, nowhere down to page 10 (in 10s). I did the same search on a different browser with no history on it, same result. Other terms were where I expected them.

Then 2 minutes later I'm back at #3.

What's going on?

Sid (In UK)

[edited by: tedster at 3:28 am (utc) on Mar 2, 2012]

[Martin Ice Web]

yesterday switch on, Switch off today.

[ohno]

A handful of sales between 8 & 10 then dead. Yesterday came alive in the afternoon on one site for us then late in the evening for another site. Single page views everywhere again. Germany, UK & USA all seeing the same paterns? That's NOT the economy at fault people!

[shoreline]

I noticed the exact same thing fred9989, glad you pointed it out!

Here's another interesting thing to try if your site has disappeared from the search results: if you have your results set to 10 per page, change the settings to 100 per page, then run the search again. In my case, the site that had "disappeared" from the results when showing 10 per page reappears in the same place it originally was, and remains there when I switch the results back to 10 per page. (Even when I am signed out of G with history turned off and cookies cleared...but using same ISP though.)

[Hissingsid]

Can anyone suggest a rational explanation/mechanism by which this is happening?

[petehall]

@Web_speed

Another theory i am now investigating is that maybe the exponential increase in mobile device usage has something to do with with this dead beat zombie traffic.

Mobile devices convert badly, it is a known fact. Maybe the reason i am seeing more sales over the weekend and late at night is because more people have the time to seat in front of their good old pcs at home on weekends?... will definitely look into this further in upcoming weeks.

I think you could be right about this... great theory. I certainly see lots of referrals not converting during working hours and then in the evening the enquiries pick-up.

Having come onto the site from my iPhone I can see a large majority of daytime visitors seem to be from mobile devices (same style of referring URL).

Very well spotted, I think you are onto something.

[Web_speed]

"very bad economy" +
"major increase in mobile devices usage" +
"Flawed F^%45*g instant" +
"Flawed major algo rewrite/rank evaluation" +
"Flawed google search box shortcut keys" +
"major increase in google properties space over the SERP" +
"Google search market share of more then 85%"
---------------------------------------
= The "perfect storm!"

Can anyone suggest a rational explanation/mechanism by which this is happening?

[ohno]

Still dead here, TWO cart adds, sadly one from Thailand & the other from Indonesia!

[Web_speed]

ohno what are you selling?

[wingslevel]

another typical day for us. slow for 9 hours, then as many orders in the last 35 minutes as we have had all day. fasten your seatbelts.

[ohno]

UK specific telecom products! Just looked at some shopping results & that seems to be in a mess too, related products has images missing & "%s - %s of %s" appears to the right of them! Coding issues Google?!

[Web_speed]

@petehall

I will be going over my logs tomorrow to check the ratio of mobile devices and "web previews" to normal web browsers.

Will report the numbers right after. From a quick look i can definitely see a considerable increase lately.

[Web_speed]

@ohno

me = Mainly small electronic components + electronic gadgets.

[tedster]

Folks, your orders (conversions) over a short time period don't really help anyone understand Google Updates and SERP Changes - not even you ;)

If you occasionally see a long term pattern about conversions and can definitively track it back to the SERPs, then yes - please share. But otherwise, I would rather not see hour-by-hour sales reports, especially when they don't change.

[Andem]

@anteck:
>> i've spent literally hours trying to find certain answers to PHP coding questions

These are the absolute worst results I've ever seen on Google and they have been getting less and less relevant since the first Panda. It can sometimes take hours to find what I used to be able to find within a matter of seconds. Exactly that: PHP coding.

[networkliquidators]

Folks, your orders (conversions) over a short time period don't really help anyone understand Google Updates and SERP Changes - not even you ;)

If you occasionally see a long term pattern about conversions and can definitively track it back to the SERPs, then yes - please share. But otherwise, I would rather not see hour-by-hour sales reports, especially when they don't change.

Tedster is right. You need to understand your visitor base. For example, my visitors typically come to my site and then go off to do some more research. To regain a visitor, you need to provide other avenues to get them back. A bit of this stems from your trust signals on the web.

