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]

[Shepherd]

the general public seems to keep buying into what Google is providiing

And that's that as they say...

As for the panda update (friday/monday as reported). Seems like they rolled something out briefly on monday and fairly quickly retracted it. nothing to back this up of course, just the way it felt yesterday with periods of heavy movement and then by late afternoon and into today the shifting seems to have stopped and results reverted back to those of late last week.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Snowman68, who ever made this stat has now clue of math. G+ stated itslef that since panda poeple do more searches. Why? Cause they can´t find things they search for. This now makes a new search on google and so on .... G+ blew up its on searches by not giving the poeple what they want. The overall searches are growing but only because of this. While bing + yahoo are steady g* seems to grow. But only because we do not promote bing + yahoo. Poeple don´t know them.
It´s the same problem google+ has, nobody knows it, everybody know facebook and uses facebook. Theres no chance for g+ to get to this point.

[SnowMan68]

As for the panda update (friday/monday as reported). Seems like they rolled something out briefly on monday and fairly quickly retracted it. nothing to back this up of course, just the way it felt yesterday with periods of heavy movement and then by late afternoon and into today the shifting seems to have stopped and results reverted back to those of late last week.

Saw the same thing. I also noticed this movement during the friday evening through saturday timeframe in the USA as well. Several different sets of results. Maybe rolling out Panda as part of them main index isn't as easy as they had hoped.

[Wilburforce]

Is a recovery EVER possible?

Not in the sense that things will go back to how they were, no.

No matter how crappy we think the results are

We're now in a world where I can say to my phone "what is the life expectancy of a weevil?" and it will enter the words in the search bar.

I think most of us here are probably looking at results that are predominately short key terms (1 - 3 words). Google, on the other hand, look like they are getting to grips with a more linguistic approach. We are still looking at "haircut", while Google are looking at "which is the best men's hairdresser in Orpington?"

It looks to me like one-word searches on Google are increasingly getting one-word answers (either thin content, small sites, or "Amazon"). If short-phrase searches work for you when you search (they do for me), use Bing. I think Google are holding on to their market share because the public at large are less adept at condensing their search criteria, and Google are getting better at matching their searches, not ours.

[Sand]

As for the panda update (friday/monday as reported). Seems like they rolled something out briefly on monday and fairly quickly retracted it. nothing to back this up of course, just the way it felt yesterday with periods of heavy movement and then by late afternoon and into today the shifting seems to have stopped and results reverted back to those of late last week.

I haven't seen anything that drastic (my traffic is still considerably up overall), but I have noticed an on again / off again traffic pattern, as well as keyword referrals from phrases that I personally do not see my site show up for. I really don't think this thing is finished. Or I guess that's the new way of it -- it's never finished. But it's definitely not settled.

[backdraft7]

Noon, and still only receiving two visitors at a time...one from Breckenridge and one on the other side of the planet in Ahemdabad. Whatever rolled through, rolled me over.

[SEchecker]

@ backdraft7

To what country did you set your loaction in GWT?

[backdraft7]

US only...long time ago.

One thing I'm noticing is a lot more back and side door entry to the site. Seems the home page is getting very little exposure while the sub pages are getting some non interactive traffic.

[edited by: backdraft7 at 5:25 pm (utc) on Mar 19, 2013]

[SEchecker]

So you not targeting "global"?

[backdraft7]

no - this was debated some time ago, yet I still get plenty of global traffic, mostly in fact these days. Maybe it's time to toggle to global and see if some good comes of it.

[SEchecker]

Such change will take some weeks as far as I know and to roll back again few weeks. When I’m talking about global I’m referring to "not listed" if you do not chose "not listed" G will take your IP and list you there...

(I hope nothing changed, I wasn’t visiting G help quite some time, last time I checked it was like this. And use the info with caution, as this is how I interpret “global” listing”)

[backdraft7]

Well folks, I'm out...time to go comb the classifieds and concentrate on other more controllable and profitable efforts. My site is now below the point of providing even a poverty level income, so not worthy of further discussion here. Nothing left to do but dismantle and park the domain. I'll probably get more traffic that way. This whole dozen years of DIY SEO, webmasterin' and Google folly would make great fodder for a book. Have fun!

[Lorel]

I have a client ranking #5 for a 2 word phrase with a competitor who continually scrapes my client's content. The competitor was crawling back up to #6 but since this last panda update dropped down to #12 where he belongs.

[Panthro]

@backdraft - write the book! (or at least a blog post)

[chalkywhite]

16th october 2011 I was hit, shocking traffic for exactly 1 year, the last two updates ive gained around 30-35% each time, in November i was getting around 1k uniques per day, now touching 3k per day. If I knew what I had done i would write and sell an ebook.

Affiliate conversions, interaction, social the lot are up.

US target

Technology Niche

[spreporter]

Let us hope that this update will do something with the host crowding, is getting awful seeing infinitive same domain listings from second page onwards.

