Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2013

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System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4580257.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 9:35 am on Jul 1, 2013 (utc -5)

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RIP Tedster, though I never knew you personally for 8 years now I've learned a lot from your great contributions

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@reseler
Thanks reseler

By the way,question for the thread:
In my niche I haven't seen any changes for weeks now, is that a global or a particular niche targeted update that is my question.

[HuskyPup]

Yet again another spike in crawling my already demoralised directory site! Why bother Google if all you're going to do is promote all the scrapers and plagiarisers?

[SerpsGuy]

I see a lot of movement, and some of my keyterms have even come back (not many). However despite that my traffic in analytics still shows traffic dropping lower than ever before. So that's my contribution today, hope it helps you guys.

[johnhh]

@SerpsGuy
+ everyone

major drop in traffic here in the UK last two days. Can't see any incorporation of Panda into the algo nor any of the Matt Cutts promised Panda relaxation.

[SEOGuyAU]

MozCast is reporting a lot of fluctuation over the last few days... perhaps this is pointing towards something going on at Google? [mozcast.com...]

[Saffron]

Too early to tell, but I always have the live view open and seem to have a little more traffic today than usual. But will have to wait until end of day to see if numbers have increased. I hope so, everything is crossed for an upturn.

[Saffron]

Nope, I was wrong. Traffic continues to drop. I wonder how long this decline can go on for. So far it's been going on for six months, despite adding another 130 articles.

Depressing.

[Martin Ice Web]

Was searching for inforamtion about a Can* WIA Scanner Driver and all that Google matches are big selling brands that sell this scanner.
Searching with bing 3 pages full of Information, nothing to see from big brands. +10 for bing. And there is not this much ads on the page. Next +10 for bing.

Google did the brandindg thing to far. All the results are overridden by big brands that makes no sense at all.

[Jez123]

I am seeing big fluctuations with my Penguin hit site's main SERP. It swings from page 5 to page 2. Definitely something going on. Maybe it's the rolling change (or whatever it was last week week - with so many changes all the time it's hard to keep up, or care.)

[Some_Bloke]

I just noticed that all the ads have disappeared from the serps.

I've tried several random searches - both through Firefox's built in search box and directly at google dot com. All coming up the same. Based in UK if it makes a difference.

[dethfire]

I see different ad configurations too. Sometime no ads, sometimes, just on the top.

[Some_Bloke]

It's great, I've got the very top link of the page on some keywords. Top 2 links on one search!

It's all an illusion though, traffic is absolutely dismal. And most of it high bounce and "zombie".

[Dymero]

There's definitely a lot of flux, and it's in the head terms. We're seeing a significant amount of one to three position drops. Luckily visits and sales are mostly unaffected, thanks to long-tails.

[CaptainSalad2]

Yea seeing some movement on a couple of my sites main key phrases. (local sites)

Page one sometimes, (refresh page) then moving to page two (been on page two for a while now). Hoping Google is finally getting it right and giving independent sites a chance against the list of directories that have dominated the entire page one for localised services recently (excluding places listings). Starting to look better on some serps, fingers crossed! I guess somethings rolling out, hopefully for the better?

P.S RIP tedster, gone but not forgotten!

[mrengine]

I guess somethings rolling out, hopefully for the better?

There's no need to guess. Matt Cutts previously tweeted that a multi-week rollout has been occurring and will continue into the week following the July 4th holiday.

Source: [twitter.com...]

[besnette]

If indeed this update is going after EMD, or PMD - why?
I was talking to a friend of mine about this, and he commented - well, if you have a domain with a keyword in it, as many people do (Burger King is a PMD), why change it to a Branded name and 301 your site - who knows if the next update will go after 301'ed sites, called the "Ostrich update" or something like that.
All of these sweeping, black and white updates really make it hard to know what to do, or what small change might destroy a site. I am hoping that we can get back to what really matters - offering, and being rewarded for content that is original, useful, unique, that comes from a place of passion and expertise.

