Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2014

[Martin Ice Web]

---

System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4694139.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 3:07 pm on Sep 2, 2014 (utc -5)

---

Hopefully Google is getting this thing tweaked.

as i see today, they didn´t get it right. Very low and nonconverting traffic.
+ domaincrowding
+ not compelling sites are on page #1
+ Content is NOT king
+ search for bananas and get apples


On saturday a friend asked me to look into his niche and all the ranking sites are like
- keyword town
up to page two
I thought this would be considered as spam? There was not one local Business, there was not one realy -> compelling <- site.

[Martin Ice Web]

Google does endless experiments and we suffer.

I am afraid to tell you that this is not an experiment, it is on purpose.
geevil wants all the clicks from buyers to turn into cash. I would do it if i could, they do it because they can do it.
But if poeple finaly see that GSA is not working, geevil will loose their clients because they did not treat them well.

[mrengine]

More host crowding and zombie users for me. Adwords is not converting either so I paused the campaigns to idle the entire account.

[aristotle]

Google can track some people's activity on the web, and use these histories to determine who is more likely to click on an ad or make a purchase. Some people are easier to track than others, but Google probably has enough information to partially "personalize" most search results.

[Wilburforce]

Google probably has enough information to partially "personalize" most search results

I wouldn't stop at "probably". Added to your personal browsing history is geographical location (even if they don't actually know who or where you are, they can base the results on the location of your IP address or ISP's server).

I think, also, that many single-word or short-phrase searches now have general historic data factored in: if you search for Widget, where a human might ask: "Could you narrow it down a bit?", Google attempts to fill in the blanks from past search data, so you might get results that factor in a (global or location-based, not personal) history of clicks where that word was included in longer search-terms. A lot of current single-word and short-phrase results I see suggest that kind of effect, rather than something based wholly on relevance for the exact phrase.

Altogether, this makes it much harder to optimise a page or site for specific short-phrase terms, and I think Panda and Penguin both target sites and pages that - whether deliberately or inadvertently - do just that.

This, of course, changes the behaviour of both webmasters and searchers, so results are much more dynamic - i.e. less stable - than they used to be. Add the randomising effect of frequent agorithm updates and tweaks, and it becomes all but impossible to know what to do to keep on page 1 for Blue Widget.

I don't believe this is motivated by a desire to drive all site-owners to adwords: if Google want to keep advertisers coming, they MUST keep readers, so if their results drive searchers away they will ultimately lose business. The end-user is what their paying customers pay for.

[Awarn]

I do not believe that from the data I see. I can show you a site that uses no Adwords yet at times will have 5 pages listed on page 1. I sitting here spending on Adwords and I am sitting on page 2 or 3 and being bled dry. Logic would say you hit all the main players and rotate the organic so they all go up and down but manage to stay a float. Clearly there is manipulation.

I do have data to suggest that Google does not truly index pages like they suggest. This may be part of the problem. It appears like some sites are more thoroughly indexed. I find there to be a difference between what WMT shows as indexed and I consider indexed. To know a page exist is not indexed. Indexed to me means the page has been thoroughly scanned and digested.

[aok88]

Google can track some people's activity on the web, and use these histories to determine who is more likely to click on an ad or make a purchase.

That makes sense. But then how do you get Google to 'choose' your site to send the 'good' traffic to? And how could there algo change so drastically that you're all of a sudden sent a completely different set of visitors? I'd think we'd hear more rumblings of major algo changes.

A lot of current single-word and short-phrase results I see suggest that kind of effect, rather than something based wholly on relevance for the exact phrase.

Altogether, this makes it much harder to optimise a page or site for specific short-phrase terms, and I think Panda and Penguin both target sites and pages that - whether deliberately or inadvertently - do just that.

Yes but there are plenty of top 10 results where the sites are doing exactly that, targeting tons of specific short-phrase terms, doing great.

[Wilburforce]

Yes but there are plenty of top 10 results where the sites are doing exactly that, targeting tons of specific short-phrase terms, doing great.

I agree: intermittently and in the short-term some manifestly spammy sites/pages seem to populate good positions, particularly - or so it seems from here - during and just after algorithm changes.

I'm not sure what accounts for it. It is almost as if a spam loophole opens up every time a new anti-spam initiative is launched.

The only sites I see doing this are relatively new at the time: I haven't seen any maintain their top 10 position for any substantial period, which my own site (and those of many other contributors here) succeeded in doing before Panda/Penguin.

[Martin Ice Web]

So what spammers has been before panda and penguin are now the brands. As geevil is more ads biased this brands spam the whole adwords and gsa sections.
In my niche not only this brands are on #1 but they fill gsa and adwords too. Sometimes they have up to 3 different domains only to be displayed in gsa with the same widget 3 times.
Its like geevil opened a very new way for big companies to take over the comercial section of geevil.