[JesterMagic]

@chalkywhite

Good to here someone has seen some positive traction.

[taberstruths]

For the first time in a year I am seeing double digits on site at any given minute from search.

Informational site U.S. based.

Edit to add "at any given minute"

[lewis1]

Seeing quite a bit of movement today on some keywords in UK results. Mainly good for us. It feels like something is happening. We didn't notice any major changes on Friday/Monday as anticipated, but today is another story. Will update and see what happens during the course of the day

[nickreynolds]

just seen a new entry in the uk payday loans niche for a keyword with about 1000 local exact searches. Position 3.
The domain name is so long it doesn't all fit in to the serp result! and has more than eleven keywords in the domain name alone! It redirects to another site when you click

[ErnestHemingway]

These updates are very funny. It is never what Google claims it to be.

One thing is for sure, Google Adwords are SUPER LASER TARGETED TO EVERY KEYWORD.

[ColourOfSpring]

Well folks, I'm out...time to go comb the classifieds and concentrate on other more controllable and profitable efforts. My site is now below the point of providing even a poverty level income, so not worthy of further discussion here. Nothing left to do but dismantle and park the domain. I'll probably get more traffic that way. This whole dozen years of DIY SEO, webmasterin' and Google folly would make great fodder for a book. Have fun!

Good luck backdraft. Certainly being a webmaster in 2013 is a lot less satisfying / enjoyable than it was just a few years ago and before. Too many wolves at my door in this game. I feel like I live from day to day now, which is NOT a good feeling when you run a business. So much outside of my control. There have been many times in the last 6 months where I imagine the RELIEF of quitting this lark.

One thing is for sure, Google Adwords are SUPER LASER TARGETED TO EVERY KEYWORD.

So true EH. Funny how Adwords ads haven't gone hay-wire over the last 12 months like the organics have. It's not like you see "host crowded" ads and the like, or irrelevant ads. I wonder why that is? The organics are like a bingo tombola of randomness, whereas the ads are holding steady and true. Perhaps I should click on the ads more in that case?

[mihomes]

AdWords have and always will be laser targeted - you bid on specific keywords or search queries that include specific keywords. Remember, you can also have negative keywords as well.

The only reason you might think you are seeing 'better' matching with AdWords than previously is people are being more precise and fine tuning their bids where perhaps they were using 'match all' type bidding before.

[ColourOfSpring]

AdWords have and always will be laser targeted - you bid on specific keywords or search queries that include specific keywords. Remember, you can also have negative keywords as well.

This is true but Google also have their own quality score for landing pages too which heavily influences cost per click. That's not to criticise it by the way - clearly they are doing something right as ads are the reliable area of the SERPs. In regards to organics, these seem to be becoming less and less relevant in terms of results, and also their physical position on the page (when you make a commercial search). It may be just a matter of time before Google start to experiment with "pay only" first pages for certain keywords, all in the name of giving quality results to its customers (which literally would be the case given the low quality of organic SERPs on many commercial keywords).

[nickreynolds]

The site I referenced at the post 4 places above was first registered 7 days ago.
According to ahrefs it has 7000 backlinks
To give you an idea the domain name includes the following words (I've jumbled them up and left some out):
cheapest bad credit guaranteed approval payday loans direct lender
Hope I haven't overstepped the ToS boundaries but I thought this was of interest

[mirrornl]

Serps are moving again from here
Similar, but different, as the 6th of May

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

@nickreynolds

That is interesting.

I wonder if maybe it "looks hot" algorithmically right now, but also wonder if that's the case how it's going to look in a week or three when the "link growth rate" stagnates and "link churn rate" becomes flat to negative?

Do you know what type of variety of domains the links come from? It would also be interesting if there's a large number of links from a limited number of domains so maybe it's ranking on other factors and the algo just hasn't "triggered" an unnatural growth rate flag yet? That would seem to tell us there's a delay between "links acquired" and "oh, gotcha!" notices from Google.

Anyway, good find and thanks for sharing.

[SnowMan68]

@ nickyreynolds

I have seen that for the same niche in the US serps. They get blasted with anchor text rich lings. Google usually catches onto it and demotes the site, but it sits in the top 5 for a while. In the US results we have PR sites ranking in the 1 and 2 spots for those phrases, being bombed as well.

[SevenCubed]

...but wonder how it's going to look in a week or three when the "growth rate" turns negative and the churn rate is flat to negative?

They don't care, that's why it a registered throw-away domain that redirects.

Do you know what type of variety of domains the links come from?

Probably their own network link farm.

It's cheaper to get those things up and running for 2-3 weeks for the cost of a domain name registration then throw it away when it tanks, rinse, repeat.

It's way less expensive than paying for Adsense to run for a few weeks.

And obviously it works.

[gyppo]

Few sites that lost traffic on March 6th have come back to pre March 6th level starting on Monday.