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]

[Martin Ice Web]

Till friday we lost on our pandalized page again 30%, now we are down to 30% from prepanda.
( Hope it ist due to the complete redesign on wednesday, but I doubt that google catches this in 3 days ) .
WMT shows crawls errors from pages that does not exist and have never exits. I donīt know where google gets the URLs from. The crawler adds different widget names to a new url and trys to reach them.

@nichesachin, we do have the same problem. All dc titles and short descriptions have been fixed long ago, but nothing, it still shows the errors.

[whyohwhy]

What I've noticed in GWT is the screenshot of my site is one from about 4 weeks ago, but there had been newer ones showing since then. It makes me wonder if they have rolled back data to a few weeks back which in my case would make sense of the slump in traffic I am having now being the same with what I witnessed 4 weeks ago.

[IanTurner]

@Andem - Why is 'higher time spent on site' a 'good user interaction metric'?

In my opinion it means that the user is not finding what they want fast enough.

As an ecommerce site you want lower time on site together with more pages visited, as you want the user to find what they want, place it in the basket and purchase as fast as possible.

[Andem]

@IanTurner: In my case, they are looking at suggested further reading (other articles), looking at related pages, searching for something else using our search engine or joining our community and posting a comment.

I'm *NOT* an Ecommerce site.

[ohno]

Had a great end to last week & a good weekend. Today has seen this come to an end yet again. Now back to 30% off normal. SERP's have changed since the last time I checked too but have remained static so far today. Seeing windows of foreign traffic today along with spurts of zombies.

[themistral]

We are UK based with a .co.uk domain.

We have seen our most generic search term rise from 3rd to 1st over the weekend and traffic for that keyword rocketed, yet long tail has become almost non-existent for most of last week and the weekend.

Some of our long tail searches are returning Australian sites and US sites we haven't seen before.

[Pjman]

@rusty brick

Time to check in with the G-gods this. Obviously something happened over at the Plex. Too much chatter going on here.

[IanTurner]

@Andem, you see that is the real issue with using certain user metrics - different classes of site require different user metrics and have different definitions of success.

I even have some concerns about using length of time on site for informational sites. For instance if you provide a lookup table of html character codes - success could be defined as delivering the code someone wants as fast as possible as in most cases that is what your user wants. In that situation increasing length of time on site is not necessarily a good thing.

[Simsi]

We have seen our most generic search term rise from 3rd to 1st over the weekend and traffic for that keyword rocketed, yet long tail has become almost non-existent for most of last week and the weekend.

I've seen exactly the same on more than one focused niche site I manage over the past 3 months. My best guess to now is that Google can't see a relationship between the longtail terms and the key term.

To a degree I can understand that. For example if you are writing about Beautful Objects and one page is about diamonds and one is about a rainbow, there is no obvious correlation and I can't see how Google could possibly understand ther eis one - unless you for the search engines, which we are discouraged from doing.

The answer is more work, clutters up the web with small sites and leaves you feeling annoyed lol, but seems to work: a seperate site for each beautiful object. One index page of useful content and a couple of pages of related fluff around the subject to boost internal links back to the main page seems to do wonders.

[ohno]

Well whatever happened late last week has reversed, back to zombie trafic and no conversions. Can't say I'm surprised. I guess all we can do now is look for that SERP flipping again........

[gregorysmith]

John Mueller mentioned in the new Webmaster video, that Google does not update during weekends, or holiday weekends, etc due to the engineers not being available, was a error to take affect.

Mozcast did rise to 83, and at all times the chart has gotten that high, a update did take affect.

I have seen evidence of an update. I have messaged Google and Cutts. I'm awaiting a reply. I will update you as soon as I'm updated.


Gregory Smith

[backdraft7]

All Zombies, all day today. Traffic levels were at post Penguin record highs, but bounce rate jumped 5% over night. Poor conversions. Non targeted Zombies again.

[xcoder]

Non targeted Zombies again.

