Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2012

[backdraft7]

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

Historically we never saw drastic drops due to holidays...except this year, when the now daily everflux drops just happen to coincide with a holiday.

[edited by: tedster at 5:33 am (utc) on Sep 1, 2012]

[Sand]

Depends on the niche, Backdraft. Some will tank and some will peak when people are off of work.

[backdraft7]

@Sand, this is true, but for my niche, I usually see an increase. 2012 has ushered in the new OFF period that we had never experienced. I seriously went from 2000 to 2010 with a total of five days where sales were 2 or less. In the past month alone, I've had 7 days of 2 or less.

I'm not going to blame this all on Google.
It's about other sites that have been lurking in my niche that are now seeing daylight. They do not necessarily provide good info, so hardly deserve to see daylight, but it is was it is.
Videos, one page answer articles now all appear to drown us out in out long tail.

Like everything in this world, even in my niche space...there is too many people and not enough room.
Problem is, most of those people are just wannabe's who identified our niche and just want to take a piece by presenting a one page wonder article. Problem is, it now ranks, and that I have to throw on Google.

Authority in all it's complexity means little these days. Thin is in.

[Alex997]

As per first week in August - now back up to page 1 in SERPs! Another big change Friday.

Let's see if after the first week we drop back 2/3/4 pages again.

[crobb305]

financial serps filling up with press releases. LOL. That's the best Google can find? It's sad.

[imbckagn]

financial serps filling up with press releases. LOL. That's the best Google can find? It's sad.

Been like that for months. Check the backlinks they are being pushed up with the spammest links you can build - and it's working great.

[crobb305]

Been like that for months. Check the backlinks they are being pushed up with the spammest links you can build - and it's working great.

Yeah, I've been watching it, but I thought surely it was going to be temporary. It's getting worse and worse, and all so a few 5 to 10 year old established sites with trust and perhaps a handful of bad links can be punished. It is a scammer's haven now. Fly-by-night sites and press releases.

[imbckagn]

Yeah, I've been watching it, but I thought surely it was going to be temporary. It's getting worse and worse, and all so a few 5 to 10 year old established sites with trust and perhaps a handful of bad links can be punished. It is a scammer's haven now. Fly-by-night sites and press releases.

I know this all to well. Negative SEO is rampant in this niche right now and it's working - victim of it. I was positive the PR's would get shut down fairly quick as well but that hasn't been the case. Check back on pages 5-10 for some keywords phrases in that niche it's PR insanity.

[crobb305]

I know this all to well. Negative SEO is rampant in this niche right now and it's working - victim of it.

Yep same here. I find my site linked from hundreds of .edus, within cloaked content shown only to Google, that often redirect to a spammy lead-generation site. What's worse is that no explanation to Google is sufficient.

The financial serps are among the most competitive. They are also among the most dangerous to consumers. Google takes down the established sites who have been around for years, and replaces them with 1-month-old sites and press releases. It makes a lot of sense to me.

I feel sorry for the consumers.

[imbckagn]

For anyone who is interested I mentioned in August that there are at least two data sets. The second one pops up every few weeks for a couple days then disappears. It's here right now and it appears sporadically when searching.

It's changed dramatically from what I have seen in the past. It's completely full of spam when usually the results are high quality from my perspective.

I'm not sure what's going on but in my opinion something is brewing.

[aristotle]

The financial serps are among the most competitive. They are also among the most dangerous to consumers

In a case like this, it seems to me that Google should have their human evaluators contimually check the top results to protect consumers from fraud.

[crobb305]

In a case like this, it seems to me that Google should have their human evaluators contimually check the top results to protect consumers from fraud.

I agree that they should try. However, I think fraud would go largely undetected to the untrained eye (just as the fiasco with negative seo -- clearly Google doesn't understand what is going on in some of these competitive industries). Having said that, many of the established websites spent years building their brand, seeking out the best 3rd-party certifications, and have BBB scores of "A". Some of these sites were nailed over the past year or two because of Google's immature view of unnatural links. I don't expect a human reviewer to be able to identify a scam in the absence of credible certifications/BBB profiles, etc, which many of these newly-ranked webpages lack and when current reviewers are letting press releases proliferate. Google seems so consumed with "punishments" that make for dramatic headlines, that they simply do not understand the nature of vicious link practices in the financial sector. Consumers are now left to pay the price.

