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.

[samwest]

I'm sure it's not our sites...although we doted over them daily like fragile flowers, just so when Google comes by they look pretty for them.

Well, I'm giving up worrying about them. I've stomped those flowers out of existence and tomorrow I'm (finally) starting a new approach that does not involve Gorg. I'm shutting off their services and I'm deleting my G+ account.

There comes a point when you just can fight the monster anymore. No evil...humph!

[matt621]

I'm terrified of everything to do with Google. One slip up and we lose our house.

saffron

What button out of ten thousand did I accidentally toggle the wrong way for Google's approval? and like you said, lost the farm over it?

samwest

I'm with you and feel the same way here. I think I know what "button" it was, but it's just ridiculous that we have to tip toe on eggshells hoping we don't annoy the beast.

The "mistake" I made is not illegal, unethical, immoral, nor nefarious.

I "dared" trying to make our site more useable and safe for our visitors. And for that I'm headed toward Google purgatory.

[davidhan]

That is the problem that I'm interested.
I too see the on and off periods but I do not think the traffic is going to Adwords users. Adwords sucks right now.
I also see site NOT using Adwords listed higher than those that use Adwords.
I would bet that Google is price shopping and sending people to the cheapest sites. Cheapest usually is Ebay and Amazon. Quality may be garbage but it is cheap.

[samwest]

@Matt621 - I also "dared" to improve the site by moving from stale, static html to a CMS. I've done everything in my power to 301 and recreate all the old pages, but ANY change was enough to garner their wrath. After 14 years, I am now officially out of business in the online niche I pioneered. Ridiculous.

[Wilburforce]

Google is price shopping and sending people to the cheapest sites

It is easy to assume some sinister or callous intention behind this, but one of the problems affecting high streets (and any business that provides accessible services - which have a cost - as well as a box on your doorstep) is that "internet shopping" for the majority of consumers is simply a hunt for the cheapest.

Google may be returning the cheapest sites because that - on the basis of sound statistical evidence - is what the searcher is looking for.

[toidi]

Or maybe Google is like the VD investigator from the Department of Public Health who wants a list of an infected person's contacts. The "disavow" list makes it easier to see who's been transmitting the clap. 

Then why do they want us to list those we have never had contact with?

[samwest]

Well, today verifies that I have been shut off, completely.

I'll ponder the question one more time...How can I be well listed, yet getting zero traffic?

I ran my keyword check for hundreds of niche related keyphrases and see I either have the same rank or have moved up. No ranking losses at all. (except for a few -1 moves).

What kind of black magic is going on here?

If there's a problem that's serious enough to shove me in the sandbox, why can they at least have the courtesy to alert me in WMT? (yes, I can hear you snickering)

[aakk9999]

I ran my keyword check for hundreds of niche related keyphrases and see I either have the same rank or have moved up. No ranking losses at all.

Have you had a look at your WMT Queries section? What does it say under Impressions, Clicks and Avg. ranking position?

If you see many Impressions, try to drill down to countries / web properties to see where the impressions come from.

If you do not see this in WMT then it may be that you are getting highly personalised results when you do ranking checks.

[Wilburforce]

Then why do they want us to list those we have never had contact with?

In Google's enviroment, links are contact. They want us to list the sort of contact which is, in EG's metaphor, infected.

[samwest]

Since I gave up hope, I feel so much better...the story of working for Google's attention.

[mrengine]

Google is price shopping and sending people to the cheapest sites

Not at all. For example, we sell a product at a price well below Amazon. Even with freight, we beat Amazon's free shipping on this particular product. We even have a devoted page that explains to buyers, in detail, how to use the product. Where do we rank for this product? Nowhere. Amazon is at the top of both organic and paid search results.

The policy at my company is to generate a shipping label and send it to the customer within two hours of their order. Amazon drags their feet on shipping orders that they fulfill with free shipping (can take days just to ship). Amazon's price is inflated and they don't have anyone available by telephone that knows anything about the product. We do. There is absolutely no reason why Amazon should have two listings above the fold.

