Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2012

[Martin Ice Web]

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

Today is very low. I donīt know if its weather or vacation related? From what I see is that most product related serps will show #1-#10 price compare sites, not one informational or ecom site.

[edited by: tedster at 6:04 pm (utc) on Aug 1, 2012]

[rango]

It is becoming clear that problems with sites that link to you can bleed through to your own rankings

New strategy for penguined/pandalized sites to make money:

1. Sell links to people trying to hurt their competitors.
2. Be paid to remove the links by the competitors.

[ohno]

I'm sorry imbckagn, but it's obvious you're referring to me with your comment. Did I not just add value to this thread by offering a suggestion as to how my site may have been effected my the updates going on this month and what I'm going to do to rectify the situation?

Perhaps that alone could help out a lot of people on this forum no?

Don't worry starkseo, this forum does seem to have comments like this(one reason I rarely bother posting any more).

I'm glad you did however as we have two sites that have been in meltdown since Friday too. Last week Thursday was unusually GREAT for us(normally Thursdays are the dead day for some reason, seems to be when Google test the latest "quality updates").

[ohno]

I'm hoping it's just due to kids going back to school this week, which could possibly account for the drop in traffic/activity/searches.

Don't kid yourself. I did this last week but then come Thursday we did nearly a weeks sales in a single day. How is that possible? This week is worse, maybe we will have another miracle day? Then again I'm seeing zombie traffic galore along with foreign traffic (only this time India seems out of flavour, we now get traffic from Australia!).

Good grief what a mess Google is these days. I was searching for memory yesterday, I ended up going direct to company websites as Google search was useless with page after page of duplicate pages from Amazon.

[Hollywood]

Last week for us was amazingly awesome (many many nice hits and conversions, long page paths per visitor), now this week seems it's 1/3 the conversions we had from last week.

[netmeg]

We've been way up this week too, but way up on Bing too. Can't really account for it.

[SnowMan68]

Way up in SERPs or way up on traffic?

[Alex997]

Good grief what a mess Google is these days. I was searching for memory yesterday, I ended up going direct to company websites as Google search was useless with page after page of duplicate pages from Amazon.

This is probably why...

[businessinsider.com ]

[netmeg]

Way up in SERPs or way up on traffic?

Traffic. SERPs seem mostly the same. Orders way up. Normally in August we're relying more on other channels; things don't start to pop till September or so.

[starkseo]

Don't worry starkseo, this forum does seem to have comments like this(one reason I rarely bother posting any more).

Yeah it's fine, I was in a bit of a mood myself yesterday. The good news is my traffic levelled out today and I'm actually seeing a 15% improvement so far.

Obviously too early to tell what's going to happen, but I'll keep everyone posted over the next week which will hopefully give a good indication of what to expect.

[ohno]

Please do. I'm seeing big traffic movements accross two sites but it's not converting.

[gregorysmith]

I have received a lot of messages from people asking us about a change in their SERP. Many have dropped from positions within the first page, to position 300+

[Martin Ice Web]

I would like to know if google did think of the worldwide social effect that this changes are going to imply.
Itīs not only the mom and pop sites that suffer but the familys and employees. But still there is the fact that many small business do dispense on local and global projects. I think these business could not longer afford to do this, because they have been cut off. And i canīt imagine that the now prefered big profit driven businesses will catch this up.

[TypicalSurfer]

I would like to know if google did think of the worldwide social effect that this changes are going to imply.

Google is heavy on social engineering so it's obvious they have always been in front of updates semantically painting sites that lost visibility as "spammers" or some other derogatory term. I do believe they understand the social impact of their "updates" otherwise they would use more neutral language.

Of course when main stream starts to catch up with "granny living in car after google junked her doohickey site" type stories we might see a different tone from the spinners in Mountain View.

[netmeg]

I would like to know if google did think of the worldwide social effect that this changes are going to imply.

That's a topic for a different post. But since whenever someone falls someone else rises, and since they deal with things on such a large scale, I tend to think no, they don't spend a lot of thought on it, because they can't. If they did, they'd freeze like a deer in the headlights.

[edited by: netmeg at 4:03 pm (utc) on Aug 22, 2012]

[gehrlekrona]

@Alex997, there are sites that doesn't need Google at all and amazon is one of them and Google knows it and knows that they are loosing the battle slowly but surely so what they are trying to do is do fool people to think they are some kind of a friendly social search engine. I think the results we see now is filtered through whatever they have gathered about you during he years no matter how hard you try to be anonymous to Google.
My hits are ( have been?) up today but mostly foreign traffic. Strange since I posted here yesterday about NOT getting foreign traffic
(Hi Google.....)

