Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2015

[samwest]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4726139.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:15 am on Feb 2, 2015 (PST -8)

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wow - a conversational graveyard in here....anyway, just noting that weekly traffic has now inverted itself, whereas Saturday & Sunday used to be the busiest days of the week, with Thursday/Friday being the slowest. Now either the traffic pattern has somehow inverted or weekends have just been deflated to the point of the slow days now appearing as the busiest. This pattern started 3 weeks ago and is sticking.

[Nutterum]

"Starbucks Update" - check your mobile SERPS guys. I see a lot of movement there, especially when it comes to non mobile friendly websites. Can anyone confirm what I see on my end?

[Jez123]

I don't see anything different between mobile SERPS. In fact one site that is especially non mobile friendly has moved up a bit.

[Baby_Moos]

Mobile SERPS haven't budged on ours at all, pretty much the same as desktop

[bsand715]

It's seeing webmasters report results like Jez123 posted that is simply not making it easy to do anything Google is suggesting at the present time.

I don't see anything different between mobile SERPS. In fact one site that is especially non mobile friendly has moved up a bit.

I started an experiment on a website about a month ago. It was and is a site that ranks in top 5 of SERPS for it's target group, the first thing done was to remove title and description completely, left blank.

? To my amazement, as of today, it is now Number one ?

[engine]

It all seems to have settled a little, with SERPs moving to some normality after the last 48-hours of volatility.

I started monitoring selected mobile SERPs and I was somewhat surprised how similar they are to desktop.

[Rasputin]

@bsand715,
That's very interesting - would the previous titles and descriptions have been considered too long, too short or too keyword stuffed?

It raises theoretical concerns about a situation where G have applied lots of 'negative ranking factors' (panda, penguin, atf, menu structure, css not accessible to robots, internal linking structure top heavy, titles too long, page slow loading, etc) and made natural linking something that most sites now avoid.

The result could be that the SERPS become a list of sites that have avoided a negative ranking score in all these areas rather than by those that have achieved an overall positive ranking score...

... so removing a description or title completely is better than risking having one that might accidentally have a 'problem'.

[puckparches]

Almost 50% page views jump on my main site, but no change on my other 4 smaller sites. Also the click revenue it's about the same.

[webcentric]

Today, one of my sites has more traffic from G than it's had on any day in the past three months. About a week ago it tanked to an all time low and stayed there until today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I'm wondering how much development money Google could save if it just implemented a random algorithm and left it at that. I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be a better representation of the web overall and a fairer approach to discovering things on it. Just musing basically.

Simple math says that when an item in the list is elevated, some other item in the list needs to be demoted. Thankful for the upswing today but sorry that someone else is getting hammered right now. Still perplexed as ever as to the reasons behind this yo-yo effect but not letting it impact my decision making either. Given the difficulty of getting new visitors to the front door these days, my number one strategy is to find ways to make them glad they got there at all and to give them plenty reasons to hang around, come back, etc. That's my dead horse and I'm riding her until she drops.

[bsand715]

would the previous titles and descriptions have been considered too long, too short or too keyword stuffed?

Be good if I knew that answer.
Title was:
42 characters. Contained Owner Name,occupation and Location of services offered and of course was keyword related in occupation and location which was of course different. Keywords did not repeat, were in title 1 time and related to URL.

Description: 128 C's Expanded Reason to use the location and Owner for the Service. I do not believe any stuffing, not my style anyway. But I dont know anymore.

[aok88]

Today, one of my sites has more traffic from G than it's had on any day in the past three months. About a week ago it tanked to an all time low and stayed there until today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Same here for one site. Last week, Friday and Saturday were huge visits and sales, then back down. Now today, 10am to 3pm EST traffic shot up, conversions shot up and bounce rate got much lower. From 3pm till now I see the same lower traffic amounts and dismal conversions and a higher bounce rate that the site has had most of the time lately. Google is definitely messing with things and it's frustrating.