I'm seeing the same. These can not be human (unless they have a cat playing with the mouse while they browse). One hit/page in 99% of cases, very very high bounce rate....last 24 hours or so.

It is so frigging quiet ($s wise) it almost feels like the entire web is on vacation or a strike....

P.S.
Tons of junk/virus/phishing emails lately too...

[ohno]

Tons of junk/virus/phishing emails lately too...

Yes noticed that too, happened around the same time as the traffic & conversions came back but remained yesterday too.

[Mentat]

Traffic Monday lower than Week-end.
This is wrooong! :(

I hope Labor Day is the cause...

[xcoder]

Yes noticed that too, happened around the same time as the traffic & conversions came back but remained yesterday too.

I bet probably lots of "joe public" open these emails too...

I'm getting phishing/virus infected emails "from", banks, Facebook, twitter, fedex, dhl, my ISP, and many more big name companies...all asking to open a file attachment. Seems like a major outbreak is going on.

[muzza64]

We saw some ranking falls over the weekend on a couple of terms that had improved on the 20th August Panda refresh, and overall traffic has been lower since.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was another minor Panda refresh, especially in light of gregorysmith's comment above.

[backdraft7]

I just want to point out > traffic is HIGHER. Typically that would be a good thing, but if it's junk, perhaps not.

[ohno]

Traffic up but it's junk all right. :( These days it doesn't stick for more than 4 days with Google.

[gehrlekrona]

Total disaster today.. it's Google doesn't exist. Other people have mentioned that in periods like this we get more spam email, phising emails etc and I do too so maybe this is not a goog thing? Maybe It's a internet network problem? Maybe goog control internet traffic?

[xcoder]

I just want to point out > traffic is HIGHER. Typically that would be a good thing, but if it's junk, perhaps not.

Same here.

Traffic up but it's junk all right. :( These days it doesn't stick for more than 4 days with Google.

4 days? i wish... try 48 hours...

[ohno]

Considering the signs of an update are there IMO the SERP's seem earily quiet? No shuffling in my niche now for nearly a week. With new Google that is a lifetime!

[gehrlekrona]

The shuffling has kinda stopped but where are the hits? Yesterday was a record low in the liofe of a web site :(

[rustybrick]

I pinged Google twice about this and no word back yet, which is not typical.

[financialhost]

The reason why the serps have changed is because Google is now showing too many irrelevant foreign websites in the mix.
Previously this was filtered out.

Yesterday i was searching for a job and got job sites from Switzerland, Europe and Ireland and i am based in London!

My hunch is that they are yet to factor in the algo for geographical locations - they probably are working on it.

Once that is done and the foreign sites disappear then results will improve.

If on the other hand the update is over - Google have made a huge error of judgement in the aglo this time round.

[ohno]

/\ that may explain why I'm seeing loads of foreign visitors hitting our sites. One thing is 100% IMO, if you see foreign traffic they are up to something & that first started Monday for us.........

[HuskyPup]

Google is now showing too many irrelevant foreign websites in the mix.

Yep, Google.co.uk SERPs are a mess...again. I searched for a trade widget yesterday, the first result was a relevant .co.uk the remaining nine were all US.com sites, ridiculous.

[Pjman]

@rustybrick


Thanks for the update.

[Panthro]

Big traffic day yesterday for some of the sites I manage.

[gehrlekrona]

@financialhost, I agree with you about the geographical location. Right now it seems like I am getting hits including some location and the ones without a location is almost non-existence right now.
I have seen it before but it is even more frequent land/or longer lasting.
I also see a lot of G+ crap so is Google tryiong to become a new SIRI trying to answer every question someone have and make it local?
Q: I am looking for some entertainment?
G: You are close to this location. According to G+ it is a prime location for entertainment. We have some ads for items you might need.

Google might just have ONE big result instead of 4 or 7 or 10 with a comglomerate of things they scraped so the SERP will look like one of those auto generated articles you find everywhere and that doesn't make sense.

Maybe a lot more people will go to Bing when you can rewards for searching?!? Better than AdSense?