Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2012

[garyr_h]

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

Traffic from G is down by 30% over this month. 20% from Knowledge Graph day and 10% from Panda.

I changed the site from being static width to fluid width (CSS changes only). I did that around Mid-May. Also moved the members section to a subdomain last week.

Other than that, I've just been adding content to pages which needed it.

Is it even possible that the fluid width change (was originally 990 width) would cause a Panda smack?

My main terms are still the same (although, none are #1 since they lost that ranking in January). It's the terms which usually get 1 or 2 hits which completely disappeared. That made up a big chunk of traffic.

[edited by: tedster at 1:48 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2012]

[Simsi]

Seeing lots of ranking changes today across a small network after staying fairly static through all of Panda and Penguin. The sites that are affected negatively are pretty much exclusively the smaller longtail-targetted ones. Terms which have held Top 3 rankings for months and months have dropped several places.

Initially I thought it was keyword related but a couple of big sites in the network that are keyword-focused domains have had positive changes. One "brand" (it's not a keyword and 35% of previous searches are on the brand name - 200+ pages) has lost some significant longtail rankings too.

Something happened today, that's for sure.

[Broadway]

rustybrick,
Thanks for the info from the source.

[garyr_h]

There's definitely some sort of fluctuation going on, but I have no idea what it is. I'm still getting the constant traffic for several hours and then a complete dip where usually I receive much more traffic (around 7-8PM) and then it goes back to normal.

ES = Exact same traffic

U = Up

D = Dip

D, D, D, D, D, D, D, U, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, D, D, ES, ES, D.

Very, very strange!

Normally it's like this:

D, D, D, D, D, D, U, U, U, U, U, U, D, D, D, U, U, U, ES, ES, U, U, D, D

So there is a HUGE difference in how traffic is coming in. It is almost unreal.

I have absolutely no clue what is going on with AdSense and how it relates to this either. Sunday, Monday, were absolutely normal with how it has been the past few months. Tuesday was way down. Today is back to normal. But traffic is way, way off.

[viral]

One thing I am noticing at webmaster tools is that keywords I have never have had an interest in are appearing and fluctuating wildly from day to day when you set with change on. One day a keyword will be up 100 to pos 20 then a day later down 50. If I order by change there are keywords that have gone up by 600+ to sit at pos 20 and then disappear to pos 300 the next day. I have always seen fluctuation here but not like this. Anyone else seeing anything similar?

[venti]

Traffic from Google, Bing, and Yahoo look pretty typical today. However, traffic from direct/none has dropped off roughly 50% on numerous sites which differ dramatically.

[SnowMan68]

I'm not sure if monitoring keywords that you rank pos #20 or #50 is really all that important. Honestly, with how much paid crap Google puts on the first page the drop off in traffic after #3 or #4 is pretty dramatic. Sometimes #1 is just above the fold.

[viral]

Yeah I agree snowman but that is what I am catching.. I am wondering about the keywords I aren't catching I guess what I am saying the day to day fluctuations seem off the chart to say 3 months ago.

[diberry]

@viral, I haven't been tracking that in WMT, but I'm seeing fluctuations in my keyphrases along these lines:

--For most of today, I was ranking lower on lots of my usual phrases. This evening, I suddenly ranked higher on them. This sort of pattern keeps repeating, sometimes in reverse.
--And within that pattern, there are two fairly distinct SETS of keyphrases. One day, it's all my usual standbys that are fluctuating in position, but the next day it's a bunch of other phrases I've never ranked that well for. Sometimes the keyword set will shift during the day.
--Despite all these shifts, I'm getting a set amount of traffic from Google each day, and it never varies by more than about 30 searches.

At least, I think that's what I'm seeing. I'm getting so little traffic from Google that I'd be hard-pressed to prove any patterns. But the fact that the two shifting patterns don't result in search traffic fluctuations seems very odd to me.

[GreenC]

I've been seeing the same things, longer tail results loosing strength across the board, not by masses, between 2 and 5 positions on average, however the stronger money terms have remained basically untouched.

