Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2014

[samwest]

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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)

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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.

[Atomic]

@SnowMan68

Ditto everything you said

[samwest]

I saw an increase...627 sessions on Sunday and two weeks ago Sunday it was 618 sessions (last week was 534). My "uptick" was more like 1.4% - they must have screwed up and forget to penalize me into negative numbers....or it's just another infinitesimally small carrot. Either way, it's the most positive numbers I have seen in months...and that ain't sayin' much.

[samwest]

...one additional note...how can search query impressions in WMT for three consecutive Saturdays be 1442, 1441 and 1442 respectively? Is that a natural pattern? No.

[engine]

On top of Penguin and Panda, the DMCA Piracy update is taking place this week.

See the policy change I posted about last week [webmasterworld.com...]

This will, no doubt, be causing the SERPs to shift around.

[goodroi]

I am not expecting a big shift from the DMCA update. I think it is going to be limited to a very small selection of websites that deal with torrents and related issues.

[samwest]

Aggregations are really becoming tiresome with titles like: "89 amazing photos of XXXX" or "Top ten reasons to XXXXXX." 100% of these are stolen content on a thin, ad packed series of pages, yet they dominate in my vertical. Once one monkey has success, the rest follow and make a mess of things. Google can target those type of sites next.

[cptops]

Aggregations are really becoming tiresome with titles like: "89 amazing photos of XXXX" or "Top ten reasons to XXXXXX." 100% of these are stolen content on a thin, ad packed series of pages, yet they dominate in my vertical. Once one monkey has success, the rest follow and make a mess of things. Google can target those type of sites next.

Couldn't agree more.

[RedBar]

Google can target those type of sites next.

Whilst I would agree do you think it's likely when they get so many users and thereby attracting the scatter-gun advertisers?

What amazes me is the incredible amount of free time some people seem to have to scrape our sites and then the amount of time people have to go trawling through them all...unbelievable, don't they have jobs? No? Oh!

[Nutterum]

Its called customer experience. There are websites that hide their true identity (selling you something online in most cases) with huge amounts of content, listings and thin pages and pushing above the fold a "simple" subscribe form. Dig 3 pages deeper and voila - buy this at x price.

Want an example? Type book a hotel for niche (luxury, tradeshow, something seasonal) in google and see what happends!

I do not want to be a bad prophet here but in my eyes this is the new way to spam the SERPS.

[samwest]

Whilst I would agree do you think it's likely when they get so many users and thereby attracting the scatter-gun advertisers?

and there's the rub...trash sells ads.

[RedBar]

...trash sells ads.

Unfortunately it seems to be a numbers game, it used to be the lowest common denominator however these days it seems to have gone up-market now selling "added quality" to the masses...the problem is though that I cannot see, at the moment, how we can fight back other than become one of their "members" and promote from within.

Yeah, I've got loads of spare time to do that, not!

[Wilburforce]

My server logs show a substantial spike in traffic yesterday, with increased traffic from most non-UK Google sources (google.com, .au...). However, .co.uk referrals (which is where my income comes from) were down.

For several days now the logs show much less referral information than usual, so I suspect this is being masked again.

SERPs for the terms I monitor - on either google.com or .co.uk - have scarcely moved. On most terms, however, my pages are better placed in .com than .co.uk results. I don't know what this says about geolocation, although it might have something to do with my site being .com rather than .co.uk.

[samwest]

I don't know what this says about geolocation

From what I've seen , geolocation doesn't work at all and is seriously flawed. I searched for a contractor the other day and got a big KG display with map and full page listing of contractors in North Carolina...I'm located in the upper Midwest. Anther clean miss by the Mountain View Mind Readers.

[RedBar]

Wow, Houzz has so much clout now that my company name page, which has absolutely nothing on it but an overview, comes in at #11 on G.co.uk and #15 on G.com right behind Twitter where I do actually post regularly!

[samwest]

Wow, Houzz has so much clout now

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that they just received 165M in funding, eclipsing the 11M they used to make this much of a lopsided mess of this vertical. Certainly Google serps wouldn't be affected, swayed or even slightly influenced by this pile of money.

I feel your pain, its frustrating.

BTW, my Houzz page comes in at #4 on page one and has 5 photos and a keyword loaded (intentionally) intro sentence, yet my site is at page 7 and used to be at #1 on page one. Normal WMG's do not appear to apply with these mega sites.

You wouldn't think mega sites typically need this much search engine exposure simply because their names are already embedded into the vernacular.
They are getting a ridiculous amount of broad search and domain crowding and becoming tiresome. I suspect (hope) they will eventually tune them down. Remember ezine articles? LOL

Anyway, something happened in the past 24 hours and things have gotten MUCH worse. Spotty traffic, long zero runs, non converting, page sitters...GA seems to freeze too, anyone else noticing that?

[seoskunk]

Outdated see below ..........

[edited by: seoskunk at 1:56 am (utc) on Nov 1, 2014]

[seoskunk]

Ok coz of all your protests about Houzz I took a look.......interesting
I attached to the domain a random query...

[houzz.com...]

What I found is they are responding to all queries with a 200 OK and generating bullsh@t content. Literally they are throwing complete crap at google and are presently being rewarded for it. I stand corrected Houzz is a site that deserves to be penalised.

The only way to find a 404 page on houzz.com is here

[houzz.com...]

If this stands lets all do it and google will have millions of pages to crawl per site.

Finally I would like to leave you with some obviously carefully worded content off there generated page (first query)

mom m mom m m m m m m m m m mm mom m m mom m m mm m m mom m m m m m m m m mm mom m m m m m m mm mom mm m m m mm b m mm m m m m m m m m mm m bm”
“bm m mom m mm m mm m m mm m m m b mm mom m m m m m m mm m mm m m m mm m mm m mm m m m mm m m m m mm mom m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m mm”
“m mom m m m m m vmm m m m m m m m m m mz mm m m m m m man z M mm z m ZZ z Mom m mom z M m m m m m m m m mm m mm m m m z vm m m m mm m z”
“Mm m mom mom m m m m m m mm m m m mm m m mm mom m mom m m m m m mom m m mm mom mom m m m mom mom m m m m m m m mm m m mom m mm m m mom

[samwest]

@eoskunk - thanks for that brief analysis. I'm glad somebody else is finally seeing it. Houzz is the new web spam, but because it is very well funded, it gets away with anything and everything. It's destroying the value of the serps.

I spent some time this evening entering dozens of random and mostly unrelated terms and houzz appears above the fold for a ridiculous number of queries. Most results include the query, but in a totally useless way. This is old school black hat at work, and it works!

[System]

The following 8 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4712477.htm [webmasterworld.com]
9:17 am on Nov 1, 2014 (PST -8)