Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2013

[sunny_kat]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

I am seeing a lot of ranking drop. Lot of keywords ranking between 10-50 have disappeared from Google top 100.

Is anyone else also noticing changes?

[edited by: tedster at 11:54 am (utc) on Apr 1, 2013]

[JesterMagic]

What a great Sunday morning... I see traffic dropped 7% yesterday (Information site USA). I really don't understand Google. It's one thing when your competition has better content but when it is mostly pure garbage.

[HuskyPup]

Do you know and/or have you looked into the benefits of posting digitally signed images?

I just had to read up on that again to see if I could.

My images have been scraped tens of thousands of times in Google however Bing mostly recognises them as mine. What I decided a couple of years ago was to build a new flagship site using all new watermarked images and much more informational text, so far I've done 550+ pages with another 1,500 to go and, seemingly, no one's attempted to scrape me...yet!

All the first uploaded informational pages and images are ranking extremely well and new ones are rising steadily and I expect within a year that this site will actually outrank all my other widget sites.

I do have about another 20,000 product images to upload however I want to see just how much business these generate before committing any further time.

[turbocharged]

@ HuskyPup

We seem to have a problem with not just human scrapers, but of the automated variety. Watermarks in the case of automation would not work too well as I don't think these bots really care. It's a case of grab and post. It may impact the thieves bounce rate though when visitors see that the images are stolen, which could impact their ranks.

If Google does not read image metadata, especially the copyright portion, then they should. What Google is doing now definitely is not respecting the original creator when scraped content seems to rank so well.

[HuskyPup]

but of the automated variety.

At present I don't seem to have that problem, my images have been scraped principally for trade widget sites all over the world.

Initially I didn't have a problem with it since Google didn't rank the scraped images however the last 4 years or so Google has obviously lost all its historical data and they quite simpy do not care what images they rank at times since some can be awful and others can be totally incorrect which is crazy.

[diberry]

My Penguinized site is definitely making some kind of recovery. Not a tremendous one - stuff like a page that's been at 650 for months suddenly leaping to 175. It got its sitelinks back sometime in the past month (that's how often I've been checking).

This could mean there's a Penguin update on the way... or it could mean my recent on-page SEO changes worked. Anybody else seeing movement on Penguin sites?

I started using Bing a couple years ago and really don't have anywhere near the headaches people who use Google seem to have.

Me, too!

AFAICT, Google's business model is to index the most stuff the quickest, which is a totally reasonable goal, but one that's caused a lot of problems due to half the stuff on the web actually only existing to get into the Google SERPs. Bing, having seen this, created an alternative model: they index slowly, checking for spam as they go, and there are a lot of totally decent pages that they may never get around to indexing. But the end result is that Bing feels more curated and Google feels more exhaustive.

Why Google seems to be getting worse at detecting copycat content and other forms of spam, I don't know.

[Kelowna]

My Penguinized site is definitely making some kind of recovery. Not a tremendous one...

Penguin update on the way... or it could mean my recent on-page SEO changes worked...

I think you are confusing the two animals, you must mean "Panda" as on page has nothing to do with the Penguin.

[Wilburforce]

Bing, having seen this, created an alternative model: they index slowly

I don't know about indexing new content, but from here it looks Bing is much quicker when it comes to updating existing content (which a smaller index would obviously help).

A lot of the hundreds of backlinks that could well be causing me a problem are on pages that Google hasn't crawled on over six months.

I have no idea how to deal with the problem itself: I can't do much about sites in the Ukraine and Indonesia directly (correspondence or legal threats are disregarded, and the cost of international legal action would bankrupt me much faster than simply not doing any business). Google are happy enough to hand out 600-place SERPS demotions on the basis of nothing-much-at-all, which is also exactly how much they are prepared to do about it when they get it wrong.

Bing, alas, still isn't showing any real challenge to Google in my own server logs, but the current results suggest to me that the legitimate white-hat sites that have escaped Google demotion are now in the minority. The whole of last year's page 1 for my own Key Term has gone (and most of page 2 as well). Bing's look like Google's used to look.

