Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2012

[Alex997]

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

A lot of my keyword SERPs dropped a page today - totally out of the blue. They have been going up and up in SERPs steadily all this year with no panda or penguin impacts. I havent changed anything on my home page and no new spammy links, so I *guess* it's a google algorithm change?! I doubt its a penalty as the drop would have been even more severe.

Anyone else in the UK seen something similar today?

[edited by: tedster at 1:14 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2012]

[petehall]

I have seen several newer sites rise as of this morning (UK).

[crobb305]

I do not understand what is happening with my title display or with their silly Panda tweaks. As we discussed in this thread [webmasterworld.com], Google began altering some titles to display the domain name.

My recent timeline:

June 4... Google began displaying my domain name as the title
June 8... (Panda 3.7) I lost 75% of my traffic (on an already Penguinized site)
June 22...Full title began showing again.
June 25...(Panda 3.8) I also saw recovery of the traffic that I lost in Panda 3.7
July 8... Title displayed in Google has reverted back to domain name
Today...I seem to have lost the traffic recovered during the last Panda refresh.

Was there another Panda update? Everything is such a mess. I have made ZERO changes to my site in the past month, so Google is just tweaking things on a whim. They are inconsistent and it's clear that they have no idea which direction they want to go.

[edited by: crobb305 at 6:01 pm (utc) on Jul 9, 2012]

[hal55]

I don't know but it looks like the first page of results is fine for any given keyword, the problem starts when you go to the second page,any thoughts?

[Alex997]

My SERPs made a 90% recovery over the weekend, but today they are back to where they were last Friday. Google is definitely up to something as I am getting sea sick!

[seogenx]

I'm safe. It's worry for those or for the site that uses the too much of exact match anchor texts in their inbound link profile, getting too much of paid links.

[Oimachi2]

Drop, drop, drop in Canada. Getting worse every single week....

[Oimachi2]

Not a single paid link EVER...

I think paid links is a myth

[Oimachi2]

I've never had a paid link ever...exept from Adwords, that IS a paid link.

And that is the only kind of paid link Google won't look at!

[DigiSEO]

My Google analytics showed a horrible day today (75% drop), but I checked back a few hours later (after a little freaking out) and they had apparently updated the stats to show I am actually having one of the best days in weeks.

[SnowMan68]

@ DigiSEO

We were having some of the same issues with G analytics too. Must have been a bug this afternoon.

[gyppo]

Seeing a significant uptick in traffic as of 2 hours ago (on a Pandalized site) plus a huge spike in Googlebot crawling this morning.

Anyone else noticing anything today?

[diberry]

My traffic is suddenly up, and at levels I haven't seen since June 25, which was a Panda update. My site was definitely, dramatically Penguined on April 24th. On June 25th, traffic dropped again but I'd done so many changes (including domain name!) that I'll never be sure if that was Panda or not.

But in any case, yeah, my traffic is suddenly up a significant little bit today.

[reseller]

I think Google is pushing a new Panda 3.9 data refresh ;-)

[chalkywhite]

Yes, 100% seeing a return to traffic levels of panda 3.7

[Web_speed]

I think Google is pushing a new Panda 3.9 data refresh ;-)

I think you are spot on. It is dead quiet across all the web sites i am monitoring... no sales, no inquiries, just junk mail...hell even ebay is dead quiet... this normally happens whenever poogel updates or "pushs" something ...(about 4 times per week nowdays?)...

[tedster]

@reseller, any particular reason you think this ranking change is based in Panda, rather than some other change?

[reseller]

@tedster

Of course only Matt Cutts & Co. know exactly whats going on. So I'm just guessing.

[johnhh]

Don't see anything here in the UK in our niche ... yet

[spreporter]

@reseller bingo

[Spiekerooger]

It's either panda or a dc filter updated.

[zeus]

I got a site which I dont work that much on, it got about 1100-1200 unique visits a day, was hit a little 19 april 2012 down to 930 unique a day, then again 27 April 2012 where it got down to hmm about 650, but I really did not care that much. Then 10 july I got 755 from 600, then today it looks like I will be back to normal 1150.

Ohh I forgot I also get more visits from bing on the same days, but as I have mentioned before, Bing is copying google somewhat i think

[gehrlekrona]

I think I have been hit by all so called updates they have done lately so I decided that I should redo the whole site and see if that would help. There hasn't been much that has told me that what I did ever changed anything or not. The hits didn't really go up nor down so when they have had the last updates I am not sure if I got hit or not.
On July 5th there was a 25% increase of hits and then it went down again about 20% for a couple of days and then back up 25% July 9th, went down a couple of percent the day after and then today it is, so far, only 50 % of the good last couple of days. I am guessing that it will go up a little bit but not be more than it was before July 5th.
@zeus, interesting you should say Bing is copying Google because that's what I think they do too. It seems like they are a couple of days late but they always seem to have almost the same type of updates. It weird and when I don't get a lot of traffic from Google then it is Bing or Yahoo. I have many time been wondering if there is something wrong with my stats but they say they don't have a problem.

[diberry]

@gehrlekrona, my search traffic also seems to stay stable - if Google's down, another engine compensates. I think it's just coincidence, but it does seem to happen more often than I'd expect if it's just random. It's odd.

[rustybrick]

Google told me there is no update taking place. Just an FYI.

[Pjman]

@rustybrick

Thanks for updating us. I kept SERT this morning to see, if you updated the story.

[wingslevel]

Thanks rustybrick.

For us, something is definitely going on with google organic referral quality as of midnight last night (us east coast). If it is not an update, then maybe some kind of data refresh or something strange.

Our conversion rate on google organic only referrals is running 1/3 of normal - sampling is in the 1,000s of uniques, so, not likely an anomaly.

Anybody else experiencing low quality referrals today?

[wingslevel]

Sorry, forgot one other datapoint - google organic traffic referrals are running at normal levels for a Thursday. No problems with quantity of traffic, just low quality...

[rustybrick]

Google told me something like, "we are always experimenting." But no update.

[johnhh]

@reseller you normally call it correctly - maybe it's a big experiment !

[petehall]

@wingslevel exactly the same the last 2 days for our UK site. Traffic levels completely normal... conversions from around 15/1 to something like 40/1.