Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2014

[netmeg]

---

System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4676767.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 3:29 pm on Jul 1, 2014 (gmt 0)

---

They've been tacking my site name onto my title tag for a while now - more than a year. Meh.

[Wilburforce]

I'm noticing an increasing number of results with a "missing" tag (see [searchengineland.com ]) on shorter (typically three-word) searches, e.g. Medium Blue Widgets:

#1 Result: Medium blue trousers.

_{Missing: Widgets.}

I'm noticing it because I have run several searches where the important term is missing in the top results. It is irrespective of order (e.g. Widgets Blue Medium still returns top results without widgets), and irrespective of operators (+Widgets Medium Blue still returns results with Widgets missing).

On one specific search, the first relevant result (containing all terms) was at #4, with an important word missing in the top three.

I'm UK-based, but I'm seeing this on google.com as well as google.co.uk.

Is anyone else noticing this?

[iammeiamfree]

Yes it sucks bit time. It looks like they are trying to read your mind based on previous searches and guess what you are looking for now assuming that you are not smart enough to type an appropriate search phrase. Missing out the important terms or just showing results for something else using the thesaurus match. So infuriating although it does occassionaly help. I am going to have a look for and plugin to delete google cookies automatically every 5 minutes or something.

[aakk9999]

and irrespective of operators (+Widgets Medium Blue still returns results with Widgets missing)

Plus is not a search operator in Google Search any more. Instead, you should use quotes around the single word if you want to do what + was doing before.

What happens if you try below - do you still get "Missing" ?
"Medium" "Blue" "Widgets"

And yes, it is very annoying to which lengths a searcher has to go to have returned results of what they searched

[Steven Davis]

And yes, it is very annoying to which lengths a searcher has to go to have returned results of what they searched

Yes you have to be extremely explicit to get quality results from Google search right now and it is very time consuming. The default seems to return the most generic possible answer to your query. I do market research, and now for the first time ever, I find myself having to recheck certain searches on Bing because the Google results are poor enough in quality as to not seem plausible.

I'm really hoping that this is some sort of temporary experiment.

[Wilburforce]

What happens if you try below - do you still get "Missing" ?
"Medium" "Blue" "Widgets"

No, the quotes override it (thanks!).

[superclown2]

I'm really hoping that this is some sort of temporary experiment.

If it is it's a very long temporary. It's part of Larry Page's plan to have Google giving us the answer before we've asked the question. He's a Montessori kid, they see things differently from we mere mortals but since he's a self made multi billionaire and we're not he may well have a point.

[Martin Ice Web]

And yet larry forgets that he only provides the answer but he is not able to give the answer because of knowing it.
Informations are in constant progress and sooner or later poeple especially business will not provid it for free. Remember first email accounts, all for free. Now they are limited or you see ads in your mails.
Sooner or later good sites will not be free, like manybig newspapers doing it right now. Then all google can scrap is low content farm sites.how long will poeple support wiki when they get the answer from scraping google? Which following generation will not know wiki anymore? The next one?
I myself get the feeling that getting good information is getting very hard since google launched panda.

[dethfire]

For some reason my pages crawled sharply crashed on 7/11 to it's lowest amount in 90 days.

[iammeiamfree]

Seeing some movement today. Not just my site but others moving too.

[superclown2]

Yes I've noticed movement today here in the UK - nothing major though.

[GreenDog18]

My website has been on a crazy ride. The keywords I have been monitoring have seen a slight increase but my traffic has gone from 600ish visitors a day to 1200 probably today. This movement started two days ago.

I am seeing increased traffic from Google/Bing/Yahoo. My website just hit 5 months old the other day so maybe it is gaining a little bit of authority instead of changes within the search engines.

[Wilburforce]

Google traffic dropped about 10% last week, and yesterday was the quietest Monday for some time.It is quiet so far today, too.

I can't see any obvious shifts in Google SERPS, so it may be season/weather related. Is anyone in the UK seeing something similar?

[superclown2]

My business is down a bit. I'm not bothered, it's lazy weather syndrome.

[RedBar]

Is anyone in the UK seeing something similar?

According to AdSense metrics my PVs are down about 33% however according to my server logs and Statcounter my PVs are actually up a little.

This started precisely last Thursday 10th July and the subsequent five days, according to AdSense, have all been down 33% plus, at the same time, my EPC from AdSense has been slashed exactly in two.

Something's happened but what, as yet, I haven't fathomed it out.

[nomis5]

Is anyone in the UK seeing something similar?

I'm not seeing any significant changes in the UK G serps.

[SnowMan68]

Had two days of massive crawling from Google on the 13th and 14th, 3+ times the normal daily crawling. Anyone else see this too?

[SnowMan68]

Anyone else notice the pictures gone in the SERPS for people that have videos and use the schema markup? I can't seem to find them anywhere now. Did Google pull the plug on this now too?

[CaptainSalad2]

yep saw that! Expect the stars and anything else that draws attention to organic listings to fade away!

[Wilburforce]

I'm not sure what is going on, but since 21:36 yesterday (UK) there is *NO* search term information from Google showing in my server logs.

[IamnotMattCutts]

Friday is normally a quiet day for us, but so far it's a ghost town (UK)

[superclown2]

Expect the stars and anything else that draws attention to organic listings to fade away

Excellent. They were very distracting and usually faked anyway.

[dethfire]

I've seen a little bump in traffic today. Anyone else?

[netmeg]

I guess John Mu mentioned that they're busy working on the next Penguin update (but no estimate of when it'll drop)

[Wilburforce]

I've seen a little bump in traffic today. Anyone else?

Not exactly: traffic has been down (~10-15%) for the last 2-3 weeks, and seems to be back up from yesterday.

I thought the slump was due to the UK weather, and on that basis would have expected it to get worse with school term ending and the continued fine weather, so possibly something is acting as a boost.

[webcentric]

traffic has been down (~10-15%) for the last 2-3 weeks, and seems to be back up from yesterday...I thought the slump was due to the UK weather

Or perhaps the World Cup?

[Martin Ice Web]

Not exactly: traffic has been down (~10-15%) for the last 2-3 weeks, and seems to be back up from yesterday.

we had been up about 20-30% for the last two weeks and see a drop abotu 50% from yesterday!
Rollback?

[aristotle]

Results Jumping Around

I usually don't spend much time checking search rankings, but when I checked a few last evening from two different sites, the rankings for my sites' pages had fallen about 5-7 positions from where they had normally been lately, in most cases dropping from Page1 results to Page2.

So being somewhat concerned, I checked them again this morning, and found that they had jumped back up to their "normal" positions, or even a little higher. Of course I wasn't signed into Google, and I used incognito browsing, so that wouldn't explain it.

I often see shifts of one or two positions, but this much jumping around is unusual, and has me wondering what could have caused it.

[Alex997]

HUGE swing in generic terms rankings. Google is now using geo-locations it seems for non-mobile search on google.co.uk

So for example 'accountants' for me now only shows accountants local to me. I get similar results to those for 'accountants <my location>'

And yes, I am checking with incognito tools that don't look at my history etc...

[Steven Davis]

Results Jumping Around

Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing starting on July 22 it seems there has been a partial rollback of Panda 4.0.

[SnowMan68]

rollback of Panda 4.0.

I see what seems to be similar results from 2 weeks ago, but I don't think it is related to Panda 4.0.

USA, ECOM