Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2014

[Mentat]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4650302.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:45 am on Apr 1, 2014 (PST -8)

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For me, since this Saturday, google reverted the changes they did last week.
Going down, again...

[CaptainSalad2]

It's very clear that Gorg is more focused on converting ads than providing a good user experience

agree

[johnhh]

It's very clear that Gorg is more focused on converting ads than providing a good user experience

Which may explain why some advertisers are reporting lower ROI, from what I hear anyway.

[Shepherd]

It's very clear that Gorg is more focused on converting ads than providing a good user experience

?, converting ad != good user experience

[CaptainSalad2]

from Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page years back

“advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”

[Itanium]

I'm using Google as my default search engine since forever. But lately, after the nameless march update, the results really suck. It's happening more and more often, that I just can't find anything relevant to my search. The local search (google.de) is filled with foreign content. I even got a korean search result sitting on the first rank once.

I found myself using Bing a few times, just because Google isn't working as it once was.

Luckily my site stopped its decline in April, but you'll never now. At least the spam-sites work as they always have. :)

[EditorialGuy]

from Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page years back

“advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”

Sure, and owning a gun often provides an incentive to shoot someone. That doesn't mean everyone pulls the trigger.

FWIW, that comment dates back to when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were in grad school. Search engines and the Web in general have changed quite a bit since then, and I'd imagine that Messrs. Page and Brin have learned a lot more about the role of advertising than they knew 15 or 16 years ago: For example, if there are 10,000 sites selling the same item with the same boilerplate photos and the same boilerplate text, advertising becomes a way to stand out from the crowd (regardless of whether the search results are good or bad).

[igyulev]

For example, if there are 10,000 sites selling the same item with the same boilerplate photos and the same boilerplate text

And why not make yours unique with unique text and photos. That's another way to stand out.

[Shepherd]

“advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”

If a searcher, looking for widgets, finds said widgets in the ads, how does that equal a "bad user experience"?

[goodoldweb]

It's very clear that Gorg is more focused on converting ads than providing a good user experience

No doubt! i fully agree.

Finding a relevant result has become a major pain. Business is absoloutly dead across all of our channels. We've been reducing our ad spend to about 10th of what it used to be. Google is just a freaking mess... and getting worse.

What more, we have some of our major SEO/adwords clients complaining too and talking about reducing ad spend budgets because the ROI really sucks lately. What a mess...

[CaptainSalad2]

Finding a relevant result has become a major pain. Business is absoloutly dead across all of our channels. We've been reducing our ad spend to about 10th of what it used to be. Google is just a freaking mess... and getting worse.

That’s what happens when you have a spam team that sees inblack and white and runs a scorched earth policy to “break the spirits” of a teeny tiny minority. Go team!

[Martin Ice Web]

I don´t know what you all expected after Google released its quarterly earnings ( with 20% up again ) but they didn´t reached the expectations of some silly analysts. So the next quater they have to deliver! How? Look at the serps and you will find the answer.
As there is not much to tweak put more ads on the Screen the only way is to push down relevant sites.

[Rasputin]

Martin,
I'm not sure it is correct that all they can do is add more ads to increase profits, beyond a certain point, and tend to the view that improved SERPS is their only option going forwards.

Say a result currently has 4 ads, paying for example $1, $0.75, $0.6, $0.25
Adding another ad at the bottom of these, paying say $0.15, will boost income if a greater number of people click on an ad when there are 5 ads instead of 4, but the average price per click wil fall*.

* This is what we see in all their recent results, with income increasing but price per click falling.

But there is likely to be a point beyond which the benefit of increased CTR is more than offset by the fall in CPC.

I can see this in the 'google custom search' on one of our sites. This search shows an enormous number of ads above the results and has a very high CTR, but the average cost per click is only about 25% of what we get on the site for a single click on a single ad on a page. The RPM really is not much different between our one ad on a page and their 10 ads on a page.

All this suggests to me that ultimately (1) they can't just continue to increase the number of ads to increase revenues, so (2) they have to maintain / increase the number of visitors to google properties or find other ways to increase revenues (eg ads on google maps, google hotel search, google shopping...)

The only way to maintain / increase the number of visitors to google search is to provide the best results possible, so while I don't personally think the current results are the best possible (especially regarding sites hit by penguin) or accept that there is not much for them to 'tweak' I do accept google's claim that they genuinely do focus on providing the best results they can, simply because they have no other option.

[Wilburforce]

I can't see much change in traffic, but my current landing page for main key term gained 11 places (from #25 to #14) yesterday, and there is quite a bit of shuffling on the top couple of pages. Is anyone else seeing anything similar?

Incidentally, I installed a new machine on a new ISP locally a couple of days ago, and found my site at #2 for the same term. This obsession with localisation for non-localised queries further obfuscates whatever Google are doing lately.

[Martin Ice Web]

@rasputin, i didn´t say that they will add more ads. I I said they only way for them is to accustom poeple to click on adds not on serps. Way to do it is target the ads on query, distarget the serps. Poeple will get used to click on the targed ads. They don´t mind if this is an ad or not.

In ecom they don´t try to make best result possible( Why sould they )? In informational serps, yes, it could be but i can´t see it. This is they way to bound poeple to Google ( Google it! )

Our results are looking always they same. It seems like the Google Internet exists only out of 50 sites.
Give my a query in my niche and i can propably say you about 7 sites that will be on first page.

