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]

[breeks]

thudufushi I think if you go back to the thread you posted in an unclick
"Email notification of new replies" the emails will stop. Or mark them spam :)

[Andem]

@chalkywhite

>> We seem to have recoverd a little more from panda, each day is a record breaker traffic wise and still seems to be increasing

Amazing and congrats to you. I believe there are a few of us here on webmasterworld who can say the same thing. Which version of Panda were you affected by? With me, it was (I believe) 1.1.

[gyppo]

Up about 50% on a Pandalised site since 21st, seems like things have reverted back again for us today though.

Also seeing quite old caches of pages in SERPS I monitor, ranging from the 13th - 16th.

[chalkywhite]

@andem Hi, October the 16th 2011 was the day we got hit ( believe, that was 2.0 ), however, adsense and site interactivity has died from this iteration, really strange.

[Jez123]

Seeing quite bad (further) drops for my penguin affected site this morning. In fact, seeing a large shake up of SERPs all round.

[Jez123]

I see a site rising up my SERP that really does turn SEO on its head. It's so bad. Very slow loading, spammy titles, grammatical errors everywhere. Have you got to have a crap website to succeed in google these days?

[Wilburforce]

(further) drops for my penguin affected site this morning

Mine too.

I can only see two likely reasons:

1. New unsolicted (and for the most part natural and benign) backlinks are having an effect;
2. Reiteration of historical data (i.e. whatever caused the initial drop is being reapplied in subsequent re-runs, even if the original "problem" has been removed).

Is anyone else seeing a Penguin (rather than Panda) effect in their SERPS?

[Jez123]

1. New unsolicted (and for the most part natural and benign) backlinks are having an effect;
2. Reiteration of historical data (i.e. whatever caused the initial drop is being reapplied in subsequent re-runs, even if the original "problem" has been removed).

Or it's just shaking up prior to updating perhaps? I am seeing some longer tail stuff still stable at the moment. However, I don't actually care. Google cannot affect me any further. Do your worst google. What will you do? Remove my remaining 70 clicks per day? I am pretty much done. I have been trussed up, the stuffing has been inserted and just waiting for the seasoning to be applied and the oven to reach temperature. Bring it on.

[claaarky]

Yep, shake up here too. Lots of gains from Panda still holding but only on lower traffic terms so, whatever this is, I'd say it started on the high traffic phrases and is working its' way down.

Or it's link related......all the phrases I've dropped for are ones I've built links for in the past (although I haven't actively gone out to get links for months).

Yesterday I saw a massive increase in direct traffic as well, three times what I normally see on a Thursday. Very odd.

[Wilburforce]

longer tail stuff still stable at the moment

Today I'm down on e.g. <widget service nearest-city> and <widget service local-town>, which were previously OK.

There are also what look like more site-wide effects on a wide range of expressions (which are still at #1 in e.g. Bing results, but have dropped to the bottom of page 1 or lower in Google).

It's hard to see what the issue is, but it is certainly some kind of negative scoring: the pages the expressions point to meet Google's guidelines exactly, are highly relevant, provide comprehensive descriptions of the topic, and Google agreed with that until now. There is nothing wrong with the content, and in terms of all the things Panda and Penguin have set out to purge, they are whiter than white.

[graemej]

Jez123
I agree ,"I don't actually care. Google cannot affect me any further."you need a crappy site to please google now.
I see sites in the serps with no keyword or anything in the domain name,they are just interested to confuse seo and they don't really care about the so called viewer experience
either ,that's just baloney.

[Wilburforce]

Or it's link related

I strongly suspect that it is. I think some subjects (specifically some of those my website covers) are not synonym-friendly. If a chemistry site has a page on chlorine, no-one is going to linb to it with "see this page on bleach" or "look here for toilet cleaner".

Google's war on unnatural links seeks a variety of backlink terms, but for some subjects that returns lower quality and less relevance.

Short of disavowing every perfectly legitimate backlink, I don't see a solution to this.

[petehall]

Wow, my UK results are different today. Long tail seems fine, this is affecting 1-2 keyword searches.

Something doesn't look right to me...

[Jez123]

What is google doing? They are becoming a joke! #1 in quite a difficult (but low traffic) SERP that I am involved with is a spammy 2 page (3 if you inclue the "Hello World" wordpress template blog post) site. One page is spammy keyword rich page and the other is a contact page. This is the title of the main page

Blue Widgets Blue WidgetsBlue Widgets - High quality Blue Widget for your loved ones

(note the lack of space between Blue WidgetBlue Widget).

