Google Updates and SERP Changes - Apr 2012

[backdraft7]

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

Going, going, GONE!
After over 10 years of consistently ranking between position #1 and #3 on page one for a single four letter word search term, the month of March (starting on the 10th) has resulted in falling to below the fold, then to page 2, then page 3 and today I have been completely removed for that term.

In place is nothing but garbage. Branding obviously has lost traction. I'm thinking whatever they have done is meant to stick. I checked to see if I had been over optimized for the term, but with a mere 4 occurrences on my page and my need to use that term to describe my product, I really don't know what they want from us anymore...

The effect of lost traffic has set off all the "Big Traffic change for URL" warnings and the anayltics charts have nose dived. Anyone else seeing this type of situation on their long established sites?

Lost income from March updates is just about $1000 / week.

I'd almost guess that Google is just removing older authority sites in favor of nothing but news articles and blogs.

[edited by: tedster at 4:54 am (utc) on Apr 1, 2012]

[mhansen]

Anyone else see some major changes yesterday?

One of my sons (he's 25 years old) has a popular hobby site he has run for more than seven years. Throughout his site he shows an adsense block in the sidebar, along with a few links to ebay products on pages about various hobby related products. In a nutshell, its a hobby blog.

He doesn't follow ANY webmaster forums and as far as I know, he has never worked on things like backlinks, or any of the other things us SEo's do. He's kinda clueless to web design, seo, marketing, etc... he just likes his hobby. If I had to find anyone building a site strictly for its users without worrying about search engines, it would have been him.

He took a significant slap-down over the past 2 days. From 25k uniques/day to 5k/day from search. 100% of his loss was from Google search.

[netmeg]

Lotta changes being reported all over, apparently.

[seroundtable.com...]

[klark0]

Possible bug in a roll out?

[groups.google.com...]

Googler JohnMu last repsonse to the thread was just an hour ago saying they'll look at it. 1 hour 30 minutes later, the 3 users in question all report their sites back up?

[Lorel]

I agree...but a very, VERY, VEEEEERY bad move on Google's part if they try to herd us to G+. People are not using facebook like they used to, yet we are being force fed all these social apps and junk we're supposed to add to our sites in order to "fit in" and rank high from our "social interaction". That model doesn't fit every business.

I don't like this either, however Google has started using Rel=author plus Google+ to confirm who is the true author of articles. Seems like a good way to beat the scrapers to me.

[garyr_h]

Definitely a change Sunday or Monday. Seeing traffic up since then.

Of course, if it's anything like the last uptick in traffic I saw, it'll be gone by next week.

EDIT: These results aren't too different for me, just some slight shifting here and there that seemed to have helped me.

Here's what I don't understand: Websites which have no business being in the top 10 are hanging out there for the past month+.

Exhibit A:

A blog which has 1 comment on all the front-page posts combined. And the posts are ripped off from other websites. It is 1 year old, poor backlink profile. TONS OF ADS above the fold. Doesn't load quickly. Has a spammy title "Tiny Widgets for Him | Tiny Widgets for Her" is the title.

And this site has MOVED UP every single week since the beginning of March. Is now in the top 5.

Exhibit B & C:

Blogs which have very few comments and are not even in English or have an English domain name. They have some ads, but not too many and are probably just OK loading time.

Here are their titles:

"Tiny Widgets for Pakistanis" and "Tiny Widgets in Urdu"

Click to the page, hardly anything is in English and it's all in Urdu.

If this is what Google thinks people want to see when searching in English, I'm amazed.

EDIT: by English domain name, I simply mean .com or .us or uk, ca, etc. They are using things like .pk, even saw .tk in there somewhere. Nothing against that and think it should be possible for them to rank there, but when the only single thing on the website is an English title, it's ridiculous to rank it that high.

[jkdt0077]

Which is absolutely, positively and forever impossible. So don't even go down that road because it's a dead end.

It's not impossible - it's just incredibly difficult. But with Google being on top for the past 5-10 years they should at least have some kind of idea how to achieve it by now, right?

<rant>

Instead, page relevancy is traded off for things like company size, age of website, number of links in, user interactivity levels, amount of ads on page bla bla bla.. meaning the same few sites come up in the top 10 time after time - whether they are the most relevant or not. FGS Google, just rank the most relevant page! Stop the automated penalties without giving webmasters any idea what they've done wrong, while other sites doing all kinds of black hat wrongness (but somehow manage to slip through the net) move up the pages to the top! If I've got too many keywords in my title then tell me. If I have too many ads on the page tell me. That way I at least have a choice whether I want to remove the things that are penalising my sites or not. If the playing field was level and fair then the only thing that remains to rank sites on is relevancy.

