Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2014

[chalkywhite]

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System: The following 17 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4659095.htm [webmasterworld.com] by brotherhood_of_lan - 11:06 am on May 1, 2014 (utc -5)

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I know its Labour Day around the world but my god is quiet today, wouldnt be surprised if an update has rolled out also.

[Pandacide]

@Wilburforce India. Mainly serving the US & the UK though

[chalkywhite]

Its half term in the UK, ive noticed a 5% dip so far this week

[crobb305]

I think something is rolling out again. History:

I'm seeing a lot of international traffic suddenly.

[petehall]

@Pandacide I am seeing eBay back in the results. Definitely something significant going on.

[chalkywhite]

Yep I recovered all traffic last week and im seeing a traffic drop off now over the last 2-3 hours, hope its not a roll back.

[Jez123]

I didn't think eBay would stay out for long!

[CaptainSalad2]

Yes seeing a rollback of sorts across a number of sites! Is it just me or is it every time people on this forum are happy/not moaning about an update its either rolled back or the knob is turned higher till the complaining starts?

I.E Penguin 2.0, initially no one moaned, then a week later they turned up the dial, the moaning started and the algo stuck! It’s almost as though they monitor the forums and weigh the success of an update on the number of complaints from SEO'S/People who do SEO on their own sites.

[Jez123]

I'm not seeing a rollback as my rankings are way worse than they were before last week. I saw some improvements on longtail but no movement on more competetive SERPS but now all has dropped.

[IamnotMattCutts]

I had ranking increase across a majority of keywords but not traffic increase last week(it has been like life itself was frozen into some sort of non traffic but high rank virtual reality).

Anyhow, today (UK) I am starting to see increase in traffic (long tail) and have still maintained increase in rank from last week.

[ColourOfSpring]

Yes seeing a rollback of sorts across a number of sites! Is it just me or is it every time people on this forum are happy/not moaning about an update its either rolled back or the knob is turned higher till the complaining starts?

I've seen similar - with a slow-slide back to the previous position.

As an aside, I got a reconsideration request rejected by Google a few days ago - and one of the example "bad links" in the reply from Google actually had a "delete this link for $20" with a PayPal button next to it - right on the page with a link to my site. A search in Google for "Deletet this url $20" (with quote marks, and yes, with misspelt "Deletet") will show you the kind of scam going on - seems quite widespread. It suggests to me that the reconsideration replies are automated, or the manual checker missed this. Either way, it sums up being a webmaster these days....!

[Itanium]

Seeing some kind of rollback too (in Germany - google.de). Let's hope it's only temporary like the last 10 times in the past 3 months they have been screwing around....

[CaptainSalad2]

COS that's shocking.... actually im not shocked, it is disgraceful though!

The neg SEO industry is now thriving and I suspect many of the SEO's G wants to put out of business will become neg seo's, its a joke m8!

[SnowMan68]

Definitely seeing two distinctly different data sets. Something is rolling out or perhaps being tested before a full roll out. I have no idea what it is.

Interestingly though, the page I am seeing pop up in the second data set is the same page that was included in the initial panda test/ pre roll out. This page is ranking higher than last week for it's short tail phrases on the second data set today. We saw this page bounce back on Saturday May 17th during the early panda test. The rest of our site started to recover late Monday and the all of Tuesday the following week.

[petehall]

I saw a top ranking site lose it's no1 position today, replaced by an irrelevant page at number 10, and then 3 pages of results (that's 30+ results) of similar pages all from the same site. Now it's back sat there at no1 with the original, more relevant page.

Does look like we had an issue and some sort of rollback, however I'm not seeing this across all verticals yet. Perhaps it's a fast learning Panda and this is not a rollback !

[ColourOfSpring]

The neg SEO industry is now thriving and I suspect many of the SEO's G wants to put out of business will become neg seo's, its a joke m8!

It is....actually these kinds of scams are so so easy to perpetrate - cheap hosting, free directory templates, scrape an existing directory, make sure all links are dofollow, place PayPal buttons next to each link, rinse and repeat by creating many of these toxic directories. You could build hundreds of these neg-SEO directories and just wait for the PayPal payments to come in. You know what? Perhaps we really should do it (seriously). It would be anarchy if webmasters wrecked Google's link graph in this way.

[CaptainSalad2]

It is....actually these kinds of scams are so so easy to perpetrate - cheap hosting, free directory templates, scrape an existing directory, make sure all links are dofollow, place PayPal buttons next to each link, rinse and repeat by creating many of these toxic directories. You could build hundreds of these neg-SEO directories and just wait for the PayPal payments to come in. You know what? Perhaps we really should do it (seriously). It would be anarchy if webmasters wrecked Google's link graph in this way.