I've noticed similar spikes in crawl rate towards the end of may, although it does seem back to the normal rate now. Am I right in thinking this smells of Penguin 1.1?

[crobb305]

I've noticed similar spikes in crawl rate towards the end of may, although it does seem back to the normal rate now. Am I right in thinking this smells of Penguin 1.1

I observed a spike this past weekend. Strongest in about 6 weeks. So far, no ranking changes. I'm also still seeing backlinks that were removed nearly 2 months ago (both in WMT and cached).

[edited by: tedster at 10:06 pm (utc) on Jun 7, 2012]

[brinked]

I am not seeing much in the way as the sites I monitor. What I am seeing though from a searcher standpoint is when I do searches, I am seeing a ton of results from the same domain.

It's truly ridiculous. I don't really complain about the results from a user standpoint because I am pretty good at filtering out the garbage and doing the right search. But I am seeing 3 sites listed on the first 2 pages of results. The 2nd page results I did a search for had the same website listed 5 times in a row, just slightly different inner pages. I thought google was supposed to be improving redundancy?

[SnowMan68]

@ brinked

It's weird, in the past two days our niche has really seen an increase of the same thing. There are sites taking up 2-4 spots on each page. Something must be happening again because our site traffic is all over the board. So much for the day of any sort of consistency.

[thms]

brazilian serps also showing the same problem, lots of results from the same domain(s). This is happening mainly in product related searches

[wokka]

google is your friend

Maybe 5 years back.

google is god

Google is definitely not God and will do evil from this time forward.. for the sake of the shareholders.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Wednesday evening and into today, direct traffic to informational pages cut by 50% from Google over three sites(200 pages in total from those sites, not all pages). Steady from all other sources. GWT reports a falling number of links for the past two weeks(data reported up until Monday).

Something changed. Penguin 1.1? One of the site observed a major spike in googlebot visits roughly 10 days ago. Rankings look unchanged but that is meaningless when the results are user dependent, of course they look the same to me.

[viral]

Something has definitely changed traffic halved but on a brighter note I have never had such good rpm! I think Mr Cutts lied to Danny at SMX. He wouldn't lie to Danny would he?

[wokka]

I'm seeing all sorts of changes in the UK index - I'm surprised there's not more comments and activity in here about it.

Maybe, all the active UK posters have decided to go camping in the wind and rain, during the half term holidays? Or, is everyone just completely fed-up with google messing with their income and talking about it.

[Martin Ice Web]

@wokka,

same here in germany.
I think most webmasters are ill of these serps and going to look for other traffic sources.
Since there will be no way out, cause no changes brought any difference ( way up or down ).

Matt Cutts says this WMPU Page in Autralia had bad links to it. The owner asked for removing and after 2 weeks he is back?

I did changes for 6 weeks now, nothing changed. If u donīt have a driect line to Matt, then nothing will change.

In my niche amazon and another big player are ruling through all terms. Then there is crap, we are down to #2 - #3 page.

[edited by: Martin_Ice_Web at 7:56 am (utc) on Jun 8, 2012]

[petehall]

@wokka I have seen changes this week but they seem to have stabilised a bit on my searches. I have to say though I am getting very used to constant change.

I actually think the frequent updates are a good thing. If you make a mistake you can put a plan to recover into action quickly rather than waiting for 6+ months.

[viral]

Yeah martin it appears that if you do not have Matt's personal mobile number then you got no chance of getting things fixed.

[theskunk]

@ wokka ...

i am UK ecom online for 15 years, I am baffled by the search results. I see throttling, I see throttling which has increased by 20% since April bringing 20% less searches and traffic. I see the consistantly lowest traffic for 15 years. Search results seem to look differnet every time I check them out.

My site had a MASSIVE crawl at the end of MAY, I guess we would not get any manual penalty but I have lost traffic and position due to the devaluing of some incoming links, and perhaps since in every instance I use keywords for anchors I may have some kind of over optimistaion issue. But I think its way tooooo early to start trying on site fixes.

