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.

[jmorgan]

So is the snow storm still affecting traffic for anyone? Is there anything else that could be a factor right now?

[goodroi]

@jmorgan How long have you noticed your current traffic situation? Are we talking a 1-2 days or over a week?

[samwest]

I'm seeing plenty of ranking changes for my site. I regained dozens of previously dropped key phrases. A few downward moves, but only -1 or -2, but at the same time many +3 and +4 deltas, BUT......

...regardless of all these positive moves (which I verified using chrome ingognito mode) my traffic is dropping like a rock (29k sessions two weeks ago, 21k this week so far). Conversions totally shut down. No sales in over 24 hours now. This is bizarre. How can my serps improve and yet my traffic tank? Seems to be the story of my life with Google...or who / whatever is causing this. Because they insist on operating their business in "Mystery Mode" one can only guess.

Did the snowstorm shut down power and internet to half the US?

[aok88]

This is bizarre. How can my serps improve and yet my traffic tank?

We're seeing this as well to a lesser degree.

[RedBar]

How can my serps improve and yet my traffic tank?

One reason could be that more people are going direct to sites rather than searching for them.

[frankleeceo]

showing up in less serp's while higher for selected target visitors. it appears that google is getting better and better at segmenting users. may it be intent, demogrphic, or buying cycle

the reverse can also happen, serp rank lowers while traffic explodes --> showing up in more serp's for bigger pool of users while rank lower than the big boys

[jmorgan]

@goodroi Over the last few days.

Traffic was obviously affected by President's Day. I expected it to return to normal, but it didn't quite do so. Just guessing it's related to the snow storm and maybe the cyclone in Queensland, Australia or who knows what else is happening around the world.

I'll wait for these natural adversities to run their course and see if things go back to normal.

[samwest]

I'd put my money on Google flux rather than natural events.

[GreenDog18]

I have seen a nice increase in traffic starting yesterday morning and still going strong. These are all time highs for this particular website.

I also couldn't find any changes in the keywords I monitor. So its either long tail or something else.

[samwest]

In my neighborhood, Google traffic beats Bing 10 to 1 yest my best converting referrers are from Bing. We're into the 6th Sunday of high daily traffic and nearly zip conversions. Way below the mean. This appears to be a new harvest pattern that is really sticking.

[mcneely]

my best converting referrers are from Bing

Same here -- It's as if the only ones that have any money all use Bing ..

[samwest]

@mcneely - feels more like cherry picking than affluent bing users. When a source that previously delivered targeted, converting traffic suddenly stops or starts (then stops for days) on the same or "normal" traffic volumes, one can only wonder.

[seosingapore]

this update is good, most of the website SERP are increased.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld seosingapore

this update is good, most of the website SERP are increased.

What update, did I miss something?

[glakes]

my best converting referrers are from Bing

I see this as well. I suspect a lot of the visitors Google sends to my site are just bots, which have found my site from scraping Google. Also all the above the the fold shopping, images, etc. filters paying customers leaving little left for those who have an excellent organic rank.

[Nutterum]

I was about to write that my Bing adwords and organic spiked up from Thursday onwards but then I see I am not the only one seeing this. Now the question is does the aggressive Yahoo/firefox campaign is creeping on my analytics or something else is in play.

[samwest]

Another telling stat from this morning so far...8am, 40hits from G, zero conversions. 4 hits from B, 2 conversions in the form of completed sales. 90% of G visits are one and done. They don't don't register as bots tho.

I do notice that most of those G visits are from page two or worse results. That would indicate to me that people are hitting everything on page one, then moving to page two. By that time they are likely discouraged and losing patience. I know I would be.

It may also be the case that G users don't particularly trust page two results as much as page one results because according into them, G knows best.

[aristotle]

Google can use its Chrome browser and other tracking methods to determine which searchers are most likely to actually place an order, based on their previous behavior.

