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]

just found this from MC:

We’re always going to be looking for ways to identify who is valuable in the real world. We want to return quality results that have real world reputability and quality factors are key – Google indexes 20 billion pages per day.

So how do they get the way from real world to internet world? Something like economy top list 500?

[Wilburforce]

Google indexes 20 billion pages per day

...and can no longer see the wood for the trees.

[wingslevel]

anybody have any comments about the quality of google organic referrals this week?

Looking at just this segment of traffic, we saw very high quality on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - about 10% better conversion rate than historic average, but also higher average orders and pageviews than normal.

Different story for yesterday and today. G organic referrals are converting at about 40% lower rate than historic. Bounce rate higher, pageviews lower and average order lower.

Overall quantity of google organic referrals are slightly higher than normal for this whole period.

Our other traffic is all converting at normal or better rates, so, we don't think there is any problem with our site.

This is generally longtail traffic and we are US ecom.

Thanks in advance for sharing your performance for this week!

[Noximus]

When a google webmaster tool shows the same places but I do not see any traffic or real rankings , What does it mean?

Any ideas?..

[edited by: tedster at 9:34 pm (utc) on Sep 14, 2012]

[Noximus]

in "the same places" I mean pre september/2012 update good rankings...

[edited by: tedster at 9:34 pm (utc) on Sep 14, 2012]

[Robert Charlton]

Google indexes 20 billion pages per day

Here's some more context for this. It's apparently from a Google Blog post on energy sustainability...

An update on our carbon footprint and sustainability efforts
Google Europe Blog
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
[googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com...]

The Internet continues to see explosive growth: we’ve found over 30 trillion unique URLs on the web, up from 1 trillion in 2008. Our servers index 20 billion pages a day, receive 100 billion search queries a month, and support 425 million Gmail users—among many other services....

The figures are astonishing. I remember when there was debate going on about whether Google had managed to index 8-billion pages total.

[Zivush]

20 billion pages a day?
Every year it becomes harder to make a site stands out from the crowd.
The competition is tough and I think domain age, authority, quality and uniqueness are going to play a great role in the game.

[Martin Ice Web]

I know it this belongs not to this chapter but I don´t won´t to start a new threat.
I was reading the old panda discussion and there was always the talking of many outbound links can hurt our
site because it looks like a link farm.

So due to server space I place a large amount of PDF Files to my local server and going to fetch them via DYNDNS. But I have to make a work around through another domain, because my provider does not allow external _urls_readfiles in php.
So about 9.000 links are going to another domain to one redirect file, that now fetches the PDF.
I do that with two domains ( different content ) but both are badly hurt. The links have rel=nofollow.

Could google the the links as bad?

Thanx for our reply.

[IanTurner]

I don't think that having the PDFs on another domain would be an issue - especially if it was a subdomain of the original domain, this is done by many large companies to improve performance of the site.

If your local server delivers the PDFs slowly there might be an issue with the ranking of the documents themselves which could be improved by putting them on a faster connection.

Why do you have a nofollow on the links? If you know the PDF content is good then there is no reason to have the nofollow in the links.

[Martin Ice Web]

Hi Ian,

no the redirect file is not on a subdomain but onanother hoster ( IP ) and it is referring through DYNDNS to a local changing IP.
I think to link with 9000 links to another domain even if it is a download link could hurt the domain?
THANX

[SnowMan68]

We saw a 50% increase in our Google referrals to a heavily panda'd site yesterday. It has been hit by multiple rounds of Panda and overall has lost 90% of its google traffic since Feb 2011. Has anyone else noticed a bump to a Panda'd site on Sept 14?

[aok88]

Yes, us too. One site of ours got nailed on the very first Panda, and yesterday was one,of the best days in a long time, increased traffic and solid conversions. Not sure it is Panda related though.

[ohno]

Best conversions day in a while yesterday here too, one of our sites that has been dead for weeks came back to life this morning too. Far too early to tell if this is coincidence or related to any updates. Traffic is actually down for us but it seems better quality which is what matters. Can't see any big changes in the SERP's mind.

[Martin Ice Web]

Snowman68, 50% from which Point? From Prepandalized or from Pandalized?

[SnowMan68]

50 percent up from the bottom, after the panda!

[Martin Ice Web]

That means you now have only -85% panda loss? How many google hits did you have pre panda?

[Sand]

I have a site that recovered from Panda on 8/20. Yesterday was the best day since the recovery, which is unusual, since normally my site peaks on Monday and then trails off over the course of the week.

It could be just that the site is slowly becoming eligible for more search terms as time goes on, or it could be that maybe they ran another refresh that happened to help me out? Not sure. But it's interesting other people with Panda histories were seeing benefits this week.

[SnowMan68]

This site avg'd 1200-1500/ day.

[wingslevel]

I think there may have been a panda refresh this week. The swings that I have seen are very similar to patterns that came around prior refreshes...

[Martin Ice Web]

wingslevel, I think that too, but it already started last friday and i think it is not over jet.

[muzza64]

Panda hit site - no change.

Conversions from all sources were a disaster yesterday, continuing today with the exception, ironically, of Google which our best converting source today.

[ohno]

Signs of updates for us is usally foreign traffic, that has been going for well over a week now. I can't remember it ever going on this long. Google not happy & rolling back?

[crobb305]

I have been watching a couple of sites bounce in and out, up and down, for about a week. Most obvious to me, is the continuing proliferation of press releases in the financial sector. Last week, for a competitive phrase, I reported 25% of the top 100, today about 28% (especially page 5+). This includes press releases and Yahoo News. Once you factor in the Youtube videos, we're over 35%. The press releases and Youtube videos are designed to send traffic to websites that aren't ranking well at all. They are supported by some spammy backlinks. I don't understand Google's motive for pushing this crap to the top, in exchange for the established websites that were there before (other than to push people directly to Google's own financial offerings). It's total junk, and they know it.

[topstar]

Thursday showed some hope but now down again. Are there two or more sets of results that are being tested or is this the usual dancing?

[Wilburforce]

The results for my two-word key phrase look like Google has discarded almost every page that doesn't have one or both words (or a weak synonym for at least one of them) in (preferably) the domain name or (at least) the URL.

This takes clear precedence over content or authority (a lot of the sites in the top 50 have neither).

I can't think this is permanent. If you want to buy a widget you might as well just enter widgetpurchase.com in the address bar yourself. If you can't find what you want there, go to obtaingadget.net. As a last resort, thingshop/widgets.co.uk.

[Wilburforce]

Sorry, the last one doesn't work. Try thingshop.co.uk/widgets.html

[Sand]

Are there two or more sets of results that are being tested or is this the usual dancing?

It looks that way. For a couple hours yesterday afternoon, I was hitting a data center(s?) that didn't have anything I'd published in the last week in the index. The content in question was indexed previously.

Fast forward a couple hours, and the results looked up to date again. I had the suspicion that they were maybe testing a week old historical result set with a new one. Or who knows, maybe they just had some technical troubles and did what they had to keep things running.

[Splugged]

My site is jumping up and down like hell, right now.
Anyone is experiencing that?

[Sand]

Yup. Googlebot taken up trampolining, apparently. Weird morning.

[netmeg]

Mozcast reporting a lot of turbulence yesterday, if you believe in such things.