I have been keeping a check on WMT and have 9'000'000 backlinks HURRAY... mostly from my own subdomains like support.domain linking to shop.domain. So I have removed some sitewide links.

I have been hard at best practise SEO since 1994 and my brain is wired to think like that. I might need to delete my brain before I can effectively address this latest barrage of crap.

Frankly I just want to pay my staff, rates and rent, alas the twisted hand of Google once again is putting pay to that. I am not complaining, since I beleive it will all come out in the wash. If only people werent so powerless and weakwilled, then we could all get behind an alternative to the Google Internet Experience.

I remember a time, not long ago, when the internet was a place full of magic, wonder and intrigue, where you could loose days just discovering. I guess the reality is, the web is going to die and mobile access to whatever app will be the only point of access for users to the internet. Certainly many young people I now interview for jobs and placements dont view web pages... other than GMAIL when on holiday or something like that.

The google bean counters must just be doing their best to sweat their asset, via tormenting those that rely on them to make money. I guess we are all supposed to be pumping funds into our adwords account to try and offset our losses. They probably tested this in earlier algo roll outs, to see how panic and confusion swells their bottom line.

Give the people a puzzle that simply cant be solved and force them to buy their way out (or in).

good luck

[GreenC]

For the moment it is watch and see what happens, the rate the SERP has been changing recently it's hard to really know which changes are going stick and which'll be gone this time next week.

I'm certainly doing further investigations into the issues, but anything more at the moment seems a little premature.

[viral]

On a separate note I have just seen the first google shopping piad results! now there is no organic results above the fold for me

[Martin Ice Web]

@viral,

I have his privat mobile phone number, but his not going on the phone cause he knows itīs calling me....
Though I just want him to compliment about the successful leveling of the serps. Did a great job. We have to admit this one.

[HuskyPup]

I'm seeing all sorts of changes in the UK index - I'm surprised there's not more comments and activity in here about it.

I'm about 99% Google search free now, their image search is still mostly ok for me. I couldn't give a toss what they're doing, they've screwed it up, let them sort it out.

Mostly using Bing/DDG/IX these days.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm about 99% Google search free now, their image search is still mostly ok for me. I couldn't give a toss what they're doing, they've screwed it up, let them sort it out.

Sticky me if you've got a decent adsense alternative, I wouldn't need my account or gmail anymore. I haven't been penalized, at least not manually, but the writing is on the Wall as to where Google is going so, yeah, more alternate traffic and less Google dependance is definitely worth working on. You know, in case Google gets to where they are apparently headed :)

now there is no organic results above the fold for me

Never thought I'd see the day a 'search engine' would monetize to that degree.

In another private forum someone is working on a wordpress plugin that checks your google analytics and if it finds that Google is sending little or no traffic to a given page the plugin adds the page to your robots.txt file for Googlebot and removes analytics from the page. The reasoning being that if a page gets no traffic from Google its safe to keep googlebot off the page. No sense allowing dozens(hundreds/thousands?) of pages to be crawled for nothing.

[tigger]

another UK webmaster here

the serps are a complete joke! just checked my money term and one site takes the top 6 places ...can someone tell me what benefit to the surfer to have the same site taking 6 places ....

The problem is the lemming UK surfers still keep hitting the G button when they think about anything to do with the internet and will all the free advertising the beeb offer can you blame them for being brainwashed into believing Google "IS" the internet

[crobb305]

I have just seen the first google shopping piad results! now there is no organic results above the fold for me

I am amazed that the government hasn't stepped up regarding Google's monetization of the # 1 organic spot for commercial terms. I've been seeing the /advisor urls for a while now.

[johnhh]

@tigger - not by any chance a company moaning to the EU about Google?

Just checked one search phrase - of the top 30 positions 15 were taken by 2 companies ( both of which are owned by the same USA corporate )

[tigger]

@ johnhh

nope .....but it is a highly competitive term

I fail to see the logic behind these multiple pages being displayed for the same term ! I can understand why a recognised authority would be first with bullet points but then to further list more pages what does that offer to the user? nothing