Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2014

[Martin Ice Web]

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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)

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Hopefully Google is getting this thing tweaked.

as i see today, they didnīt 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.

[seoskunk]

Thanks Wilburforce that does make more sense. LOL 'Eudyptula' but thats a cute black and white animal, I always thought the Penguin update was like that short psychotic monster in Batman.

[Wilburforce]

short psychotic monster

Spot on!

[goodoldweb]

Google are fast becoming irrelevant. I long removed their crapysense from all my sites and robo blocked them on most.

Facebook is the word...

Stop wasting so much time, money and effort on the "lost" Gorg. You are better off joining or forming related Facebook groups and marketing your stuff the good old way. It works!

[Zivush]

Facebook is the word...

What's the catch with Facebook really?
Our website's fan page has 26,942 likes. We get zero benefit out of these fans - No traffic to the site and no extra sales.

[goodoldweb]

Dont know about fan pages. I dont use them. Groups works a treat if you know what you doing, have the right offers and know how to push them across.

[Martin Ice Web]

@samwest,

serps are realy a mess.
Over the weekend i took a deep look at the serps.
I found that goolge treats my queries very different to what i realy want.
I have to therories about it:

first:
google is totaly messed up and all this is to move poeple clicking ads.

second:
from googles data they gather that poeple if search for a term in most cases search for something different. It that fact that we have the know how in our niche. Most poeple donīt know how to call a item and relay search for something other than they type in. But i have to say that this is not new and that google did a much better job before all this panda/penguin. Maby they have penalized so many sites that they are not able to give better results.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by aakk9999. New thread at: google/4702381.htm [webmasterworld.com]
7:24 pm on Sep 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

[matt621]

Has anyone tried Bing? Bing ads in particular?

[Mentat]

This week-end, my biggest site (News/IT related) has -30%, but one of smaller sites, affected -90% recovered from the 4 Sept 2013 update.

:@

[System]

The following 15 messages were cut out to new thread by aakk9999. New thread at:

Are SERPs a Popularity Contest ?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4702381.htm [webmasterworld.com]
7:29 pm on Sep 17, 2014(gmt 0)

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Mods note: There was a really good discussion going which I felt deserves its own thread. Please do continue with Google SERPs observations here.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 7:42 pm (utc) on Sep 17, 2014]

[trabis]

I see crawl spikes on WMT for day 15 on 2 sites. This are record crawling numbers for the last 3 months. One spike is 2x the average and the other is 6x ! I forecast bad weather begining this thursday :)

[edited by: aakk9999 at 7:47 pm (utc) on Sep 17, 2014]
[edit reason] Moved message back after splitting the thread [/edit]

[linkbuildr]

North American B2B in the luxury sector also seeing the start of something. A lot of crawling and zombie traffic turned on for the past two days.

Google is sending visitors my way from the most un-relevant queries resulting in poopy traffic.

[rbarker]

As of this morning 3 sites usually below me (#2) and the #1 guy just jumped to the 1,2 & 3 spot on Google. Our site and the usual #1 site are very clean and strong so not sure how 3 competitors are suddenly dominating the serps with weak content and design...

[RedBar]

so not sure how 3 competitors are suddenly dominating the serps with weak content and design

Sounds Google normal to me!

Anyway, who actually uses Google for anything these days?

[goodoldweb]

Anyway, who actually uses Google for anything these days?

I agree. As far as i'm concerned they have become irrelevant and seriously mistrusted, on all levels.

For searches I use a mix of bing, yahoo and duckduck. For products promotions i use Facebook. Works great.

The Google goons need to be thought a lesson... it's totally up to us to make the switch and change things around.

[EditorialGuy]

Anyway, who actually uses Google for anything these days?

About 203.7 million people per month in the U.S., according to Quantcast.

(Mind you, in my experience, Quantcast has a habit of underestimating traffic.)

[Wilburforce]

My site has recovered the page it dropped on 6 September for main key term, and has also reverted to mysite.com.

For quite a long time it had been returning mysite.com/key-term.html, until - at the point when domain crowding entered the discussions again - it returned both.

As it is now back to a single entry, I assume whatever Google were looking at that resulted in widespread multiple entries has now been resolved.

[Martin Ice Web]

What is up with Google today. There are only Zombies and we have russian and norwegian sites in german serps.

ecom, germany

[CaptainSalad2]

@Martin do you use Google analytics? Google analytics from my tests is completely inaccurate!

I put a link on a site I own to another site I own for a couple of weeks then deleted it but still have "referrer" traffic weeks later from a link that doesn't exist? Seen this a few times now.

[samwest]

@rbarker - I hear ya! We all know <big niche business listing site with supplier listings and galleries>, well I have a page on their site with a hand full of photos...less than ten in fact. For several key terms I've ranked #1-3 for or the past decade, now my page on <big listing site> is outranking my site that contains the detailed, full fidelity story on the focus keyphrases. They hold 1, 2 and 3 position while I've been moved down well below the fold.
This is (IMHO) pretty much proof positive that G is either out of it's gourd or prefers the well funded source over the "hi-fi" version. (hi-fi, wow, guess I'm showing my age...)

Oh, and to top that off, <listing site> is now spamming me about the "business website" they built for me. Why? I already have a site. Next we'll see them peddling paid advertising, if they're not already doing it. That's gonna cut into G's profits. See what happens when you give a site all the long tail in a niche? They come back to cut your throat.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:11 pm (utc) on Sep 18, 2014]
[edit reason] exemplified listing site, per forum Charter [/edit]

[SnowMan68]

We should change the name of this thread to.... The Google complaints board.

