Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2015

[Itanium]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4733881.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 12:23 pm on Mar 1, 2015 (gmt 0)

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@samwest
10 years of data are worthless, if Google constantly changes the rules. It may as well be, that there was a stable conversion rate before Panda, because your rankings were stable throughout the whole keyword range you're targeting. That might have change with Post-Panda with a strengthened focus on authority and big brands.

How do you thing is Google managing to manipulate your conversion rate? The only way I could think of is via ranking changes and those have to be pretty obvious too. I haven't seen anything like that and can't find any correlation between conversion and my rankings (checked via Sistrix, Semrush and Searchmetrics) or general ranking changs (checked via Mozcast and Algoroo).

I just thing that the user behavior has changed and that Googles algorithm changes reflect that and lead to highly unreliable conversion rates for smaller sites (besides Amazon, Ebay & Co.).

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Mods Note: When sharing observations about Google changes try to provide some general details to help us better understand your observation. What details should you try to include?
Which country did you find this?
What type of site? (B2C, B2B, e-commerce, content only, old, new, less than <100 urls, >10,000 urls, wordpress, etc.)
What type of serp was impacted? (desktop, mobile, tablet, local, etc.)
When did you notice this? (weekday, weekend, morning, business hours, late night)

For example it is not very helpful to say "My site went up" but it can be very helpful to say "My e-commerce site with less than 100 urls increased its Germany rankings on the weekend for mobile devices."

[edited by: goodroi at 4:06 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2015]
[edit reason] Added Mods Note [/edit]

[rish3]

How do you think Google is targeting your audience without visible ranking changes?

Hmm. Say you ran a search engine, and wanted to be able to steer clicks away from organics, and more towards ads. And you wanted to be able to "turn the dial" on how hard it would push.

What kinds of things might you do, both to accomplish that goal, and to make it difficult for site owners to see how it's being done?

Quit providing the search keywords in the referer url (check)

Heavily personalize the SERPS both by the searcher's prior history, as well as geography (check)

Introduce widgets that can be dynamically inserted into the search results above either most, or all of the organic search results (check)

Also create dynamically appearing widgets into the right sidebar that push paid ads in the right sidebar further down, so that they can now compete with below-the-fold organic results that used to have no ad next to them. (check)

Create an ecosystem where the algorithm, and filters are changing almost every day, so that you could reorder the organic SERPS however you wanted, per query, without it seeming odd. (check)

[webcentric]

I know it's speculation, but it could be that Goog have expanded the scope of the answer box / knowledge graph into many more topics.

Not speculation. It's happening. I'm spending a lot of time searching these days (both Google and Bing) and both are getting more and more aggressive with their info boxes. Recipes, company information, movies, you name it. Don't even need to go to most websites to find complete address info any more. Thankful for Social Media these days. Twitter particularly.

[Martin Ice Web]

We are seeing big Drops in traffic ( -30% ) since yesterday 5pm CET. That is exact the amount of traffic we gained that last 6 weeks.
Maybe a flip back to an old Panda Version. Brand bias is now on highest Levels we have ever seen. Amazon now takes about #1-#4 in many very competitive queries.
ads/organics is now 11/1 over the fold! It is amazing that Google has an over the fold algo for Websites and their site is all but compatible to this algo. It is a shame!

[Nutterum]

@rish3 - pretty much nailed it on the forehead!

The only thing that will bring the Google kingdom down are Google themselves.

[sasaforum]

This latest google update seems directed towards EMDs. I hope my <snip> site is not affected

[edited by: aakk9999 at 9:51 am (utc) on Mar 6, 2015]
[edit reason] Welcome to WebmasterWorld, no links for new members, please read Charter and ToS [/edit]

[glitterball]

I'm seeing a big drop in traffic to all of my informational websites starting on Tuesday. I don't see any changes to their positions in the search results though.

[Mentat]

Same picture here...
Drop is on the long tail...

Also check country variation.

[silentneedle]

I see a drop in German traffic since tuesday, US traffic increased, only long tails are affected.

[leah2rose]

Thats strange, I haven't noticed anything to suggest an update, everything's been quiet on my sites. Fingers crossed its not another penguin as that hit me quite hard last time round.

[samwest]

Identical total conversions week to week, been that way for going on 7 straight weeks...and it's evolving. Total OFF days followed by total ON "ketchup" days. Great aim, never overshoots. No natural variation.

They've really improved their precision. In the "good old days", week to week would vary by +/- 20 to 30 conversions. Now it's +/- 1. and not a surprise. Wondering when will they finally tell us "no soup for you!"?

I'm ready to go back to advertising in the trade magazines.

[mhansen]

This latest google update seems directed towards EMDs. I hope my <snip> site is not affected

I disagree with the broad statement - We have 4 moderate volume EMD's, no fluctuations at all. If it was an EMD update, I assume one of the 4 would have been affected.

[Mentat]

No EMD here, -10% traffic since Tuesday... :(

[GreenDog18]

I have an exact match information/reviews site on a new gTLD and I am still climbing.

Although I posted an article about a hot topic in the news and received a bunch of new links.

So in regards to my EMD we are seeing an overall increases in traffic as of lately.