[Gemini23]

I have seen a drop in rankings today for a major search term.. dropping from position 20 on Google to 98! No messages in WMT...

[System]

15 messages at this point were spliced into a new thread by tedster. New thread at: Damaging Effects of Privatley Registered Domains in SERPs [webmasterworld.com]
1:42 pm on Apr 29, 2013 (EDT -4)

[edited by: tedster at 5:46 pm (utc) on Apr 29, 2013]

[simplo]

Rankings are up but traffic is down. I'm guessing it's due to college/university finals. For one niche anyway.

[taberstruths]

Traffic up on my info site in the neighborhood of 20% again today. Looks like another partial recovery. That makes 3 in the last 5 weeks.

[Martin Ice Web]

Jet another dip down, also our Rankings got better for some competitive Terms. This now looks like panda july 2012 ( which was the worst serps ever ) have been established again. In addition we only get foreign traffic ( swiss, argentinia, Austria, Luxembourg.... ) for our german site.
brands/big sites now seem to get pushed up again.

[tigger]

seen another poor day here but when you consider for one of my old 1st place ranking its now been replaced by 15 ! pages of flickr ! - so I'm now 16th

I've never seen such a poor set of results - G has clearly completely lots the plot

Bing on the other than - offering quality results, even thought I'm 3rd but at least its a top ten of quality sites rather than just displaying 15 pages all from the same site

[chalkywhite]

Im 99% sure something rolled out on Sunday, continuous growth for months and traffic seems to have gone back to a month back levels.

[Martin Ice Web]

continuous growth for months and traffic seems to have gone back to a month back levels.

?
What do you mean. Traffic was growing and since sunday it fall back?

[tigger]

Im 99% sure something rolled out on Sunday, continuous growth for months and traffic seems to have gone back to a month back levels.

agree something happen either Sunday / Monday and from what i'm seeing all bad - If you want traffic time to throw up a Flickr / Youtube / blogspot site

[HuskyPup]

Or Blogger/WordPress site.

I've just seen a kid's site, he admits to being a kid and it's his personal experimental site, and the query was for keyword1 keyword2 and he ranks #1 for this. A competitor of mine is #2 and I'm #3.

On his site he has the title bar - His Name keyword1 keyword2

On page - keyword1 keyword2

Nothing else on the page other than the usual WordPress stuff, no images, no text, nothing.

Congratulations Google, somehow you're getting even worse, how the hell can anyone compete with this kind of "quality" result?

[simplo]

Congratulations Google, somehow you're getting even worse, how the hell can anyone compete with this kind of "quality" result?

Yeah those useless blogs keep ranking well despite having no original content, they need to penalize blogs instead of promoting them. Too much crap out there, it's time to stop. Only problem is that Google's scared of bloggers so it will probably never happen.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

On his site he has the title bar - His Name keyword1 keyword2

On page - keyword1 keyword2

Oh, that's nothing compared to the medical service related search I did last night when I got 26 of the top 30 for the same business name, (one use of the business name does offer the service), but the sites ranking were all different sites and some were completely unrelated except for having the same business name in the title.

By some were completely unrelated I mean:

The title of one is: Medical Service Provider Related Business Name - Bathroom Fixture (Yes, they sell bathroom fixtures and have nothing to do with the service I searched for, but they are certified and licensed to make EPA repairs and remove paint from my bathroom. Phew!)

The title of another is: Medical Service Provider Related Business Name | Home Safety and Security (Great! Someone can have an alarm installed -- if they get over the disease they're suffering from, but to find more than one service provider for that they'll likely have to use Bing.)

Keep in mind I did not search for the business name. I searched for a medically related service generally, but the business name that showed in title of every result for 26 of the top 30 did start with AAA, so maybe now they're just alphabetizing?

