Google Updates and SERP Changes - Jun 2013

[epmaniac]

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

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

[SnowMan68]

We have been seeing a ton of flux in my niche over the last week. Late last night it seemed to flip back to how the results looked before the big shift. Not sure if it will stay like that but it's very interesting.

[Awarn]

@SnowMan68 - I see the exact same thing. It is almost like the SEO process is going in reverse. Used to be Google would dance and we tweak our sites accordingly over a period of time. Now it looks like Google does their dance and they see the complaints and they pull back. Makes me wonder what would happen if these boards had zero comments. There is going to be another round though because they are still showing the strange data set.

[rlopes]

A lot of dancing in the last 2 days for my main site.

[backdraft7]

Traffic is way down, but yesterday conversions were way up...go figure. Each week it seems if "they" shorted me on the front side, they make up for it almost exactly on the back side. Every week turns out to be very close to the same total number of conversions...+/- 1 or 2. Daily traffic numbers are still unnaturally similar.

[diberry]

In the interests of talking about what works or something, my pure information sites are doing just fine. My Penguinized/Pandalyzed site got another boost around the 22nd. These sites make money on advertising - NEVER Adsense, btw. It's just not the best available for my topics/niches. They do not compete with a lot of spam because they're not built for Adsense terms.

But I don't think it's due to an update. I think it's due to appearance and coding improvements I've been making. Another site of mine that has always ranked well is starting to rank better after I made similar changes. This suggests to me that at least on non-selling sites, the algo still responds somewhat predictably to changes that make sites load faster, look better, appeal more to users.

So maybe those of you who are suffering with commercial sites and looking for ways to diversify, setting up pure information sites that have nothing to do with your commercial sites is a solution. Pick topics that have social media viral potential, and fit into major advertiser niches (NOT Adsense - you can do so much better). That CPM income could buy you time to work on other sources of traffic for your commercial site, or even help you pay for traffic to it.

Because on commercial queries? I agree with the majority that Google SERPs have gotten very strange. But Google's focus on killing the spam only affects those types of queries. Avoid those queries, and yeah, you may need several sites to get the volume of traffic put together that will make you a living or fund a small business, but it can be done. The potential with social media is actually bigger than Google.

[taberstruths]

I would agree with you diberry. All I run is an informational site. I use both adsense and cpm networks. I have been relatively unaffected. I expanded to a social network in the same niche and it has done well also. The spam and the war on spam is on e-commerce soil. Time to do business where there is no war being waged. War is only good for those that are in the munitions business.

[EditorialGuy]

Dlberry and tabertruths: I've been running an informational site for more than 12 years (more than that, if you include its previous domain), and I've been affected a great deal by Google's algorithm changes--starting with Panda 1.0 in February, 2011. What's more, I know quite a few other legitimate "content site" owners in my sector who have suffered collateral damage from Panda.

Probably the biggest change that I've noticed in Google's informational results since Panda 1.0 has been a dialing up of "ranking juice" for megasites with millions of pages at the expense of specialist sites. Google's Web is starting to look more like network television and less like a plethora of specialized cable channels, which is what the Web was supposed to be not so many years ago.

If a niche site's pages are nudged down in Google's rankings by an average of only three or four places, that can mean a huge drop in referrals and traffic. I suspect that Google knows this is a problem, and that Author Rank (or the boost for site expertise that Matt Cutts suggested would become part of the algorithm this summer) is an attempt to keep Google's SERPs from forever being taken over by megasites' filler pages and stubs.

[Saffron]

My sites are all informational only. Running Adsense, and the odd other smaller advertiser. My main site is well known for authority.

[taberstruths]

EditorialGuy. Sorry to hear of your struggles. I was hit by panda 2.5 and then recovered and went on until the panda/penguin/panda update when penguin started. I lost 2/3rds of my traffic. At that point I changed tactics. I focused on Social, Syndication, and Signals. It took 9 months but then the slow and steady loss of traffic stopped and I started to regain what was lost. Today I am almost back to where I once was and with the addition of the social network, the two sites have 4 times the page views. I do believe you are right in some way concerning the "amount" of real estate you control on the net. The reversal happened when I started the social network and took a couple of my large categories and made them subdomains.