I personaly began to install bing bar on all my clients computers. It needs 1-2 days and they get used to it.


Back to serps:

The last two month have been worse ever. 4 out of 4 ecoms i talked to they that they have a big decline in traffic and even more in conversions.
I yesterday read an article were it says that - based on Google statments - 96% of the users go ímmediatly back from the ecom-site to the search page! And i realy don´t know if this nubmer is arguing for Googles serps.

[EditorialGuy]

I yesterday read an article were it says that - based on Google statments - 96% of the users go ímmediatly back from the ecom-site to the search page!

So you're telling us that organic results for e-commerce queries are a waste of space on the SERPs? :-)

[aristotle]

I yesterday read an article were it says that - based on Google statments - 96% of the users go ímmediatly back from the ecom-site to the search page!

Well I don't know where that 96% number came from, but it's hard to imagine that it could be correct. The only way it could happen would be combination of a lot of really bad websites that people hate at first sight combined with really bad search results.

[not2easy]

I yesterday read an article were it says that - based on Google statments - 96% of the users go ímmediatly back from the ecom-site to the search page!

I think it is more likely a bad reflection of merchants that have a big box in the checkout form for you to paste in your Discount Code - without providing their own 'alternative' code to keep shoppers from running back to search for the coupon code and perhaps never return, depending on where they land. If they were supplying complete data, maybe they could tell you that the next search term entered was "Merchantname+Coupon"...

[Martin Ice Web]

They dind´t tell if it was only ecom related but further it says 70% all shoppers are breaking up their Shopping within they last few steps. ( This must come from Google analytics, though).

Today there is a Report oin TV baout Google with the title "will Google make us all depend on them?". I think in Germany ther is going to be a awareness raising about Google. They are going to much into privacy. I think that this is something poeple get aware of, slowly but it steady.


Serps are changing constantly they get more and more brand biased. But more on more towards the real big players. Even known brands got hit and have been replaced by ebay/Amazon and the germen (europe) biggest electronic shop.

Informational queries give Forum post from 2006! What a mess.

ecom, Germany

[Martin Ice Web]

They dind´t tell if it was only ecom related but further it says 70% all shoppers are breaking up their Shopping within they last few steps. ( This must come from Google analytics, though).

Today there is a Report oin TV baout Google with the title "will Google make us all depend on them?". I think in Germany ther is going to be a awareness raising about Google. They are going to much into privacy. I think that this is something poeple get aware of, slowly but it steady.


Serps are changing constantly they get more and more brand biased. But more on more towards the real big players. Even known brands got hit and have been replaced by ebay/Amazon and the germen (europe) biggest electronic shop.

Informational queries give Forum post from 2006! What a mess.

ecom, Germany

[SnowMan68]

Could a moderator help me find the "Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2014" forum? This one seems to be titled as such, but doesn't have any content related to Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2014.

Thanks!

[lee_sufc]

@snowman68 - agreed! The quality of this Forum and the relevancy of posts has gone downhill the past few weeks / months.

[Jez123]

Oh, the irony ;-)

[Mentat]

Quiet, so quiet here...

On the internet no one can hear you scream.
That is death by Google...

There are 2 problems:

1. No communication from Google in the last year and they are trying hard to blind us in any way they can.

2. The forum charta forbids the use of site URL (exemples) => the blinds are giving advices for deafs.

[mrengine]

The quality of this Forum and the relevancy of posts has gone downhill the past few weeks / months.

To many, it mimics the same quality and relevancy found in the search results. That's why I think so many people find it easy to stray from the main topic as their optimized keywords are competing for placement against a backdrop of paid ads, KG, images, videos, news and perceived brand bias.

Any business uploading there valuable product data to Amazon, Ebay or Google today is completely uninformed. They just steal your data to then sell to anyone who wants to sell that product on Amazon.

Definitely worth repeating for those who manufacture goods! I've never regretted not selling the products we manufacture on Amazon.

The forum charta forbids the use of site URL (exemples) => the blinds are giving advices for deafs.

Read [webmasterworld.com...] for the permanent change to the Google SEO posting rules. I think it addresses some of your concerns.

[lee_sufc]

Sorry, maybe I was too harsh in my original comment. However, (as ironic as it is as I'm doing it now).

Agree with Mentat's comments entirely.

[EditorialGuy]

Could a moderator help me find the "Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2014" forum? This one seems to be titled as such, but doesn't have any content related to Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2014.

Maybe because there haven't been any significant Google updates and SERP changes in April, 2014? (Algorithmic tweaks happen all the time--to the tune of 500 or 600 a year, according to Google--but big updates aren't monthly events as they were in the days of the "Google Dance."}

[MrSavage]

The only update I see regarding my sites in the Google serps is? Hopeless. Nothingness. That's where one small webmaster sits in the overall scheme of things. A branch dying from the tree. My observation is that my sites are nowhere to be found and really I have no solutions. I haven't seen movement nor a crack that would indicate that I have any hope of ranking for subject that I want to write about or care about. Sorry, just speaking honestly and it's my first post in this thread in MONTHS.

How's that?

[System]

The following 17 messages were cut out to new thread by brotherhood_of_lan. New thread at: google/4667620.htm [webmasterworld.com]
11:06 am on May 1, 2014 (utc -5)