Bah..

</rant>

[irishsolar]

Exhibit A:

A blog which has 1 comment on all the front-page posts combined. And the posts are ripped off from other websites. It is 1 year old, poor backlink profile. TONS OF ADS above the fold. Doesn't load quickly. Has a spammy title "Tiny Widgets for Him | Tiny Widgets for Her" is the title.

@garyr_h is it adsense?

Here's what I don't understand: Websites which have no business being in the top 10 are hanging out there for the past month+.

I honestly think Google has made a massive mistake with this algo. When reading about the SERPs in different forums and seo sites I see much more webmasters complaining than praising this latest update.

The ones praising IMHO seem to be less clued-in about how SEO works and the purpose of it - both on-page and off-page.

Good solid SEO helps make sites better. It helps webmasters make their sites more relevant and of a higher quality.

Punish SEO and you are left with exactly what we are getting - garbage.

I know a lot of people were upset by the initial Panda update but at least the results were still relevant. This update has left many of the SERPs in a mess.

This algo is definitely broken.

The SERPs are just NOT relevant in several niches I am looking at and the changes seem to be slowing down. 2 sites that clearly do not have any business being in the results at all have been hovering around the top 3 spots since all this started.

A page with a pixelated image as its ONLY content and 5 pages of scanned copy has also been moving up at a constant rate. It now occupies position 11 in the SERPs for a competitive search phrase. I have no doubt it will sneak onto page 1.

I don't know about anyone else but I am totally fed up with this. Google releases guidelines for webmasters to follow. We follow them. Then Google changes it's mind and we get penalised.

Meanwhile spammers create sites and use the latest tricks to get to the top. If the site falls they just make another one and rank it within a month or two using the new tricks.

If Google ranked RELEVANT sites instead of convoluting its algo to factor in its own revenue streams this simply wouldn't happen.

Hitting sites for over-optimization without telling them what that means is abuse of power. Can you imagine being arrested, sentenced and imprisoned without a trial or even being told what you did wrong?

This has to stop!

Google has a monopoly on the Internet and it should be held accountable for the damage it is causing to small to medium business. At the very least it should be forced to be more transparent.

Didn't JFK say in a speech to the press that, "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings."

Google is a secretive organisation that holds the financial destinies of millions of companies in their hands - they don't have the RIGHT to be secretive!

I honestly think it's time we stood up to this.

[Shaddows]

I honestly think Google has made a massive mistake with this algo. When reading about the SERPs in different forums and seo sites I see much more webmasters complaining than praising this latest update.
[Emphasis Mine]

Er, yeah. That's what happens, and has always happened. Yet the results don't ACTUALLY get any worse (for your average non-power user), despite the proliferation of spam websites.

The ones praising IMHO seem to be less clued-in about how SEO works and the purpose of it - both on-page and off-page.

Good solid SEO helps make sites better. It helps webmasters make their sites more relevant and of a higher quality.

Punish SEO and you are left with exactly what we are getting - garbage.

Frankly, that is misinformed. Google is not trying to punish the SEO you are talking about. They are trying to punish the SEO that MFA use. SEO to get garbage to rank. They may not be succeeding, but that doen't mean you should mistake their intentions.

I know a lot of people were upset by the initial Panda update but at least the results were still relevant. This update has left many of the SERPs in a mess.

This algo is definitely broken.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Most users are happy with the SERPs. Panda upset one lot of webmasters, this is upsetting another lot. Some people got hit in both, most by neither. In any case, whether you are affected or not, the updates are not aimed at gaining your approval, just the searchers'.

The SERPs are just NOT relevant in several niches I am looking at and the changes seem to be slowing down. 2 sites that clearly do not have any business being in the results at all have been hovering around the top 3 spots since all this started.

A page with a pixelated image as its ONLY content and 5 pages of scanned copy has also been moving up at a constant rate. It now occupies position 11 in the SERPs for a competitive search phrase. I have no doubt it will sneak onto page 1.

I see similar isolated reports, but I monitor a LOT of search terms. There are a few anomolies, but frankly it is NOT widespread.

