Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2013

Our 14year old ecommerce site has been heavily spidered over the last two weeks, traffic is down way down, google shopping spending hasn't changed.

Today is not normal, it's way too quiet.... site traffic down way down.

We're low on traffic here too (UK ecomm), Google still serving less relevant pages for queries.

It feels like there should be a conclusion to all of this, but it carries on and on ...

Did you see anything Friday? We saw the normal signs of an update-boost on Thursday, dead Friday, dead Saturday (LOTS of foreign visits), slight recovery Sunday, dead Monday & today, well, guess what, DEAD! Whatever hit us has stuck so far across two sites (UK ecom).

It feels like there should be a conclusion to all of this, but it carries on and on ...

Yes indeed, but been waiting for years now pretty much since May Day! 2013 has been terrible really.

The fear the only conclusion is the SERP's will send less & less our way.

I just realized it is election day today in the US

Yes, but mostly for things like city elections, which tend to have low turnout rates.

Site owners who see slow traffic today probably aren't being hurt by U.S. citizens voting or waiting for election results.

How far outside normal day-to-day fluctuations is this for your site, and have you an idea (or at least a suspicion) what might account for it?

Today's traffic increases and bounce rate drops are not normal when looking at hourly data, compared to all days over the last month. I'm on California time, so we're currently only 8 hours in.. but definitely looking at record numbers today since we launched 15 months ago.

Mon-Thurs are usually 3-7% lower in terms of traffic, so these improvements are certainly outside of daily fluctuations.

My suspicion is just overall improved positions in SERPs across the board.

If you are watching Statcounter it seems to have issues today. Mine doesn't seem to count unique visitors for last two hours, it counts only pageviews and repeat visitors but not unique and new.

We saw the normal signs of an update-boost on Thursday, dead Friday, dead Saturday (LOTS of foreign visits), slight recovery Sunday, dead Monday & today, well, guess what, DEAD! Whatever hit us has stuck so far

@ohno Ditto here. Seems like a big shake up going on just in time for the holidays.... Oh Joy.

Whenever my site disappears from the result.. i know something big is happening... lost 80% traffic.. site is almost dead now.. last time it took 20 days to recover.. this time i don't know how much time will it take again to recover :)

If you are watching Statcounter it seems to have issues today. Mine doesn't seem to count unique visitors for last two hours, it counts only pageviews and repeat visitors but not unique and new.

cheers for posting that I was just about to hit the panic button ...I hadn't checked the serps just statcounter and nearly hit the floor when I saw the massive drop

Have statcounter posted anything about this?

Update - just seen a posting by statcounter relating to this

Not using statcounter here :( We use two stats programs to avoid issues like this & both are showing huge drops. The Google glass ceiling dropped for us & has stayed there thus far.

If you are watching Statcounter

Phew, thanks for that info!

Here we have not seen any changes with our websites or clients, all thing are asusal like before. But one of my friend also asking for same, he has 50% traffic down suddenly and keywords down for some important key words.

I'm getting referals from various forum posts where people have linked to our site (multiple domains). Trouble is when I check the links all of the posts are OLD, VERY old, as in 2008>2009. I just can't get my head around what is going on, a few weeks back we had the best week in months, now we are back to basically not existing. How is this good for anyone? Will we use Adwords? Nope, what's the point? We can't control stock as we don't know what one week will bring. Just don't get what is happening during these on/off periods, sure the SERP's shuffle a little but I NEVER see anything drastic.

I'm getting referals from various forum posts where people have linked to our site (multiple domains). Trouble is when I check the links all of the posts are OLD, VERY old, as in 2008>2009. I just can't get my heda around what is going on, a few weeks back we had the best week in months, now we are back to basically not existing. How is this good for anyone? Will we use Adwords? Nope, what's the point? We can't control stock as we don't know what one week will bring. Just don't get what is happening during these on/off periods, sure the SERP's shuffle a little but I NEVER see anything drastic.

After getting so many shocks by google, one should learn to be "patient". It again looks like a big shuffle and those who are not suffering, may suffer after few days. When few weeks back google integrated the "hummingbird" to their main algorithm, I was among one of the few webmasters who reported the 80% loss here and rest of the people were NOT seeing any changes, but then after few days everyone started complaining. I am seeing almost same pattern here, more than 80% loss, but I am patient.

If you are running a web company, and most of your traffic is dependent on google, then learn the patience. Those old good days are over. It's a new generation competitive race, be with it or leave the track :)

Disarray here too ohno - are we working on the same site? lol.