One theory I have is that the site is sitting on a threshold where it gets dumped into the 'bad' bucket or the 'good' bucket depending on the slightest of tweaks.

[diberry]

My conclusions are that the free ride is over for most and marketing (as in having a comprehensive marketing strategy) is more important than ever. Pair that with a really good product, one that people can trust and find useful, entertaining, etc. and you've got a fighting chance.

I can attest to this. It's what I've been doing all along, and I'm finding it's what Google rewards. Whether it's fair or not, Google sees it as spamming if the only evidence of your marketing is SEO. I'm not selling a product, just entertaining and informing with articles.

[Itanium]

Huge crawling spike on 7th. 5 times the normal crawling rate. No ranking changes so far (besides the ones from 4th).

[samwest]

Google is definitely messing with things and it's frustrating.

Frustrating yes, but surprising, No.

This weekly inversion pattern is sticking for a fourth consecutive week. Sunday, my best day of the week for over a decade is now my slowest day. Why? Because G has me on the edge of page one and two (you're right aok88). During the week they seem to relax a bit and give me a bit of page one traffic, but on the weekends, paradoxically traffic goes up slightly yet quality goes DOWN.

They also have me clocked to nearly the same number of conversion per week. No surprises tho...it's their game now. not ours. We're just lucky to be here.

No wonder this forum is a ghost town.

[mcneely]

Less traffic - more business?

A site with low traffic that converts, is more valuable than a site with high traffic that doesn't convert ... This has been the law of the internet lands for ... IDK .. Centuries?

[glakes]

A site with low traffic that converts, is more valuable than a site with high traffic that doesn't convert

Exactly right and is precisely I am seeing right now. My Google traffic has taken a 10% dip this weekend but the traffic they are sending is laser targeted. Sales have more than doubled.

Matching the right users to the correct websites is what search is all about in its most basic form. I hope it sticks.

[mcneely]

Matching the right users to the correct websites is what search is all about

... and how often has that happened over the past few years in search?

Search has been so busy chasing it's tail with regard to Social over the past few years that it's lost it's focus on the things that really matter ...

I haven't seen the GoogleBot this active on anything I've got since 2006 ... Impressions are up exponentially, but whether this all converts remains to be seen. Call me the skeptic if you will, as I'm quite sure that when all is said and done, Bing will still be bringing (binging) me the majority of my conversions ..

[glakes]

and how often has that happened over the past few years in search?

Not often. Unlike Bing/Yahoo, which has sent quality traffic over the years, the quality traffic Google sent this weekend is definitely not the norm. That's why I hope it sticks, but am just as much as a skeptic as you appear to be. Google needs to get back to the basics and dump their penalty heavy algorithm in favor of simply identifying quality content and ranking that content appropriately - regardless if some junk links point to the page, has a few too many keyword occurrences, resides on an exact match domain, has too many ads above the fold, etc.

[Jez123]

algorithm in favor of simply identifying quality content and ranking that content appropriately - regardless if some junk links point to the page

Maybe that's the way forward. Basing it on engagement with page / site instead of just links? Probably fairly easy to influence though perhaps?

[Wilburforce]

identifying quality content and ranking that content appropriately - regardless if some junk links point to the page

I think that isn't as easy as it sounds.

Links are a clear indicator of site popularity, while content quality can't be assessed independently of popularity: it is no use pleasing a few academics if nobody reads the book.

Google's difficulty is the proliferation of spam links, which - especially with smaller sites - add a great deal of noise to the link signals that Google uses (and needs) to differentiate.

I imagine many smaller sites have a similar profile to my own: a small number of high-quality links, a larger but still relatively modest number of relevant but low-quality links, and many thousands of links that are, by any measure, unadulterated junk. The problem is that the good stuff sometimes doesn't look all that different (from an algorithm's point of view) from the junk, and the junk is in the order of thousands to the hundreds at best in the wanted pile.

