Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2013

[petehall]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...]

Not just location screwing things up... all web browsers are now using your history to distort results, even with Web History switched off. Only way to check the real results now is Chrome Incognito.

That and the location issues are really screwing things up. If I type in weather, G gives me weather for Windmill Hill, UK... I don't even know where that is. I looked and its 200 miles away at the other end of the UK!

[edited by: tedster at 2:08 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2013]

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

It's interesting to me the difference in our understanding of the patent / how it works and also the difference in our rankings. I'm not experiencing a 70+ page drop at all.

Makes me wonder if there's any correlation?

[Wilburforce]

Makes me wonder if there's any correlation?

Which makes it even more clear that you are not a statistician.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Which makes it even more clear that you are not a statistician.

Yup, I just make sites rank ;)

[Dymero]

I'm making my way through the patent; been skipping around a bit, so I'm sure that'll do me no good.

But...

[0213] indicates that spam documents have between 100 and 1000 related phrases. If you have that many related phrases to the primary keyword, isn't it likely the article is overbroad, anyway, and should be pared down a bit or split into sub-articles?

Even if it were not spam, it seems to me that any search engine would have trouble identifying exactly what it is the article is about, so it wouldn't rank well for anything.

[Martin Ice Web]

Knock! Knock!

who is it?

Many new stupid, non relvant, spammy pages!

AH! Itīs an quality update!

It's interesting to me the difference in our understanding of the patent / how it works and also the difference in our rankings. I'm not experiencing a 70+ page drop at all.

I guess even google poeple donīt know their patents at all and donīt use them. These patents are years old and should be guilty before panda/penguin and did not affect serps in this stupid way.

[Wilburforce]

AH! Itīs an quality update!

My Home page has moved from page 75 to page 5 for Key Term (and has returned to #1 for geographical searches, e.g. Key Term County and Key Term NearestCity).

Something must have changed (again!), but doesn't reduce my pessimism about the future of Google organic results as a marketing tool.

[Martin Ice Web]

My Home page has moved from page 75 to page 5 for Key Term

When was it moved to #75?
Did you sit and wait or did you do some changes?

[sam1450]

I have been watching the replies and the effective Google has been having on everyone very closely. If the general consensus is that Google SEO is now beginning the decline as a marketing tool - will we now see a greater emphasis on paid platforms?

My understanding is this will be the case - however, the bigger question is, how long have we got until SEO can no longer give us the ROI that we have all enjoyed to date?

[Wilburforce]

When was it moved to #75?

From page 4 to page 46 on 7 February, and from page 46 to page 73 on 18 February.

Did you sit and wait or did you do some changes?

I didn't make any changes to main page content, but implemented a site-wide menu change (from css to js) on 14 Feb. My Home page - the one that dropped - was spidered on 18 Feb (so that might have made a difference), but another page that has remained at #1 for its key phrase throughout the period was spidered on 17 Feb with no effect.

The js is disallowed in robots.txt, so search engines now only see the breadcrumb menu.

I did this to address two concerns:

1. To clarify site hierarchy for search engines;
2. To reduce the number of internal links;

In general, Google has appeared to be relatively tolerant of menus (and it has made no difference to other engines), so I doubt that this accounts for the movements.

[backdraft7]

Well, today I started doing my monthly ranking checks and I discovered in the past 30 days I have lost position on DOZENS of keyphrases. A quick check of the sites who have usurped mine reveal egregious foreign scraper sites using MY images and nonsense text ranking (same site) in the #2 and #3 positions. Mine is at #5. I quickly filed a DMCA to have the pages removed, but I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like no matter what I do, Google's apparent incompetence will guarantee we fail no matter what we do to be good web citizens and provide quality content.

Google's QUALITY detector DOES NOT WORK. I'm sure all of you can agree with that. This is ridiculous and infuriating.

[Wilburforce]

Google's QUALITY detector DOES NOT WORK.

Seconded!