They said they were going to organize the worlds information and alphabetizing is organization, so maybe they've given up on trying to show people what they're looking for and are going to put everything in alphabetical order for people.

The query was basically: [Service Type in City State]

Congratulations Google, somehow you're getting even worse, how the hell can anyone compete with this kind of "quality" result?

Well, in the result set I'm talking about having a page titled: 000000001 Medical Service Provider Related Business Name on your site might do the trick.

---

Added.

There is absolutely no way they used any personalization, search history, or other "visitor behavior based influence" to show me the ridiculousness they did for the query, because I'd just conducted the same query and more specific variations of the query in other major cities within the same state, so showing me what I was looking for rather than remodeling results should have been easy.

I do check this result set fairly often and I'm not sure exactly when it changed, it hasn't been this way too long, so I'll go with the something changed recently theory.

[edited by: TheOptimizationIdiot at 2:38 pm (utc) on Apr 30, 2013]

[chalkywhite]

@ Martin Ice Web

Yes sorry, month on month growth of around 10% for the last 6 months, higher impressions in GWT and GA. Stats for Monday and Tuesday show this week we have dropped back to march levels. The first 3 days of last week mon-weds where amazing, tailed of Thursday and Friday, Sunday was a reset, stats are almost identical to march.

Zero site changes, standard 1-2 posts per day added.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Interestingly, I just tried the search I was talking about on Bing on they absolutely nailed it! Great mix of businesses providing the service I was looking for and the unrelated business that has the type of service in their name. 7 for the service and 3 for the specific name -- And, no, the site I was checking the rankings for in Google was not in the top 10 on Bing either, so it's not that the rankings of something I have an interest in seeing do well were better. Bing's results were what I would be looking for as a searcher.

IMO Google does seem to be losing the edge rapidly from what I'm seeing.

[HuskyPup]

but the business name that showed in title of every result for 26 of the top 30 did start with AAA, so maybe now they're just alphabetizing?

Oh ... The site I'm referring to also started with the kids name, an "A"!

so I'll go with the something changed recently theory

Yep, I mentioned it a few days ago, something's afoot.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Interesting.

(I'll be back later -- gotta get my titles changed to start with 000000000001 AAA and keep up with the incredible new addition of alphabetization to the SERPs -- I wonder if they'll call this the "Albatros to Zorilla" update?)

[Str82u]

Sunday and Monday felt very much like something happened but looking at traffic from other search engines shows the same behavior as G traffic, even sites that get no traffic from G at all.

EDIT: Also, it's the end of the month and people tend to be very active buyers if the last few days of a month are on a weekend, not THE end of the month, near the end of the month.

[diberry]

I think you are confusing the two animals, you must mean "Panda" as on page has nothing to do with the Penguin.

Nope, definitely Penguin. (Side note: if you have some insider info about precisely what does and doesn't have to do with Penguin, please share! A lot of us without spammy backlink profiles are still struggling to figure out what we did "wrong.")

But that's neither here nor there - what I was saying is that my site's improvements might indicate something to do with a Penguin update, or it simply could be that my on page changes are boosting me in ways that have nothing to do with Penguin. I guess I should have been more specific.

[chalkywhite]

This internet thing drives me nuts, we've 100% lost traffic but conversions are well beyond normal. Not even going to try and work it out

[HuskyPup]

we've 100% lost traffic but conversions are well beyond normal.

Huh? How can you lose all your traffic yet still have conversions? Do you mean 50% (half)?

[chalkywhite]

Traffic down from 3k uniques per day to what looks like settling at 2.5. Daily conversions so far on both days up from an average of 12 to 18 on both days so far.

Sorry, I worded the previous post wrongly, should of said we have definatley lost traffic.

[Dymero]

chalkywhite, perhaps you're just receiving more qualified traffic now? We've had times where traffic has gone down but conversions haven't. Makes for a nice conversion rate boost when it does happen.

< Continued here: Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2013 > [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: tedster at 12:51 pm (utc) on May 1, 2013]