Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2013

[spreporter]

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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

[Saffron]

Ooooh, okay...that's good to know. I was going to ask if anybody had had a drop in traffic today. Friday is usually my worst day of the week, but today was dismal.

[ColourOfSpring]

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?

That's what I've seen - companies not rank for their own name because they dared link to their site with....their company name - enough times to trigger an algo penality on that keyword. I'm talking about unique enough company names not to be confused with other companies. From a searcher's point of view, if you typed in a company name, surely you'd want their website to be easy to find, right? How can Google punish navigational searches and NOT make the search experience worse? And if you don't rank for your company name, then you also don't get the "brand signal" either - because other companies in the top spots that do get clicked on for your company name will likely be confused with your company name by Google. What a fustercluck....

[Martin Ice Web]

Did they cut of all the buyers today?

ecom, germany

[diberry]

Remember that many US people have today off as well as yesterday, either because their company was generous or they took a vacation day to make a nice long weekend. This will change both browsing and traffic patterns.

[Martin Ice Web]

diberry, we are in germany. No vacation.

[Saffron]

Still very low here. I'm really hoping it's just the holidays.

I just stumbled upon an article that ranked no. 1 with Google that is actually recommending dangerous medical advice. Scary.

[stgeorge]

A whole host of new sites that started acquiring links only on June 1 are obliterating one of our niches! They are some of them have acquired in excess of 5000 backlinking domains in 7 days by use of what looks like hacked links on good sites.

It goes deep, they have a lot of these in the top 50.

All are Partial Match domain names.

Once again it makes TOTAL mockery of everything google claims it is doing to fight spam. They are losing the battle.

You either have to be a brand (even with a really bad site as long as it's old) or a hacker. Else forget it.

The irony is that a lot of sites ranking on bought links have slipped only top let these guys in. At least the link buyers had some really useful sites. These things are just utter rubbish.

What I don't get is that if it takes me ten minutes to spot the footprint, then just what exactly does the google spam team do every day? Ride their Segways in the plex? Drink lots of coffee? Maybe they should use their search engine a little and the "view source" button in their web browsers. It's amazing what a tool as simple like that can tell you.

[experttalk]

multi week Google update is live ...........

[simplo]

July 4th-7th traffic has been terrible and although there is some rebound it looks like people are still hungover from the extra-long holiday weekend.

[Saffron]

Yes, that's the same with me too. Numbers seem to be up a bit. I think the weekend's woeful numbers had to be related to 4th July.

[SnowMan68]

Does anyone thing that Panda has ran yet? We are going on like 9 weeks right now.

[johnhh]

@SnowMan68 - don't think so - it doesn't seem to be included yet in the this 'rolling update' either, or if it is I don't see any changes in my neck of the woods.

Actually all I need is for Google to remove multiple listing of the same domain and listing domains owned by same company/person one after another ! That would push us back to page one alot ( we still have some keywords on page 1 )

How difficult is that for Google to do ? OR they have lost control now, that is a possibility.

I think my time may have come to roll over and find something else to do !

[stgeorge]

@johnhh

That would result in half she top 50 sites in our industry being removed. Problem is that it is obvious to see that these are owned by the same people but cannot be confirmed through whois so how does google do it? They risk removing innocent sites so they are in a corner again.

[johnhh]

@stgeorge
Fairly easy in our area

<brandname>.in
<brandname>.com
<brandname>.co.uk
<brandname>.anyTLDyoucaretomention
All same content...

then we have <brandname>.TLD, respun the data into other pages, same data, different layout and page URL...so repeated up to 3 times on page 1

The worst one, we used to rank #3 for "brandname widget" now you get
<brandname>.com ( fair enough )
<brandname><someplaceintheusaIhaveNeverHeardoff>.com
repeat different placenameinusa I have never been to for the next 30 places in the SERPS!
it is a franchise - but I'm in the UK and likely to want the UK franchise holder I think

also

<awebsite>.com .. just repeated several times for different pages

Google is a registrar - can't be rocket science ! <edit> if you are a business , a future brand, you will not hide your details in whois, and you will show contact details on your website!</edit>

[johnhh]

and then look at Bing ...

[breeks]

I think just about every website should expect less traffic from Google unless they are willing to pay for it.

"Don't be evil" was replaced with "No money no honey"

[johnhh]

update ! wikipedia.org now #1 for brandname widget in our niche ... followed by tripadvisor for 6 entries, brandname gets only 3 entries ! What the f***

Analysis - wikipedia=google friend,brandname=adwords buyer, tripadvisor=adwords buyer and google friend.

Such obvious bias

[Andem]

update ! wikipedia.org now #1 for brandname widget in our niche ... followed by tripadvisor for 6 entries, brandname gets only 3 entries ! What the f***

Analysis - wikipedia=google friend,brandname=adwords buyer, tripadvisor=adwords buyer and google friend.

