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]

[Str82u]

@Convergence funny you mentioned "STAY dead". I watch a group of our old "satellite" sites and usually before they burn up in the atmosphere G does something to give them a little more altitude. Logic says they should be DEAD dead but day to day observations are that competitive sites are using those same tricks and getting away with it when they do it on a large enough scale. Good temperature gauges they are.

@backdraft (you're beating Miss Freebie today! Where are those "images for..." usually located, above or below you? No need to answer but it gives me the opportunity to add that those and news listings can reduce traffic significantly if they aren't your images or news articles, put a nice block or 3 AdSense ads over those images RIGHT NOW and you got no traffic buddy and a cozy spot close to the fold.) That Penguin algo... someone here mentioned a while back, in part, that a possible factor in that might be shopping cart sophistication. That sounds really reasonable to me, wonder if it will affect PayPal much if sites with that simple checkout process get washed out by giant$. Maybe it'll understand the difference between Mom and Pop and MEGA.

[Splugged]

I'm noticing a strange behavior. I just checked my GWT account: impressions increased by 214% in the last 3 days, but the traffic is still the same. Also rankings are up but traffic is very very low...

[brokaddr]

That Penguin algo... someone here mentioned a while back, in part, that a possible factor in that might be shopping cart sophistication. That sounds really reasonable to me, wonder if it will affect PayPal much if sites with that simple checkout process get washed out by giant$. Maybe it'll understand the difference between Mom and Pop and MEGA.

Wait.. what? Is that sarcasm?

[Str82u]

@brokaddr - wasn't meant to be, but I heard all kinds of arguing in my head while typing that; "Maybe" it'll understand but "maybe" it won't care.

EDIT: Let me clarify. For years now, "little guy" webmaster is complaining to G that Mega-Site is killing them unfairly so G algos them out, then out again, then out again. Now, there's a chance that this algo update is going to boost Mega-Site back up based on a ranking signal that's unfair to "little guy" because he can't afford a $2000 software package and coded his own shopping cart.

That's not throwing rocks at G but being reasonable that they won't be surgical enough when the algo is introduced to not put "little guy" out of business before tweaking it over the following weeks/months; if they fix it in play it could be very harmful.

Grain of Salt: This is just playing off a comment made here at WW, purely hypothetical.

[backdraft7]

Slammed! After a nice uptick yesterday, over nite the site was slammed again. Had better traffic at 1am than 6 am, which had 1 visit for the entire hour. Looks like another day parted Sunday. Brutal! Think I'll start posting over om my own blog cause this place has become a dead zone. Later!

[Str82u]

@backdraft7 I hate to keep nagging and I'm really sorry you have bigfoot hanging around your "house". Is the flood of traffic coming from a small set of keywords or many different ones?

[Splugged]

@backdraft7

Same here, slammed again after a good day (yesterday)...
My God, my resources are running low...

[SnowMan68]

@backdraft, it looks like you're #1 for your main keyword again.

[Str82u]

@SnowMan68 - I saw that too but without knowing if he gets much other KW traffic, I can only relate like this: I have an EMD that seems to be penalized in reverse, it only gets KW traffic for the exact term and a few useless long-long-long-long-tailed terms. Traffic is just OK normally but one SERP ad and traffic gets cut by more than 50%, a block of 3 SERP ads and the site might get one visit for that term over the day while those ads are in play. Another site with a nice flexible term (3 words base, up to 6 words total) gets cut 90% or more with 3 ads over SERPs... for all the derived terms

[backdraft7]

SnowMan - I think I've always been #1, or #2 for my main keyword, it's the semantic variation that has completely died off. No longtails is what is killing me. I used to be able to think of any related keyphrase and I'd be on page 1, now it's down to a handful of lower volume keyphase leftovers that G doesn't want or care too much about, or so it seems.

Str82U - you hit the nail on the head. I rank mostly for the EMD, and one synonym. Specific page titles and sub content is diluted out by well SEO tuned blogs and rehash. Site just got a minor facelift and now I'm starting work on retooling my blog for eye candy and responsive design.

[Str82u]

I'm starting work on retooling my blog for eye candy and responsive design

I believe that's a solution for this exact situation, "keep working".

[rannans]

i can only tell you guys from my experience with my music website

since 1 week ago, ive got down from 4000 uniques to 3000 per day

adsesce revenue has tanked 90% ! pretty bad outlook as the %'s do not match

i can say, going by by keywords and phrases, the sites now that sit above me, are the old school made for $$ sites, so the future aint looking good for me

my site : 4 years old

it;s just my story

cheers
mikey

[Martin Ice Web]

What we are seeing, that usually means something has happened algo-wise, is some of our older, OUT-DATED, web properties springing to life.

Since thursday last week our affiliate site has come back to life. Great, because we do not have much work with these.

[backdraft7]

It only has gotten worse here. Today the site is dead...I thought there was hope for recovery, but it's not happening. My serps still exist for a handful of terms, but apparently not enough to generate ANY traffic. I'm not sure if the recent DDOS attack is still flood my host's network or what the problem might be. Anyone want to buy a site?

