Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2014

[samwest]

---

System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4699490.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:31 am on Oct 3, 2014 (PST -8)

---

Traffic still lethargic here...funny how the traffic looks human, but acts like bots. I've never seen a human sit on a privacy page for 30 minutes, and yet have bounce rates of almost 70%.
The mobile vs. desktop pie chart shows 25% desktop, 14% mobile and 51% unknown.

[SnowLeppard]

I have two terms I'm studying...both are page 7 or worse in Google but #1 in Yahoo and Bing. Occasionally (rarely) I'll see it pop up in the #3 position on Google, so it seems they are penalizing it one minute and not the next.

WF - I don't think that is the case. It's firmly at page 7 which is usually due to some penalty. I woke up this morning, did a search and there is was on #3 on page 1, I check again and it was gone. Been this way for weeks.

I observed this behavior in February, posted about it here and was doubted and ridiculed.

It seems to me to be Google's mechanism for throttling the number of visitors to a website in realtime.

When this happens, I can see from the search keywords that people are having to work harder to find my site.

[JesterMagic]

On one of my keywords I noticed an interesting thing. A site that uses a blog network is listed twice. First at position 7 and then the exact same listing at position 12. The listing is an exact duplicate. It has the same title, text and url.

[Shepherd]

It's super-clear to me that Goog is giving the site a completely different set of visitors. My conversions go up and down but the amount of traffic has remained about the same since Panda 4.0

Having seen a few people talking about this I just can't wrap my head around it.
My first thought is that this sounds a whole lot more like a case of a competitor eating your lunch than something google is doing. Really, what would be the point of google doing something like this?

[rish3]

It's super-clear to me that Goog is giving the site a completely different set of visitors. My conversions go up and down but the amount of traffic has remained about the same since Panda 4.0

Having seen a few people talking about this I just can't wrap my head around it.
My first thought is that this sounds a whole lot more like a case of a competitor eating your lunch than something google is doing. Really, what would be the point of google doing something like this?

If you've seen it, it's pretty hard to deny. I have one site, somewhat newly afflicted with this. Traffic counts are steady and predictable, and the mix of traffic sources (organic vs direct, google vs bing, etc) doesn't fluctuate much.

But...there are repeatable periods where the bounce rate swings for the worse in a way that is clearly statistically significant. And, with the bounce rate increase, there's a corresponding drop in conversion, etc.

If I filter out "google organic", the crazy swings disappear.

Thus, I'm convinced it exists. Why it exists is another question.

Could be something innocuous...like periodic testing, or some unintentional flaw in the algorithm.

Or, it could be something nefarious, like a "hey, we're near the end of the quarter, and short of revenue targets, so..."

- Put lousy organics on the best converting SERPS to boost ad revenue (crap organics == more ads clicks)
- Drop the ads on the lower value / lower converting SERPS to boost organic visits. This makes it less obvious that we're doing it (keep traffic relatively even to the slowly boiling lobsters)

The "[not provided]" keyword stuff, plus the extreme personalized nature of today's SERPS would make it very hard to prove or disprove. Everyone sees something different, so twisting dials from the mothership isn't easily detected.

[Ralph_Slate]

rish3, I'm with you on this. I track my visitors, percentages from Organic, Referral, and Direct, and Mobile on a daily basis. They don't move much at all.

Although my site is not sales-based, I have seen shifts in the CPM from my ad networks, as if the mix of traffic has changed. I also get periods of time when I get zero emails from people, and then other times when I get a ton of them. It's hard to explain without getting into detail about my site, but it's as if I'm getting a different blend of traffic, more long-tail, during these periods of time.

I may be just paranoid, but it sure seems like Google has the ability to change the blend of traffic to a site.

[samwest]

Having seen a few people talking about this I just can't wrap my head around it.
My first thought is that this sounds a whole lot more like a case of a competitor eating your lunch than something google is doing. Really, what would be the point of google doing something like this?

