Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2013

[gyppo]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...]

I'm seeing daily switching between 2-3 datasets across around 600 keywords. Seeing roughly 10-20 keywords swapping in & out of positions.

[edited by: tedster at 2:47 pm (utc) on Mar 1, 2013]

[Str82u]

@foxhunter All is normal here, might be a little light, EST users are just going to lunch though.

[ScubaAddict]

Is anyone seeing movement on forum sites?

I run a forum site and it hasn't seen any movement.

I have 3 sites that almost fully recovered on Jan 22nd 2013 from Panda 1 (Feb 2011). Those 3 sites lost their ranking last night to exactly the same ranking to pre-(Jan 22)-panda. Barely touched those sites - only thing I have done is added a few pages rich with content.

U.S. content based sites.

[getcooking]

We had a large jump in keyword positions overnight but site traffic today suggests otherwise. In fact, it's turning out to be a fairly poor Friday traffic-wise. Google is still spidering HEAVILY though which in the past seems to shut off once Panda starts.

One interesting thing I've detected about the most recent spidering though, it seems to be putting in overtime checking and rechecking urls that I am now convinced were a reason for our Panda demotion (some canonical issues due to a programming glitch). Wonder if that's a clue as to which additional pages I should be looking at for some Panda relief. Has anyone else noticed something like this? Certain parts of a site being spidered extra heavily (and those parts possibly being the reason for a Panda hit?)

[Convergence]

@getcooking

Yes, traffic was very heavy yesterday. Today is a "fairly poor Friday traffic-wise", as well. The Google IS spidering us heavy today.

For us they are hammering old 404 pages. Also, we added a new merchant with some 20K products and they are very active on those pages. Not much activity on other established product pages....

[kenroar]

I saw a 30% increase in traffic on March 6 and that has held up to this point. I assume the increase was because of one of the many algorithm changes they do and not related to Panda. I actually expected to have heard that the Panda update occurred that day. Today I am seeing almost the exact same numbers as last Friday. The curve is pretty close to last week thus far.

[Wilburforce]

Heard the BBC got slapped with an unnatural links notice

The idea that "even big brands get penalised" (so there is nothing wrong with what Google are doing) is an interesting way to spin this story.

All the commentary refers back to a single post that may well be genuine, but I can't yet find any external verification.

If it is as reported, then it isn't a sign of Google's equanimity: it is proof that their penalty crusade is ill-conceived.

[foxhunter]

So the takeaway that I am getting today is that no one really knows what is going on. Some SEO sites are saying they "think" Panda hit today, based mostly on what people like us are saying in these forums.

While it is true that some people are reporting declines (and increases) don't these updates usually cause a major influx of people reporting? The testimonials seem scattered at best.

So did it happen or not?

[robert76]

I saw a 30% increase in traffic on March 6 and that has held up to this point.

Exactly same increase on March 6 here but dropped back down to where it was on March 12. Panda 1.0 ecom site US.

[mihomes]

You have to remember that not all sites are affected as they have done in the past. This is why some people are hit and others are not. It does make sense to do 'groups' and not everything at once, but this also gives Google some leeway as well. Whatever the % even if it is 2% Google can turn around and say it was a small amount affected when in all reality 2% is a crap load considering the vast amount of sites on the web today.

[kenroar]

You hire journalists from Contently paying $3000 - $4000 per white paper they research and write for you to make sure users and Google are happy.

As far as hiring journalists to write articles for your website, the only concern would be if they are giving you articles they've already submitted to other websites. Otherwise, if your articles are definitely unique, then I think you need to look elsewhere for the problem. The biggest penalty I paid with the January 2011 Panda update was the number of ads I had above the fold. Too much content was pushed below the fold. Although I had followed all the Adsense guidelines, they are a different department than the search team - and they don't talk with each other. 100 visitors a day sounds way too low to make up for the expense you have. Something isn't right to begin with. I have a website that gets about 100 daily visitors and I haven't made any changes to it for about 4 years. It is a hobby website. You should be getting much more than 100 visitors for paid content.

With one of my sites that has submitted content, I don't pay anyone for any of it. I was getting 90,000 pageviews a day before the Panda updates and now I'm getting about 35,000 pageviews. I have long ago corrected the ad issue and am still going through the site to experiment but I have come to the conclusion I will never recover from the updates. The reason for this is that I am still ranking #1 with a number of key words that relate directly to my content. Before the updates began I was also ranking high with keywords that didn't necessarily match the content of my site well.

