Google Updates and SERP Changes - Jun 2013

[epmaniac]

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

[edited by: tedster at 3:52 am (utc) on Jun 2, 2013]

[Mac_Guy]

I had to check if I was still indexed ... It's ridiculous, 4 visitors today on my G Analytics !
Anyone else have been experiencing this?

e-com Canada here. I think if we want to really take the pulse of our concerns, let's at least
tell each other the general niche of our field ..

Widget = Natural body care.

[backdraft7]

Yup, after months of slow recovery, something hit today that seems to have de-ranked my site severely. What's left is super Zombie / un-targeted traffic...one page and gone.

[Wilburforce]

My own site's position continues to deteriorate.

Bing referrals are ahead of google.co.uk in my server logs, and WMT stats are incomprehensible: current referrals are less than 10% of what they were 18 months ago, and ALL the referred terms show <10 clicks and CTR - .

I could understand being collateral damage if I had done anything at all that violated guidelines (I haven't), or if the current results could in any sense be interpreted as better for my potential clients or information-seekers. Manifestly, they are not.

As my site continues to perform in all other search engines as it used to in Google, it really does feel like a personal vendetta. I know it isn't: I would be surprised if any of the google anti-spam team had ever personally looked at the results for the search terms I monitor, but they must surely have looked at some of the garbage currently floating on top in almost every sector. Matt Cutts should be embarrassed, not smugly telling me what I should be doing to make my site - which my clients and other search engines like - good enough to sit alongside the rubbish in his results.

[brianp]

I've never seen so many sites ranking from links from hacked sites. I found some very obvious hacked pages and went so far as to call the contacts on the site for confirmation.

It would seem that despite everything Google says, links are still the primary driver from a ranking perspective.

Some of the hacked sites that have links posted are on sites for example a page about a convention that happened in 2007, with the URL incorporating 2007 into it. The page hasn't changed at all from 2007-4/2013 when the hacked links were added, to a page that has absolutely nothing to do with the conference.

There seems to be more and more sites ranking higher and higher using this method. Anchor text is very distributed, perhaps that is why it isn't tripping a Penguin metric?

[Wilburforce]

Sorry, I thought I had finished my rant, but I haven't.

The point is that all the metrics that should tell Google whether they are getting it right tell me they are getting it wrong: CTR is DOWN, conversion rate is DOWN, bounce rate is UP, time on site is DOWN.

They are not matching search queries to desired results anything like as well as they did before they went on their anti-spam witch-hunt. That really should be their problem, and I am pretty sure that if things continue as they are for much longer it will become so. In the meantime, however, the problem is ours, and I don't think we can do anything to put it right in Google's eyes. There are almost no reports of recovery.

[Wilburforce]

Anchor text is very distributed, perhaps that is why it isn't tripping a Penguin metric?

Yes. It certainly looks to me that if you produce the best widgets, and for that reason lots and lots of organic links point to your site with "best widgets" as anchor text, you will never be seen again in Google results for best widgets.

[backdraft7]

First time EVER...no sales within a 24 hour period. Thanks Google....you topped yourself again. Like someone else said here, it's always down, down, down.

[JesterMagic]

@Wilburforce - For me bounce rate is not a good indicator. While I like people to browse my site if they were just looking for a specific piece of information and nothing else I would expect them to bounce after 1 page view.

[JesterMagic]

I really wish the search engine world (Google, Bing, Yahoo) was represented proportionally more like the video game world (Xbox, PS, Nintendo). A monopoly like Google can just steam roll over it's customers with any changes (Penguin, Panda). Microsoft at E3 last week announced that the new Xbox was to have very strict DRM and the system had to be connected to the internet every 24 hours. Gamers didn't like that especially since Sony's new PS4 wasn't nearly as strict. Afraid about loosing customers Microsoft a few days ago reversed their decisions to keep their fan base happy.

I realize this is not a apples to apples comparison but it shows that competition is good for consumers.

[taberstruths]

On an informational site, time on site is a good metric to pay attention to. We don't get as many page views and have a higher bounce rate. However some of that can be alleviated if you give them related articles on the subject. I used to use a plug in for that but now I am putting them in personally and the personal touch has helped with all 3 metrics.

[Shepherd]

Google can just steam roll over it's customers

webmasters/website owners hoping to be listed in the organic results are not google's customers.



301'd a website about 3 months ago, saw it listed this morning in the serps for a keyword search (not domain name search). Click on the result and the redirect is working, not sure why it is taking google so long to recognize the 301.

[Wilburforce]

For me bounce rate is not a good indicator.

On its own, I agree (and agree with your reasoning).

[brianp]

webmasters/website owners hoping to be listed in the organic results are not google's customers.

There are some of us who sell legal products that Google won't accept advertising dollars for.

Would happily pay Google tens of thousands of dollars a month to sell our legal product, but their company policy prohibits it.

