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]

[xcoder]

This is not true at all. There are plenty of sites that have seen increased traffic. You just won't see too many of them being very vocal about it on here.

Nonsense. I have more then 10 content websites covering a range of topics. From hobby electronics to pet care. About half of them are ecommrece.

I also run/manage about 8 websites for small business in my area as well as a couple of websites for small business clients overseas (US).

Furthermore, i have many items listed over third party ecom stores like ebay, bonnaza, ecrater, gumtree etc. (talk about not having all your eggs in one basket)

The sites are all hosted over different servers (NO GD hosting or DNS here) and are not interconnected in any way. All white hat light to moderate SEO.

IT's BEEN ABSOLUTELY DEAD all around.... and for weeks now... it gets especially bad right after Google announcements of some sort of update going on.

Traffic levels +/- the same. SERPS positions +/- the same..... conversion = CRAP!....on all channels.

So yes, some may see more traffic but its junk/zombie/worthless traffic in most cases.

I'm in this business since 1997. I've seen enough of this to know it is a Google hand made mess which is only going to get wor$e...

[klark0]

5 sites here. 4 doing EXTREMELY well. 1 hit by both Penguin/Panda.

Things aren't as bad as some people would make it out to be. And the average users ..well, they can't tell the difference and are pretty much satisfied with their search results. That's reality.

[xcoder]

5 sites here. 4 doing EXTREMELY well. 1 hit by both Penguin/Panda.

Our perception of "doing EXTREMELY well" may be very different. I don't count hits. I count sales. Check almost any independent webmaster forum and/or blog out there and you may get a hint...

[Sand]

You can't say that nobody is seeing gains. I do SEO for a pretty big site (100k+ organic visits a day), and visits have grown considerably over the last six months with only a very minor decline in conversion rate.

Here is my observation based on experience:

As you grow (in terms of visits) sometimes it's your head terms that grow, but most often it's long-tail. As that long-tail growth happens, your landing pages often become less effective because visitors don't see that the page matches their intent quite as quickly as they do when they arrive from a head term search.

Landing pages often need to be adjusted to convert the long-tail in order to keep the conversion rates as steady as possible.

I'm not saying that's the case with you, only that it is often the case.

[Sand]

I don't get it...

We're talking half of a percent overall decline in conversion rate, but visits are up considerably. So overall, we're seeing thousands of 'extra' conversions each day. That's the definition of growth.

[xcoder]

And you conversion rate is ?

[Sand]

Not sure what difference it makes for the purposes of this discussion, but ~15%. And it's not ecommerce, a conversion is defined as a user registration.

[xcoder]

:) ~15% :) ... OK

"And it's not ecommerce, a conversion is defined as a user registration."

Free, non-country-targeted registrations i guess...

[edited by: xcoder at 2:46 am (utc) on Sep 13, 2012]

[Sand]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

But the only point I'm trying to make is that there are sites out there that are growing, both in terms of visits and conversions. It's not doom and gloom across the board, regardless of what you read on forums.

Edit: Yes, registration is free, but we make our money during the registration process via lead gen. But you can't register without providing a US address.

[Awarn]

What I am seeing is overall sales are close to last yr but growth is none to negative and hits are down a fair amount. I think if hits were at a normal level sales would be where they should be. Everything as far as sales and hits were right on track through April.

[Hollywood]

Xcoder I have to agree I managed sites that see 50 million hits in two weeks, ecommerce, service industry, etc, all down all a mess, I hear very few people doing well. Of all the sites I manage and consult all are getting killed. Google is controlling the internet by themselves BIG, wake up Gov't people, it's bound to get ugly at some point for Google. I can see the CA-Lawsuits coming. I have been contacted as an expert witness by already three lawfirms.

It's A MESS! - And FOR MOST ALL the sites! - Wake up folks. I'm in this since 1996 before most ever even saw a dot.com addvertisement anywhere. This is a mess beyond what I have seen before.

Xcoder - perfectly said 'I'm in this business since 1997. I've seen enough of this to know it is a Google hand made mess which is only going to get wor$e..."

[Awarn]

Ok Hollywood, you and I are on the same track but is this a move to make the the economy look worse than it is? Where was Ryan last weekend? I know we have decided to not purchase a big piece of equipment this week just because we don't have a good feeling.

[xcoder]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

The point i am trying to make is that you can not compare apples and oranges. You simply can not compare eCommerce to some forum or blog taking free registrations. People will absolutely kill to have a 15% conversion over an eCommerce site... try 2%-3% conversions when it comes to popular competitive products and that's when times are good and Google doesn't mess much with the secret sauce, randomize geo targeting, and what else have you, over 24-48 hours cycles...

As someone else has mentioned earlier, they've cornered the market and are now killing (by thousand cuts) many small legit businesses that are not ready to pay...

[edited by: xcoder at 3:36 am (utc) on Sep 13, 2012]

[Sand]

You simply can not compare eCommerce to some forum or blog taking free registrations.