Being the lowest priced retailer of this product, you would think we would be found somewhere in the first two pages.

My theory is that in this tough economy Google is rewarding their largest Adwords users which helps to keep more money flowing Google's way. The last time we advertised this product on Adwords was a few years ago. With great pricing there are no margins for advertising it as a standalone. Back then we ranked pretty good for the product on the first page.

I agree with the other posters that Adwords is not working well either. After the rash of recent host crowding our Adwords campaigns had a poor ROI, but it was sliding downhill before that. All campaigns are now paused. If I see some positive reasons to reactivate the campaigns from others, I will. Until then it's a matter of self preservation and a watchful eye on every dollar spent.

I think we did a really good job on this product. We have our own unique and detailed description, multiple supporting pictures, a how to use tutorial, the best price online and fast shipping. None of these quality points seem to matter with Google, and is part of the reason why I think the search results are based more on what kind of money each query will generate for Google. Amazon, a big Adwords spender, gives Google a lot more of an incentive to rank them well instead of little old me.

[samwest]

My theory is that in this tough economy Google is rewarding their largest Adwords users which helps to keep more money flowing Google's way.

BINGO!

All campaigns are now paused.

Mine too!

Intentionally or not, it's so sad to see how G has torn down all the Mom & Pop stores on the web. With personalized support and telephone assistance, they are the best user experience going.

Google has NO interest in good user experience.
We starve while they feast on our traffic. They are just more blowing smoke...BTW is the PR robot MC still on leave?

[Wilburforce]

Google has NO interest in good user experience.

They have no mechanism for monitoring what happens when your customer picks up the phone.

In fact, bad user experience - like trawling through the site for the phone number that isn't there - might look like the opposite.

[mrengine]

Intentionally or not, it's so sad to see how G has torn down all the Mom & Pop stores on the web. With personalized support and telephone assistance, they are the best user experience going.

I think the problem is much bigger than any of us realize. Both Amazon and Google have invested heavily in drone technology to deliver goods. Controlling the entire consumption cycle (search to delivery) offers the winner huge profits. Small businesses don't have much of a role in the product consumption cycle when this shift happens. And it will make it much easier to deploy a controlled shopping experience with few small businesses out there competing for the consumer's dollar and muddying up the waters with personal interaction directly with shoppers. Get shoppers used to getting their goods from a warehouse, which is a form of preparation I see in the search results now (mostly warehouse giants listed on the first page for products).

As a small business being found in the search results is a major problem now. But look how things could be down the road. Imagine competing with Amazon or Google in a retail environment where they can deliver goods to a shopper's doorstep in 1/100th of the time for a freight fee that is 1/10th of what a small business charges when using UPS. Us small retailers better be selling heavy products if we intend on competing!

[samwest]

Imagine competing with Amazon

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The little guys are now using Amazon for huge profits. You mention them capturing the entire shipping cycle, but that will still take an army of little guys like you an I. It's a literal jungle to get signed up but it's gotten easier over the past year or so...that's where I'm headed with my product, should have been there long ago. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

For many, the SERPS are dying FAST!

Expect to see GOOG bidding on AMZN soon.

[RedBar]

Us small retailers better be selling heavy products if we intend on competing!

I produce and ship heavy products globally in container loads, believe me if you were to go down that route you had better get your delivery logistics and costings right!

[matt621]

My theory is that in this tough economy Google is rewarding their largest Adwords users which helps to keep more money flowing Google's way. The last time we advertised this product on Adwords was a few years ago. With great pricing there are no margins for advertising it as a standalone. Back then we ranked pretty good for the product on the first page.

I can confirm that, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with the economy. When we started (very early 2000's) we were about 9th or 10th listing on google. Then we started adwords. (i believe around 2004) Very modestly at first, but at the time there was no one else using adwords for our search terms. As soon as we started a google adwords account we shot up to the 3rd position. I knew right then that google was boosting those sites with an adwords account. At the time I didn't have a problem with that because we only spent like $25/month. That was all we needed to stay in the top 3 results.