While penalty-based filters certainly bring collateral damage, it isn't likely that every loss of ranking is the result of them, and non-penalty filters (e.g. treating any links as spam, and simply disregarding them unless they meet increasingly stringent quality criteria) might well have the same effect: it may not be that I have been penalised for the thousands, just that the hundreds have been struck off.

However, Google's central problem is deciding ("regardless if some junk links point to the page") which links to disregard, and even if they get that right they are not going to please all of us.

On the face of it, the Disavow tool gives them some assistance with that decision: if lots of people disavow the same Chinese directory it sends a clear signal about that domain. However, it may also be something of a two-edged sword, if not an actual Trojan: it may be telling them "this kind of link, which has not been disavowed, is probably self-posted". For that reason, I generally err on the side of disavowing forum links, whether or not Google takes any notice of them.

Whatever you wish would happen, however, I don't advise you to hold your breath until Google forgets about links.

On-topic, the recent changes in my (Uk niche service) sector seem to be holding.

[mcneely]

@glakes ... I hope it sticks for you too .. I think that everyone needs to have a good day every now and again, and who knows? .. This just might be your day.

Google needs to get back to the basics and dump their penalty heavy algorithm

Naw .. I think Google just needs to quit selling the SERP's to the highest bidder .. I don't think it's really Google as much as it is the veracious appetite for money that their stockholders have ...

Google's following was a purchased one ... The quest for higher dividends has far outpaced Google's ability to purchase any more following, so it resorted to pushing it's own brand of browser, search, and ad marketing on to the general public. Google isn't ever going to tell it's stockholders no, so chances are good that it's core will continue to suffer.

Linux builds dumped Google Chrome a while back -- Firefox decided to go with Yahoo! for primary search, and Apple might well be on their way to using Bing as it's primary search, so as the shoes drop, and Google becomes more irrelevant, we'll be seeing Google going after more of the crumbs, like social for instance, as they drop to the floor.

We can only hope for a big Hurrah as Google tries to get it's relevance and market share back .. They may reverse some of their filters, but I think it's unlikely -- Google has been so drunk on it's ad revenue for so long, that I'm not sure if it even knows it's way back to search.

[netmeg]

Maybe that's the way forward. Basing it on engagement with page / site instead of just links?

That's all I ever focus on. Works for me.

(Assuming a good business proposition from the getgo, of course)

[Jez123]

That's all I ever focus on. Works for me.

I should be OK then, I hope, as my customers seem to love my products (judging by the fact that they buy them and then are willing to review their purchase and experience online, anyway).

[RedBar]

I've seen a couple of sites definitely gain traction in the last three days, they were launched beginning August 2014 so 6 months, we'll see if they continue to get new traffic.

Interestingly they're getting results in the regular SERPs and not via images which used to be my fastest way.

[Mentat]

On one of my sites I have 3 big Arabic sites as referer.
I do not speak Arabic and my site is English.

The traffic from them is -50% since Saturday, so it might be a local, non-english update.

[Nutterum]

What about e-commerce, images or google products? I do not deal with these types of websites but there are speculations that some brand shifting and traffic wackamole is going on in this end of the Google.

[Baby_Moos]

SERPS seem to have settled on the keyphrases I watch now, with the big names on top again, Mobile SERPS are exactly the same as desktop too.

Is this the same for everyone else?

UK ecom

[theotherandy]

No, it appears that the SERP for one of our biggest terms changed completely this morning. Not for the better either. Although most of the bigger names have definitely moved up, one smaller site (barely related to the term) got pushed up as well.

[RedBar]

Is this the same for everyone else?

Nope, for some queries the first half dozen results are identical and then mobile goes into a mixture of some of the same and some completely different that I've never seen before and not specifically "mobile" sites, however for some searches I am seeing precisely the same results.

They're playing and not playing very well at the moment!

UK Serps

[RedBar]

So what's happened overnight, I have hardly any traffic this morning across all sites.

Anyone else?

[jecsh]

Everything looks the same to me today, still no sign of rankings returning to how they were previously