[Jez123]

Google is heavy on social engineering so it's obvious they have always been in front of updates semantically painting sites that lost visibility as "spammers" or some other derogatory term. I do believe they understand the social impact of their "updates" otherwise they would use more neutral language.

Yes, social engineering at a very obvious level to some. Still, some here are too thick skinned to know they are being manipulated as whenever someone gets hit in an update (and NOT them) they are the first to shout "Spammer". Which is rarely helpful when your business and livelihood has just been destroyed.

[TypicalSurfer]

whenever someone falls someone else rises

nah

The "one falls, another rises" isn't happening anymore. I've seen some results pages go 8 out of 10 to ancient forum posts and magazine articles. I think some would be happy to see even their competition in the SERPS, it would indicate sanity or at least something to study.

[netmeg]

(I disagree, but as I said, that's for another post, not this one)

Google just tweeted that there was a Panda refresh on Monday; 1% of queries noticeably affected. I posted a new item but it hasn't been okayed yet.

[ohno]

The "one falls, another rises" isn't happening anymore. I've seen some results pages go 8 out of 10 to ancient forum posts and magazine articles. I think some would be happy to see even their competition in the SERPS, it would indicate sanity or at least something to study.

Yes, seen that. Last week we were getting referals from forum posts made in 2008!

1% impact yet again eh? Those 1%'s are starting to add up....

[Martin Ice Web]

@netmeg, just one last sentence from me I know its a another post )

"someone falls someone else rises" -> small business falls, bigger business get bigger.

[muzza64]

netmeg, thanks for the Panda refresh news.

We saw some ranking and traffic improvements on Monday for a Panda hit site which seem to have stuck (up 1 or 2 places on first page results, up from page 10 to page 4/5 for some 1 or 2 word terms). Not a huge improvement in traffic but hopefully it's all a sign we're heading in the right direction.

Some terms that improved on Monday have improved further today however, so perhaps it will take a few days to settle (he said, clutching at straws!).

[menntarra 34]

First time i've been positively affected since my panda hits(2011/oct | 2012/apr | 2012/june)

Site gained about 7-9% traffic

Still a long way to get back where it was. It dropped 60% alltogether.

[bloard]

Just for the record menntarra... can you share what changes, if any, you made and roughly when in the timeframe since October you made them?

[Dymero]

No movement either way on our part as of yet since Monday. We did lose about 5% last week, but this was zombie traffic, which is, of course a whole different forum topic.

[gregorysmith]

could someone please repost the tweet from google. i didn't see a panda update Monday.

[Hollywood]

Last week we had amazing conversions into new deals. My hits per day did not change, quality did on terms searched for to find us for the better. I have been making many long overdue changes to our site so of course I have no good way to say what is working. But I am making MANY changes across board.

This week so far all went to S*!$ again as far as new deals coming in (much less), same amount of traffic, and same better terms getting sent to us, so of course I am lost bigtime.

I do agree this must be badly hurting business overnight and sending them to dust. I do think Google will get more gov't eyeballs into how they play this all out.

[Sand]

could someone please repost the tweet from google. i didn't see a panda update Monday.

Here's the text:

Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1% of queries noticeably affected. More context: [goo.gl...]

And the link: [twitter.com...]

[edited by: tedster at 8:48 pm (utc) on Aug 22, 2012]
[edit reason] make link clickable [/edit]

[Elsmarc]

@ohno -

Last week we were getting referals from forum posts made in 2008

Funny you should mention that. Some of the most visited *static* pages on my main site are from 1998 and 1999 for the last couple of weeks. They do have their dates on them. So much for Matt Cuts "freshness" comments.

[gehrlekrona]

Well, what started out looking to be not as bas it use to be lately it seems to be a crappy day after all :(
Looks like long tail is almost gone and I do not know anymore what way it is going. Seems like for every thing Google do, the less traffic do they send you.

[diberry]

Did anything happen today, Thursday?

My Penguinized site sailed through the Panda refresh of Monday just fine - in fact, Tuesday and Wednesday were my best days in several months. Suddenly on Thursday, a really steep drop - we're talking low double digits.

But the strange thing is, my pages are still ranking where they have been, give or take a position here and there. I looked at them through various proxy servers, hoping to get as objective a view as I can, given the way Google seems to be localizing results and testing various datasets.

I don't get it. How can your Google traffic drop that much when your page rankings haven't really moved at all? It's as if everyone just spontaneously decided not to search my terms, or not to click me even when I was a top 3 result.