1. My only competitor left is Google...my old REAL competitors have been scattered to the wind somewhere -950. They cram their ad network partners up in front, then eat our lunch. How much can they eat? all of it.

2. What would the point be? Seriously? $$$

[Shepherd]

If you've seen it

I sell products online, have for many years, of course I have seen:

..there are repeatable periods where the bounce rate swings for the worse in a way that is clearly statistically significant. And, with the bounce rate increase, there's a corresponding drop in conversion

and you know what, so have my competitors, you know why? Because I've done it to them.
The serps are so fluid and it does not take much of a change to create huge rifts in your world. Here's one thing I could do that would cause what you're seeing. Every now and then I could run an ad in the sidebar that lists a price of my product. I would make sure the price is just below your. Your listing is in the organics, people see my ad, with the price, but click through to your site, see your price, remember my ad price and back out of your site.
That's real world, I do it everyday. I sure hope my competitors think google is doing to them ;)

1. My only competitor left is Google

Samwest, is google selling your product or directly invested in someone that is? It's possible, they have their hands in a lot of pots, they even own one of our biggest competitors. If not, there's much less incentive for google to siphon off your buyers than there is for your competitors to.

Anyone that knows, knows I'm no google fanboy and I'm not pushing content, I sell stuff online. There's lots of ways that google is going to get you, this ain't one of them.

[aok88]

If it's my competitors stealing the good converting traffic, I guess that would click jacking, how could I check that?

But why would there be good periods too? They stop stealing for a hour here, an hour there? That doesn't make as much sense as google messing with their dials because:

-They are testing various things, and our site is part of the testing batch (Robert Charleston suggested this one).

-Our site is giving off signals to Google that it's informational most of the time instead of transactional, thus sending us readers, not buyers. Every page of ours has more unique content per page than most if not all competitors, I.e. Each of our widget descriptions are longer and more involved than anywhere else, could it be that this is somehow telling Google we are an informational site?

Any other theories for why we could be getting such bad converting traffic?

[rish3]

and you know what, so have my competitors, you know why? Because I've done it to them.

I do not think my competitors are capable of creating ghost users coming from multiple different cities across the U.S., all with a mix of user agents that match typical patterns, all arriving via Google organic search.

If they were doing what you're describing, it seems odd that they just started this year.

[freshpaul]

I've seen the same thing and it seems highly unlikely that it's what Sheperd is describing.

[Awarn]

Could it be from scrapers using scrapebox and a list of proxies or some other automated software. If Google is throttling traffic and that hits you may hit your Google traffic limit, It would appear like ghost traffic from all over the world.

[samwest]

Samwest, is google selling your product or directly invested in someone that is? It's possible, they have their hands in a lot of pots, they even own one of our biggest competitors. If not, there's much less incentive for google to siphon off your buyers than there is for your competitors to.

Let's take Houzz and Pinterest, two websites that have crowded out my niche with photo spam. These sites are ad network partners, so in my book, they are Google. What's good for those two well financed photo spam sites is also good for Google as they churn plenty of ads for G.

That's Google competing against me...and making matters worse, if I want to compete, I have to buy Google's ($3 / click for a single word term I used to "own") ads. See who's winning here?

I lose traffic and go broke while they do 16 billion / qtr. That's how it looks from the cheap seats.

[edited by: samwest at 12:53 pm (utc) on Oct 24, 2014]

[Shepherd]

If it's my competitors stealing the good converting traffic, I guess that would click jacking

In my eyes, more like your competitors are stealing your customers, not your traffic.

creating ghost users coming from multiple different cities across the U.S.

Rish3, what's your distinction between a "ghost" visitor and a visitor that simply does not buy from you?

If Google is throttling traffic and that hits you may hit your Google traffic limit

Awarn, that would be a pretty easy theory to prove but with all the talk of throttling no one has ever been able to prove it that I know of. If I wanted to test the throttling theory I would set up an Amazon Turk project to click on my organic listings over a specific time period to see if it had any affect on the amount of traffic I received from google.

