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]

[Kelowna]

Anyone with a US based site seeing serp changes today. We've seen a large increase in traffic.

I have one site that was hit by the penguin on April 24th. Google tools is showing the site back on page one and I am getting the odd visitor clicking on the site from page one but I can not see it yet. Maybe it is just one or two databases showing the update?

We are nearing the three month mark since the penguin slap so maybe the penalty is expiring? I hope so.

The site was put on moth balls since the hit and we moved on to other sites. We thought that any crap links that Google found would be dropped from the index with time and all would be well, just hoping this is the start of something good.

[indyank]

We are nearing the three month mark since the penguin slap so maybe the penalty is expiring? I hope so.

I don't think Google considers Panda or Penguin as penalties and so there is no question of expiry. If you have made a true recovery, it could be something else and do hope that it sticks.

[Kelowna]

I don't think Google considers Panda or Penguin as penalties and so there is no question of expiry.

"I don't think" is not proof. My site got removed from the searches for it's main keywords, that is proof enough of a penalty for me. Just because the Gorg calls it something else with their pr spin on words, who gives a #*$!. This mess "penalized" a ton of sites worldwide, so I like the word penalty.

"there is no question of expiry" -- now why would that be? In my experience and testing over the years I have found that penalties do expire, as long as the cause was cleared up. We are right near the 3 month mark since the penguin "penalty" hit and people are starting to see changes, why not watch and see what plays out over the coming days, could be nothing, could be huge. I was just adding that I too am starting to see recovery at the 3 month mark, just as others are reporting.

[tedster]

Google has been very clear that both Panda and Penguin are algorithms and not penalties. In fact, they no longer use the word "penalty" but rather talk about "manual actions" - what we have always called penalties, in other words.

If you submit a Reconsideration Request for a site with a Panda or Penguin demotion, your reply tells you that there is no manual action against the website.

All that said, Penguin sure does seem to act more like an old-school penalty than a new algorithm factor - doesn't it?

why not watch and see what plays out over the coming days, could be nothing, could be huge. I was just adding that I too am starting to see recovery at the 3 month mark, just as others are reporting.

I agree. There's every chance that one or both of the algorithms have been changed and that Update is what we're seeing. In that case, all kinds of things may have changed for at least some affected sites.

[Kelowna]

Google has been very clear that both Panda and Penguin are algorithms and not penalties...

Those are their words and their lawyers probably had them put that spin on it for some legal reason. To me, they did something, be it through their algo or manual, that caused a penalty.

My experience has shown me that their "penalties" do time out... and I think we may be getting close. Seen another visitor hit my site listed on page one from a state that borders the other visitor... could be spreading. Now I should be getting thousands of visitors for that term on page one, but my stats say just a few so far so that tells me only a very small percentage of the databases are showing it, the rest have it buried on page 50 or not at all.

[anteck]

An Algo can easily create what looks like a penalty. For example, unnatural anchor text = take away all power and trust to that site. Thus rankings drop.

Penguin clearly sacrificed quality ( as stated by many including Rand Fishkin) so that google could flex it's muscles, show everyone 'who's boss' and 'level the playing field' (as they said it).

Who knows if they'll refresh Penguin? And when? They had a chance, a month ago, and didn't.

I believe they will keep this one as is for a while, just to screw the nails into the coffins of thousands of webmasters now struggling to make ends meet.

It's like taking a nuclear bomb to an area and wiping everything out, no matter good, bad, or ugly. Only the strongest buildings have survived, or the smallest shacks hidden in the forest.

[PaulJa]

Just had the weekly report in for one of my sites that's struggling against branded terms (no Penguin or Panda smacking)- we've lost another 10 keywords in the last 7 days to somewhere below page 5, due to mass host crowding of the main brand. Not sure how to combat this, as we're authorised resellers of said brand, so the terms are pretty damn relevant to the site.

More interestingly, the so called 'brand terms' are getting more generic.

eg

Previously 'ACME Widget AW1234' SERPs was crowded out by the brand, now the search term 'AW1234' is also crowded out.

Boy, do I love my job at the moment!

[mhansen]

Spotting a few of the older mashup-content-aggregator sites (like Mahalo) in serps again this morning (East coast USA) for how-to type content.

No change in other rankings in the same space... just seeing the addition of the aged sites again.

[docbird]

My impression in past few days is that Google has gone bonkers with showing perhaps six or more results from individual sites: looking quickly, these are by no means, says, the 1st to 6th best results by any stretch of the imagination. One page might deserve good ranking, but at least one of the others often there just as happens to be somewhat related, and on the same site.
I know this has been noted before, but perhaps even worse just now. I'm surprised this glitch - as I think of it - has lasted so long.

[robzilla]

A Panda refresh seems to be due any day now, judging from the pattern. Most happen on a Friday, so maybe tomorrow?

[seoskunk]

Interesting Friday sounds good to me

[netmeg]

It may just be the circles I travel in, but I'm hearing of a whole ton of new unnatural link notices going out in GWT today.

