Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2013

[getcooking]

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

Sunday traffic sucked, Monday was the best Monday in months, now today traffic sucks again. I'm talking a difference of 25K pageviews a day.

What I don't get is that our keyword rankings have been quite stable. How can that be? I mean, ok, so maybe every keyword that I don't track suddenly tanked... but that doesn't seem likely. Are those DDOS attacks on Wordpress sites still going on? (my site isn't Wordpress nor have I noticed any access issues but I know webhosts and ISPs were experiencing bog downs). I just can't figure these fluctuations out. I'm seeing very unstable traffic patterns lately.

[edited by: tedster at 12:41 pm (utc) on May 1, 2013]

[Sand]

I'm noticing a nice uptick in organic referrals this week across two sites. It could be seasonal, but could also be reflective of an algo shift.

[Wilburforce]

Noticing something RIGHT NOW in traffic. Anyone else?

Another 30% drop. From my server logs it looks like the whole of that drop is down to Google (no drop in Bing/Yahoo/others).

My site has now disappeared completely for Key Term (not in the results at all, although still at #1 for Key Term Nearest-City, Key Term Prices...). As I trawl through a second time to check I notice that a couple of competitors who ceased trading in 2009 and 2010 are in the first few pages.

I have been using Bing for my own searches for a long time, but lately have taken to checking Google results for identical search terms. Don't any of their shareholders bother to look?

[chrisv1963]

based on increased ad revenues, which in turn is based on.....

decreased search quality?

[diberry]

Well, one of my sites is ranking better than ever in Google... and bringing in less Google traffic than usual. What does that suggest?

"When will Joe Public notice this garbage and search elsewhere?"

I think it's already begun. My peeps are all looking for me through social media now. They're young and trendy, and I guess Google is their father's Oldsmobile. Of course, my particular site WOULD be one of the first to see this trend, so don't expect it everywhere. But I think it's a sign of things to come.

I'm off to continue beefing up my social media presence while ignoring Google.

[HuskyPup]

I think it's already begun. My peeps are all looking for me through social media now.

Yep, I've noticed similar with my daughters in their 20s going straight to Facebook for news especially, and in fact the younger daughter has Bing as her home page on her laptop now ever since I set-up her Xoom tablet with it.

My widget industry appears not to want to know social media stuff possibly because we're seen to be too serious plus the retail sector is also an expensive purchasing decision, not something anyone would do on a whim.

[Pjman]

Yep, I've noticed similar with my daughters in their 20s going straight to Facebook for news especially

It's funny you mention that as GEN Xs and early GEN Ys see Google as a source of knowledge.

GEN Zs see it more as phonebook that gives you directions and nothing else. They have apps for everything and are far less likely to count on Google.

[tedster]

Do members think that there is a current update related to social media somehow? If so let's get more specific - this thread deserves that level of discipline, I think.

[nb123]

Hi!
from starting May my traffic down 60%.
Anyone have the same problem?

[edited by: tedster at 4:26 pm (utc) on May 15, 2013]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[diberry]

Sorry, Tedster, it spun off from my remark that while my rankings have actually IMPROVED noticeably since yesterday on one site*, my Google traffic is down considerably. I don't know if this has to do with updates, and suspect it's about user behavior, but I'd like to rule out algo updates as the reason. For example, I'd like to be sure Google hasn't developed some weird penalty where somehow you rank better yet get less traffic all the same.

*as recorded by my stats package, which tracks the ranking each visitor found my site at and averages them together.

[Shepherd]

Noticing something interesting today, when searching for example.com we still don't have sitelinks back but the first 16 results are pages from our site.

[Shepherd]

Also, seeing a significant drop in ranks for a different domain I mentioned in another thread that I was using to test junk links. It's possible we could be seeing a penguin update.

[taberstruths]

I imagine we will see some penguin tests before we see the update.

[venti]

I am also seeing a decent drop on the 14th which seems to be continuing today.

[bassie666]

I am seeing a 30% drop in traffic since 13 may, my conversion doubled though. Actually it seems my conversion stays the same but the traffic we get now is (mostly through adwords) is much more converting. Upto 10% of the visitors is converting the last 2 days.

Last penguin update for me it was the otherway around i dropped 30 % to 40% and had no conversion at all. It was horrifying then...

My adwords conversionrate has increased 100% for the last 2 day's.

Since the last problems I have spend so much time in making the site better, removing all sorts of #*$!ty problems up untill today. My conversion has been more steady lateley. but my organic traffic is still a problem, i really rely on adwords these day's :(

[bassie666]

today's conversion is dramatic :) lol

[Zivush]

I am seeing three (!) Google updates in May:
1st of May, 9 May and now 14-15 May.

[nwelsh]

Has anyone considered that it might not be an update yet but an old index?

We have few large sites and when we do site:domain.com or "http://domain.com" all we're seeing is old pages that don't exist anymore or a lot of non content pages (category pages and member profile pages).

That might also work with what Matt Cutts is saying about there hasn't been an update yet.

[HuskyPup]

I'm seeing new pages of mine in the index and ranking well and they were done within the last 2-3 weeks.

[diberry]

I'm seeing new pages of mine that are as recent as yesterday.

