Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2012

[xcoder]

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

Today has just been a miserable day.

For us this whole week has been miserable.

Traffic numbers more or less unchanged but hardly any sales, online enquiries or phone calls...(except for loads of spam emails). The only sales we did get came from paid ads.... organic visitors all seem to be dead beats.

It is like someone or something is cheery picking all the buyers and sending our way only the crap. I wounder who it is...

Off to reducing our ad spend again... the till is simply empty!

[edited by: tedster at 4:05 pm (utc) on Nov 2, 2012]

[petehall]

I have woken up this morning to signs of a Panda update (UK).

Is anyone else seeing this?

[dirty_marra]

petehall - looks that way to me :(

[jinxed]

@petehall Yep, my guess is a big Panda update.

[SEchecker]

"Yep, my guess is a big Panda update."

That’s what G did confirm to Barry.... they didn’t say exactly when, but I think we are already in the process.

[SEchecker]

today (morning till now (CET) it seems the FLUX is gone and all is back to normal...

i noticed another G datacenter swich tho....

[menntarra 34]

@petehall
i don't see any signs of an update, despite the fact that i was affected by all latest pandas.
I mean last days were crazy, but today's traffic is just the same as yesterday.

[Martin Ice Web]

yes, it is a usuall lousy thursday. Traffic is quiet normal, but it is very bad targeted traffic. Conversions are near zero. Bounce is 90%.
Yesterday it was the opposite - bounce 10%. Maybe some sort of update but for sure they rolled it back because it produced to many good results and that is - we all know it - nothing goog wants.

[Splugged]

I can't understand G anymore, really.
Getting crazy. What they want?

Bha...

[MelissaLB]

Just wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone was in the same boat as us. We were expecting a lousy Thanksgiving Day due to last years stats. This year, we reached our # of transactions equal to last year at about 9AM (although the $ amount was only about 60%). Still, a VERY promising sign that this years Black Friday will be great for us.

BUT, the interesting part is, the sales are not coming from google anymore. In fact, we reached our last years # of conversions without one from Google organic (last year google provided 70% of our sales). The greater majority of them are coming from Google product listing ads which convert at about 2x the rate of the rest of our traffic, but have a lower $ value. We find that those who find us through product listing ads will only ever put 1 item in their cart.

Anyway, that's just my two bits. Happy Thanksgiving to America!

[backdraft7]

Google's goal seems to be a systematic top down sort, and monetization of all key phrases. That's what their AI is clearly doing. My logs can prove the non stop trimming of key phrases.

This trimming means customers are NOT finding what they need, but rather find ad filled pages (ka-ching!) - so throw that "better user experience" PR blather out the window.

They can't necessarily do it overnite (technologically they could), so they are dragging it out over a longer time period so it doesn't look evil. I think everyone here is wiser and can see G for what they are. Happy T -day.

[taberstruths]

Possible update in the works. It is hard to tell because of the holiday but many of my older articles are up over 100%. I am also seeing a spike in image search referrals but that might be holiday related.

[chalkywhite]

Sorry for being an ignoramous,im in the UK but get traffic from mainly the US, is today your national holiday or tommorow?

Thanks

Al

[Martin Ice Web]

We find that those who find us through product listing ads will only ever put 1 item in their cart.

We know this from earlier amazon sells. only one item and you must be the cheapest. With this product ad listings you attracxt only the price hunters. So we stopped it. Google heads intos the same direction.

[taberstruths]

@Chalkywhite Thanksgiving holiday is today and starts a 4 day weekend filled with way too much excessive shopping. :)

[gehrlekrona]

So, here's how they do it. When you search you get different suggestions which changes over time and nowadays it is more often that ever before since they changed the way they can pull up SERPs. Thay are learning what people "want" from what they do after clicking on a result and from that they change/update/trim their stored results. It's as simple as that. It gets trickier when people don't use their suggestions since they have to learn how to incorporate that and show "good" results but they will eventually make a new suggestion out of it if enough people use the same query. You have probably seen how they can "twist" your query to try to "match" yours and steer you away to their stored results, "did you mean..." or even rewrite it, haven't you?
Peoples intent then becomes GOOG's intent and they will steer you towards what makes them money. GOOG are now stupid and they will do anything to "take over" any type of business that makes them money and use your work to do it. Zombie traffic? Nothing but GOOG testing things even though it looks like they come from "Far-Far-Away land" so if you have some type of money making site you can be sure GOOG will take it over somehow and use other info sites content to lure people in. I have said it before and got censured, but how long will it take before they go into the adult business (if they haven't already!)?
As for the SERP right now it seems like they have settled me at another level of traffic which is very low. In Statcounters Search Engine Wars they only have 25% and heve been for quite a while with a slight upswing the last couple of days. Last weekend the traffic went up and like a fool you think "Ahh GOOG loves me again..." but as usual it only last 1 day or two. I used to be really upset, but not anymore. You can't keep on chasing your tail to please GOOG because there is no way without money that you can please them.