[Kelowna]

It may just be the circles I travel in, but I'm hearing of a whole ton of new unnatural link notices going out in GWT today.

Ya, I was starting to see some traffic then today got the same notice... again. Every three months they send it to me. I guess to old penalty times out then they send it again. Nothing we can do as that site was spammed to death by our competition and Google does not care... at least Bing does not count that crap against us.

I wish Google would smarten up and just discount the crap links as there are thousands of then and we can do nothing. A more normal approach I think would be to delete what they think are spam links and not penalize us, one day hopefully they will change this.

[netmeg]

They don't want to penalize links. They want to penalize (or discourage) behavior.

[SnowMan68]

Do they actually penalize sites or just devalue the links. Has anyone ever received the notice and had nothing happen to their G referrals?

[errorsamac]

It may just be the circles I travel in, but I'm hearing of a whole ton of new unnatural link notices going out in GWT today.

One of my websites received an unnatural link notice today. In my situation, I had example.net as my domain and had a website on it for years. I then got example.com and 301'd example.net over there. In March, www.example.com received an unnatural link warning and was penalized (it deserved to be). I've spent the last four month cleaning up the backlinks for both example.com and .net and have been in touch with Google about getting unpenalized (they partially lifted the penalty but I haven't seen any movement at all in the SERPs). Today, both example.net and www.example.net received unnatural link warnings 1 minute apart. That's not a typo - it's the same domain, two different hostnames. Previously, only www.example.com received the warning. I have not done any link building to example.net (and in fact, I've done nothing but remove links to this domain) over the past four month. There isn't even a website on this domain - it just 301's to example.com. I emailed Google asking why it received a warning and I'm waiting for a response. I have a feeling I've pissed off someone with my attempts to get links removed and they have launched a negative SEO attack against me (no proof yet other than the warning I just received). I'm not really sure what to do at this point though. I can't control who links to me and I'm sure I've made enemies in getting links removed so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm getting hit with a ton of links right now.

[Alex997]

No notices from Google but one of my home page main phrases dropped about 50 places today! (top of page 2 to bottom of page 7)

All my backlinks on this phrase seem to still be in place, and all my other main phrases rank the same.

Really weird. Could one or more of my strong backlinks for this phrase be devalued by Google by the remote site having a warning/penalty?

[topstar]

Got the email today for two sites. I've never received the message before. Both of these sites have no SEO or backlink building done to them. Traffic comes mainly from user bookmarks or users that google the site name.

What is Google really after here?

[spreporter]

"What is Google really after here? "
Old bullet proof brand name websites....my 2 dimes...

[n00b1]

Here is an interesting one. I had requested reconsideration for my main website which seemed to be penalised out of the blue. Manual penalty confirmed by a previous 'failed' reconsideration request. Yesterday I received an 'unnatural links' warning in Google WMT, but today I received a reply to my most recent reconsideration request saying that there was previously manual action on my website that has been revoked. If anybody is interested I think the penalty was flagged by a large number of forum links from a forum where I am very active - there was a link to my site if you click my name and I had posted about 4000 times so received as many links from that site. I had removed this link and explained it to Google in my latest reconsideration request that was apparently successful.

[bobsc]

They don't want to penalize links. They want to penalize (or discourage) behavior.

People (other webmasters) love my site.
So, some put sitewide links on their site to mine.
It might look unnatural, but it's not.
I don't solicit this behavior in any way at all.
Yet, my site gets penalized.
Google is baffling.

[ZboC]

the 'old bullet proof brand name websites' have received the unnatural links warning as well...

[SnowMan68]

@ bobsc

Did you receive a unnatural link letter?

Have you lost traffic to your site, or have you recently in (last 3-4 months)?

[errorsamac]

@n00b1 - Have you seen your site recover it's old rankings yet?

[topstar]

It appears like Google had indexed the site's IP address which has caused 600,000 backlinks from those urls to my site. Cannot Google detect these kind of technical issues?

[n00b1]

@errorsmac. I only received this notification this morning so I wouldn't expect anything yet. Having said that I do see some new content I posted recently and I think Google only just indexed ranking very highly.

[courier]

Got one of these emails this morning also,

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank

. Site was target of negative SEO around 18 months ago, received a -50 then. Recent times has seen the site dissapear further into the back of beyond.

My reply to G, if I decided to reply, would be do you realy think I would waist my money putting any links on this site that has not been earning money from Google in the past 18 months?

I no longer rely on G for my main income, which was a hefty drop, but a lesson to learn.

[gehrlekrona]

No email but a huge drop today compared to yesterday.

[netmeg]

One of my PPC clients from years back got a notice today, came looking for help. Google must have really widened the net.

[MarvinH]

@n00b1

I think the penalty was flagged by a large number of forum links from a forum where I am very active

Was the forum topic the same as your website, or unrelated?