But now everyone has a google adwords account. And so everyone is getting the boost and so it's no boost at all and it's costing everyone dearly.

I know google has their froogle (or whatever it's called now) system and I'm fine with that. They do take into consideration shipping charges etc. but on that page they clearly identify what they are doing, listing by price. But for the organic results, it should be listed by content.

[matt621]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The little guys are now using Amazon for huge profits.

Maybe you know something I don't (likely. ;-) ) but price competition on Amazon is cut throat. We have had items on Amazon that never sell because we are $.50-$1.5 higher and that's $.50 to $1.50 over what our cost is.

I think in the short term it could work for some people, but in the long term you are cannibalizing your business being on Amazon.

[samwest]

@matt621 - I can share hundreds of examples of top 3 listed big brand how to and answer sites that have no less than 9 Google ads on their endless "Top XX whatever" articles. Webspam anyone?

[matt621]

I agree but Google is google and they are going to support their own. Eventually I hope people realize the new boss is the same as the old boss and don't get fooled again.

In the mean time .... we have to hang in there to survive.

Or find yet another niche that the big boys have not discovered and google has not yet twisted the screws on.

[samwest]

^ +1

[Saffron]

I've always assumed that Google is moving towards 'brands' because according to Eric Schmidt, the Internet is a cesspool. Therefore us scummy 'non branded' sites aren't worthy of ranking.

Doesn't actually matter if the branded sites are any good, people trust them, therefore that's okay.

[seoskunk]

If Google was a Star Wars Film it would be "The Empire Strikes Back" right now as big business push the small business off the web. However with coordinated effort maybe there could still be a "Return of the Jedi" :)

[Wilburforce]

No ranking losses at all. (except for a few -1 moves).

What kind of black magic is going on here?

@samwest

One mechanism that seems to come and go, but is in evidence with my site at the moment, is that Google decides your Description isn't right, and substitutes a random irrelevant snippet - possibly containing one or two words from the search-term - for your own succinct, lucid, carefully-worded description.

Removing your own highly-relevant description can give a highly-relevant page 1 result a CTR of 0%.

[Rasputin]

Google decides your Description isn't right, and substitutes a random irrelevant snippet

something like this...?
[i.imgur.com ]

[Shepherd]

I swear, when I saw google's doodle for autumn this morning I though it was a penguin walking through the woods killing trees... might be time to take some time off.

[Wilburforce]

@Rasputin

Yes, that would do it. Best laugh I have had today!

[Zivush]

I am sure that there was a substantial update starting Sept 19 to Sept 21.
MozCast and SerpMetrics are seeing the update too.

I can tell that one of my sites went from 43K sessions per day to 55K sessions(this Monday).
Anyone else see an impact?

[Wilburforce]

Anyone else see an impact?

Not in traffic, but my site lost the 10 places it had regained (having originally lost them on 6 September) on 18 September, and regained a double entry (mysite.com/key-term.html rejoined mysite.com).

As you point out, Mozcast shows a fairly Hot day on 21 September, which coincides with what looks to me like a rollback of last week's change.

[samwest]

@Zivush - finally somebody spotted this. My traffic shut down completely on 20th, 21st. Usually I usually see a negative bump when a big update comes along, but how much lower can I go? In a "normal" situation, I'd recover a day or two later...but there is no longer any recovery. If there was any update, it likely pushed the current branded garbage further up and our sites further down.

The tear down of our sites continue:

Lost all long tail long ago, now they are working on plurals. I don't rank at all anymore on "blue widget" but I do rank #3 on "blue widgets".

The big brand web spam sites rank on the long tail and plurals and for terms totally unrelated to the site's content.

Business as usual at Google...

[edited by: samwest at 12:09 pm (utc) on Sep 23, 2014]