[backdraft7]

@gehrlekrona - as a test, post a spoof press release that claims you just received 10 million in VC, then watch your position skyrocket. Money talks, the rest walks.

BTW, an update MUST have just come through, one of my old, unmaintained project sites is seeing higher traffic and my established, well maintained sites is dropping. Typical for an med/large update.

[edited by: backdraft7 at 3:19 pm (utc) on Nov 22, 2012]

[HuskyPup]

post a spoof press release that claims you just received 10 million in VC

And in addition make sure your offices are next door to Google's and that all your users steal images and information from all over the Net!

[chalkywhite]

@taberstruths thanks. OT, I rmember your user account, you have posted on my sitebefore regarding being hit by panda, small world. Enjoy the long weekend.

[Splugged]

Another huge drop for several keywords.
Something is happening?

What the hell!

[Lame_Wolf]

Another huge drop for several keywords.
Something is happening?

I'm glad I am not the only one. And I am seeing some new sites on page one - some i've never spotted before.

[garyr_h]

I'm definitely seeing a change on some datacenters. Some of my keywords are WAY down, several pages. On others, they are where they have been the past week. Hopefully it's just in flux and the change won't roll over into all datacenters.

[viral]

I find it funny that just before Black Friday there is always a massive serp shakeup. Google are denying that anything happened on the weekend but have said Panda is coming. Mozcast went to 90degrees on Monday, the highest I have ever seen it and serpmetrics has posted that Google ( and Barry ;) )are full of it! Something happened on the weekend.

Yes Black Friday is coming and you guys who don't have a Google preferred (you can read that as spending lots in Google shopping) eCommerce site. Then yes you can expect very low levels of converting traffic this week.

It doesn't take Geniuses working at Google to work out that this is the biggest shopping time other than Christmas and the Serps needed to be aligned to give Google products and Google preferred shopping sites a boost this week and into the next. This is what was probably happening. That much data doesn't just shift over night.

I am lucky I don't actually sell physical products (anymore)so I don't get affected as badly as you guys. However nearly every year this happens and it amazes me that although it doesn't go under the radar it does not really get as much coverage as it should.

By the way Bing does it also.

[rustybrick]

How am I full of it. ;-) I just told you what Google told me. :)

I really doubt they will release a Panda update this weekend. If I had to guess, they will wait till I get on a plane, sometime this coming Wednesday.

[jinxed]

With one site I own, the G traffic is down 50% since yesterday morning.

[Lame_Wolf]

With one site I own, the G traffic is down 50% since yesterday morning.

Remember, it was Thanksgivng in the States yesterday.

[flanok]

My guess is experiments for the upcomming Panda.

I have lost big traffic yesterday and today (UK), but not going to change anything (not sure what to improve anyway) until I know Panda is here.

We know that Google Panda is about quality, but who's perception of quality are we talking about?

If they think that by putting the biggest websites in the world (ebay amazon youtube) at the top of all rankings suggests quality, then Google becomes a directory rather than a search engine that gives quality options.

They have lost their way and I blame Bing for not capatalising on it more.
I.e. Tell the world
Why are we a better search engine than Google? This is why.

If Google were in any other industry there would be an issue with a lack of competition and we webmasters would not have to have all our eggs in one basket.

[flatfile]

I find it funny that just before Black Friday there is always a massive serp shakeup.

Not trying to claim that Google is innocent here, but I bet that there is a massive change in the link graph during this period. I run a service that involves crawling some parts of the web, and I always notice changes in linking patterns before certain events.

[IanTurner]

Flatfile - do you find changes in linking patterns between weekends and weekdays (especially in new links?) and between school/college holiday periods against school/college 'working' times?

You could expect to get a higher input of social links at times when fewer people are working or at school.

[TypicalSurfer]

I find it funny that just before Black Friday there is always a massive serp shakeup.

All algorithmic changes go straight to the bottom line. There should not be any mystery in that regard.

[Shaddows]

All algorithmic changes go straight to the bottom line

Its a common theme, hard to disprove, but unlikely. Not least because you can't predict how an algo change will affect your bottom line.

Much more likely is that user intent changes for the holiday season. Different user intent means different SERPs. Nothing to see here, move along.