I don't know about anyone else but I am totally fed up with this. Google releases guidelines for webmasters to follow. We follow them. Then Google changes it's mind and we get penalised.

Unlikely. More likely you have just had your score adjusted. 1 million results means your website has to be in the top 0.001% of published pages. Dropping to page 2 means you are in the top 0.002%. This is not, in fact, that big a drop.

If Google ranked RELEVANT sites instead of convoluting its algo to factor in its own revenue streams this simply wouldn't happen.

Whatever Google does to promote its revenue streams, that does not include the Organic Algo. Pilferred real estate, yes. "Blended" results, sure. "Best Guess" - of course. Barely differentiated "sponsored results", tick. But actually changing the algo? No way.

Google has a monopoly on the Internet and it should be held accountable for the damage it is causing to small to medium business. At the very least it should be forced to be more transparent.

If you paid to be included, then fine. But they do not in fact supply you a service. They can rank who they like, for any reason they like. If the USERS don't like the result, then they'll go elsewhere.

Didn't JFK say in a speech to the press that, "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings."

Yeah, except that I quite like privacy. And Coke quite like its secret recipe.

I honestly think it's time we stood up to this.

Go ahead and block Google. If everyone did this, Google would cease to exist. But you won't, because you need Google a lot more than they need you.

[jkdt0077]

I see similar isolated reports, but I monitor a LOT of search terms. There are a few anomolies, but frankly it is NOT widespread.

I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. It's the other way around; the anomolies are where the results are good. I use search all day, most days, and the quality of results has most definitely decreased in the last 2-3 months.

[garyr_h]

@irishsolar it is adsense, yes, but I don't think that's a reason why they would allow it. Having that many ads above the fold is probably hurting G's advertisers because those people will likely click to just get out of the website since it looks absolutely horrible.

When those sites first started popping up, I thought it was only the algo, but there were many, many updates in March and even now more in April. Why are they still at the top?

They *are* relevant to an extent. But that's not the problem here. It's *quality*. These pages are definitely not quality. As an English speaker, I want to find English web-pages. If I wanted to see Urdu pages, I wouldn't be searching at .com and even if I was, I wouldn't type my search query IN ENGLISH to want to find non-English pages.

And with all the talk about "above the fold", the sites are breaking that rule pretty point blank.

This is one of the bigger paying keywords for my niche and gets hundreds of thousands of searches. The top 10 spots are HUGE earning potentials. So to see these sites there is a huge downer.

And like I said, it doesn't really have much to do with "age of website" because these three are all 1 year or younger. My site is almost 8 years old now and it is only in the top 10 in .hk and .mx and other non-English search engines for whatever reason along with several other older websites. And was in the top 10 for a few days directly after March Panda, but quickly slid out March 31-April 3 update (whatever that was!)

So here's my beef with G:

I want to them to do what they promise. I want pages with above the fold content. And I want them to actually be in the language I search in. I don't think that is much to ask. The first one is harder to calculate, but the non-English thing is really horrible.

Also, seeing angelfire sites ranking is pretty freaking horrible, but I won't go there.

[irishsolar]

Possible bug in a roll out?

[groups.google.com...]

Googler JohnMu last response to the thread was just an hour ago saying they'll look at it. 1 hour 30 minutes later, the 3 users in question all report their sites back up?

For those who didn't read the threads here is a quick update:
Emme Rogers reported her site had lost all its rankings. This complaint was quickly followed by 3 more other site owners.

After a lot of complete run-a-round talk by Google (which didn't go down too well and was not accepted), Googler JohnMu admitted there might be a problem and had a Google team look into it.

After the Google team looked into the problem all 3 sites regained their rankings.

MY OPINION:

IMO this was manual intervention. It is a bit suspicious that Google looked at the sites and within about 2 hours they suddenly regained their rankings. Some of them regained their rankings after they had even been de-indexed due to the algo updates.

The main site that sparked it all off was [emmerogers.com...] which lost all its positions including the search term "Being Emme" which is the name of the site.

Several professionals looked at her site, including some on the thread, but no-one could see any on-page problem. After a lot of hogwash talk from Googler JohnMu he eventually admitted that it might be a problem on google's side.

After a Google team reviewed the sites they regained their rankings - all within a few hours.

IMO when Google have to manually override their algo for the first 3 sites that lodge a complaint with them then I think it pretty much proves the algo is broken...now what are they going to do about it?