Even the product's for sale price will influence a potential buyer. If you are selling popular widgets for under $100, you may be more likely to make a quicker conversion. If you are selling products in the $1,000+ range, a visitor isn't simply going to hand over his financial information because you have it for sale and YOU think your site is the best choice.

My advice, step back and look at what you are selling and all the information you are providing to your visitor. I know what I am posting is a bit broad, but only us webmaster's have our own data to interpret to develop the best possible decisions for our sites. I am new to the E-comm experience but am figuring out how to gain Google organic traffic even when Amazon and the other massive brands are reserving search ranks.

[zerillos]

@ Andem
Same here. I find it more and more difficult to find technical stuff these days. Good thing i started bookmarking everything...

[wingslevel]

I guess I got tired of typing it each time, but, when I mention conversions in this google seo forum, I am talking only about sales from organic google referrals. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I have over a decade of benchmark data and I know when I am receiving garbage traffic. These days I am seeing periods of hours of low converting traffic followed by periods of hours of very high converting traffic. There are many of us that have been experiencing this phenomena. In my case, my sampling is easily large enough to discount any anomalies. Long tail traffic is way screwed up. That's a fact, plain and simple.

[Zivush]

Long tail traffic is way screwed up. That's a fact, plain and simple.

Panda is targeting long tail traffic.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Google has already admitted that a small percentage of serps contain test results instead of normal results. You probably saw one of their tests.

I have over a decade of benchmark data and I know when I am receiving garbage traffic. These days I am seeing periods of hours of low converting traffic followed by periods of hours of very high converting traffic. There are many of us that have been experiencing this phenomena

AMEN! I've been seeing exactly this on my transactional pages for some time now.

[ohno]

How are you guys testing the SERP's? The trouble I find with what Tedster is saying(which is perfectly reasonable) is thus far, since May Day, I haven't been able to pin these dire periods to anything in the SERP's! Yesterday was awful, I'd swear we had a DNS issue! Yet I check the SERP's & although they look a mess still we are still on page 1 for the terms that convert. This algo reminds me of that old fild war games, the thing is out of control, it's like they pull it back into line only for it to go off on one a few days later!

On the subject of (sales) conversions is there a thread open for that? It may be an idea to start one where the ecom guys can post?

[pawas]

My Google referrals increased by 20% yesterday. Hope it stays.

[zerillos]

Is there such a penalty as 1st result on page 2?

[n00b1]

Not sure but I certainly seem to be affected by that if there is ;).

[Pjman]

Is there such a penalty as 1st result on page 2?

I thought this is what Panda did. I found that this happen to my Mega site after Panda. No gain yet.

[Marketing Guy]

There were various minus penalties years ago (minus 30, etc) which had this effect. Not certain if this has been integrated into what Panda is now though. However those were penalties (i.e. fixing the problem and requesting reinclusion did the trick), whereas Panda is an algo change (i.e. you can't request reinclusion).

[petehall]

I think I'm actually seeing 2 sets of results this last week or so, although they are quite subtle in difference.

[reseller]

@petehall

I see 2 sets of results if I run the same search query on Google.ca [google.ca...] and google.com [google.com...] .

Btw, I'm neither in USA nor in Canda.

[danijelzi]

Is there such a penalty as 1st result on page 2?

Since about a week ago many of my pages on a pandalized site (feb 2011) were de-ranked from various 1st page spots to #1 on page 2. Replaced mostly by keyword-stuffed spam pages on page 1.

[danijelzi]

@reseller
I don't know if this matters much when it comes to different results on google.ca and .com, but I see huge differences in rankings on google.com, depending on language settings. It looks like I'm pandalized only when I set search preference in english (I use adwords preview tool with country set to the US). When I change domain (google.de, .es etc) I get pandalized results.

[reseller]

@danijelzi

Do you see big differences in rankings on google.com and google.ca ? because that doesn't necessary means your site is pandalized.

I see also different SERPS on many different international Googles. Accordingly we may expect sites to rank differently on different international Googles. And that might explain why some people get "undesired" international traffic sometimes!