It has no links whatsoever that I can find and it's an affiliate for Amazon. Need I say more? Absolute TOSH! WTH has happened to Google?

Perhaps if Bing spent more time doing its own thing instead of just following google like a puppy people might actually start to use it.

[rubinetto]

claaarky,
Thursday I saw on one of my sites (Penguinized) a massive increase in direct traffic as well, very unusual.

The same site has dropped in all keywords with many (old) backlinks and I suspect too that it's link related.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

What is google doing? They are becoming a joke!

I am finding more and more that I am really struggling to find the information that I am looking for in Google. Like you I would like to know what is going on because progress it ain't!

[petehall]

I'm seeing some shifting going on in the UK... it's changing by the hour, literally. As ever some verticals remain unchanged and other fluctuate wildly.

Actually, I remember this happening around this time last year...

[nethead]

One of our original penguin hit sites (April 2012) has been hit again. I was under the impressions this was going to be a panda update but looks like penguinized sites are being targeted again.

[HuskyPup]

What an utter load of garbage!

Scraper sites now rule in my niche plus houzz has been promoted to nearly every #1 position for thousands of keyword terms ... Isn't it amazing how G's next door neighbour with millions of Dollars in funding have taken over my widget SERPs?

[nomis5]

For my niche the SERPS over the last two days are showing only the big names in the top eight. G has become so lazy that they are just promoting big names regardless of content or user experience. On Bing everything appears normal which is a sign that G is definitely churning their SERPS.

But one niche site I've got is showing a massive increase in the SERPS, I've no idea why. Perplexing.

[diberry]

I'm not sure today is for real. It looks like they've rolled back to a few weeks ago or something.

[Wilburforce]

It looks like they've rolled back to a few weeks ago or something.

In my case - my Home page has completely disappeared (i.e. not in the top 500 results) for key two-word term - it looks more like last April.

The amount of junk in the first two pages looks that way too.

[petehall]

I'm not sure today is for real. It looks like they've rolled back to a few weeks ago or something.

It looks that way to me too. Perhaps There's been some sort of error during the final stages of the update and we're now back in time...

Having said this, certain aspects look quite different.

[nomis5]

The fluctuations in the SERPS for me are massive, up and down. Do nothing, wait a week and see if the crap they have rolled out sticks.

[paparoysan]

my 8 year old site is local travel guide (500 blog posts,1500 images in gallery, 120 videos,plus 100 local info pages) - all unique.

the site was #1 ranking for years.

it is now #4 or #5 in serps.

tripadvisor.com, tripadvisor.co.uk, wikipedia and wikitravel are at the top of serps.

lost about 20% traffic.

depresive :/

[petehall]

I can't really believe what I'm seeing, which leads me to believe this is temporary. I haven't seen activity like this since the start of last year, and I remember junk sites doing really well for a while before being banished.... I think this is yet to come.

I see a site at number 1 position for a really competitive two-word term which has hundreds of pages of copied / duplicate content where only a single line of text changes on each page.

There is no way that site can sustain it's position for long... I'm sure they're cracking open the champagne now, however I'm pretty confident the hangover is going to be bad!

[Jez123]

Has anyone got any theories why Penguin hit sites have been further affected?

[rubinetto]

Something interesting happen to me...

I have a youtube channel of page rank 3 (one year old) not monetized (someone else ID and email), and I decided to connect it through Google Analytics to the Penguinized site (my ID and email) I created for.

After about a week I notice the youtube channel page rank become n/a?!

I thought something temporary was going on but after a month I decided to disconnect from Google Analytics the two and you know what? Youtube page rank 3 came back after about a week!

Coincidence?
Is it possible that the bad reputation of my penguinized site (or me!) can affect the page rank of an officially connected youtube channel?

[seo_noob]

Theres a lot of chatter about Google Zebra Update on the internet. Is it real or is it a joke?

[SevenCubed]

Google algo rollouts are not born with a name. They get their names when some kind of a major update was rolled out that affects sites in ways not seen before. Thereby the new beast gets noticed in communities like this. When there is enough consensus reached that something new is happening (or google talking heads confirm it) the community at large begin a sort of unofficial naming rights competition. Eventually a name sticks.

Has to be a joke because there hasn't been enough chatter about some big variation of something we haven't seen before?