[samwest]

More host crowding and zombie users for me. Adwords is not converting either so I paused the campaigns to idle the entire account.

Exactly what I'm seeing.
It's also exactly what I did - pausing Adwords.

[Wilburforce]

It's also exactly what I did - pausing Adwords.

If a few more people followed suit Google might actually sit up and take notice.

[seodudez]

I am noticing a recovery today. 1 week of 20% down and now back up to normal levels.

[aok88]

What's interesting is that the relatively small number of orders this site gets lately are always lesser-priced items, like zombies still kinda buy, but not very often, and when they do they spend very little.

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: I've split part of this discussion off to another thread....

Many results for one query - domain clustering returns
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4699959.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[Martin Ice Web]

Aok88, i can confirm that. Zombies that look all day long for cheapest price all other buyers are gone. Carts don't have much more items then 1 to 3 and are of little conversion. I know that this has been before but i can't remember when it was. i also get many foreign buyers now.

Ecom, germany

[samwest]

Since 2010 I've gone from six figures to poverty level. Is this what G wants? to financially break the very same people who provided the content to make them the money hungry, no dividend paying Goliath they are today? Seems this will only end badly for all. All due to one thing...greed. Typical story of humanity.

These geeks think their tinkering has no effect on real people.
I'm ready to throw in the towel here...I wonder what the economic impact of all this meddling amounts to so far? How many jobs lost, broken marriages, homes repossessed and businesses shuttered?
The good old wild west days of the internet are long gone.

[Martin Ice Web]

samwest, today i looged in into adsense to look at my campaign. And i saw that the CPC went up from 10 EURO Cent to 70 EURO CENT ! for most items. This is why goovil insists of telling us that they do it for UE. What a joke, poeple pay 70 Cent for a click where the item cost only 30 Cent.

Today is even worse. No traffic. No sales. No mails.

[samwest]

To be honest, this was all expected. It's just the natural flow of capitalism. Soon the serps will be dominated by nothing but mega corporations. Heck, it's already that way now. Organic results are being swept away and replaced by big money, big brand sites. I guess this is what they call "progress".

Traffic is zip today. 1 or zero is what GA reads.
By this time of the year (post labor day) there is always a seasonal upswing in traffic. this year it's just flat as a pancake or heading down. Gonna start packing my mule and head back east.

[philgames]

Iv seen a boost in amazon recently. Yay for them boo for everyone else... searchers, consumers and small businesses.

I did tons of product searchers the other day and couldn't find any results that didn't have amazon at the top.

[samwest]

What's really odd is that my keywords have not moved much at all. Still ranking on page one for many terms and still #1 for main terms. Regardless, there are no visitors coming to the site. It's as if the server is disconnected. Maybe it is? (I've already checked with my hosting co. - it's not)

[edited by: samwest at 1:51 pm (utc) on Sep 5, 2014]

[GreyBeard123]

I did tons of product searchers the other day and couldn't find any results that didn't have amazon at the top.

I don’t see this in my part of the world. I think it differs from country to country.

[philgames]

You may be right. I am in the uk so there aren't many uk mega sites that come close to amazon.

*I searched all sorts of random unrelated cheap products
*All searcher I do are done in private mode.

[Hollywood]

mrengine

Re "More host crowding and zombie users for me. Adwords is not converting either so I paused the campaigns to idle the entire account."

I ended my ENTIRE Google PPC campaign after 10 years, a total joke.

I agree with all you are saying.

~Hollywood

[aok88]

What's really odd is that my keywords have not moved much at all. Still ranking on page one for many terms and still #1 for main terms.

That's what I'm seeing. In fact, visits have gone up a bit the last two days, but conversions have gone down.

[Martin Ice Web]

A brand now outranks us, not new but this one has 30 keywordlinks on the page footer on every page. Brands realy can do what they want without getting into trouble.

[Atomic]

I had another massive deep crawl September 4 and then another the next day September 5. Anyone else see anything like this?

[EditorialGuy]

The last really deep crawl on our main site was almost exactly one month ago.

Our smaller, secondary site had a couple of very deep crawls in mid-August (several times more pages crawled than are on the site), with a full crawl again on September 3.

[Awarn]

I also had the same deep crawl - absolutely huge. Maybe schema related?

[aok88]

This morning (only) I've noticed our conversions are up, better visitors. No discernible change in visits. It's like they opened the spigot - although I imagine it will be temporary...

[samwest]

@aok88 - I'm not seeing anything new here. Hope it sticks for ya!

[Martin Ice Web]

since 28/08 google organics conversion rate < 1%
before panda it was at about 25%, with panda it grew to 30% and with every panda and new find good content blahblah updates it shrinked.

If google realy has some integrity, they would announce it. Ecom is over in organics. PLEASE PAY. But they are not....

what ever they did, it worked out well form them, routing all the buyers to their ads.