[brinked]

seeing movement. 2 sets of SERP's. More recovery from original panda.

[textex]

How about them YouTube videos dominating the finance SERPS?

[garyr_h]

@aristotle they do have human's continually check them. It's just that the process takes a very long time.

[Andem]

>> How about them YouTube videos dominating the finance SERPS?

I'm seeing (and have been over the past 6 months) exact-match YouTube results which aren't really videos but rather images with overlay links to spammy sites. Many of them actually infect your system with malware.

They aren't necessarily from the finance niche since I don't usually search for those topics, but they are from other fairly lucrative niches.

I don't understand how or why they are showing up in SERPs at all, because user engagement must be pretty bad.

[crobb305]

I found a screenshot of the serps in my industry from about 3 years ago, and they were pretty darn good. It's too bad Google had to create problems. It's as if Google started letting college students come up with their own document scoring factors/filters as part of a capstone project, with little oversight.

How about them YouTube videos dominating the finance SERPS?

Yep, homemade videos that describe how to use the target website with a link to the website. lol. Useless.

[SnowMan68]

I saw a big change on Mozcast yesterday. Most change recorded since the beginning of August. It looks like something may have started to roll out Friday-Saturday.

[Elsmarc]

@crobb305

<snip> Some of these sites were nailed over the past year or two because of Google's immature view of unnatural links. <snip>

I am in part thinking that is part of why my main site (a now relatively broad based forum) literally crashed after the 25 July "update" - So many "unnatural" links.

[edited by: Elsmarc at 5:08 pm (utc) on Sep 2, 2012]

[Sand]

Getting a ton of foreign traffic today to a US site. Normally, my US visitors represent about 90% of total visits. So far today, it's closer to 50%. We'll see how the rest of the day shapes up, but this is strange.

[Elsmarc]

@Sand - What do you use to monitor where traffic to your site(s) is (are) coming from?

[Sand]

Just Google Analytics -- the traffic sources report filtered by country / territory.

[crobb305]

I saw a big change on Mozcast yesterday. Most change recorded since the beginning of August. It looks like something may have started to roll out Friday-Saturday.

I do see some sites that were heavily suppressed are now appearing in the positions 40 to 70. I see at least 3 that have returned to the top 100. And prior to today, they were well above 200. I still see the press release garbage, so I don't know what to make of it.

[Sand]

And I just remember it's a holiday weekend in the US, so it's possible that the percentage of US visits could be naturally skewed downwards. I'll have to wait until Tuesday to get a better idea.

[mslina2002]

I am seeing some movement and serps seem to be all over the place. Clear cache, surf incognito, via aol, etc. seem to produce changed results. I know it's not unusual to have updates during holiday weekends. Yes, mozcast also show rise in temp.

[Andem]

Virtually all of my pages with good user interaction metrics (low bounce rate, higher time spent on site) have seen a huge increase in traffic since Saturday night.

[Zivush]

I have just visited Mozcast and saw a "rainy day" started on Saturday.
What is Mozcast?

"MozCast is a weather report showing turbulence in the Google algorithm over the previous day. The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google's rankings changed."

Anyone noticed?

[imbckagn]

Look at my post above msg:4490477 and Mozcast is a joke. They put out some useful SEO tools but Mozcast is link bait to promote their products.

[nichesachin]

In GWT, HTML improvements isn't getting updated at all. I've fixed all the duplicate stuff that were popping up as errors almost 3 weeks before, but they haven't got updated in GWT. How much more time does Google need to look at this?

[tigger]

The serps are getting worse by the day ....

I can't use the term (as I'm in the adult industry) but one of my prime keywords now been overtaken by Itunes! ..."click here to view songs played by #*$!"

JOKE ....