[Shepherd]

Let's take Houzz and Pinterest, two websites that have crowded out my niche with photo spam

Samwest, that's a different topic, but I'll touch on it. Houzz and Pinterest are not taking your customers. They may be getting the visitors that you feel you should be getting from google, but not your customers. Everyone is competing for visitors, google, Houzz, Pinterest, and you. And all of you want to monetize those visitors. You either have to get those visitors before everyone else or you have to get those visitors from them.

[Martin Ice Web]

I think we all have seen/this good/bad traffic shapping periods and still seeing it and will continue to see it.

As i did some investigations about my personal searches i do, i found that in most cases the serps are not changing within this periods. This makes me think that Google tries to "understand" the query and servs "similar" results.
When i sometimes see, what poeple type into our site-search, it makes me think that some of them didnīt went to school or didnīt finished it.

The search we type into Google are mostly searches for keyword | keyword. The serps are expected as we see it served from Google. But this is not the way poeple search the web.
I think that poeple "talk" to the SEs, like we are knowing it from SIRI.

[samwest]

Houzz and Pinterest are not taking your customers.

I think it's best we agree to disagree on this point. I have a decades worth of data and they have sopped up all of my longtail with millions of keyword loaded photo pages. Examine their obviously automated comments sometime. Any site pulling traffic away by usurping my positions with fragmented, thin or the same content page result over hundreds of unrelated terms is spam in my book and a threat to my business. Right or wrong, that's just my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Google 100% for this but they are the one judging quality and relevance and by the looks of comments, they seem to be missing the target across the board. I just wonder if they are missing on purpose because those results churn more ads. That's the only logical reason I can find that ties all the observed facts together.

[Shepherd]

Samwest, are people buying a product you are selling from Houzz or Pinterest? To my knowledge neither of those websites are ecom sites, neither sell products directly do they?

Are they a threat to your business? Well, if they are getting the visitors you want and then sending them somewhere else to buy then yes, but that's just business in my book.

[samwest]

missing my point, but oh well...and yes it's proven to be very good business for Google. Bad business for most of us. Yeah, and I know, I don't deserve traffic at all. My site sucks, it's spammy and irrelevant. Like a virus, these "central scrutinizer" updates many not have hit everyone. There's always some survivors. Count your blessings.

[rish3]

Rish3, what's your distinction between a "ghost" visitor and a visitor that simply does not buy from you?

Well, it's more about the grouping than any individual users. I, of course, expect some percentage of non-converting users.

What I don't expect is that they cluster together and smash bounce+conversion for some set time period, and then, disappear.

Especially given that they all arrive via the same source (google organic).

[Shepherd]

What I don't expect is that they cluster together and smash bounce+conversion for some set time period, and then, disappear.

Especially given that they all arrive via the same source (google organic).

Rish3, all I can say is that I can make that happen. We have sites with organic rankings and we spend a ton of money on adwords. I can run ads in ways that keep the organic listings from getting any buyers, only shoppers. I can do that for a specific period of time, turn it on and off, target specific demographics, target specific geo-locations... the possibilities are endless.

If I'm your competition, I have the incentive, ability, and desire to try and make sure you never get any customers from google.

[rish3]

Rish3, all I can say is that I can make that happen.

I do believe a competitor could effect an overall drop in traffic by enticing people away.

However, to achieve the effect of keeping traffic at the same exact level, but completely trash conversion, you would have to have control over the organics as well. In the niche I'm seeing this, it's not a few products or keywords...it's hundreds.

It is, as I said earlier, possible that this is Google, but an unintentional side effect.

It looks very much like they are swapping "purchase widget intent" users for "writing a high school paper on widgets intent" or "looking for pictures of a widget intent" visitors.