First, for the sake of my pride, I'm not talking about forum or blog registrations. Per the forum rules I don't want to disclose my exact niche, but think about niches like finance, insurance, dating, or employment where registering on a site is often free, and then visitors are heavily monetized through advertising offers disguised as a service after registration. That's what I'm talking about.

Second, I agree with you that you can't really compare two different types of sites. I was just pointing out that things don't suck for *everybody* right now, even though much of the chatter makes it look that way.

I hope that your sites turn around soon. I know that there are some pretty bizarre search results out there right now, and sympathize with everyone who has been negatively impacted.

[klark0]

Check almost any independent webmaster forum and/or blog out there and you may get a hint...

I suggest not taking your hints from forums and blogs.

[Elsmarc]

Anyone who does not understand that the internet of today is not the internet of 1996 or 2000 or even 2005 is - Well, good luck. The internet has become commercialized (I call it "Wallmartization") and "Mom and Pop" sites (aka "small businesses") are on their way out the door. The Gold Rush is over. And I've read posts here where some people have over 100 sites.

My recommendation is to consider alternative income sources. Anyone depending upon Google for their income these days (especially AdSense) better be good at it (which, if someone has 100+ sites up is, I assume, well versed in the "trade" and is counting on many small profits).

My main site "died" almost over night and stayed "dead' for 2 weeks. It's coming back now, but not anywhere near its peak. But, to me the extra income is nice, but not necessary since I'm retired anyway.

I do wish all the "Mom & Pops" well, but I think they're headed to extinction just like when Walmart comes to town...

[xcoder]

I suggest not taking your hints from forums and blogs.

Sure makes a lot of sense. Now i understand what you are doing here...(?)

[1script]

@Sand:

As you grow (in terms of visits) sometimes it's your head terms that grow, but most often it's long-tail. As that long-tail growth happens, your landing pages often become less effective because visitors don't see that the page matches their intent quite as quickly as they do when they arrive from a head term search.

You must be talking about good old pre-autocomplete times. Long tail keyphrases are the bread and butter of smaller niche sites, which Elsmarc above refers to as "Mom & Pops". Long tail is getting completely killed by autocomplete.

I often have to search for esoteric very long-term phrases with various industrial part names and such - something that I used to feed the whole thing into the search box and Google used to bring just one or two results from the entire Net, but those were the results I needed. What happens now is that it is almost impossible to type more than 2 words in there - you're bound to either go on a tangent or hit Enter accidentally or a slower computer will play a trick on your and put a wrong suggestion in there JUST BEFORE you hit Enter - stuff like that. Yes, I do know you can turn autocompelte off, but how many people actually do that? Myself, I'm very frustrated by it and yet, incredibly, it's still ON in my FF. I imagine an occasional searcher simply does not care to turn it off or even has a clue it's possible.

So, anyway, going after long tail kws is all good but the long tail traffic has dried up significantly in the last couple years. Once you get there you may realize it was not worth the (little) effort.

[Hollywood]

awarn very much respect hat thinking 'Ok Hollywood, you and I are on the same track but is this a move to make the the economy look worse than it is? Where was Ryan last weekend? I know we have decided to not purchase a big piece of equipment this week just because we don't have a good feeling.'

It sure could be this way, you never know, NOTHING, I mean nothing surprises me ANYMORE!

Broken, and dam good and broken!

[Hollywood]

I HATE AUTOCOMPLETE! It's a joke, always makes me go places I don't want to, it does not even work as it is supposed to!

[backdraft7]

If this is Google's idea of a good user experience, I'd say that no one at Google has ever HAD a good user experience.

[ohno]

Some really interesting points here. I think xcoder & hollywood are on the money. Visit Google Groups to see how many products have issues right now, it's beyond a joke. Google seems to be on a path of "we'll do what we like so tough ****". Well, that just may be our saviour, this is affecting the wider economy not just a handful of small websites. Stability has GONE, people are not making stock orders etc for fear of more drops. This is how recessions start (& drag on).

Back to the SERP's, static for us, not seeing any movement at all. The Zombies & foreign junk is still with us, I can't remember foreign junk traffic going on this long before.

[tedster]

There are plenty of sites that have seen increased traffic. You just won't see too many of them being very vocal about it on here.

Agreed. I'll try to give an overview of the sites I've been involved with. On the average, most are up, second steady, and in third place are the problems. This is a mixed up collection of major business, small business, and one person business. They use informational, e-commerce, lead-generation and advertising models.

1. Most have stayed steady through Panda/Penguin Updates.
   
2. A few have grown with Panda/Penguin updates.
   
3. One long-term client has taken a 10% income loss after Penguin.
   
4. Some asked me for help after Panda or Penguin problems hurt them.
   
5. Above-The-Fold hurt one site.
   
6. Unnatural backlinks hurt none of them.
   
7. Changes in Google Suggest (which have been common) account for a lot of both losses and gains. I check Suggestions both when creating copy and when significant traffic changes of any kind happen.
   
