Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2014

[samwest]

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System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4634995.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:01 am on Feb 4, 2014 (PST -8)

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On February 2nd, our site experienced a huge drop in traffic. Anyone else see this? My first suspicion is that G figured out a way to collect as much Superbowl related traffic as possible. Our 10 years of traffic and sales records show no drops on previous Superbowl Sunday's. Looks like a big update was unleashed.

[Wilburforce]

Search for "nirvana teen spirit" for example.

I tried a random selection of band/track searches that I thought would probably have a video, and an embedded video came up in every case.

Yahoo isn't actually that dissimilar: the video isn't full-sized, but if you click on it you get it in a pop-up window. The top two results - YouTube then Wikipedia - are the same for Google and Bing/Yahoo.

Google are obviously trying different display options (but then they always have). The SERPs in that type of search don't look out of place, however.

[Robert Charlton]

Barry Schwartz commented on this in SEL on Feb 4, 2014...

Google Showing Large Video Embeds In Some Search Results
[searchengineland.com...]

I think when the result is unambiguously for a popular song by a specific artist, they're going to the full size YouTube embed. Arguably a kind of "entity"... not exactly Knowledge Graph.

Not clear how they'd treat a non-YouTube video of song on the artist's own site that had a following as large as YouTube's... assuming that such a situation exists.

[Martin Ice Web]

I donīt know what they did but since 06.02.2014 they successfully removed all shoppers from organics.
Google: good job !

[ibeau]

Replaced by what though? That is the key. Over here it's Wikipedia, eBay & Amazon.

Sorry I should have mentioned. There is now a news article from Australia's main news website and the rest are just small time websites.

[ohno]

Are they a big adwords or ppc customer? Are the small time sites junk in your opinion?

[ibeau]

Are they a big adwords or ppc customer? Are the small time sites junk in your opinion?

I've never seen any of them use AdWords. They all have pretty bad Alexa ranking and a low or non-existant google page rank too if that means anything. I wouldn't say junk, just fairly new sites with bad designs.

One of the sites is a parked domain that displays only adwords and it's ranking #7 on page 1 for one of my key terms.

[goodoldweb]

I donīt know what they did but since 06.02.2014 they successfully removed all shoppers from organics.
Google: good job !

I agree. I am getting close to zero sales since, over a number of ecom sites (Aus electronics, up to date carts with no ads or links to external sites, anywhere). I'm also getting close to zero sales over 4 different ebay accounts/shops.

It is like someone has turned the tap off all the way (yet f%$#$*g again).

[Martin Ice Web]

@goodoldweb,

realy no sales through ebay?
Maybe it is a generell dismatching Problem? How is your bounce rate?

ecom, germany

[heisje]

Constant flux - a wait-&-see situation.

.

[goodoldweb]

@Martin Ice Web

Ebay is as dead as at the moment (for me anyway). It all started around the 6th.

I Don't have bounce rate figures. I don't use any Google products to track my shoppers. I'm using piwik.

What i can see however are a lot more shoppers using the site search for items i don't even stock. Obviously landing on the wrong pages/sites. I also noticed a peak in the number of hits from the wrong countries.

No one is buying anything...

[Martin Ice Web]

@goodoldweb, thanx, where are you located.

We obviously seeing the same thing. It seems like the update was due to the fact that stock analysts arenīt happy with Googles last quarterly results.

[aok88]

Has anybody noticed a drop in their rankings yesterday or today specifically?

[mrengine]

Has anybody noticed a drop in their rankings yesterday or today specifically?

Yes, but could just be the continual state of flux I see. Though Mozcast reports activity, so you may be on to something.

[aok88]

uggh.

[goodoldweb]

@Martin Ice Web

Australia

[robster124]

Seeing big shifts for Monday's traffic in UK. Informational niche. Large site (fortunately) traffic up 10% today vs last monday, 2 much smaller sites down 10%. Let's see how the dust settles..

[Martin Ice Web]

Bye, bye organics!

[ibeau]

Bye bye organics indeed.

Going off Algoroo that measures changes in rankings over thousands of keywords, this is the biggest SERP flux since Penguin 2.0 at the end of May last year.

[algoroo.com...]

Whatever it is, it's really hurt my ecommerce site.