[Lenny2]

+1 kenroar the loss of traffic + the better algos = less traffic

[gyppo]

Interesting data point that I'm seeing, huge multi-national site. They were hit by Panda at the same time as us.

Rebranded their Australian domain with a 301, they've been dominating the SERPS now for the last 3 months (with no changes & not been hit by Panda).

They've literally just rebranded their USA domain to the same effect, straight out of Panda & dominating the SERPS.

Makes me wonder that once you're hit by Panda there's in some cases very little you can do to get out of it?

[ErnestHemingway]

Amazing update.

I have lost all the traffic even those 20 visitors I was getting now its gone to 5 visitors a day.

Bounce Rate is 90% before it was 25% so the traffic I am getting is relevant.

[GreenDog18]

Hmmm... No movement at all in the vertical I keep an eye on. Thought for sure some of these sites I watch were going to go bye bye.

Could there be more to come?

[SerpsGuy]

guys cutts said friday or monday. mo change means monday will be the update. thats why no changes yet. appreciate this notice its the last time google will ever tell you about a panda update

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

What SerpsGuy says, and also note when Cutts said Fri or Mon he said if there wasn't a huge change on Fri after they said that's when it would "roll out" it may be due to the fact the integration is "smoother" and the changes might be less noticeable now than they have been previously or something to that effect.

[backdraft7]

SERPS are trending up, but paradoxically traffic and user interaction is still trending way down. How is THAT possible? G even reported a significant increase in traffic last week while at the same time three different analytics (including GA) indicate dramatic, progressive drops in traffic starting in early Jan. The only thing that is trending up, is bounce rate. Looks like more poorly targeted traffic.

[seoskunk]

Panda has gone off eating bamboo shoots be back on Monday!

[SerpsGuy]

Monday will be the update. I can tell you for sure that it has not hit yet. I got back all my rankings, and I am really hoping I dont get smacked down on Monday.

I said earlier that I requested reinclusion in webmaster tools. I got a message back saying I was not manually penalized for anything. However they did include this;

Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.

So while no manual action was taken, they are warning not to bug them about it because they make changes all the time. I hope you guys are tracking your rankings now because Monday could be your sites reckoning.

[SnowMan68]

Why Monday? How are you so certain?

[turbocharged]

The idea that "even big brands get penalised" (so there is nothing wrong with what Google are doing) is an interesting way to spin this story.

All the commentary refers back to a single post that may well be genuine, but I can't yet find any external verification.

If it is as reported, then it isn't a sign of Google's equanimity: it is proof that their penalty crusade is ill-conceived.

I would have to agree with Wilburforce. Even if the forum post was not a well orchestrated effort on Google's part, that coincides with Matt Cutts' comment at SMX that big brands are treated the same, most anyone else posting such a question in Google's forum would not get a response from a Google employee. This too can be taken as evidence that big brands get preferential treatment over others.

[mihomes]

I agree...I have no doubt that big brands have the same treatment as everyone else... lets remember that these are algorithms not humans going to each site and taking actions (for the most part), HOWEVER, we have heard of many big names who have been hit by this or that only to return to 'normal' in an extremely short amount of time. It only makes sense they have direct contact with someone at Google whereas the average person will NEVER get a response other than a copy/paste message.

I personally have a site which was removed from the search early in 2012. This site had been fine since 2004-2005'ish. There WMT message simply referred me to a guidelines page. After reading over the page and agreeing with everything on it I then began to try and figure out WHAT on the page I was suspected of doing. I could not and still cannot determine what they think I am violating. I have and always will be white hat and have looked at my site in the eyes of others, googles, and even asked other people and cannot remotely come up with anything that has been 'violated'. Numerous (probably 10 or so) reconsideration requests have been made PLEADING for someone to actually respond and tell me what they do not like or see as a problem. Guess what? Every time I am refused and every time I get the EXACT same response pointing me to the stupid guidelines page. Oh, and I can use the Google forums for more assistance... yeah freaking right... everyone and their mom knows you will get NO help at those forums as its a bunch of regular people with opinions that do not try and help at all... Google needs to INTERACT with us especially in cases where we are accused or directly affected by their actions so we in turn can take actions. As far as I know nobody can read minds yet so a simple human response to help people out would and could go a long way, BUT I guess you need be a big boy or have an article in the paper or media somewhere for them to respond.

