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.

[Jez123]

@petehall lol, sorry! Scared me too.

[RedBar]

OK, ignore that. Somehow I was not on UK google!

Where were you that had even worse results?

[Itanium]

Google is really going crazy this past couple of weeks. It seems they have released multiple updates since the official Penguin roll out, but almost every time there's a rollback to the dataset of October 21st. Every time that happens, the cache of one of the pages on my site is set back to that date. I have updated the page multiple times, sent it to google using WMT and the new version got indexed multiple times, but every time, it just sets back to the old cached version at some point. Happend again the past few days.

[samwest]

^ - I am also seeing that strange behavior. I make a change on the site and it seems to get picked up almost instantaneously with a sudden surge of "good" buying traffic, but within a few hours it reverts back to a trickle.

Analogy time: It's almost like Google received a new sparkly package in the mail, they get all excited, then open it and are quickly disappointed that it's not as sparkly as they expected, then they throw it away.

[RedBar]

Is anyone else experiencing a lack of traction for new sites during all this messing about?

New pages on existing site are seemingly not a problem however new sites on new and previously unused names are almost as if they are sandboxed.

[rish3]

Is anyone else experiencing a lack of traction for new sites during all this messing about?

I can't speak directly to that, but I do see two distinctly different sets of SERPS that come and go, each lasting a day or two before switching. Both sets seem to correlate to cache dates for the home page (query cache:yoursite.tld). One set shows dates from late October, the other more recent, all November dates. When the late October dates are showing, you can't force a cache update via GWT "fetch as Googlebot -> submit to index". When the November dates are showing, you *can* force an update.

I don't see this universally...very large sites all have recent cache dates. It seems to be in smaller niches. I am, however, sure this is new behavior, and it's been this way for several weeks.

[petehall]

Seeing some fairly significant shifting here in the UK. I don't think it's mobile related but then I'm not convinced it's Panda either.

Is anyone else experiencing a lack of traction for new sites during all this messing about?

Yes, totally. They come forward and then slip back.

I'm also having similar difficulties with a site I moved over to https. It's very annoying.

[Jez123]

Traffic doesn't seem too bad but sales are flat this week in the UK (for me anyway). I'm seeing less shuffling from Penguin but since it's died off a bit so have ales. Is anyone else seeing similar?

[samwest]

Seeing the same "flat" non converting traffic. I'm going to retire all my Adsense ads since it's gone from about $20/day to more like $2.00/day...and it slows my site down. Now watch all my organic listings evaporate.

[RedBar]

but since it's died off a bit so have ales.

I assume you mean sales and not beer:-)

FWIW and my widgets last week was the final week of the year for shipments able to arrive before Xmas in Europe, realistically our regular buyers will not be placing any orders until New Year however project enquiries and supplies to other countries continue as normal.

Xmas and New Year holidays don't half mess things up!

[Jez123]

Ales haven't died off. They are going strong still. I'm off the a Celtic Beer Festival this weekend in Cornwall, so sales and ales should be thriving there!

I am quite a bit down on this time last year when the rest of the year has been up every month on last year. Yeah, not really sure what's happened here.

[samwest]

@jez - same here...this year is not following the past few years. Last year was similar, but at least we got the seasonal boost, this year, every week that runs into positive territory is quickly follow by a week of losses.

[samwest]

well - this certainly turned to a dead topic. Everyone must be doing great. That's groovy. I'm still locked into the "little more traffic - lot less conversion" pattern.

[n00b1]

Strange. I'm seeing some slightly old cache dates on several key pages (including the home page), from around this time last month (October 20th). I know Google has been caching the page more recently. Is this a datacentre issue or is some update brewing?

[Itanium]

I think this thread died down, because there's no changes to report. I still see the same changes. It almost looks like the different data centres are no synchronized properly. I see changes every day.

[RedBar]

Everyone must be doing great.

Not here and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, just why G persists in serving so many US results in their UK serps is beyond me, it's a mess, period.

[chrisv1963]

Not here and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, just why G persists in serving so many US results in their UK serps is beyond me, it's a mess, period.

Same mess with Pinterest listings. I did 10 searches for competitive keywords in my niche. Each time Pinterest was on number one (below the paid listings of course). The signal that Google gives average users with this is that ... they no longer need Google. They can go straight to Pinterest. Google gives it as the best option anyway.