It has honestly become useless. According to the last 3 pages...Google sucks, no one uses it, always terrible results, have to be a fortune 500 company to rank...c'mon guys, seriously.

[IamnotMattCutts]

but apart from that, what has Google ever given us.

[Jez123]

@ IamnotMattCutts are you the People's Front of Judea?

[engine]

Come on, let's try and work out what's happening.

Over the last few days I have watched one niche closely and it's clear that some authority sites today are no longer ranking. What I have seen in the last week is some real estate in the SERPs given up to a news search for the topic.

[Jez123]

It has honestly become useless. According to the last 3 pages...Google sucks, no one uses it, always terrible results, have to be a fortune 500

I agree. Some of the results are poor, granted. Dominated by all the usual names. BUT, let me tell you that I have never done better. My rankings are nothing to crow about but business has NEVER been better! Since recovering (80% ish) from Penguin last October I have had the busiest, most lucrative (by a long way) year ever. Why? Because the changes I made on my site in the 18 months I was scratching around for work are amazing. My traffic converts better than ever. I am under the radar most of the time to my competitors so they don't see me as much of a threat - which I prefer.

Are you certain that your sites are up to it? Fast loading? Engaging? Selling the right thing at the right price? As far as I can tell it's all still happening out there but it's not going to come to you like it did. You need to bring it in by making your site amazing.

[SnowMan68]

I agree. Some of the results are poor, granted. Dominated by all the usual names. BUT, let me tell you that I have never done better. My rankings are nothing to crow about but business has NEVER been better! Since recovering (80% ish) from Penguin last October I have had the busiest, most lucrative (by a long way) year ever. Why? Because the changes I made on my site in the 18 months I was scratching around for work are amazing. My traffic converts better than ever. I am under the radar most of the time to my competitors so they don't see me as much of a threat - which I prefer.

Are you certain that your sites are up to it? Fast loading? Engaging? Selling the right thing at the right price? As far as I can tell it's all still happening out there but it's not going to come to you like it did. You need to bring it in by making your site amazing.

Yes and yes! I 100% agree with everything you said.

We were slammed by Panda in 2013, lost almost 90% of our traffic. Tried everything on our own, until we realized we needed some fresh eyes on the site. Hired someone who is not cheap, but really good. Gutted a lot of the site, revamped and then launched a much more user friendly site. End result...higher conversions and less questions about how to find stuff. Then in May we saw a decent bump from the Panda update, recovered about 40% of what we were at our absolute peak in 2013.

3 months ago we decided to hire a PPC management company and increase our budget for both Google and Bing. There are a ton of moving parts in PPC and it requires a lot of attention. It took a while to update our ads and restructure how we were bidding, but we are saving money now and converting better with the new PPC company. This month we are on pace to have our 2nd best month as a company ever. Been in business since 2005.

Goals for 2015 are to start to grow our organic traffic again through much smarter content marketing, building our site back up as the authority it once was. There is plenty of room for growth in organic, especially if you are in a REAL niche. Take a step back and look at your site as a customer, not the owner. Have others look at your site and listen to what they say. When I say others, people who aren't in the ecommerce game. Real customers who don't own websites. Take constructive criticism and don't be afraid to overhaul the whole damn thing. What worked in 2005, 2009, and 2011 doesn't work anymore. The sooner you stop holding onto what was and realize what could be with something fresh and updated, the better off you will be.

[Wilburforce]

Come on, let's try and work out what's happening.

+1

In my particular case I can't help the suspicion that there is a strong clue in that:

1. In my sector, my own site is the only one in the top three pages that has moved more than +/-1 place, and

2. My site was the only one returning two pages, and

3. The returned page has reverted to mysite.com after a couple of years returning mysite.com/key-term.html.

Alas, for the moment, whatever clue there is remains elusive, but if anyone else sees anything similarly specific please let us know!

[matt621]

We should change the name of this thread to.... The Google complaints board.

It has honestly become useless. According to the last 3 pages...Google sucks, no one uses it, always terrible results, have to be a fortune 500 company to rank...c'mon guys, seriously.

I agree. However you can't find a solution until you know what the problem is. And you can't know the problem without a) being inside google at every level (which no one is) or b) hashing out all the available data to come to a conclusion.

To ignore some of the data is just foolish. It does little good to tweak and fix and change IF there is something else going on. And that is why that part of the thread is still valuable. It may not seem productive to you, because we all want a silver bullet, but ignoring part of the potential problem will never yield the correct solution.

I totally agree with the mod for splitting off the thread, however that part of the conversation should not be condemned.

[Saffron]

What I see is a return to the SERPS from the first 3/4 of last year. Dominated by the same sites, particularly large 'how to do this/wikihow' type sites.

I've said this before, that one site in particular dominates over and over. Every topic I search for, they are listed in no. 1 spot and commonly no. 2 too. Followed by 'how to do' sites.

I don't think there's much sites like mine can do other than hope that the SERPS improve, because the results right now are just not very good.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. I do think Google return better results than they did pre-Panda, but sometimes their tweaks just don't work that well, which is what I'm seeing now with the love of howstuffworks and wikihow, advising to 'fix' stuff at home that in many cases could result in death.

[samwest]

4pm, should be very busy this time of day, but GART shows zero for the past 15 minutes....here's the weird part...
I just ran a keyword ranking report and I'm #1 listed for dozens of terms...page 1 for hundreds of terms...been seeing this behavior for months and it seems to be getting worse by the day. Traffic down, SERP's showing new and positive gains in many competitive keywords...so where is the traffic me wonders? Site ranks an A/C speed rating on gt mtrx. Tests fine from proxies.