TAKEAWAY?

I still think this is a backlink issue. Looking at the backlinking profile of Being Emme in OSE it shows heavy optimization for the term "Being Emme".

From 6,643 links registered in OSE 4,891 are for the main keyword phrase "Being Emme", with 703 for the keyword phrase "Emme Rogers". The rest of the backlinks are shared among lots of other keywords in small numbers.

Obviously that shouldn't be a problem as the website's name is the main keyword phrase but it is the only thing that stands out.

Any of the links I looked at seem natural. There are a lot of social media pages linking to her and blogs from embedded post links to blog roll links but I really can't see the problem or anything that would cause a problem usually.

Could this be about the density of keyword usage in backlinks?

Is there perhaps some part of the algorithm that works out the percentages of the types of links a site has and penalises any site that falls outside what they deem to be "normal"?

For example, in the above site there is very little URL backlinking which could appear abnormal (something which both sites I am personally monitoring are also lacking in).

This may have triggered an automatic penalty and got the site removed from the SERPs for backlink keyword spamming. Upon manual review it is obvious that the backlinks occurred naturally so Google did a manual over-ride.

Sites that seem to be ranking high have a high level of URL anchor text backlinks that either matches or is just above or just below the percentage of backlinks that use their main keyword.

I might be clutching at straws here but it is worth investigating and seems like the only logical explanation that I can come to so far.

Mod's note: Normally, we don't allow public examination of specific sites. We're making an exception in this case because the site received attention in a discussion with Google's JohnMu.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:46 pm (utc) on Apr 18, 2012]

[irishsolar]

it is adsense, yes, but I don't think that's a reason why they would allow it. Having that many ads above the fold is probably hurting G's advertisers BECAUSE THOSE PEOPLE WILL LIKELY CLICK to just get out of the website since it looks absolutely horrible.

That's the whole point!

[SnowMan68]

@ irishsolar

It sounded like the Emma issue was more due to a shared hosting account, than a over optimization on. Apparently a lot of the people that were complaining lost all of their sites that were tied to specific IP's. Emma had even mentioned that she was having difficulty with the shared server she is on early in the month.

[irishsolar]

It sounded like the Emma issue was more due to a shared hosting account......Apparently a lot of the people that were complaining lost all of their sites that were tied to specific IP's.

@snowman68 they only ASSUMED that shared hosting was the problem.

Take into account that Emme Rogers and several others commenting are not professional webmasters nor are they versed in SEO.

What's more, Googler JohnMu confirmed in the thread that shared hosting should NOT be a problem.

There was one guy in the thread who did know a lot and kept blowing comments out of the water thus forcing a Google review.

This is not a shared hosting issue. I have site's unaffected that are on the same shared hosting as sites that have went down.

[mslina2002]

There are many reports of this happening on other forums where sites disappeared and then mysteriously reappeared so doubt they are all on one IP. I have also see them mentioning their hosts, and they are all different. Must have been a Goog main switch or tweak.

[SnowMan68]

Everything is assumed these days. Not to mention there was a lot more than just Emme's post, with many of those people saying ALL of their sites on the shared hosting they use were completely de-indexed. Being 100% removed from the index is different than dropping to page 7, 8 or 9. On the other side of the coin, there were people that dropped to pages 7 and beyond as well. Maybe that was what happened to your sites? My guess is that there were two separate tweaks going on yesterday, so maybe you shouldn't be so quick to discount it? With 40-50 updates going on a month it could be easy to have multiple updates affecting different sites.

I don't know about you, but considering Google sees the majority of websites as a cesspool I am cautious. I do not believe everything they say.

[arikgub]

Nice discussion, but may be anyone has some data backed observations regarding the nature of this update? Shared IP issue is certainly a bug and not what this update is about. All adsense theories are very unlikely as well.

I tried to compare a few previously well ranked websites that went down vs the ones that retained their positions. It seems to me that there is some correlation between the (lack of) diversity in backlinks anchor texts and loss of rankings. It has been some time already that Google is favoring a more uniform distribution of anchor text, but now it looks like they make a really big deal out of it.

One observation that I find interesting: I have a site that at some point in the past received a huge number of unnatural links with an anchor "blue widget". Its backlink profile became skewed with a highly unproportional number of backlinks having "blue widgets" as an anchor text. It was penalized for that particular keyword and haven't ranked well for it for a year already. However, it used to rank very well for "round blue widgets", and "<other> blue widgets". What happened in this update is that it was pushed down by 1-2 pages for all these tri-gram keywords it used to rank for.