Wow, you just answered a question I was about to post today!

My one personal project that I have been trying to get off the ground (and out of the SEO game) for the past 12 months was recently added to DMOZ, GREAT I thought but I just ran a check on my backlinks and I have LOADS of #*$!ty directories all scraping the DMOZ listings.

I was going to ask why but now I will have to guess its because they want me to pay to have my link removed from these scrapper sites?!

[ColourOfSpring]

CS2, yes they will have scraped DMOZ to create their own directories. Of course, from a Google perspective, you have now built unnatural links to your site in order to try and "game" Google. You best show "good faith efforts" to Google and contact non-existent admins of the directories you have built links to and email them at least 5 times to politely ask them to remove such links!

[Dymero]

For those who saw an initial boost followed by returning somewhat to old positions, I'd note that this has been pretty common with Google updates for a long time, at least for us. An initial change one week followed by a partial return to the old results.

It's not so fun you think you are being marked as a much better, more relevant result by G, only to fall back a bit.

[randle]

This is a really big change - lots of lost sheep returning.

To early to know if it will stick.

[Mentat]

For me is the reversal of the Week-end update.

All the popular queries = spammy queries...
It was incredible, forget about Panda!

[EditorialGuy]

Last Wednesday, thanks to Panda 4.0, we had a 163 percent increase in Google organic traffic over the previous Wednesday.

Today, a week later, our Google organic traffic is up another 10 percent.

No Panda 4.0 reversal so far.

No dent from Penguin, either (at least, not yet).

[johnhh]

To early to know if it will stick.

My fear exactly ! Currently I notice -
1. Recently crawled pages have higher positions - almost back to Panda 1 - not quite, possibly reflecting the new infrastructure, which I would guess does not need an 'expensive' Panda data refresh
2. The title shown are sometimes taken from the H1 header text rather than the actual title, this may be because some page titles are "similar", just a word or two different, and Google is just replacing the "similar" with the H1 text. There is thread here about that.
3. Ebay is back on the widget searches I did today "all websites are equal but some are more equal than others"
4. In our niche we still get domain crowding, although not quite to same extent as before, and Big Brand is still dominates Page 1, even if they are just rehashing data in a different order

[samwest]

Non converting foreign traffic is through the roof. Lotsa visitors, no buyers. Something is up, and it's not my sales.

[Dymero]

It is possible this is a Penguin update (and what a triple-whammy that would be), but is it also possible this is Panda and/or the Payday Loans update still rolling out? I know Matt said it was all done, but I've never gotten the impression in the past that a roll-out was done when he said it was done.

[Shepherd]

I'm 99.9% sure that penguin has NOT updated yet this year. I think they have been testing a penguin update/refresh intermittently over the last 30 days or so but nothing has been rolled out.

[aristotle]

I'm 99.9% sure that penguin has NOT updated yet this year

I think it's been almost 8 months since the last Penguin update. Maybe they've been working on it to try to fix it -- at least I hope that's the reason for the delay.

[Bones]

I think it's been almost 8 months since the last Penguin update. Maybe they've been working on it to try to fix it -- at least I hope that's the reason for the delay.

Integration into the main algo would be better so that it runs more frequently. The current Penguin cycle is just insane. It can kill a business in the time it takes to update. :-(

[indyank]

I am not sure whether having high hopes on frquent penguin updates are right. unlike Panda which is to demote low quality sites that can revert on improving quality and come back, penguin is against pure spam. So, why would google want them to recover at all?

[Wilburforce]

penguin is against pure spam. So, why would google want them to recover at all?

Penguin is backlink-based, and penalises the recipients of spammy backlinks.

I think Google wanted to discourage spammy backlinks, but has instead spawned growth in negative SEO (see e.g. ColourOfSpring's post a couple of pages ago in this thread). It is the links, not the recipients, that Google does not want.

I would not be surprised if, as Aristotle proposes, they are trying to fix it.

As it is, an alogrithm that penalises sites for what other people do is a Spammers' Charter.

[EditorialGuy]

As it is, an alogrithm that penalises sites for what other people do is a Spammers' Charter.

On the other hand, an algorithm that takes a site's overall trust, history, etc. into account could go a long way toward minimizing the effects of "negative SEO"--at least for the truly innocent.

Let's say that John Doe's site has a tarnished history and Jane Buck's site is squeaky-clean. John and Jane are both targeted by Nasty Nick, the negative-SEO guy. Would a statistician argue that John and Jane should be judged with an equal dose of skepticism?