Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2013

reseller are you seeing an up-swing in traffic or down-swing?

I've seen a few things jump right to the top of the SERPs in the last few days. Pages which on my .co.uk site didn't hit better than page 2 but now they're on page one position 2 directly under the target venue itself.

I think Hummingbird updates are characterized by, among other factors, the changes in pattern of countries/stats your referrals of organic traffic are from. The said change might affect both quantity and quality of your organic traffic.

Also, my site:domain.com command shows 30% decrease in indexed pages.

Trouble is, there's no way of knowing if the decrease is the result of an index change or a reporting bug. (Some of WMT's stats are out of whack at the moment--SEO Roundtable reported on this--so it's reasonable to wonder about the accuracy of the site:domain.com's numbers. Maybe you're doing better than you think!)

Hmmmm, large drop in traffic again today, we due a panda?

we due a panda?

This feels very panda-like to me. The other changes in the past month haven't really. We're down 10% in traffic in the past 48 hours.

we due a panda?

Panda and Penguine are dead. Long live Hummingbird :-)

I guess we need to look at those changes as "Algo Changes in Hummingbird", if that makes any sense :-)

Panda and Penguine are dead.

Are they dead?

Panda might have been part of the core recently but Penguin wasn't was it? It was an aside, wasn't it? That was run too seldom IMO

Are they dead?

Yes I think so. Panda and Penguin have proved to be lousy unsuccessful tools which have caused much of collateral damage.

Yes I think so. Panda and Penguin have proved to be lousy unsuccessful tools which have caused much of collateral damage.

Do you have anything to support that reseller? I was hoping for another refresh as my site improved a bit last Penguin refresh.

Panda and Penguine are dead.

according to Danny's interview and report panda and penquin are alive and kicking, bolt-on additions to the hummingbird just as they were with the previous core.

Remember, this this was installed month(s?) before they announced it and nobody noticed it until they announced it... nobody noticed it. That tells me that out of the box hummingbird doesn't do much differently but I'm guessing that it has a whole new set of "switches" that can be flipped at anytime.

I took a dip on Monday and Tuesday, enough to notice but not statistically significant.

Traffic was back to normal yesterday and today is looking OK so far. With a fairly small niche site with an underlying b&m business I have escaped any serious issues from algo updates so far.

according to Danny's interview and report panda and penquin are alive and kicking, bolt-on additions to the hummingbird just as they were with the previous core.

I certainly can't imagine google just abandoning these algo's. Supposedly Penguin cost a lot of money to implement and that's why they seldom run it. That was my understanding anyway.

Panda is definitely not dead, I have it from the horse's mouth when I made a pithy comment about Panda to Matt Cutts around the time Hummingbird will have been coming online:

@mattcutts: At this point, I wouldn't count on us undoing or turning off Panda.

Ref: [twitter.com ]

Panda is definitely not dead, I have it from the horse's mouth ...

In fact the horse has been very quite since Amit Singhal announced Hummingbird. Since then, Matt Cutts hasn't posted a single word about Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird. I think there are reasons for Matt Cutts quiteness. Matt Cutts might be leaving Google Search Quality Team or leaving Google entirely.

Personaly I think Matt Cutts deserves a better job than Head of Google WebSpam Team. Matt is a very qualified person, indeed.

according to Danny's interview and report panda and penquin are alive and kicking, bolt-on additions to the hummingbird just as they were with the previous core.

Give me one reason for Google to use Panda and Penguin (which takes ages and ages to roll them out) on a fast and precise core like Hummingbird?

Would you really expect Google to tell us; there is no more Panda and no more Penguin, please go ahead and spam our index :-)

Give me one reason for Google to use Panda and Penguin

If they had done away with penguin wouldn't someone with a penguin infected site noticed?

Matt Cutts may also not be behind Hummingbird personally, and is leaving the spotlight for those whom he feels deserve the credit. Or he could be having health issues or family stuff to deal with. Or he may be getting visited by aliens. Who knows? I wouldn't read much into it.

Give me one reason for Google to use Panda and Penguin (which takes ages and ages to roll them out) on a fast and precise core like Hummingbird?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that Panda and Penguin assign scores to pages and/or domains. Hummingbird looks at those scores (along with other index data) when it retrieves, organizes, and serves up search results.

In other words, the Hummingbird algorithm works in real time, but the underlying index--including Panda and Penguin data--is updated more slowly (e.g., as or after pages have been crawled).

Of course I understand and appreciate that we have friends here whose sites have been hit by Panda or/and Penguin and are awaiting for a Panda or Penguin refresh to recover. Wish you good luck.

we have friends here whose sites have been hit by Panda or/and Penguin and are awaiting for a Panda or Penguin refresh to recover.

Food for thought: Going forward, will there be major across-the-board Panda and Penguin refreshes (as in the past), or just lots of little ones as sites are recrawled and/or new, targeted tweaks are added to Panda and Penguin?

will there be major across-the-board Panda and Penguin refreshes (as in the past)

I don't think so. I think there would be monthly refreshes "Hummingbird Dance" in addition to sometimes roll out of algorithm changes something similar to classical updates like Bourbon , Jagger, Vince etc..

Dropped another 3 pages today for single word EMD. 9 months ago we were first, now the front page is dominated with big brands and we're on page 7. Time for a rethink.

Today 04/10/13 within the last few hours I am starting to see major shifts in the UK for some big commercial keywords. Are we experiencing a major update?

Has the characteristics of Penguin - One of our websites that has been penalised by Penguin for 18/months has returned to page 4 within the last few hours. This website in particular had been static at around page 40-49 for 18-months.

I'm not seeing anything in my niche - but my niche is not what you would big commercial probably. I will keep looking though as if something is happening with big KW's the hopefully smaller ones will follow.

Did you see any movement at all in the last Penguin update? In May I think it was. What changes have you made, if any?

Just jumped back to page 4, very odd!

UK, ecom

I would say it's rolling out now and over the coming hours. It looks like a Penguin or EMD update - Time will tell.

It looks like a Penguin

Based on the update history, if penguin still exists, we should be due for an update.

this this was installed month(s?) before they announced it and nobody noticed it until they announced it... nobody noticed it.

Hmmm.. a few months ago.. could that have been around May 8 and the "phantom" update?