[RedBar]

The problem, samwest, is that none of us know the reason why people back out of buying, maybe they were just researching?

At this very moment I am trying to locate the specific resource for a Sri Lankan product and I am having a nightmare. Bing delievered loads of results on their first two pages, Google's are all over the place up to ten pages deep, and I know I have still not found the answer.

[RedBar]

Google can use its Chrome browser and other tracking methods to determine which searchers are most likely to actually place an order, based on their previous behavior.

Is this true?

I don't use Chrome, I also delete cookies every time I close all browsers however I have to admit this is probably not Joe Average's behaviour.

[samwest]

@rb - they are not backing out of just buying, they are apparently backing out of researching too. Skim reading is one thing, but less than 5 to 10 seconds on a site minus page load time (and time for eyes to even focus) hardly qualifies as "research". My page load time is less than half a second. Makes you wonder if this "nightmare" producing confusion is purely by design. Such a great user experience eh?

[netmeg]

yet my best converting referrers are from Bing

For whatever reasons, this has across the board always been true for all my PPC clients; they get a ton more traffic from AdWords but the conversion rate on Bing is three or more times higher. Been that way for years. I don't have a good explanation for it. And it's not consistently true for organic, either, but some months it works that way.

[rish3]

Google can use its Chrome browser and other tracking methods to determine which searchers are most likely to actually place an order, based on their previous behavior.

Roughly 60 percent of the top 10,000 websites (by traffic) have google analytics installed. (trends.builtwith.com [trends.builtwith.com])

[aristotle]

netmeg wrote:
the conversion rate on Bing is three or more times higher. Been that way for years

That's a huge difference. There must be some explanation. As mcneely suggested, maybe Bing users are more affluent.

[netmeg]

I don't think it's a question of affluence. For example, all my clients at the moment are B2B, and I suspect that most of their work computers come with Bing installed as the default search engine, and a lot of them don't bother to switch it.

[aristotle]

I'm sorry, netmeg
I thought you were talking about the conversion rate from ad clicks

[mcneely]

I'll trust the results and conversions from Bing inasmuch as Bing/Yahoo, in our world at least, has always been full of Hokey-Dokes and Geezers, whereas, Google, on the other hand, has had more young techy hipster type curiosity seeker dudes.

Less money in the younger set - It's always been that way.

Less bots from Bing too, so the unique visitor-ships are higher and much more trustworthy as opposed to Google.

A lot of SEO types come in from Google too trying to read the tea-leaves - Bing isn't taken as seriously, so I get less head aches from them by way of people trying to reverse engineer our listings ...

Bing may be slow and regarded by many as irrelevant, but I'll give it it's well earned due with regard to it's proven dependability when it comes to it's traffic .. If I see referrers from Bing, then I put my shoes on and ready-up for the bank ... (figuratively speaking of course)

[Nutterum]

@netmeg - exactly my line of thought. Since I work deep in to B2B I noticed this myself. People in charge of procurement do research on their tablet/phone/home computer but do purchases from the office, from their XP/Vista (yeah still seeing those..) IEs, using Bing.

Its like that since...forever!

[Mentat]

Since the beginning of the month, for me It's like Panda is back again, on each weekend.
A new Panda, not so aggressive, but with the same effect, lesser traffic each week, mainly on long tail.

[Itanium]

I too think that the "unknown" update was indeed Panda related (regardless what some reports say). I had huge crawling spikes the days before it went live and am experiencing further ranking declines week after week. Since the beginning of the year, I already lost 20 percent of my traffic (started in October after the official Panda update, but wasn't all that visible due to seasonal effects).

Yesterday I finally decided to take action and not longer wait and see. I "noindexed" two thirds of the user generated content on my site (over 3000 threads on my messageboard), which might be the reason for the decline. I ran a promotion starting on October 1st, which generated A LOT of threads and posts. Many might be considered low quality.

Let's hope this is the reason....