[rish3]

just why G persists in serving so many US results in their UK serps is beyond me, it's a mess, period

I have an ecommerce site where we only sell and ship within the U.S. I specifically set up country targeting in Google webmaster tools to US only.

Nonetheless, according to GWT, about 5% of our organic impressions are from the UK.

They can't seem to get it right even when we hand enter the facts :) It's a shame too, because it's not good for the end customer. I've had more than one angry reply to an email when I let the customer know we can't ship product outside the US.

[xelaetaks]

Google still penguinize my site. Hope they release updates more often now. John Mueller made it sound like they will. In a hangout he said while he doesn't have a date to announce wnd it wont be next week he says the team is working to make it be able to update faster.

[Kelowna]

penguinized your site? now please explain what you mean by that? Penguin kills bad links, so your site dropped from losing those links and you think some sort of update will bring back the bad links pointing to your site?

If you want to fix the problem then get some good fresh links... pretty simple suff if your page is optimized properly.

[xelaetaks]

No it isn't just that - the penalty effecs my whole site - even with long tail keyword searches. I have some good links - although I am looking into more oppurtunities. My site isn't even the first result for a brand name search because of the penalty it has. I think without question penguin is effecting the site all over.

[Kelowna]

all I can say with 100% certainty is you are wrong. don't call your issues penguin related, Google related for sure but look elsewhere as you are having problems with the new algorithm that updated soon after the animals were done. Penguin kills bad links. Panda kills thin content. The algo kills good and bad sites alike.

[xelaetaks]

My site isn't filled with thin content. Multiple seo people have looked over my site and thought its rankings are beat cause of links and over optimized anchor text. Been that since the Penguin update before the one this year. Years ago some seo wok was done that had a lot of links from article and directory sites so I removed a lot of those. I do agree though it is possible we can see improvements with more solid links pointed at us, but Penguin did have an effect and sites do get deranked if they got hit with a Penguin penalty, even John Mueller at Google has said this by the way - and some people have seen improvements by removing a number of bad links to them.

[Kelowna]

bad links and over optimize will do it... but thats the algo. pick just 1 page and remove all money phrases from it, even the title. wait 1 week and see what happens. you dont need a penguin update

[xelaetaks]

Yeah. By optimize I mean anchor text in links - not on site but anyway - I've done a bit of work to get links removed even calling and e-mailing webmasters out of country, have gotten a fair number removed hoping this will help show improvements.

[Martin Ice Web]

At 11am we allready reached our daily traffic. Traffic was great and conversions too. Since then Google began to throttle the traffic. Shallo traffic, no conversions, bounce went up to nearly 90%.
If Google realy want s to compete with Amazon in regard of online Shopping UE then it should stop throtteling sites that poeple are obvious happy with.

ecom, germany

[Sand]

Anyone feeling the effects of the holidays on their organic traffic yet?

I've noticed my organic traffic has been down since late last week. I always get stressed out around the holidays because of my traffic lull, and then things go back to normal afterwards -- but I could use some assurance. It seems a little early.

Let me know if you've seen the same seasonal effect already.

[EditorialGuy]

Anyone feeling the effects of the holidays on their organic traffic yet?

We've had dips in traffic from roughly mid-November until mid- or late December for the last 18 years or so. (The dip used to be even more pronounced when college students went home for the holidays, probably because they had fast "always on" Internet connections at school and dial-up connections at home.)

Somewhere between Christmas Day and New Year's, our traffic always takes a big jump.

I don't like the lull, but I've learned to take it in stride.

[RedBar]

Anyone feeling the effects of the holidays on their organic traffic yet?

Without a doubt and I mentioned this in a post last week. It usually takes a steady slide downwards towards Xmas with the odd good day, a blip before New Year and then in January off we go again. I'm guessing that 5th January will be noticeable followed by 12th January.

[xelaetaks]

@Kelowna, gotta mention but you are very wrong about bad links not bringing sites down. There was a website <snipped domain> that their local keyword search was showing up a few pages behind because of bad links they had built to their site until this recent penguin update, so 100% links can bring down a site until they are cleaned up and Penguin is refreshed.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:14 am (utc) on Nov 26, 2014]
[edit reason] Removed specific domain name [/edit]