Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2013

[reseller]

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System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4606861.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:47 am on Oct 1, 2013 (PST -8)

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Folks!

I think there is an update on Hummingbird today :-)
Have you noticed today remarkable changes in the volume of organic traffic to your site(s)? Also maybe some changes in the pattern of countries/stats referring organic traffic to your site(s)?

[wockawocka]

I'm a little concerned that my organic impressions appear to be on a totally downward spiral.

1000 per day last week, now dropping in steps down of 100 per day. Yet click throughs from the impressions are remaining static. Or does that just mean Google is only showing the stuff that gets clicked.

[Panthro]

Or does that just mean Google is only showing the stuff that gets clicked.

Makes sense to me

[Wilburforce]

stuff that gets clicked

I suppose I should be happy at a very modest increase in referrals, but my server log from yesterday shows several referrals for terms my site doesn't include, and are not connected with it.

When I say it doesn't include them, I mean e.g. Firstname Surname, where neither Firstname nor Surname are anywhere on the site.

What on earth is happening now?

[ohno]

@ Wilburforce-we've seen that before too! I even checked all the code to make sure the term wasn't somehow there but nothing.

[Martin Ice Web]

my favor search "bing" shows only 98.000.000 results, thats close to 200.000.000 less than usual.
Either they cut down their data to 1/3 or that quality update shows only a 1/3. But that seems to be the reason for the reported traffic loss.

[Martin Ice Web]

Has there been a roll back from penguin update? I see results from end of september.

[ohno]

Not sure Martin, after a dire day the switch flicked around 3pm, traffic came back but it was non converting. The SERP's look unchanged from earlier in the day. Does anyone else get blips of referals from really old links? Like forum links from 2008? Almost like at some points Google is serving old data to some users?

ETA-just done a search for some of our terms, some are moving in a big way (no 2) others are moving DOWN a few spots but still page 1 (not that page 1 means much these days, most terms have organic below the fold these days!). One competitor remains No 1 for many terms. How they are doing it I do not know.

[carlos the jackal]

Anyone else seeing a big drop this morning? Most of our main terms have taken a page further drop.

[hasek747]

Carlos, I'm seeing quite the opposite - ~30% increase in traffic this morning for websites where traffic has been still for the past 4 months.

[Sand]

@carlos

My traffic is pretty level with last Friday. Maybe slightly higher.

[EditorialGuy]

No obvious changes here.

[Wilburforce]

No obvious changes here.

Or here. However my site is currently getting about 10% of 2011 Google referrals, so in 2011 terms nothing "big" has happened for a long time.

[Shepherd]

seems like google is have some issues right now here in the US, nothing working, search, calender, drive... twitter is a buz

[ohno]

Some of our terms have gone up yet traffic is DOWN. So higher SERP positions=less traffic for us these days. Of course our users could be seeing soemthing completely different.

[carlos the jackal]

Over the last 24hours we've had terms drop, and to compound the issue Google is now serving less relevant pages for those terms too.

Makes me wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve this lol

[Wilburforce]

Of course our users could be seeing soemthing completely different.

Between geotargetting and personalisation there is no longer a result set that reflects what a typical user sees. Typical users don't clear their browsing history, mask their IP or use proxies, so measures that endeavour to take your own location and personalisation out of the equation don't necessarily make the results more representative.

[reseller]

Makes me wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve this lol

Maybe you were a spammer or a black hat SEO. Who knows :-)

[carlos the jackal]

Maybe you were a spammer or a black hat SEO. Who knows :-) ]

Wow. That hurts. Kick a man while he's down lol

Seriously if that was the case at least I'd understand it. As it is I'm in the dark.

[reseller]

Seriously if that was the case at least I'd understand it. As it is I'm in the dark.

Maybe you would recover soon because things keep changing. Never lose faith in Hummingbird :-)

[np2003]

Our site is penalized. We asked Google to remove it and they sent us a bunch of links that caused them. All these links were sites with wordpress theme footer links that trace back to a site offering free wordpress themes. We did not set them up, and we know our competitor did this. We told Google webspam team about this and they don't care.

What happens now? I never realized this, but Google is supporting the uprising of the negative SEO industry. Any company can harm someone else by creating free themes and templates and putting their links on the bottom footer.

Does this mean the only way forward is just to run negative SEO campaigns against my competitor?

[hulk]

Search queries from WMT for my site:
[i.imgur.com...]

Penalty-recovery-penalty...

[viral]

hulk that is nice to see. Hope it stays for you

[n00b1]

What the penalty? The graph he shows indicates an obvious recovery following a penalty, but then another penalty. Not sure on the background of this penalty though Hulk - manual or algorithmic?

[carlos the jackal]

What the penalty? The graph he shows indicates an obvious recovery following a penalty, but then another penalty. Not sure on the background of this penalty though Hulk - manual or algorithmic?

I was curious about this too - is it manual penalty - recovery - manual penalty? It doesn't fit in with Penguin dates.

Could be a Panda-related issue I guess.

On other related matters, my site is still tanking, and when it does appear it's for irrelevant pages in relation to the term. I'm hoping Google are just 'reassessing' our site. LOL.

[viral]

Oh yeah missed the drop off!

[Shai]

Hulk, would love to hear more details about this also. Are they both manual?

[hulk]

They are all algorithmic and I didn't changed a thing on my site in the whole time. I'm praying for another recovery within a month or so.

[viral]

Hulk I went through some of the SER and Moz update reports and I believe what you are looking at is probably the rolling Panda update.

So I guess the question that needs to be asked is how is the content on your website looking? Not sure what niche you are in but you might want to start adding some "more" quality content to your site and maybe even removing some of the bad stuff?


Anyway good luck.

[Whitey]

@hulk - I sense you are on the cusp of a threshold. Whatever it is [ content and links ] , it probably needs some fast re-tweaking.

[bhukkel]

My main site was hit by the 4th September update with loss of 75% organic traffic. But on 26th October the recovery started and today i am on pre 4th September traffic.

I didn't changed anything large on my site so i don't have an explanation it just happened.

Are more people seeing this?