[Mentat]

I don't know how is in US, but in Europe is:
- very hot
- week-end
- first week-end of the school holiday!

Everybody is out!

P.S. In some countries Monday is not working (religious holiday).

For me, Saturday had the lowest traffic this year, another bottom!

[backdraft7]

@ Mentat - all good observations, however, they just don't line up with previous years data. Did much better during this time last year.

[mhansen]

Were experiencing a full recovery from the June 9th drop previously mentioned in this post. On the 9th we lost approximately 40% of our Google referrals, mostly longtail. Our rankings never seemed to fluctuate on most common terms.

Late Friday (June 21) we noticed the increase picking up. Saturday, was our busiest Saturday of the year, today, Sunday... the same is holding true.

Site is USA, consumer informational, 6 years old. WordPress CMS. (not being used for blogging at all)

MH

[SerpsGuy]

I would just like to chime in, to share that I still have not recovered. For those of you who read my previous messages, no update whatsoever. Still no traffic, down to about 400 visits per day. Disavow links file now contains over 2500 domains, apparently to many for the tool to accept so I can no longer disavow the spam links either.

[Mac_Guy]

@mhansen; Thank you for sharing your online biz niche and location.
I think it helps to put the puzzle together.
I am down 50% on visitors and conversion since 2, 3 months. but i'm on 1 and second page of a G search .. Go figure out ..

Site in Canada, e-com 4 years old - niche = natural skin care products

[mhansen]

I should also mention that during the traffic loss, we could not find our site in meta search engines like StartPage and FoxStart. (Not even when searching for main site branding) When we noticed the referrals picking up again, we checked again... and for sure, our site is back in the meta engines.

MH

[garyr_h]

Six months of slow recovery and hit June 9 and has since been going down down down and again this weekend.

Informational site. I have been trying to do more cleaning of pages, trying to make the site even more focused than before. I'm hoping that's all the problem is this time, but I'm not that hopeful.

[Martin Ice Web]

@backdraft, i didnīt hear from you for a long time!

@mentat, canīt confirm that. We are located in germany: Weekend: Yes, weather, raining, 18°. Only 2 countries have end of School this Weekend.

This was probably the worst weekend since all this mess started.
Our conversions going down from week to week starting april.
All our efforts to add quality, disavove silly links that we didnīt asked for, rewriting titles, adding Pictures, siloing the data, make a userfriendly site with nice Navigation, writing good metas, make clean html is all for the drain.
We are outranked by shallow content sites, for sure Amazon, ebay and brands withs no information but is a brand.
Sites with 30-40x keywords on it are ranking #1. G* keeps bothering me to take part in g* paid Shopping. G* adwords is a barrel without a bottom.
If this continues, in the end of the year there will only big players and scrappers left in serps. All my competitors have been vanished in favour of Amazon ( what is nothing but a affiliate site )

[HuskyPup]

but in Europe is:
- very hot - UK 15C
- week-end - Yep
- first week-end of the school holiday! - not for another month for many

Everybody is out! - Nope

Mind you, is the UK in or out of Europe? :-)

[HuskyPup]

Just had another massive Googlebot spidering in the last few minutes, this is getting ridiculous, they're chewing-up bandwidth without a care in the world meanwhile deleting many of my pages from the SERPs.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Huskypup, i just saw that g* let fall 3.000 pages that had been indexed. Maybe they have a more severe problem and lost data.

[Shepherd]

Just checking the serps for our main keyword, still not in the top 100 since penguin 1.0 but this little gem is the snippet from the #5 result:

This domain name expired on 06/20/13 and is pending renewal or deletion. This page is parked free, courtesy of...

The domain is a misspelled emd, ours is the emd.

[Jez123]

Hey, I just got a link from a massive UK newspaper. OT I know but hey :) Be intersting to see if it perks anything up at all

[backdraft7]

@HP - I saw the same thing yesterday...Apache on my dedicated server was loaded down so bad it crashed...my hosting company says the server is getting hammered by spiders. All action is still either very early morning or very late night. Day time traffic seems to have been re-directed elsewhere.

@MIW - yes, I've been seeing gradual recovery, so haven't been here in a while. Figured I better chime in again when I saw this turnaround for the worse.

I sure hope Google realizes that when us paying customers (I'm a long time Adwords customer)are finally put out of business, that much of their income will also stop. I think they are betting on all those multi million dollar sweetheart deals with their content farm buddies.

[SnowMan68]

I wonder when we will see the next Panda update, we're going in 8 weeks now.

[backdraft7]

I've been monitoring traffic this morning...started off slow, but traffic has now dropped to zero for the last 10 minutes. Looks like the day parting engine just kicked in (7:30 am CST).

[Mac_Guy]

Hey Guys, I have a "dot red" DNS connectivity issue this morning in my WMT,
Never had this showed up before, could it be another G mishap?