Our original site's brand name was overtaken by Wikipedia around 3 years ago. This brand has been mentioned in national newspapers since 1999 and has been a fixture in regional Wikipedia articles for years. Our site has a FAR broader backlink profile than Wiki.

I have to admit that the Wikipedia article provides information in a more concise and readable way than we do.

[Martin Ice Web]

Boom, another hit starting yesterday 17pm. We are now 90% from what we where prepanda. We are again outranked by useless brands that don´t even sell the items. Useless Blogs and Amazon.

[Saffron]

I was doing great this morning but then my traffic died. I hope it's not a long standing thing. I've never seen numbers so low.

[CaptainSalad2]

All my clients receive less traffic than they did 6 months ago, ranks haven't changed much, maybe a space or two up/down. What I notice is that PPC take up more vertical real estate with sitewide links and other info now displayed that push organics further down (the adds are getting much, much larger vertically).

Then you have a biased preference for yell who, let’s be honest here, is kept on "life support" only by Google. Directories are completely outdated by search engines and should be left to die, if google didn't give them *all* the top organic slots for *all* services (which they SELL) they would be gone as a business. Dishing up directories is like a search within a search to me, worthless.

Rather than work for other people I am now taking all of my programming skills and developing my own business to run full time (very unique idea) because running SEO for clients is no longer feasible as I need to have control over everything and my clients don’t have the time or energy to put into socialising online.

Just lower and lower traffic month on month since April last year but esp since June 5th! Im having to setup 2 large national clients addwords accounts today (this is MY advise) because the traffic im getting for them is no longer cutting it(this is my words to them and advise).

The route im going with my own project will have to involve PPC, I see no other option in todays market!

[Wilburforce]

Bing is (still/again) ahead of google.co.uk in my server logs, and gradually gaining in total referrals.

Referrals from Google are interesting: no referred search has less than three words, and most are much longer (maximum 12 words, mean 5.42 words). Interestingly, also, one of the two three-word searches is for a brand I don't supply or mention.

The results do not serve relevance at all. It cannot be that e.g. an usolicited directory listing for my business is more relevant than the business itself.

Similarly, in a search for Widget Service, Aircraft Service - nothing to do with my business - cannot be more relevant than Widget Service (my business).

As it seems to me there is at least a prima facie case against Google for misrepresentation if they induce the public to use their service (and thereby generate income from advertising) by claiming to rank results on the basis of relevance, but return results that are in fact (not just arguably) ranked according to other criteria.

I'm not sure that lobbying or talking to trading standards organisations will have the least effect, but has anyone tried that kind of approach?

[Martin Ice Web]

I see changing result numbers for #bing# from 423.000.000 over 317.000.000 to 113.000.000.

This Multi week update was IMO the worst for ecom-sites and nearly the most bad quality google could serve for users.

ecom, germany

[spreporter]

@Martin Ice Web :

for #bing# from 423.000.000 over 317.000.000 to 113.000.000.

What I see in Google.de is +3000 in fact
#bing#
427.000.000 Ergebnisse

[Martin Ice Web]

Sprereporter, +3000 ?

[spreporter]

@Martin sorry typo.....add other 3 0's

[JS_Harris]

In my niche Google has gone big brand crazy, and has been continually heading in that direction over the past 6+ months.

I used to look to Google to find cool new sites and/or information about stuff. If I wanted to visit eBay or Amazon etc I would just type that into my nav bar instead of in a Google search bar(how many people don't know about ebay/amazon yet anyway?). Bing still shows me sites I've never heard of which is what I am using search to find. Google? Not so much anymore. I hope they find their way again.

[turbocharged]

tripadvisor=adwords buyer and google friend.

@ johnhh

I think you are partially correct. Trip Advisor is a member of Google's political lobbying group named the "Internet Association." It's worthwhile to look up the members of that organization as many of those businesses are currently benefiting from excessive host crowding. Whether it's intentional or not, it really leaves the impression of significant bias in the SERPS.

[Errioxa]

I can see clearly changes on my sites. Spain

[diberry]

July 4th-7th traffic has been terrible and although there is some rebound it looks like people are still hungover from the extra-long holiday weekend.

So glad you said this because my traffic is down from all sources, not just Google, and I was thinking maybe my website smelled. ;) But you're right - we have a July 4 every year, but it's not usually on Thursday, leading lots of people to make a 4-day weekend of it.

All my clients receive less traffic than they did 6 months ago, ranks haven't changed much, maybe a space or two up/down. What I notice is that PPC take up more vertical real estate with sitewide links and other info now displayed that push organics further down (the adds are getting much, much larger vertically).

This is what I'm seeing.