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]

[GreenDog18]

My traffic is a roller coaster ride right now. For the month so far I am up 100% my normal traffic. Yesterday I was down about 40% of this months traffic. Today I had my best two hours ever in the morning time and it is holding strong. BIG SWINGS!

[Klebec]

It seems like any of my keywords that have a higher concentration of exact anchors pointing to them are effected the most. Also, any pages that have a higher ratio of links to them than other money pages are being hurt. What fun! Traffic down 25-30%. Might be a penguin refresh...

[Sand]

My traffic is down the tubes today. I don't see any big SERP fluctuations, though. Maybe it's on account of the east coast snow? No idea. Grasping at straws.

[DiptaM]

Seeing the same for a couple of our clients... A bit of a jig earlier on this week and then completely disappeared/massively down today. This has never happened to us before... Trying to figure it as fast as possible, obviously!

[Jez123]

Who is holding their breath right now?

[aboshakeeb]

One of my sites got 25% increase , all new traffic ONLY from ( Powered by Google )'s search engines , and it is a lot of engines . !

[blacks]

my site is banned today, several hours ago.
what to do? I write now recons.request, and waiting. But in future make throught WMT "Tell Google when you move your site to a new domain. Guidelines for moving your site." or it not help?

bad day.

[HuskyPup]

@blacks

Banned, why do you write that?

I've never had a problem with moving a site to a new domain so long as it is done correctly. You have 301'd the old domain to the new or pointed the old name at the new one on your registrar's control panel?

[rzaweb]

50% traffic increase so far.

[kellyman]

Over the last 4 weeks my traffic was up 95% the Wednesday many keywords dropped like a stone, many recovered 48 Later, but still looks like the home page got hit as all inner pages returned to where they were

Strange needs more analysis the only thing I can think of is a anchor % target of some sort, seems strange had some really strong gains over the last few months, and then this Google givith and then Google take away,

However not a total wipe out just some strong keywords, lost positions, ill just keep going

[netmeg]

One of my sites is showing in the first TWELVE positions for one of its primary search phrases. I even had IncrediBILL check since he's across the country from me. I bet that won't last, but I sure have never seen it before.

[Sand]

Traffic still down starting yesterday. Curious to see if it holds -- I've been seeing the Friday - Sunday changeup sporadically over the last few months, before normalcy returns on Monday. Might be when they run big tests? Who knows.

[graemej]

i am starting to think that google is changing regularly so that their is some inconsistency in the serps that they can't be pinned down to a specific criteria or ranking formula - which in turn will encourage most to buy their ads to try to maintain profitability.

[blacks]

@HuskyPup

site:domain.com no results for my domain.

what to do better? moved 301 and throught WMT? or?

[spreporter]

@graemej No that's not the case I monitor results on many search terms mostly 1 word that they stuck one year now.

[Robert Charlton]

One of my sites is showing in the first TWELVE positions for one of its primary search phrases

netmeg - What's your number of results per page setting?... the default 10-results per page, or 100?

[netmeg]

10.

It's already down to 10 from 12 (the first two on the second page) I probly shouldn't have said anything, ork ork.

[onebuyone]

G. Analytics is reporting +/- 5% traffic every hour(compared to last weeks), looks like some kind of A/B testing

what else could it be?

[flanok]

I have a small site that has dropped totally out of top 100 rankings.
When I did a site: command to see if there were any issues, I found 25% of the listed pages were duplicated with exactly same url. (I have checked over and over again).

I have never seen the same page listed more than once before directly under each other.

Clearly if Google is seeing these as different pages, this would explain the loss of rankings, but when I click on one of the urls, both urls are highlighted as clicked on, confirming these are identical urls but listed as duplicate.

Clearly there are changes or issues within the index

[Andem]

>> looks like some kind of A/B testing

I've also been seeing two separate sets of results over the day! It certainly does look like some A/B testing.

[nomis5]

i am starting to think that google is changing regularly so that their is some inconsistency in the serps that they can't be pinned down to a specific criteria or ranking formula

100% agreed. The reasons why are probably many and not clear. Certainly by varying the SERPS randomly they have applied a massive blow to anyone practising SEO and trying to sell their services to website owners.

Has the SEO company improved / damaged your ratings? At present no one can say with any reasonable certainty.

[netmeg]

When I did a site: command to see if there were any issues, I found 25% of the listed pages were duplicated with exactly same url.

But if you click on them do they go to the right page? I have the same thing on many of my sites, and it's just the way Google chooses to display my breadcrumbs.

[graemej]

"Has the SEO company improved / damaged your ratings? At present no one can say with any reasonable certainty. "

After a recess of some time I started to backlink ,just 350 backlinks with a service (no names mentioned ) and in the next 2 days a drop of 30 places from 38 to 68 ,that is according to serfox tracking!
Previous to this the site was stable in the serps for 2 months

I used 4 keywords for the anchor text and they all dropped in the serps within 2 days of each other.

[darco]

Can anybody give any name to this update? i lost all of my ranking

[Meenakshi Mosaic]

I noticed that one of the important keyword dropped from 14 to 26. on the other side, 2nd important keyword is dropped from 45 to not in 100.

Can someone help?

[kheadley]

Google has released a blog post on the "Above the Fold" update, [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk...]

Could be what is causing the most recent update.

[muzza64]

Jheadley, that blog post is a year old!

Rustybrick posted a couple of days back - Google say there has been NO update of any sort.

[RedCardinal]

That blog post is from 2012...

[netmeg]

Well remember - over 500 changes a year. That's more than one a day.

[jebernier]

< moved from another location >

Just saw a huge drop in my keyword rankings in Google Organic last week (1/14/13 - 1/20/13)

Keywords Ranked #1 went from 117 to 65
Keywords ranked in Top 10 results went from 331 to 209

What happened? Was there an update last week?

I've never seen my keyword rankings fall this dramatically.

Regards,

John
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:14 pm (utc) on Jan 21, 2013]