8. Another common issue with changes in search traffic occurs when a search result's balance shifts between navigational and transactional.
   
9. Although we've barely discussed it here, I also see significant changes (up and down) with the growing need for a plus sign [+] to ensure that a word is included in the SERP. This is a kind of "update" or tweak that seems to be happening a good bit in recent months. Some longer tail query phrases are generating bizarre search results because of these changes, with lost rankings for pages that actually DO contain all the keywords.

I do a lot of collaborating with other SEOs whose opinions I value. This is especially of the brainstorming type rather than sharing hands-on work. With the complexity of Google these days, I feel it's essential and really contributes to a healthy overall picture.

Even things like regular face-to-face meetups with a group of SEOs and webmasters in various niches has strong value over time. However, even in the earliest days when SEO was just taking shape, collaboration of various kinds was essential. My advice to anyone with a web business is build your network - and keep growing ALL your web skills. You never know where the next big idea will come from and save you from the ravages of the next major update.

[xcoder]

I HATE AUTOCOMPLETE!

You are on the money Hollywood. The mayhem all started around the time "auto complete" and "instant" went main stream... and if that's not enough we then got hit by penguin and panda.

And if that's not enough, they then decided to start altering page titles, hide referrer keyword strings, flood the serps with adwords/youtube/images/shopping/plus results, throttle traffic to web sites and randomize geo targeting for all... and if that's not enough, they then went on penalizing websites for back links... and if that's not enough ... "insert here upcoming (soon) new plagues..."

P.S.
Adwords team decided to broaden phrase and keywords match targeting at around that very same time, make room for all them affected poor souls...

[edited by: xcoder at 7:37 am (utc) on Sep 13, 2012]

[ohno]

hide referrer keyword strings

My heart sank when that started, why would they do that?!My paranoia was correct I think! Like you say you are not even in control of the title of your OWN pages any more! It's the same accross the board, Google Product Search uses your content & pictures to promote other peoples websites!

[xcoder]

Anyone who does not understand that the internet of today is not the internet of 1996 or 2000 or even 2005 is - Well, good luck. The internet has become commercialized (I call it "Wallmartization") and "Mom and Pop" sites (aka "small businesses") are on their way out the door. The Gold Rush is over. And I've read posts here where some people have over 100 sites.

Commercialized it may be, but that's no big deal. The main problem is that the internet has become seriously monopolized and tightly controlled by one company...

[xcoder]

Although we've barely discussed it here, I also see significant changes (up and down) with the growing need for a plus sign [+] to ensure that a word is included in the SERP. This is a kind of "update" or tweak that seems to be happening a good bit in recent months. Some longer tail query phrases are generating bizarre search results because of these changes, with lost rankings for pages that actually DO contain all the keywords.

"Instant" is probably a major resources hog. There is just no way in hell they can service so many billion of database queries in real time and display results within milliseconds without first having to break the mass historic queries database they already have into pre determined "suggested" key phrases. This way they can kind of pre determine the results, cache and deliver them almost instantly. This also explain them being way off target for so many searches lately... you often get results close to but not really exactly matching what you are looking for unless using the + sign.

I've noticed this while meeting with a customer once. We were checking together the google keywords suggestion tool for "how to *choose* blue widgets" which showed approx 1,500,000 searches per month for our target market, and the customer then suggested that maybe we should also go for "how to *select* blue widgets" ....and lo and behold, the keywords suggestion tools showed ZERO searches per month for that very same target market (impossible). This made me think that what they are actually doing is changing/matching queries into pre determined stored key phrases, most likely designed to reduce database stress...

In other words, for "instant" to work it MUST go hand in hand with "keywords suggest (aka auto complete)".... and together they are a real "long tail" killers...

[tedster]

This made me think that what they are actually doing is changing/matching queries into pre determined stored key phrases, most likely designed to reduce database stress

And that predetermination is probably aimed at phrases where the SERP shows higher user satisfaction, I'd think. But it certainly can have the effect of burying your search traffic levels, even when you rank #1, if your phrase used to appear in the auto-complete suggestions and no longer does, or has slipped down the list.

And you're right, xcoder - if one of your terms is now replaced by a synonym then your are often in deep trouble unless you also rank for that search too.

I always advise clients not to depend 100% on the Adwords Suggestion tool - it's main purpose is to sell ads, after all. These updates to the Suggestions seem to be very common, and not done in a global batch, so we seldom talk about them here. But they are a kind of update and they can have a major effect on traffic.

[xcoder]

I always advise clients not to depend 100% on the Adwords Suggestion tool...

Spot on... but it is a great tool non the less.

In my example mentioned above i actually checked it by running a Google search. A query for "how to *select* blue widgets" redirected us to results on "how to *choose* blue widgets"... "select" was no where to be seen on that page unless using quotes and plus signs etc...

[Martin Ice Web]

if your phrase used to appear in the auto-complete suggestions and no longer does, or has slipped down the list.

and if suggestions are localized, too.