Google still can't make up its mind about which pages from our site to serve up. I'd expect this partway through a big update but this has been going on too long.

Being patient doesn't get to the bottom of it. We can't do ANYTHING about this other than look for sales elsewhere which with ecom is pretty hard. Next week we may have the best week in months again, then again it could be even worse. With such wild swings I'd expect to see massive changes in the SERP's yet I never do. Logged in,logged out, public access point IP, other machines etc etc. The good days you refer to ended with May Day in 2010! I'm just struggling to see what Google is getting out of this.

one should learn to be "patient"

On the one hand, I don't think we have any choice: patience is forced upon us. On the other, my site has been excluded from the results since May for a main key term for no reason I can fathom. Patience does not fill an order book.

On the one hand, I don't think we have any choice: patience is forced upon us. On the other, my site has been excluded from the results since May for a main key term for no reason I can fathom. Patience does not fill an order book

I agree with you.. but if patience doesn't suite, we may find another alternative. My site is suffering with the same.. My patience suggestion is more like "helplessness" rather than patience of Budhdha :)

I am also working on more alternatives, but patiently watching the sites that are excluded from SERP'S. Sites that were outcasted by google few months back, suddenly start appearing.. and no matter how many changes you make.. sometimes Google doesn't notice at all.. so I just watch and work on other alternatives for my bread and butter...The more Google hurts me.. the harder i work :)

I'm getting referals from various forum posts where people have linked to our site (multiple domains). Trouble is when I check the links all of the posts are OLD, VERY old, as in 2008>2009.

I'm seeing ranking blog posts in the serps from this time period too. Google must consider these the golden years. lol

I wish i could go back to those years too! Traffic & sales were EASY to predict. I'm glad you are seeing this in the SERP's as it explains what I am seeing. The BIG question is why are they there are what is going on now?

The BIG question is why are they there are what is going on now?

Taking a shot in the dark, and on first impression, I would say that penguin may have a limit on how far it goes back to apply penalties. These days every small site appears to have some sort of "issue" that Google does not approve of and very old pages that remain untouched may be outside of penguins reach.

Taking a shot in the dark, and on first impression, I would say that penguin may have a limit on how far it goes back to apply penalties.

Assuming that your shot in the dark is correct, would that mean Penguin is a penalty with a rolling time frame (e.g., if it now reaches back to 2010, it will reach back to 2011 next year)?

We have seen just today, some modicum of normalcy return. Not like it was but #3 now (where I was #1 for months and then shifted to #13) is feeling better. traffic is recovering. I am wondering if this has anything to do with G's new Floating Data Centers off the coast of California and Maine. Maybe they had to load them up.

I know another member sees this, does anyone who's traffic fluctuates see spam emails fluctuate at the same time? When we are doing OK we get loads of spam, when the spam emails die down we know trouble is coming as our traffic & conversions drop off too! Spam emails started to come back about 2 hours ago & traffic has started again too!

90% traffic drop down since 28th Oct

Youtube videos are now all over the place, which is what pushed my site and some competitors deeper into the search results. With half of the first two pages of search results taken up by videos, there's not much room for anything else.

Since October 20th traffic is down 40% with sales being down 75%. No significant change in ranking so I doubt we were penalized, it is almost inexplicable.

Taking a shot in the dark, and on first impression, I would say that penguin may have a limit on how far it goes back to apply penalties.

I really don't think this is correct, many penguin hit sites that I am aware of have been very clean for several years, but did some directory submissions / link exchanges / article submissions a few years ago when such things were popular.
As far as I know most people using the disavow tool are using it to disavow these types of links.

I really don't think this is correct,

My statement was only a first impression and generalization of what I was seeing. I'm a believer that penguin has evolved and relies on cumulative signals from panda, the emd update, etc. When the stars are aligned, a 100% penguin penalty is applied which can be quite severe. When they are not aligned, or some expire, a partial or full recovery may be seen. By full recovery I mean a recovery that now places the site underneath the anointed sites that dominate many keyword queries (wikipedia, amazon, ebay, youtube, etc.).

many penguin hit sites that I am aware of have been very clean for several years, but did some directory submissions / link exchanges / article submissions a few years ago when such things were popular.

Most of the lesser quality directories that were around a few years ago are long gone. If people are disavowing these types of links, that may suggest they never stopped getting links in them.