Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2012

One of my newer sites is now showing up in the knowledge graph spot for its top keyword (which also recently gained sitelinks) It's not a big brand, but I'm trying to make it into an authority site. All I did was add a post to a long dormant Google+ page. Interestingly it did NOT work for any of my other sites, even the ones that are more authoritative and have been around longer, and that also have Google+ posts.

I dunno if I stumbled on a bug or the beginnings of a wider rollout.

netmeg, I noticed the same for a 6 month old site that also had a recent post to its G+ page. But then I logged out and changed IPs and it was gone.

Mine's showing up for several people across the country. Interesting. Guess I gotta pay more attention to Google+ now.

Mine's showing up for several people across the country. Interesting. Guess I gotta pay more attention to Google+ now.

Google is prepared to do anything to promote Google+ and we will see more people like you, making this observation going forward....

When searching for "example local business on Facebook" I'm seeing a small insert on the right with the Google Places icon and the business' physical address for a FB result in the SERPs. Also seeing the same for Yelp results in the SERPs since "Yelp is using Facebook to personalize your experience".

Page 1 to page 4 today for anything of mine with 'firm' in the keyword UK Google Search. Everything else steady.

Page 1 to page 4 today for anything of mine with 'firm' in the keyword UK Google Search.

I assume you mean firm as in company?

Maybe Google's whackoes assume firm to mean something else:-)

^ indeed! :)

Perhaps the competition for this phrase suddenly became a lot 'stiffer'...

About 10% drop in traffic. Not sure why. School holidays or a public holiday somewhere?

We had a very noticeable drop in traffic starting Tuesday, and Wednesday (Aug 1) was one of our worst Wednesday's in a while. Today's traffic is looking poor as well. I can't find any of our keywords that have dropped significantly in the SERPS, and in fact, some of our best ones have even gone up a position or two.

@jmorgan, @getcooking i am "happy" to see others seeing drops in traffic. It is a real quiet threath. We saw this drop although starting on tuesday. I wish I would have done nothing to my site, so maybe it would have not gone that worse. It seems like for every change we make (rewrite article description, adding categorie description ) we get one nail more... But I like WMT , where its says, we do not have any problem with our website. ( I always have to laugh, when I read it. What does a not pandalized/penguinezed website see? We love your website? )

I think a PR update is in progress right now. I've seen modifications on several websites.

My newer project (officially up for around 3 months now) saw a 650% increase in Google traffic over last week and peaked on August 1st.

About 10% drop in traffic. Not sure why. School holidays or a public holiday somewhere?

Maybe related to the power outages in India, and the Olympics. NYTimes link [nytimes.com]

We have actually seen a slight uptick in traffic over the last 2 days on a Penguin-effected site. Not much, but 15-20% increase of normal (post penguin) daily visits from G*.

(how do you even tell there's a PR update anymore? No Google toolbar)

I am seeing something in the previews of pages in the SERP that I have not seen before and am wondering what it could mean.

For a site that I am working on, the preview shows most of the text on the page and then there are the cut marks. This is how it is for most of the pages.

For a couple of pages, however, the cut marks are toward the bottom and there is also a pair closer to the top after some of the page content is displayed. The page in the preview is essentially in two parts. At the bottom of the first part, there are cut marks and for the second part, there are cut marks at the top and the bottom. The pages that have the multiple cut marks do not have as much text as the other pages and some of them contain images (the longer pages do not) and on all the pages (the ones with the cut marks towards the bottom and the ones with cut marks towards the top and towards the bottom), there is a large rectangle above the body text.

On the pages with the multiple cut marks, the pair towards the top that I am referring to are positioned on the large rectangle so the preview is not showing all the ads on it the way it does for the pages that only have cut marks toward the bottom of the page.

Does the difference in the number of cut marks mean something?

Seeing updates. It's nice to see PR flow through a site evenly after silo-ing it.

@netmeg, various other third party toolbars and services still work because the source that the Google toolbar got it's information from is still up.

I remember a few months ago, google tweaked the URL location for that source, and all the third party tools were broken until they updated.

My traffic was pretty low yesterday too.

I'm also seeing more integration of Maps/Places other than the typical 7 pack. On sites where the physical address used to show up as a little blue link under the result, there is now the indented area with a Google Places icon and physical address listed.

I think a PR update is in progress right now. I've seen modifications on several websites.

I can confirm that. Just checked a few pages that were created in the last month, and they're showing green.

Latest new page I have with a pagerank is from 26th July. NONE of my existing pages already with PR displayed have changed though.

Still 1/3 more googlebot activity on my site though since about the 19th July (guess at exact date as cannot see enough detail in webmaster tools graph). No major changes or significant additional content in this time - so just Google having increased interest in my site for some reason.

We have actually seen a slight uptick in traffic over the last 2 days on a Penguin-effected site. Not much, but 15-20% increase of normal (post penguin) daily visits from G*.

Since the Panda update on July 29th, I've seen a steady increase on my Penguin affected site. What's changed is that a lot of my backlink sites appear to have gotten a boost - suddenly they're showing up higher in my referrals than they have since before Penguin.

I think Penguin and Panda set off chain reactions: Site A falls afoul of them, so suddenly its outbounds lose value, and every site they linked to is affected slightly. If a bunch of your inbounds - or even a bunch of your inbounds' inbounds' inbounds get affected - then so do you. That might explain why it can be so hard to tell what's gone wrong for your site, or why or how to fix it.

Seeing some strange things today. Traffic up from Google but zero conversions (although lots from other routes including Adwords).

Also, two new pages now have page rank and it's higher than every other page on the site except the home page. Never seen that before and not quite sure what to make of it, but presumably it's a good sign.

@muzza64

Traffic up from Google but zero conversions

Kinda seeing the same thing for our ecommerce, however this is the beginning of the month and maybe everyone is paying bills.

Uh, Webmaster Tools is showing 600 or so pages blocked by robots.txt, but I don't even have one?

Uh, Webmaster Tools is showing 600 or so pages blocked by robots.txt, but I don't even have one?

Did you just get this message in the past couple of days? I got a strange WMT message for a domain that hasn't been active (content completely removed) in many many years. The domain isn't set up in WMT any more but I still got the message - which told me that it couldn't read the robots.txt file. The odd thing is, it gave the url as http://www.example.com//robots.txt (two slashes). The real robots.txt file for that domain is just fine. This message is dated 7/31 which is when my traffic to my main site started tanking. Google snafu?

@netmeg, various other third party toolbars and services still work because the source that the Google toolbar got it's information from is still up.

My Google Toolbar still shows PR.

I think I may have gotten re-dinged by Panda on the 29th. Not as bad as when I was hit back in 2011, and then later recovered, but I definitely took a dip. This after staying recovered for almost a year.

I think I may have gotten re-dinged by Panda on the 29th

29th of what month?

July 29th. Wasn't there a Panda update run then?