Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2014

[Anon]

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System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4706161.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 9:17 am on Nov 1, 2014 (PST -8)

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"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? "

I have noticed further drops the past 24 hours also. Really hope these new changed are only temp.

[Itanium]

I don't see much movement in the SERPs, however the visitor stats are way off today. -31% pages per visit and -32% time on site.

Whatever Google is doing now, it is clearly wrong (at least for my and the visitors of my site).

[Shepherd]

We are seeing some crazy hourly swings in organic traffic from google today.

[RedBar]

WTH? My example.in is out-performing everthing today so far!

[engine]

I'd like to get to the bottom of the traffic swings i'm seeing in some sectors. Why it's swinging, I don't know, especially when the sites appear relatively stable.

[mrengine]

Through most of Google's updates I rarely notice anything. My site is aged, clean and has high quality content because we make what we sell and don't offer it anywhere else. What I am seeing today is definitely cause for concern. A substantial drop in traffic from Google. I'm about ready to sound the alarm...

[petehall]

@mrengine you are not alone. I have survived over a decade of updates... never artificially built anything for the reputable companies I work for. All of a sudden things feel very, very unsettled...

I think I'm starting to blame this new rendering engine. It's not a good idea at all. A language based system should not be judging based on the way something 'looks'.

[mrengine]

@petehall

What I saw yesterday was a lot of crawling and no traffic and periods of a lot of traffic when Google was not crawling. Today I'm just seeing a lot of crawling and no traffic. I did take the site to https over about two months ago and am not sure how or if that has anything to do with it. It's very frustrating to say the least because the site was built with Google's guidelines in mind.

[petehall]

I did take the site to https over about two months ago and am not sure how or if that has anything to do with it.

Https: Ditto, with the only 2 sites I've had issues with.

* However the results I saw on Tuesday affected every site I have ever worked on or been interested in. This is making me very nervous.

[aristotle]

I'd like to get to the bottom of the traffic swings i'm seeing in some sectors. Why it's swinging, I don't know, especially when the sites appear relatively stable.

Are they hourly swings, daily swings or what?

A good search engine would be generally stable, with rankings that evolve slowly and gradually over time. Big swings and sudden drastic changes are a sign that something is seriously wrong.

[mrengine]

aristotle, yesterday I saw swings and today there is a stable traffic loss without the intermittent bursts of traffic I saw yesterday.

[Itanium]

I'm really curious on what Google was doing for the past 4 weeks. Ever since Penguin refreshed, the SERPs are a mess. No wonder they waited so long for this update. I hope they can fix this soon and all this nonsensical bouncing finally stops.

Today was the worst Thursday since July, in a seasonal business which gets the most attention in November and December. Just horrible.

[BillyS]

I suspect something's still churning with Google. They very consistently show new pages for us in less than five days... like clockwork. I can almost predict updates when I see our indexed pages drop or if they don't pick up those new pages. Right now, we're three weeks behind

[Martin Ice Web]

Guys I have a puzzle for you:

since 3 weeks i have this realy inexplicable behavior:

We all know that Google has more than one sets of data or serps and that they Switch continuesly between them.
So there is a realy bad dataset and I immediatly notice it, because when switching my traffic plumps like a rock. But what is curios about this is:
when ever they swith to this bad dataset it Begins with the page retrieval from every time the same IP ( T-Online ) and the same page!
I can´t imagine that this private Person Looks every day 3 times for three weeks on this page!

Someone experience the same? What could this be?

[chalkywhite]

Major upswing in traffic so far today. Panda friday?

[bassie666]

Sorry to ask, but how do you check all those movements ? I've had up and down days in conversions, and converting traffic as it seems, but I would like to know how to look for these up and downs. :-)

[glakes]

So much churn and so close to black Friday. I hope Google engineers are working overtime to get this right. If not, there's going to be a lot of business owners very upset (Google execs included).

[Mattypants]

The 7-pack disappearance and accompanying ranking increase for my site/search terms occurred a few times in the last 36 to 48 hrs, but have now settled back to how they were before all the flux.

[petehall]

I almost daren't say this... but things are looking a lot better today. And seem to be relatively stable.

Tomorrow marks the end of 5 entire weeks of updating. I just hope I don't wake up tomorrow to something completely different as I did 5 weeks ago.

[RedBar]

I'm still seeing a ridiculous amount of US results in G.co.uk. One three keyword search term had 8 US, 1 spammy semi-relevant UK and 1 totally irrelevant UK ... awesome results G.

[RedBar]

And it's even worse today, I may as well remove all my sites, I have no traffic and the serps are an utter mess for my widgets. Not just me, nearly everyone in my industry, the serps are being dominated by the usual suspects and since when did social forum boards become authority sites for my products...unfreakinbelievable.

It's no wonder the High Street is making a come-back, for the average Joe Google's making it impossible for them to find anything.

[philgames]

It's no wonder the High Street is making a come-back, for the average Joe Google's making it impossible for them to find anything.

I agree. I searched for something yesterday about a topic I had no prior knowledge of.. basically I wanted to find out about something and was very specific with my searches even including "how to" and was just given a bunch of ebay and amazon listings even though I know full well that my answer is somewhere on the internet.. why the garbage results? what I was searching for was very popular... oh yeah gogoles penalized everything it can possibly penalize so nothing ranks anymore for anything.

I guess though I did get a lots of wikihow articles stating the obvious.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:41 pm (utc) on Nov 15, 2014]
[edit reason] added quote box [/edit]

[Mattypants]

And it's even worse today, I may as well remove all my sites, I have no traffic and the serps are an utter mess for my widgets. Not just me, nearly everyone in my industry, the serps are being dominated by the usual suspects and since when did social forum boards become authority sites for my products...unfreakinbelievable.

Which industry are you in, Redbar? Are you in the UK?

[RedBar]

I'm in the UK however my sites are global except for a few focussed .co.uk sites.

Specialist construction products for domestic and project work such as hotels, office blocks, malls, universities, urban development, pretty much everything from the raw product to the finished item...in bulk!

[Itanium]

had a crawling spike on friday with ranking changes following yesterday. my rankings are not on pre-penguin levels, but better than the last two weeks.

algoroo ist showing movement too (hehe!).

[MarcMonty]

I have noted one thing over penguin. The websites that were linked up with my google webmaster tool were all got penalised. the other set of websites that not linked up with google analytics and webmaster tool are safe. Not sure what was wrong.

[Zivush]

My main website doubled its traffic over the past months but the last 2 months are fantastic. It has been 2 months now that almost every week is better than the former one. This week was another boost of 5-10%.
In the past, the site suffered Panda 2.0 and Phantom Panda.

[toidi]

The websites that were linked up with my google webmaster tool were all got penalised. the other set of websites that not linked up with google analytics and webmaster tool are safe.

years ago, when i discovered the extent that the g toolbar was spying on my online activity, i canceled wmt, analytics and everything else google. The benefits of their products does not outweigh their intrusiveness. If it is free upfront, you are paying on the backend. Google is not your friend.

[Martin Ice Web]

We are seeing siginificant conversion drops since last friday. Bounce went up again. The "bad" datacenter seems to be more online now than the good one. Traffic it self is stable and i can predict our daily traffic at 8 a´clock.
Our keysets change from day to day.

ecom, germany

[Jez123]

Google has just gone crazy again. Massive shifts. Junk everywhere on UK.

[edit]OK, ignore that. Somehow I was not on UK google! ERROR! :) [/edit]

[petehall]

@Jez123 don't do that to me... this is 2 Tuesdays in a row now ;)