[EditorialGuy]

well, if you have a domain with a keyword in it, as many people do (Burger King is a PMD), why change it to a Branded name and 301 your site

Why, indeed? Stick with what you've got (unless it's a blatant example of keyword-stuffing). Just don't expect that you should rank higher than McDonald's because you've got the word "burger" in your domain name.

[kma9090]

I was just searching for a website review on Google. I searched i*******s review.

Results 1-15 were the same site (out of 383,000 results).
Result 16 was an unrelated yt video.

Also, the results 1-15 were pretty unrelated to the search term.

[Convergence]

We've seen a steady, however small, increases in traffic since the announced algo roll-out. However, conversions/sales are still very low and the sales that are occurring are small orders - not a lot of spending going on.

Traffic is still WAY down from April 2012...

[Martin Ice Web]

@Convergence, where are you located?

Everyone : Please ad site type and Location to your posts, because then ii is a lot easier to see if current changes are worldwide our partial located.

conversions/sales are still very low and the sales that are occurring are small orders

Yes, maybe vacations are a factor? Industrie Business will slow while vacation time!


ecom, germany

[Saffron]

Dowwwwnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Pet site. .com.au domain but the site is actually global (I didn't think that domain name through very well).

[CaptainSalad2]

@Martin Ice Web

local UK services based site up5 slots to page one, BUT it is fairly new site so could JUST be coming out of the "sandbox".

[CaptainSalad2]

This is strange, are they testing a new colour scheme for organics today? Some times im checking in chrome and the colours scheme is terrible, actually **hurts** my eyes to be honest. The previously green links have turned from green to much darker colour and blue links turned much darker. Only the organic results hurt my eyes, for some reason the PPC set against the yellow doesn't hurt. New way to get PPC to look more attractive by making organics hurt perhaps? lol

[Convergence]

Convergence, where are you located?

USA.

We only allow USA and Canada traffic.

Price Comparison / Affiliate website.

1M+ products, mainly Clothing, Shoes, Jewelry, and Home Apppliances...

[Wilburforce]

I just checked out a local band I know: searching for the name of the band brings up their home page at #1 in Bing/Yahoo(/DuckDuckGo/...).

The #1 position in Google is a YouTube video of them playing, but their site is nowhere at all.

No doubt they have been penalised because most of their backlinks use the name of the band as anchor text. How unnatural can you get?

When will either someone at Google or the public-at-large wise up?

[Martin Ice Web]

@Convergence, we had about 4 price comparison sites in germany before panda. Two of them survived. One of them feeds a big brand magazine therefore it is double in search. ONe is quiet good and diserves to be one page #1. This one is a big, big adwords user.

Wilburforce, it seems that google even wants to monetize informational queries.

[JesterMagic]

I swear Google just wants us honest webmasters to work harder to just cleanup there results.

I see more scrappers (than before) ranking higher than me now. I have filed a DMC report to Google multiple times on these scrapers but they just keep stealing more of my content. Doesn't Google penalize a domain that has multiple DMC notices? Can't they just take a look at the site and see that 90%+ is scrapped content (especially after a DMC notice). I really wish I could just submit a domains instead of 10 pages at a time. It takes a long time to fill these things out especially if the site has stolen over a 100 pages.

[Saffron]

My site has dropped a further 12% overnight. I've tried everything I can, I don't know what more I can do.

I was looking at the competition that Google loves at the moment. Checked them out in Alexa, you should see the jump in global rank from 90,000 last year to around 15,000 currently.

My other competitors (I've said before, that there were about 5-10 of us) have all been wiped out. I'd say out of all of us, I'm probably doing the best. Google have taken 3-5 sites (one of whom is wikihow), and put them top of ranking for almost any search you do.

I'm not saying the guys at no. 1 are a bad site, it's actually pretty good. But no. 1 for almost every search? Last year it was an even playing field. We'd all rank fairly well, sometimes me, sometimes another site. But this year it's just site a, b, c, d & e in the top five. Often site a & b repeated a couple of times over. Google obviously aren't penalising them for their content which is below the fold either. What's with that? Does the rule only apply to certain sites?

[rango]

Saffron, just bear in mind it was 4th of July in the US overnight, so traffic from there will naturally be lower.