[bsand715]

I am seeing .us cheapo sites on top that that I have never see in the top 100. (ever) And at this point google saying build quality authority sites is not making any sense.

But this is not new is it.

What I been seeing since panda started are very shallow sites and scraper sites ranking. To be sure theses were the types of sites google wanted I have a friend that had wanted me to build him a site for a long time in my niche. So I did right after all the animals started, short and shallow, no scraper. It started in the top 5 and has been number 1 for almost a year.

[scottsonline]

Update in progress. Seeing the normal junk during the move. Sites in the. 2-3 spot that are "under construction" and #1 spots taken by doorway pages? Empty page shells with keywords and a picture plus an exact match link to the real product page. Really google you can't figure out that's spam in 2013?

SERPS are ugly for our niche and that has always meant the rest of you want to buckle the chinstraps the big bruiser is inbound

[mcskoufis]

I'm not sure if it relates to the current updates in Google's algos but a few thousands of pages website just got relaunched with about 30% of content and new url structure and everything.

Tens of thousands of not founds and increased googlebot "Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)" is nearly tripled and steadily increasing.

We did redirect the content that exists, the rest is 404 for now. That is so you have a picture :)

What I am noticing is continuous ranking fluctuations. The site is receiving traffic from over 4,000 keywords at the moment since the 1st of April that it went live.

I am checking keywords that brought in a lot of traffic a couple of weeks ago and can't find the site anywhere. Also on a daily basis I see long-tail rankings fluctuate heavily... From #2 down to #43 then up to #22 then down to #78..

What is doing my head in is that the main sections of the site now rank perfectly fine and steadily improve their rankings and organic traffic stays the same.

Like we are in a traffic throttle. Steady @ 2,000 visits a day from Google ever since April 1st.

We have not done any link building at all during this period. I prefer the content editors move on with their job of adding the old content back and make it look we are focusing on our site than engage in SEO activities. This is a 13-year authority website with links which are very hard to get, earned due to the value of its content.

[chrisv1963]

Tens of thousands of not founds and increased googlebot "Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)" is nearly tripled and steadily increasing.

For my main site "time spent downloading a page" went to 1/4th of the usual on April 22nd and stayed that way until now. At the same moment "Kilobytes downloaded per day" and "Pages crawled per day" dropped to about half of the usual.

A few days after this my website started going downhill in the serps.

[mcskoufis]

A few days after this my website started going downhill in the serps.

Chrisv sorry to hear about this... Hope this means that I am going to be seeing the opposite effect :)

Regarding the other 10-15 projects that I closely monitor, only my new EMD eshop is struggling for its EMD keyword, but traffic stats are up.

The others show things like 200%, 400%, 120%, etc. increase from April last year, so haven't felt either the Panda or the Penguin updates.

I think what paid off for my clients is great content written for the user and from a user (as opposed to from an SEO) and only editorial links from highly relevant industry places, along with some guidelines for the PR team (for the big brands) to include links on press releases and never copy text from the site.

Also "below the radar" SEO changes on the site... Always in conjunction with the copywriters and the other staff involved.

Despite seeing loads of spam in the SERPs, the sites seem to have survived ok. I think "amateur" looking SEO pays off big time. Things like no keyword stuffed titles, keyword density around what the author thinks people would search (after some training of course) and generally making the site look natural and not showcase your SEO skills.

And I am talking about long-term domination. 5 years on still Google traffic is up (year on year), even on sites without that many content updates.

Especially the update where you rank for keywords not included in your copy has proven very beneficial and has made things easier for me regarding On-Page issues.

[mcskoufis]

Also to give some credit to Google, I am administering analytics on some websites which have engaged in very suspicious SEO tactics, especially related to link building and I am talking about some major major brands here.

One of them on the 6th of April got 70% decrease in Google traffic and has stayed the same till yesterday.

You just can't get away with Argentinean directories and blog comments pointing to the Greek website of a major global brand.

Feel bad for them chosing such an SEO agency... Total crap which seems to have raised Google's alarms. They don't rank even for some of their product names!

[gouri]

Also "below the radar" SEO changes on the site... Always in conjunction with the copywriters and the other staff involved.

@mcskoufis,

Can you mention what are considered "below the radar" SEO changes?

[SnowMan68]

Can you mention what are considered "below the radar" SEO changes?

Probably wouldn't be below the radar after mentioning them on here.

[dethfire]

some serps have updated for me.

one for the better and other is terrible. lots of amazon and facebook pages after page 3

[Str82u]

Well, now that I'm here. Anyone out there, excluding @dethfire, trying not to jinx things by saying that any of their sites that have been acting like they were having algo update issues lately look like they are either stabilizing or returning to previous levels? (and remember, stabilizing is better than a slow drive off a cliff unless you're at the bottom already).

What's that got to do with SERPs? I think those that were getting unusual ups/downs over the last 7/8 days were shifts in local search... 84% positive.

@mcskoufis - that your fiverr name buddy? "Below the Radar"? LOL

[frankleeceo]

after page 3 is still better than them dominating at page 1. Google said something about moving the domain host crowding aspect toward later pages of the serp.

think this is still better, at least searchers get some diversification on the page 1 queries.