[taberstruths]

For me, I am seeing the opposite of what happened 1 year ago with the panda/penguin/panda update that started all the real chaos.

Rolling surges of traffic vs. rolling drop offs of traffic 1 year ago.

Long tail coming back for a lot of posts that were almost dead.

Either I broke enough "bad links" to remove the possible penalty (never received a unnatural links warning) or the possible penalty was for a year, or just all the hard work with social signals and site design, coupled with interlinking and moving content to subdomains worked.

Keeping my fingers crossed but over the last 2 weekends seen 10% and 20% increase in traffic respectively.

[Leosghost]

I'm not sure if the recent DDOS attack is still flood my host's network or what the problem might be.

I have a group of groups* of ( non wordpress ) sites on that network ( HG are built on top of The Planet )..they are as blindingly fast as they ever were..They are on their own separate IPs ( all my sites now have IPs that are only "mine" ) but that should not be a large factor in load speed..

*more than one site per group.. one group per dedicated IP..multiple groups

[Str82u]

The most noticeable thing in the last 3 days or so has been less host crowding, for some SERPs the domain with 3 listings is gone.

Still not seeing a change on YouTube videos as results (any videos), they are still buried to page 2 or worse.

Wikipedia has been way up and on top, of the 100+ results we (training day) compared overnight, one-third had "official" sites listed under wikipedia but most of you would prefer/trust the wikipedia page over the "official" site.

Just after 8am MST, little slow coming out of the gate. Waiting for PST to go to work, those folks know how to use the bosses internet properly.

[Convergence]

Waiting for PST to go to work, those folks know how to use the bosses internet properly.

Been wondering that this past year. If the drop in traffic during business hours is due to less people shopping/tooling around the internet during work hours or is it "day parting".

We do see an increase in traffic at about 6PM EST each day...

[frankleeceo]

Working hours definitely make a difference with my entertainment informational site. Traffic peaks at 5:00 - 8:00 pst. When PST is getting off work and EST people still haven't gone to bed. Pretty consistent during working hours, and dead in the wee midnight-8am hours.

I notice hourly patterns that coincide with potential "break" times too.

Have not noticed any algo changes in terms of my site's traffic for the past couple days other than the usual site specific growth / decreases.

[diberry]

I too see pretty consistent traffic patterns that correspond with the work day. It's been going on for at least three years, so I don't think it's anything other than people just not surfing.

[Str82u]

@Convergence Lordy Lord, those are employees. Look at your visitor stats, it wasn't until the past year that 1024X786 wasn't our most popular screen resolution.

Keep this in mind when you compare; our weekend traffic is about 20% less than weekdays.

Here's a cute spike to watch for using Analytics "Real-Time", right before the top of an hour when people go BACK to work from lunch. Don't know if you'll see it in your niche, but the last five/ten minutes of the common lunch hour 12:50-1pm is one of the highest spikes of the day for us, the next is the after-dinner crowd that's like what @frankleeceo mentioned after work.

[backdraft7]

So nobody else is seeing a huge drop in ranking and traffic today? I've hit an all time low. 1 visitor at a time, all morning. I consider that flat lined. The drop started at noon yesterday.

[taberstruths]

Averaging 43 per hour over 12 hours today @backdraft which included the dead hours of midnight to 6 where I get 15 per hour.

[Martin Ice Web]

@backdraft, it arrived today on my sites. Big huge drop. Sometimes less than 6 visitors at one hour, what is a > -90% drop.

Did someone notice that they changed something with g suggest?

DSUB ( Mods hope is OK, because its not a query ) is a common word in germany but g now suggest D'SUB what is complete nonsens.
Serps for that query are complete garbage. There seem to be more changes in g suggest. Maybe this is the drop. Because it affects long and short tail queries.

ecom, germany

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Seeing very generic general queries landing on location specific pages again today.

[MrWumpus]

On one site we lost #1 for our two primary keywords that we'd held firm for a decade. A lot of moving and shaking out there.

[backdraft7]

well ok, I thought is was just me...I cleaned up some css and page code and figured they were just nailing me on a "your site's too clean" penalty. Just cleaning it proves your intent to attempt to rule the world. Seriously, I can't break wind these days without thinking I'm going to get a Google penalty for it. sheesh!

[breeks]

I dropped from a long time held number 1 position to number 2 today. Was replaced by website that lists my site as a reference for their page. Their page just touches the subject, my whole website is about the subject. They just happen to be a huge adwords user, I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

[Str82u]

10:05pm EST - Seems like a busy Internet today, got strong traffic from all sources (still strong); our Bing/Yahoo only site is -2% from it's best day. One EMD with very light, mixed traffic is +4% already. Evergreen sites, however, look only to be normal to normal-high for now, it "feels" like they'll stall shortly.

Did someone notice that they changed something with g suggest?

You mean autocomplete term changes? I only checked a few of the most common ones I've caught (3 word terms with one synonym being exchanged), rather than swap them out they are both there.

[Kelowna]

8 pages of garbage and no mention of anything to do with google updates... my site went down... my site back up... what is all this crap doing in the update thread?

I personally have not seen anything change in many months, is that why this thread if full of crap?