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]

[spreporter]

"FB fan page" a bit out of topic, but I have seen "FB fan pages" with hundreds of thousands of fans where the admin posts every minute a new article from his garbage website, and I wonder does this guy cares for any algorithmic updates or serps in Google, Bing , Yahoo ....?

[Martin Ice Web]

tabertruths, i am not to shure about that. To many fetched pages by one IP could mean your site does not provide thet search information/product?! Or it has not a good UE? I take this in account. Unfortunatelly g* thinks they provide the best search answers and that they bring the customer with one click to luck!

[taberstruths]

@martin, that could be for certain types of sites, but a social network, it shows that people are using and enjoying it.

@spreporter I have not seen G respond much in serps to FB fan page links to be honest. I have 53k earned fans. However it does bring traffic which is the purpose all along. Twitter retweets seem to effect serps much more.

[Sand]

Feeling like the Panda update is starting to roll out now.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Seeing youtube back in where I don't want to see youtube as a searcher after it went missing for a few days last week.

Also seeing alternating indexed page counts again, but the +/- days are farther apart starting the end of last week than they were over the previous 10 days or so.

[kenroar]

Wow - what kind of blackhat garbage spam were you guys spewing onto the internet?

They very well could have been spewing NO garbage spam. I was penalized for one reason - I had too many ads above the fold. I had a 65% drop in numbers. None of my content is spam. Never was, never will be.

[ckissi]

@Sand, I think panda updated itself at friday. Seeing no changes at all. At friday we lost about 20% of our google traffic.

[Sand]

Maybe it's just now hitting me, then. Seeing ~40% gains on a site that was hit last April, and has been steadily recovering since August. Started today about 10:00 AM EST.

[kenroar]

Seeing a 20% increase in traffic today since 8:00 am eastern time. I saw a 30% increase on March 6 with apparently one of their algorithm changes. Still have a long way to go to make up the complete loss since Panda first began. We were hit hard with the Pandas on June 8 and December 21. Using Analytics to compare dates, it looks like I've completely recovered from the penalty I got on December 21. Needless to say, I'm breathing a sigh of relief.

[BlueDanube]

Suspect Panda behind a 15-40 place drop on Sunday morning (GMT) across multiple pages of one site.

[Shepherd]

Seeing some very positive movement today for keywords that have not been in the top 100 since April 2012.

[arohan]

One of the keywords I monitor, a parked domain (pmd) has come out of nowhere to rank very high on pg2.

Also, EMD profiles on twitter are doing well.

This is very competitive keyword in an ultra competitive niche

[SnowMan68]

Seeing some very positive movement today for keywords that have not been in the top 100 since April 2012.

Does very positive mean to the first page?

[Panthro]

Let us know how long that parked EMD stays there, arohan.

[petehall]

Seeing very little movement on the UK sites I watch. The results I saw on Friday seem to be no more...

[arohan]

Will do Panthro. I suspect the filters are off at the moment and when this parked pmd disappears we may be close to the completion of the Panda rollout.

[Shepherd]

Does very positive mean to the first page?

Fluxing in and out on the first page for a couple of keywords.

[SnowMan68]

Fluxing in and out on the first page for a couple of keywords.

Nice, hopefully it will settle on the 1st page for you!

[backdraft7]

the only thing up is my bounce rate...non-interactive traffic between 10am an 6pm every day now...

[SEchecker]

@backdraft7


We was sitting in the same boat hole last year, but since 12 month 2012 all the odd phenomenon (zombies, high bounce, low conversations, half day (night) OFF & co) stopped. So here is hope for you... don’t give up! Especial this panda (+ pre-panda) we didn’t noticed NOTHING, there was no zombies, not datacenter switches, all became very stable...

[gadget26]

I also had zombies until December 2012. Traffic has been very "normal" since then. Traffic is relatively light, but conversion rate is decent and steady. Today, however, my bounce rate is through the roof again (bad) and conversion rate from goog organic listings is 0 (ZERO!). It's never been zero before. I hope the zombies aren't back!

[arohan]

Alright, the pmd parked domain has disappeared from the SERPs now. SERPs are still unsettled.

[backdraft7]

@SE - Thanks for the encouragement - things can turn on and off in an instant these days. My problems started in 2010 and have not stopped since. Big serp hits followed by moderate recovery followed by the same, over & over. I now tweak & pray for redemption at each iteration, but it's never realized. My fault I guess.

Lots of one page visits today. Zombies perhaps?

[edited by: backdraft7 at 9:59 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2013]

[mihomes]

Is anyone else still noticing blatant link networking going on with ranking sites. I'm talking a company/brand/what have you is putting keyword anchor links at the footer to their other sites and vice versa.

Wasn't this clearly stated as a no-no quite some time ago by Google? I'm still seeing this on nearly all the high rank sites in my niche(s). WTF?

[gyppo]

Is anyone else still noticing blatant link networking going on with ranking sites.

Yep, it's a double edged sword. The people doing it now are getting away with it, but for how long? But then by not doing anything you just have to sit & watch.

I could spend all day reporting this sort of stuff if I knew it did anything.

[mihomes]

I should add I see the same 'method' with single sites using sub-domain categories. They will have 10-20-whatever categories each with their own subdomain.domain.com and then list every category in the footer. Apparently G is treating these as separate sites? They are essentially building a link network within the actual domain and getting results for it.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

I now tweak & pray for redemption at each iteration, but it never arrives.

I'm not sure what "tweaks" you're making but have you thought about design?

I recently redesigned one and the "stickiness" (time on site + page views per visitor) as well as "conversions" went up by nearly 30% and after the redesign traffic went from near flat / declining slightly on a year over year basis to increasing by 10% or more on monthly average.

The design it had was fine for 5 years ago, but had become out of date compared to what people expect from what I would think a "high quality" site today should present and the design changes without any significant content changes had a huge impact on stickiness, conversions and to some extent on rankings based on the year over year increase when compared to "flat" or "negative" prior to the redesign.

[edited by: TheOptimizationIdiot at 9:55 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2013]

[mihomes]

gyppo - thank you lol - I was beginning to think I was the only one haha. I hear ya'... I am completely white-hat over here and it is infuriating to see blatant violations on other sites that have now passed me up or right with me.

[Leosghost]

but have you thought about design?

The design it had was fine for 5 years ago, but had become out of date compared to what people expect from what I would think a "high quality" site today should present

+1

[backdraft7]

@TOI - Ageed! Eye candy sells! so that's always an ongoing process when I add new content. Tweaked color schemes that promote buying, the whole nine yards. The real problem for me is that when traffic is right, the site still works great! Unfortunately bots, teens, and most mobile users are not buyers.