[edited by: GreenDog18 at 6:49 pm (utc) on Mar 6, 2015]

[netmeg]

Top three clients all have less traffic (10-18%) and more conversion revenue (22 - 48%) this month. No, I can't explain it.

[EditorialGuy]

No obvious changes here. WMT rankings show the usual tiny flux, and Google organic traffic (as reported by Google Analytics) is climbing slowly, but without drama, as I'd expect at this time of year.

No unusually deep crawls since late January, either.

[Mentat]

The "funny" thing is that since Tuesday, GMT tells me that I have -20% on searches for my site name!

Blah...

Also, all keywords with big, red decreases have good positions when I check them, that's why I think it was a tweak that boosted local sites.

[Nutterum]

@netmeg - pretty much the same picture on my end. ~10% in traffic loss with moderate fluctuations on my top 100 keyword SERP positions and way lower lead generations percentage, but those that do come through are pure gold with actual revenue per lead jumping through the roof. - No I can`t explain it either.

(.com Germany based organic b2b service website for the curious)

[Martin Ice Web]

Biggest drop since 2 years now. We lost 46% over the weekend. Also it was a shiny weekend, it does not explain this dramatic losses. This is for sure a new panda.

[Nutterum]

Latest update on my end. WMT just updated with 1/3 of my entire website being recrawled. In addition some 2014/jan 2015 keyword phrases that I do not want to rank for(as they are for past events) pop-ed in and out of existence (from 300+ SERP position to page 2 and then back to oblivion). I to believe Panda is in play here, but the algo does not behave the same way it used to. Anyone else seeing the SERPs imploding?

[Itanium]

Nothing new here. Yesterday was very slow, but I guess it was the weather. Another site (not mine) in the same niche saw pretty much the same decline.

[Rasputin]

I'm reasonably confident that something changed in G results on Sunday 8/3/15, affecting Europe around 17.00 Paris time (08.00 Pacific time?)

We had about a 20% increase at that time which has held for 2 days - but not seeing a change on google.com, only on other google tlds (uk, aus, de etc). Also not seeing any change on foreign language sites.

No idea if its panda, penguin or something else since I've lost track of any penalties we have had in the past and which have been recovered from...I thought we completely escaped from Panda last year but I could be wrong.

[Martin Ice Web]

Rasputin,

I'm reasonably confident that something changed in G results on Sunday 8/3/15, affecting Europe around 17.00 Paris time (08.00 Pacific time?)

I am not happy with the new results. And it smells like a reverted Panda. Our bounce went up from 45% to nearly 100%! Something realy bad went through Google like is does since 4 years now.

ecom, germany

[Mentat]

@Rasputin, you are right, but really... what can we do?

[i.imgur.com...]

Each google tweak, I go down.

I had no nice surprise in the last two years!

There is no feedback, nothing from Google.

I've change all my sites, I've used CDN, distributed NS, mobile versions etc
I have 100 score on mobile and 90 on desktop, but It does not seems to matter.

The only feedback is from adsense rep, but this is limited and really, not very helpful, as the traffic drops each week.

I really believe that even at google is a cloudy problem, as they behaved very erratic and the last year they cut all communications.

We are captive!

[Kratos]

I agree that there is something going on. I just can't put my finger on it. Suddenly traffic drops but conversions double, traffic increases but conversions halve, not to mention the absolute ups and downs for the last 3 weeks. I'm suspicious considering that we haven't had any major update yet since the last Penguin and because it used to be at about this time every month (start of second week of month) when Panda would refresh (if memory serves me right).

Mentat, are you alluding to your graph to say that your traffic is going down? I ask because that traffic pattern (recurring up and down) is exceptionally common and fine especially with mobile traffic. Was your traffic dropping even more from before the date range in the graph?

[Nutterum]

Can all these fluctuations be caused by how google made harder to reach the .com domain? The average Joe searching Google might end up on local country domain and thus cause drop in traffic?

[Sand]

My niche is partly dependent on college students, and many are on spring break this week and last week. So my organic traffic is down a bit, as it is every year at this time.

Not sure if that could apply to any of you other guys seeing traffic dips but no ranking changes.

[Mentat]

Can all these fluctuations be caused by how google made harder to reach the .com domain? The average Joe searching Google might end up on local country domain and thus cause drop in traffic?

I suspect so.
I see dramatic differences in local serp vs .com

It's like a different algo for .com/US vs EU country domains.

I did not check Asia, but I suspect the same problem, as my indian traffic is getting lower each day (good thing).

btw, google.com/ncr address is working again, but the link for Google.com is still missing from local google domains.

[Kratos]

Sand, thanks for reminding us of the Spring Break. It's a big thing in the USA (millions flock to Florida) so it could lead to lower traffic in some niches. Good reminder.

[samwest]

All indications in my vertical are that an update came through yesterday. A hacker/competitor who stole my site architecture but NEVER updates his site and NEVER makes sales had three sales yesterday. That's always a good sign of a major algo update.

[Itanium]

There was definitely some kind of update. Google WMT shows a spike in impressions on 8th March, but no changes in clicks. I also had a crawling spike on 5th-7th. However, that might have something to do with the recent changes I made.

But whatever the update was, my rankings didn't change (much). Without those metrics, I wouldn't know anything had changed.