[Lenny2]

I can attest to what Turbocharged has said. When the first Panda hit I lost 75% of our overall traffic, in one evening. I had 15 employees at the time working full time. I was desperate to find out what was going on... was it a mistake... would it "bounce back"... Should I keep my employees or let them go. Eventually over a 4 month period I let go of the employees as it became apparent as to what was happening. In the meantime I emailed / posted on their forum / asked Google employee friends of mine... and not a single shout out from Google as to what was happening. I ended up spending most of the business savings keeping employees for longer than needed in the hopes that "google would come to their senses..."

I'm not blaming Google. I don't have the notion that Google should be responsible for the well being of myself, my employees or my business decisions... and the whole affair is water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned... But, this talk that "brands" don't get preferential treatment... yet get responses from Google... is salt on the wound as far as I'm concerned.

As far as whether or not Panda has run yet... My guess is NO. Even though Rusty Brick is already calling it... I don't see enough movement on our end to claim it.

[mihomes]

Exactly... in the case I mentioned above the fact that a human has not told me what they see wrong after asking 10+ times to specifically tell me has in turn essentially cost me $40-50k for the year and will continue to do so as I am not listed any longer. I don't care who you are that is a decent amount of change to give up and makes it even more infuriating when your requests for specific come back with the same copy/paste response every time. I have other sites, markets, and income, but pardon me for being just a tad bitter lol!

[epmaniac]

I can attest to what Turbocharged has said. When the first Panda hit I lost 75% of our overall traffic, in one evening. I had 15 employees at the time working full time. I was desperate to find out what was going on... was it a mistake... would it "bounce back"... Should I keep my employees or let them go. Eventually over a 4 month period I let go of the employees as it became apparent as to what was happening. In the meantime I emailed / posted on their forum / asked Google employee friends of mine... and not a single shout out from Google as to what was happening. I ended up spending most of the business savings keeping employees for longer than needed in the hopes that "google would come to their senses..."

I'm not blaming Google. I don't have the notion that Google should be responsible for the well being of myself, my employees or my business decisions... and the whole affair is water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned... But, this talk that "brands" don't get preferential treatment... yet get responses from Google... is salt on the wound as far as I'm concerned.

As far as whether or not Panda has run yet... My guess is NO. Even though Rusty Brick is already calling it... I don't see enough movement on our end to claim it.

Same situation as mine, I had to shut down my office and let go around 25 plus people to move back to my home to run business.

[zeus]

I dont get it, when you look at all those recommendation from all the big gurus and then look at google serps it dont match up one bit. I have NEVER seen so bad results as the last 2 years, but now its even worse. So how can we take those recommendations serious as it obvious dont work at all, so where are the real info what google want. I really think we have to rethink it all, one thing is for sure, link is still very much king if not even more as before.

[simonmc]

So google slaps down the BBC and then gets a googler to look into it. This seems like a fair response from google. People the world over look at the bbc and they see fair play. They see unbiased. They see global reach. Well, this is what the people see. The computers on the other hand might see something else. So, put yourself in googles shoes, do you go head to head with the conscience of the free world or do you risk losing everything when people realize that google no longer presents the most relevant results.

What would you do in googles shoes?

[backdraft7]

Hey guys (epmaniac & Lenny2 in particular)I'm just curious, what type of site are you running that required 15 to 25 employees? Were these writers, seo experts, programmers and were you selling a product you make, re-selleing or running a purely adsense site? Like several others here, I really can't consider an MFA site a serious business. I suppose if you can make 100k+ /year doing it, but having all your eggs in Google's basket is a frightening prospect. Either way, I (we) feel your pain. Good Luck! It is St Patty's day after all.

[johnhh]

@backdraft7 we had 7 + subcontracted companies for design and big coding jobs. I was going to take on an extra 3 writers until the naughty Panda came along. Sales, warehouse manager, writers, tech guy for the server, etc. I even had a business mentor.

All gone now, gave them all 3-4 months notice, like @Lenny2 did.

Back to the updates ... BIG BIG crawl on our main site yesterday , I checked some SERPS currently +/- 3 places movements , normal flux.

[ScubaAddict]

@backdraft7 we had 7 + subcontracted companies for design and big coding jobs. I was going to take on an extra 3 writers until the naughty Panda came along. Sales, warehouse manager, writers, tech guy for the server, etc. I even had a business mentor.

All gone now, gave them all 3-4 months notice, like @Lenny2 did.

@johnhh, epmaniac & Lenny2 - Wow - what kind of blackhat garbage spam were you guys spewing onto the internet?