Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2013

[Bewenched]

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

I'm seeing our old zombie traffic since the end of the year. So we'll have a slow week, then like clockwork things will be back to normal next week or so.

[edited by: tedster at 2:11 pm (utc) on Jan 9, 2013]

[spreporter]

Happy new year guys and don't give up. If you lost a site start a new one. It is never too late. If its unique content with just a couple of good links it wont take you more than a few months to be at the first page, believe me!

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I think I will just concede. :(

[Jez123]

Happy new year guys and don't give up. If you lost a site start a new one. It is never too late. If its unique content with just a couple of good links it wont take you more than a few months to be at the first page, believe me!

I have so far replaced my penguin hit site with 2 micro niche sites (I need another 2 more to cover all the niches). Both are just about on page 1 (like at #10) for their main phrases which is promising but long tail traffic is sadly lacking and I guess might grow given more time. Sales are slow from these new sites but everything helps. I have also started selling on ebay which has helped more than I thought it would. Even so, with these diverifications I don't know how much longer I can continue to trade. I just have to see what happens. Happy new year.

[jinxed]

Update yesterday? I'm seeing 40% gains on one site previously hit by Panda.

[Dymero]

@jinxed:

Is it a Panda recovery or bounce back from New Years Day?

Edit: Though, interestingly, we got visit numbers yesterday we haven't seen since November.

[superclown2]

I think I will just concede. :(

I won't. Having spent much of the Christmas/New Year period doing the same as usual, pushing out new websites and improving old ones, I am full of confidence that, once again, the lost business will not only be recovered but exceeded.

This business still beats working for a living.

[Jez123]

I am full of confidence that, once again, the lost business will not only be recovered but exceeded.

I too am optimistic that all will be OK. As long as I can hang on in there in the short term. Also, I feel that if I can do it and get it right that google will never be able to cause me as much damage ever again.

[indyank]

think there is a data refresh or update going on...

[diberry]

The New Year holiday makes it a little tricky to read stats, but I'm seeing improvements on my Pandalyzed/Penguinized site, starting on January 1. Google traffic has shot up about 10% or so (from where it's been for months, not just since Christmas), and WMT indicates that since Jan 1 the site's gaining ground in the SERPs. I'm up 20-100 positions on a lot of good keyphrases.

[GreenDog18]

My volume shot up once again. It has been a steady incline since Dec. 25th with a mahor bump yesterday.

[Panthro]

Here's a pretty strange result I thought - [i45.tinypic.com...]

[Wilburforce]

My traffic between Christmas and New Year is a long way down, but the effect is not limited to Google.

The drop in previous years has been less marked.

[Bewenched]

Something is shifting, even though it's typically slow the first part of january... it's unusually slow right now.

Our e-commerce usually sees decent traffic just after Christmas because people get $$ during the holidays, but either everyone's grandma was stingy this year or theire's a shake up with google.

[System]

The following 18 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4533352.htm [webmasterworld.com]
12:04 pm on Jan 4, 2013 (PST -8)

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: I've moved a bunch of off-topic discussion to another thread...

The folly of depending on free traffic from Google
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4533352.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Some posts were cut out because they were getting personal, and, as such, would be off-topic for any discussion on WebmasterWorld.

Let's please confine discussion on this thread to observations about January serp changes.

[simplesimon]

I just checked a money SERP that has been relatively stable for a long time and today it's populated by 80% new players. My site was kicked down to page two a few months ago. Still there, but now many of my long time pals are joining me.

[Jez123]

@simplesimon, the same thing has happened in my SERP. Only 2 of my old enemies remain the rest are all new. One a spammer that google did well to keep out of the front page SERPs for years, it now loves. This was not so recent though and has beeen changing faster in the latter part of the year.

[superclown2]

Still no changes I can see here in the UK in the results I've looked at.

[Convergence]

Appears whatever has been in the works since 3 January has come to a head.

Guess we are stuck where we are until the next "whatever"...

[Jez123]

I don't think I noticed anything different Convergance. What are you seeing? I'm in UK and usually notice anything changing

[Sand]

@Convergence,
I'm seeing a fairly significant traffic shift on one site today, but I don't have a full year of historical data on this particular site. I'm not sure if it's something seasonal or algorithmic...

[Convergence]

Started seeing a drop in traffic across websites we monitor and reports from other webmasters we know personally - this was on 3rd of January and 4th of January (US sites). Spidering from the Googlebot was minimal from end of December to the 3rd of January where it became heavy again (4-5 times the number of daily pages at the end of December).

Interestingly enough, no noticeable movement in the SERPs from 3rd January to 6th of January - but yesterday there was heavy activity.

Today is hard to judge regarding traffic as, so far, it appears to be a typical "Tuesday". But daily traffic is definitely down overall since the 3rd...

[Splugged]

If someone can remember my past observation about this strange "effect", I'm having today "hourly rushes".

As for now (from 08:00 PM to 09:00 PM local time) I have a typical "pre-penguin" traffic (1 hit per minute) from G.

Before (from 07:00 to 08:00 PM) I had few visits from G.

I will check in two days my GWT to see impressions stats...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I wish I could find the post but I reported similar traffic surges based on time of day years ago, it had a ripsaw effect on my charts and watching my log files in real time was quite entertaining and EXTREMELY predictable in its randomness.

Here's one post from 2010 that I mentioned time of day changes in Splugged but there was another a year before that I believe - [webmasterworld.com...]

Tedster called it "day-parting".

[seoskunk]

Tedster called it "day-parting"

Cool I like that. Party all day like Penguin never happened, by the night your too knackered to care

[newsnshop]

Till yesterday everything was fine but today suddenly there is drop in 90% keywords and not a small drop but keywords whose ranking was 5-10 are not even in first 100.

What update is this can;t understand Panda , Penguin or some other. I will never accept 2013 gift like this from Google.

[edited by: tedster at 2:10 pm (utc) on Jan 9, 2013]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[louieramos]

Google Australia search results are all over the places, some are changing every 10 mins, I am seeing a lot of results from the same domain (one instance the whole page 2 for that particular keyword) and some sites shows up then gone then shows up again. Must be some major shakeup going to happen soon. If I am to guess, the Penguin is back

[Jez123]

I see lots of switching around in UK today (and yesterday) too.

[kheadley]

I am not seeing any change on multiple accounts today in the UK. Very quiet, possibly calm before the storm?