[diberry]

One of my informational sites was hit hard by Penguin, but has recovered some since Penguin 2. One thing that's obvious to me is that where I got hit was on money terms - terms where people spend money on Adwords. On the terms where people don't spend on Adwords, my sites continue to do fine.

My theory is that Google has two different ways of ranking pages, depending on whether the query involved is big in Adwords or not. This is NOT a conspiracy theory, but a reflection that spamming is more likely to happen on Adwords money terms than other terms, so if Google's main focus recently has been to fight spam, that's where you'll see changes.

[reseller]

@spreporter

@reseler hi reseler back to action? We had a lot of fun back in florida, brandy, caffeine updates....I was posting with another nickname back then...well keep up the good job.......DC watching is like trainspoting

Thanks for the kind words. Those were the good old days of Google DC watching where we were watching each and every movement on Google data centers. And we use to get interesting visits of our kind friend GoogleGuy ;-)

[HuskyPup]

Congrats Google, it kooks as though you've wiped out my niche widget trade directory site ... so much for unique information!

[reseller]

@HuskyPup

Did you mean GOOG has deindexed your directory?

[Wilburforce]

What on earth is happening now? Current results for my main key term include several examples of the same page having more than one entry (my own Home page among them).

The new #1 a couple of months ago has joined the growing Ex-Page 1 Club (I have been a member since April 2012). Four of us have entries on the last results page. Is Google the inverted Bing? It really does look like somewhere in their algorithm someone has entered 1/n where they meant n.

[HuskyPup]

Did you mean GOOG has deindexed your directory?

In its 14th year and they seem to have de-ranked everything, all my exclusive images, articles, trade resources etc, it's gone from tens of thousands of page views per day to only a few hundred so far today.

It started May 6th 2011 and every iteration has just knocked it down further and further meanwhile Google promoted those sites that scraped me ... excellent stuff Google, way to go!

[reseller]

@HuskyPup

I guess you have to wait until medio July and see whether things would look better for your directory. Who knows ;-)

[dethfire]

I'm seeing heavy personalization in my results. Anyone know how to clear it to see normal results?

[reseller]

This is sad news.

I'm posting this here for the memory of Tedster our kind friend and admin. Ted had been a generous contributor to this thread too. Thanks Ted. Much appreciated.

Brett Tabke wrote:

Tedster - The Community loses a Giant.

I am deeply saddened to tell you that long time administrator and member of WebmasterWorld, Tedster (Warren "Ted" Ulle) passed away Thursday night in his sleep with family near.


At the request of Ted and his family, we with-held this information from public posting until arrangements were made. The family will also have information for anyone that would like to donate in to the memorial fund and/or a charity in Teds name. We will update this post with that information when available.

......

[webmasterworld.com...]

May Ted rest in peace.

[gford]

Really sad news on Tedster. :( How old was he?

@HuskyPup - Try sending Matt Cutts a tweet or post in the Google webmaster groups.

[ColourOfSpring]

I'm very sorry to read the sad news about Tedster. He was contributing here only just recently too. 37,000+ posts made by him - that shows how helpful he was. My thoughts to his family.

[netmeg]

Ted was 67, I think.

[Saffron]

That is sad news. RIP Tedster.

[Savanadry]

Such sad news. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

[Vlad]

Rest in peace Tedster!
I always thought that he was one of the most helpful and honest contributors here.

[SnowMan68]

RIP Tedster! You'll be missed.

[reseller]

Matt Cutts has just posted on Twitter:

Ted Ulle (Tedster) passed away. Enjoyed his company online & at PubCon. He was a gentleman & a friend: [goo.gl...]

[twitter.com...]

[Saffron]

That's nice of him.

[edited by: goodroi at 2:38 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2013]
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