Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2013

[Panthro]

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System: The following 20 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4614058.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:36 am on Nov 4, 2013 (PST -8)

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I'm seeing some interesting SERPs right now. Queries seeming to be matched to the most generic term available instead of the specified query. IE - a search for "type of something" returns a list of "somethings". These are geomodified queries.

No surprise, just interesting to see.

[johnny_joe]

Martin, I see the same as you, I have been getting almost 70% foreign traffic. That means no sales.

Google just did a deep craw of my info site and the related webstore yesterday. I have never seen them hit the website that hard. They gave me 403 errors on all the image and pdf directories. And hundreds of 404 errors from almost 5 years ago.


Matt Cutts blog claims he has been on vacation pretty much the whole month of November, and is why he has not been posting anything. It sure seems like the whole crew took off with him.

[ohno]

ohno, since 4 days we have foreign traffic from australia, India, China....
The "normal" german traffic is unrelated, too. But I heard that this is a Quality update.

Seeing the same as you Martin! India, Australia & US traffic here though. Is the UK switched off today for us Google?

[flanok]

Has anyone checked their quantity of pages listed in google, both in WMT and as a site command?

I say this, because 2 of my sites have lost hundreds of listed pages over the last 24 hours in the UK.

These are not spam, low quality pages all hand written with unique data. I would get it if they just lost rankings.
But they have just disapeared, 60% of one site snad 30% of another.
I know this smells of Panda, but it doesn't make sense in this case.

[Wilburforce]

Has anyone checked their quantity of pages listed in google, both in WMT and as a site command?

I did on reading your post: no issues in either case (also UK).

[chalkywhite]

@Flanok, yes, bizzarre, in reality I have around 560 pages, WMT says I have 1000.

When I run the site command it says the same 1000. When I browse I get to page 46 then the ususal "pages have been exluded - click to show more results ).

When I do so I get around 600 pages ( some are images pages which ive now noindexed). I cannot find where they are getting these extra 400 pages!

[flanok]

Hi Chalkywhite

This might be a different issue to recent updates.

Do you have any exclusions in your robots txt file?

Becaause google still counts the pages it can't access in the previous 90 days, robots txt file.

I believe also that canonicals pages may be counted also, even those they will not appear in the index.

I have seen a decline in pages listed both pysically and in WMT. These pages are my money pages, so to speak.

[chalkywhite]

HI Flanok, yeah a ton of blocked directory's...if that is the case with the canonical s then that would answer a lot.

thanks :)

[Martin Ice Web]

Just have a big drop in traffic, although we have better positions than befor this update.
I see that even google shopping does not mathc the query and the pictures from google shopping are not related to the widget information itself.
Something realy went wrong at the plex.

Now google WMT goes after links from pages that habe been deleted 2 years ago!


ecom, germany

[ohno]

Noticed one product started selling again, quick check of the SERP's reveals it's jumped a few places on page 1 for common search terms related to it. That's changed since this morning, we had the usual foreign traffic so I'd say another update is in progress.

[petehall]

I'm seeing what looks like a rollback today. Many verticals have returned to their former positions.

[carlos the jackal]

We've been hit again, main keywords dropping even further.

Where will it end?

[ohno]

Same here, hammered today. What little traffic we are getting is coming from ancient (2008) forum posts!

[carlos the jackal]

@ohno - rankings drop matey? Or traffic drop?

[viral]

Had one site that had been pandalized 2 years ago pick up today a little. Still way to early to call though.

[ohno]

Rankings look about the same if not THE same, traffic has just disappeared! The only thing I see is lots of Amazon links in the SERP's.

[viral]

ohno it is thanksgiving in America. Traditionally traffic drops off massively for USA based sites. Your site USA based?

[ohno]

Afraid not, UK. Yesterday was the same until later afternoon, then we got a blitz for 2 hours then back to off. Last year black friday was poor too. Maybe Google pushes the big players on this day/week build up?

[viral]

I know there is speculation that Google does a lot of special things around blackfriday. The days leading up to blackfriday seem to be a case of Google getting the "buying index" (for lack of a better word) in place.

Every year here at WebmasterWorld we see the same thing. Some strange stuff happens leading up to black friday and then black friday itself is huge for some online retailers and pretty bad for the rest of us and then it all settles down in the following days.

Google denies it does anything special around black friday but this happens every year. So I guess we can draw our own conclusions.

To add to this My aussie clients all feel this even though they don't have blackfriday either.

[carlos the jackal]

The SERPs for our industry are a shambles - there are competitors of ours that have been dropped from the first 10 pages for the main keywords we share. They, like us, deserve to be at least first page in terms of relevancy, indeed their link profile is better than ours!

In fighting spam Google has become a pantomime version of itself, a parody if you like.

[ohno]

Interesting, thanks. I would find comfort in last years figures but for one thing-we've had these massive ups & downs for months!

[scottsonline]

Don't forget you've got a major US holiday and Hanukah together this year which has not happened in decades. A lot of businesses are flat out closed or low staffed today. If you're b2b it's going to be very slow

[Wilburforce]

Now google WMT goes after links from pages that habe been deleted 2 years ago!

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but possibly it is related to the fact that WMT is reporting (new) crawl errors where the linking page was deleted a long time before the link was "first" found.

Does Google have really ancient pages ferreted away somewhere?

[Andem]

Just wanted to report that I saw (for a moment) a totally new SERP design while flipping pages. It drops the underlined links and the letter spacing seems to be increased.

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it to create a screenshot!

[ohno]

@wilberforce, in our case the page was deleted years ago, like 5 years. No external links & no links on our site or sitemap that link to that page. So, the page is well dead,no links what so ever yet G has started reporting it again. Never forgets?

@Andem, that is VERY interesting, I hope you see it again & get a screen grab ;)

[matrix_jan]

no links what so ever yet G has started reporting it again. Never forgets?

GWT Started reporting our 410 pages that were deleted years ago. No it doesn't forget. It constantly seeks to squeeze more information from websites.

[System]

The following 3 messages were cut out to new thread by aakk9999. New thread at: google/4627107.htm [webmasterworld.com]
3:08 am on Dec 2, 2013 (gmt 0)