[SEchecker]

Rofl: A simple hardware related blog outranks one of our product brand websites and also outranks our corporate site for that our specific product. The blog topic about our product has 3 comments all in all (maybe 200 words).

This isn’t right at all.. but funny to realize G canīt be taken serious any more...

[Convergence]

Starting to think that the Google's daily updates are replacing the likes of the monthly Pandalization.

Traffic has been steadily climbing since the 16th - peaked on the 18th. Started dropping on the 19th - bottomed out on the 23rd. Spiked on the 24th. Dropped on the 25th. Spiked on the 26th. Dropped heavily on the 27th. Today "appears" to be a normal low day.

These swings are in the 20% range. That's a lot for us...

[backdraft7]

If these results can be attributed to Google's AI, then it's still in it's infancy, well before the age of reason & common sense. Here's an except from the #2 ranked site for a specific term (that they throw in twice), just for your entertainment...try to guess the topic of the site...

Housman and is taken by Percy Dearmer famous and sought after book of altar of prayer book the Italian Catholic Blessed Sacrament. The image of intro is by Laurence a. Engraving Eastern Samoa as well as the ability to drink like a shot ofttimes considerably neglected traditional Catholic spirituality (BIG KEYWORD DROPPED IN HERE). Helping others enjoy collecting and reading these Eastern Samoa works well. Most definitions are taken from the dictionary Ecclesiantics hosted on transport. Often pleased sterling existence able to part the find with.

For those who are interested in trade and ane Yes I’m ane of these end also put the possibility to treat gems and to make water your indio style small group gathering at least self-funding.The purpose of this lens of the eye is to provide an introduction to the topic although unrivalled you hush up very very very tyro angstrom unit same image entropy and odds tips and hopefully a. And this is some glossary terms amp that can be used in this goal I hope Crataegus laevigata want (BIG KEYWORD DROPPED IN HERE)

It just floors me that this even ranks on Google.

[Jez123]

@backdraft, I have something pretty bad at the #1 spot in on of my SERPs. The most ridiculous pile I have ever seen google produce. And they have produced some!

[Panthro]

lol that's pretty bad

[Str82u]

@backdraft7 I see those all day and even those that aren't cloaking don't get penalized after reporting them. I stopped wasting my time on spam reports.

[ScubaAddict]

I am getting pretty frustrated with google SERPs. I have been doing a search for my content keyword. First result is the "Images for {my content}" - the first image is MY PHOTO that I have taken to illustrate MY ORIGINAL CONTENT. So I click on it and it takes me to the Google Lightbox - where they can right-click to steal my photo - OR ...GET THIS... OR - they can "Visit Page" - which when you click that, it takes them to a spam site that is using my image AND hot-linking it from my server!

Been this way for the last 2 weeks that I have been checking. I previously thought I was getting the referral from my image on google - but apparently not.

I got bitch slapped by the first Panda in Feb 2011, and a previously-thriving, 15 year old, free content site is now almost defunct. So it is fantastic to know that someone is benefiting from my hard work. GFY Google.

[backdraft7]

@Str82u - spam reports are useless, DMCA filings usually hold up under investigation and the offending results are usually removed.

BTW - it's Thursday and again only a trickle of traffic, that's why I have been calling Thursdays "Four visit Thursdays" - because there are no more than 4 visitors on my site at anyone time all day the past 20 or so Thursdays. Weird! ...and of course infuriating.

[RVSam]

Same here Backdraft7 and has been for years.

[Martin Ice Web]

@wilbur, i agree that changing the menue changed your rankings. Not in such a short time. But it is strange how a site can step von good to bad and back within 4 weeks without a change. If this is AI that tedster proclaims then i think that the AI does evalute sites on a "daily mood basis" ( and i mean it not as a joke )

[tedster]

I agree - something like "the daily mood" does seem to be going on. Automated statistical sampling, maybe?

I don't see the daily mood swings on the really big keywords I watch, by the way - not unless I look at the deeper pages.

< continued here: [webmasterworld.com...] >