[aristotle]

I just noticed that Google's results for long-tail searches are really bad right now. For example, if you search for a phrase with four main keywords, say keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, and keyword4, most of the top results will only be relevant to one or two of them. In other words, Google will mostly give results for keyword1 + keyword2 ( or some other combination) while ignoring the remaining two keywords.

It would make a lot more sense to give all of the keywords more or less equal weight. The way they're doing it now makes it really hard to find what you're looking for.

[RedBar]

Let's take Houzz and Pinterest

The single biggest issue I have with both these sites is their inaccuracy/malinformation/misinformation, call it what you like.

I see many of my industry images re-posted from all over the world and the information that people post in many cases is completely incorrect. I can show you thousands of pages, especially on Houzz, whereby products shown are not at all what they purport to be, thousands and thousands of images are like this yet they rank above me and I am, in many cases, the actual original producer.

Houzz also seems to have auto-generated text that simply does not make sense at times.

Is it merely a co-incidence they are Google's next-door neighbour? I don't think so!

[samwest]

I'm glad somebody else noticed this. It's not their next door neighbor status, it's follow the money.
If I had received 165 million, I'd be on top too. They are now valued at over 2 billion. That's my new competitor...it's not even a slightly fair fight. Those millions have secured the best custom ad slinging platform money can buy. Google loves it....but as I suspect with everything else Google has fallen in love with in the past, they'll soon lose interest...especially when the money runs out.
Read more about Houzz [blogs.wsj.com...]

Perhaps there should be a penalty for "well funded mega webspam"; where sites that sling million of thin ad filled pages and millions of tags pages all with the same keywords are not allowed to obscure Google's "average" result. The playing field needs to be leveled somehow.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...the buzz for these sites has already permeated the populous. Like Facebook, eBay and Amazon, they don't need search results anymore, people just know about them and go there directly.

IMHO, featuring mega sites across the board is killing search diversity and user experience.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 5:02 pm (utc) on Oct 26, 2014]
[edit reason] Updated link [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

IMHO, featuring mega sites across the board is killing search diversity and user experience.

Google isn't featuring megasites across the board. Quite a few smaller sites are just doing fine.

[Wilburforce]

ignoring the remaining two keywords

I have just picked up a referral for my UK location-based business in which the words "price in india" - very obviously germane to the query - have very obviously been ignored.

I am also seeing a far higher incidence of their "smart" treatment of my own multi-term queries in which, underneath each result, half of the terms have been crossed out.

Putting inverted commas round each of the individual terms usually forces inclusion (replacing the less cumbersome +), but it seems now that where AND used to take precedence over OR (so pages returning all terms would occupy the top of the SERPs), the current default is the opposite.

[aristotle]

Putting inverted commas round each of the individual terms usually forces inclusion

Since average searchers don't do this, they'll see the bad results I described earlier, making it hard for them to find what they want. Google should be trying to help people find what they want, but instead they're making it a lot harder than it should be.

[Wilburforce]

Since average searchers don't do this, they'll see the bad results I described earlier

I agree. It is almost as if in their War On Spam they have turned everything on its head. If your page has all the searcher's terms on it, you must be up to no good.

I am certain, whether or not they fix that particular bug, that the days when you could use Google organics as a "free" marketing tool are numbered, if they are not already over.

[samwest]

Google isn't featuring megasites across the board.

guess I need to clarify - in my vertical they are across the board. This includes long-tail searches and even listing them #1 for unrelated searches...meaning if I search for apples, the results page features the mega site with a result for ORANGES. Not even close.

Furthermore, there are no small sites left in my vertical..all have been pushed to page two or beyond. Many went straight to page 7.

[SnowMan68]

Whatever rolled out late last night we are seeing another uptick in traffic, around 20%.

On Friday we saw a 40% boost from a penguin refresh. We have been patiently waiting over a year for that refresh after disavowing and requesting manual take downs of bad links.

Not sure if Saturday nights update was Panda related or what. Anyone else seeing something similar Saturday night?