Considering all this recent talk about the overoptimization penalty, I am wondering if that's one of the new things introduced by this update.

Does anyone see smth similar? Share.

[Shaddows]

Re: Those missing sites.

Sounds an awful lot like a database partition was excluded from the index for a short while.

[SnowMan68]

Re: Those missing sites.

Sounds an awful lot like a database partition was excluded from the index for a short while.

That's a good possibility as well. Especially since most sites recovered back to their normal positions after the "bug" was fixed.

[petehall]

Is anyone noticing an improvement on really long tail search accuracy? I seem to be able to drill down to very specific searches again.... just noticed this afternoon.

[Hissingsid]

Could this update be disregarding or down weighting nofollow links? Just an observation.

I know folks think that Googlebot never followed nofollow but in fact it does/did and they do/did affect ranking positively.

I have one (home) page that has around 40% nofollow links to it that has suffered in the last couple of months but inner pages on the same site with <10% nofollow backlinks have improved.

When I look at competitors backlink profiles that have either held position or improved their nofollow links are less than 10%. The other 90% are all (OK mostly) bought or are on sites they control but nonetheless the ratio of follow to nofollow is "better".

I'm mentioning this in case it rings any bells with anyone here.

[garyr_h]

@arikgub not familiar at all since I have been penalized for [red widgets] and have seen some success after this update.

[George]

arikgub, that theory looks familiar... and might hold water. Or partially. It would tie in with the messages they are sending too.


My guess is the anchor text must have been heavily skewed though for it to impact 12 months ago.... or if it got alot at once, then I have seen sites tumble on phrases because they do not keep up the level of new back links.

[backdraft7]

Looking at the backlinking profile of Being Emme in OSE it shows heavy optimization for the term "Being Emme".

I'm not familiar with this particular site and have not reviewed it, but it took me about 1/2 second to rationalize that the "Being Emme" is how she intended to brand her site. Not long ago, brand was to be a considerable ranking factor. What are they doing now? Evaluating your brand and deciding whether it's an attempt to over optimize? I use "My Product Brand Name" in a LOT of my links. It's a federally trademarked name, so it's not an attempt to over optimize. I HAVE to use it to describe my product & brand.

Some other member in a current topic scoffed at one of my offhand comments insinuating that Google does not know they are doing by replying - "Oh Boy, Google Derangement Syndrome again" - well, there you have it, they at least admitted one mistake. I guess SNAFU is the new "normal" at Google.

[SnowMan68]

@ petehall

Seeing a nice increase on long tail as well today.

[EmptyRoom]

A number of my sites completely disappeared from the SERPs this morning. I see a lot of reports and complaints about this on Google Groups, so I hope they will fix it soon.

[garyr_h]

More changes still happening. It looks like databases are shifting around once again. Checked on Chrome then on Firefox, then checked different IPs and see something happening. Different shifting going around all over the place.

Also stats are different. Looks like whatever tweak happened a few days ago was turned up a notch. Seeing increase traffic for those terms and a couple new ones.

But like I said before, I'm never hopeful anymore. I'm sure it will be turned around next week!

Forgot to mention, the blog I complained about is showing still on 1 database in the top 5 and on others it is on page 2. Then the Urdu pages disapeared.

However, when searching for "sites in the USA" or whatever it's called, British and Australian newspapers still show up.

[HuskyPup]

What an almighty mess...is the pre-qualification for first page listings these days to be a spammy Chinese/Indian MFA site?

Quality widgets sites in my neck of the woods have been blitzed from the SERPs, gone, disappeared.

[backdraft7]

Getting reports from the UK of traffic quality improvements and increase long tail results. Not quite seeing it in the US yet, but site doorbells are starting to pick up. I agree with gary... looks like databases are being updated again.

[garyr_h]

@HuskyPup, check different IPs if you are able and also check out different browsers and check at different times of days for those terms to check out the different databases.

I would see the foreign stuff on one database now but not on the others. Before, it was on every single one. Hopefully the other databases completely roll-out this time!

I bet it'll be like the other times the past month or so where we might see a shift every 12 hours and finally settle down after about a week (so possibly Sunday/Monday).

Like I said though, I'm never hopeful anymore, but it's still interesting to follow.