[ohno]

Another update happened 100%. Expect a bumpy few days. If you recover, great. If not nothing you can do. Check your money terms, see if the organics have all but disappeared below ads & image results. My money is they have used Google Shopping data to spot the money terms. If your site relies on that term kiss goodbye to organic traffic.

[Martin Ice Web]

A Little off Topic.
I noticed a new big Google Content adwords network banner aside from YouTube Video on the YouTube site? It has 4! links to you tube adwords Videos. Related Videos to the searched on are down 4-6 spots.
Do they have Problems to get the webmasters come to adwords while pushing so massive and annoying ads?

[goodoldweb]

@ ohno & Martin Ice Web

Hows your sales?

Mine still hover around zero sales since this "update" began. No emails, phone dead quiet. It is like the world is on vacation again...WTF?

This company is getting away with murder... absolutely sickening.

[northweb]

We're up 10% and holding strong on our main keywords.

[tigger]

@ goodoldweb

Whilst my sales & traffic has slowed you also have to take into account half term in the UK & CCbills hitting people after Christmas. In the past Feb has always been the worst month of the year (least for me) not help by 28 day month... and this month a drop in rankings as well, all leads towards very poor figures

[ibeau]

How's everyones Google crawl rate?

Over the past 2 weeks my pages crawled per day have gone from between 3000-9000 all the way up to 16,000-18,000 pages per day. It's the highest they've been for the past 12 months.

[i60.tinypic.com...]

[ohno]

@ goodoldweb

Way way down. It's dead.

It's not half term at fault, looking back at historical data it's never affected us before.

No spike in crawl rate here. There was a blip in traffic late in the afternoon yesterday but overall it's pants yet again.

Yet again we had the boost, the foreign traffic then the fall off cliff.

Checking the SERP's is a waste of time, I'd expect to see radical differences in these periods but never do.

One thing I do notice is they seem to have traffic throttled by user intent. During these periods we'll get users who bounce off. Then we'll get a set that window shop, I'm talking people who ponder over spending Ģ10 for 20 odd minutes!

When traffic is good we have users that G+ 1 us and leave feedback, when the traffic is "off" no feedback at all.

Those observations have been made over many of these so called updates.

[Mentat]

I also saw this, the crawl rate is kind of flat!

[imgur.com...]

[Martin Ice Web]

@goodoldweb, our sales went pretty much down. the last two days looked a bit better but still not good.

@tigger, the sales suddenly switched off with this update. The all poeple must have get their bills at the same day and hour! No no, that was due to this update and it was supposed to kick off small Business. While this update Progresses it see Google putting up much more own ads for participating in adwords!

[goodoldweb]

Whilst my sales & traffic has slowed you also have to take into account half term in the UK & CCbills hitting people after Christmas

While i don't take these factors lightly, my historical data suggest otherwise for this time of the year. I now have enough experience with G's new age "updates" and can predict with almost 100% accuracy how business is about to go dead quiet right after an MC announcement/update.

As mentioned numerous times by members on this thread, i too can see evidence of Google filtering commercial, "buy intent" searches. It's a given.

There is simply no other explanation to so many ecom channels going quiet at once. I have 4 ecom different websites and 4 different ebay shops.... everything goes dead at once every time they unleash one of them new age "algo updates".

We will wake up one day to hear that the police raided their offices. The only reason it still hasn't happened is because they are in bed with the government.

[edited by: goodoldweb at 11:52 am (utc) on Feb 20, 2014]

[ohno]

I'd agree with that, what I can't work out for the life of me is WHERE the buyers go? I mean we aren't talking one niche here in one country. What on earth happens? Do the data centers have a wobbly & send traffic to the wrong places during these updates? Afterall, bounce rates always seems to go through the roof. Maybe one day we'll get a Matt Cutt's video on this!

I now have enough experience with G new age "updates" and can predict with almost 100% accuracy how business is about to go dead quiet right after an MC announcement/update.

I seem to be in the unique position of spotting these updates before any announcements! I see the same pattern every single time.

[goodoldweb]

Maybe one day we'll get a Matt Cutt's video on this!

That's one video he wont be making... unless off-course under oath in a special Senate inquiry into G's woeful business practices.