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]

[RedBar]

Definitely something has happened since I have a site that has suddenly gained traction plus many pages ranking in reasonable positions, I expect these to climb higher over the next few weeks if things go as they usually do, that'll be the test for me.

[spunkle]

John Mueller says that Panda has not updated/had data refresh since last official update back in October:

[youtube.com ]

[Nutterum]

It behaves like Panda in the way how incoming traffic is suddenly either plummeting or becoming a total mess. At the same time though rankings are stable. So in short something else is in play in the way the users use Google and I tend to believe more and more that the emphasis on local google domains is reason behind this.

[nuthin]

Today I am starting to notice an increase in positions for alot of directory type related Yelp/Yellow pages industry specific portal websites. Also have noticed major shifts happening in the key industries that I monitor for customers.

Results look like garbage without the filtering of those directory websites though...

Is there an update happening as we speak? Wouldn't surprise me if they are testing something out right now based on current observations.

[Macedonian85]

I have noticed a HUGE drop in my site traffic (70-80%). All of my keywords went from page 1, 2, 3, 4 ... to nowhere. The site has 100% original articles, not sure what happened.
There is an update for sure, i hope it will not stay like that, cause it is awful.

[nuthin]

I'm quite confident results won't stay the same. :)

The release of the filter at the moment with the results that I am seeing mean that huge authority websites that have an inner page that barely mentions specific local related queries are getting positioned over the home page of alot of small businesses. It ain't going to stick, I only started seeing these results being applied to me less than an hour ago.

Wait until things settle down a bit.

[Macedonian85]

I hope so :)

[Macedonian85]

There was definitely something big going on with Google last night. I had a blog that i once made with not original content, it received manual action (which is fine) and i will now remove it. A friend of mine have a blog with 100% original content, it also had the same manual action last night.

They are doing a clean up or what ? Never seen things that serious before.

[flatfile]

Today the number of pageviews and time on site have literally doubled, but no changes in traffic. Something happened for sure.

[Martin Ice Web]

John Mueller says that Panda has not updated/had data refresh since last official update back in October:

? He said he has no knowledge about it!

[RedBar]

Why am I thinking that I read/heard that Panda was running constantly in the background these days?

[Mentat]

After a lot of "smart" algo, I still get this!

[i.imgur.com...]

[Nutterum]

My latest keyword SERP update is in and I am quite happy. Everything is on the green across the board for the non country related organic search phrases. However things are hectic when looking at the local search queries, rollercoaster. What is more interesting though - totally sunny weather on all relevant SERP monitoring websites. Honestly don`t know what to think, so I`ll just sit back cross my fingers and hope the green arrow wave sticks.

[spunkle]

? He said he has no knowledge about it!

I think he quite clearly says the data has not updated since october, I'm pretty sure he would know if it had updated as he is asked about it every week in those hangouts.

[seroundtable.com...]

[rish3]

I think he quite clearly says the data has not updated since october, I'm pretty sure he would know if it had updated

Scary either way. It's either...

It really hasn't updated in 4 months. If Panda is a "good thing" that means it's stale, and therefore the current SERPS are suboptimal

==or==

The guy who is now Google's public face for webmasters has very little clue about one of the top 5 concerns of, well...webmasters.

[RedBar]

has very little clue about one of the top 5 concerns

You may be closer to the truth than you speculate. How close to the Three Wise Monkeys is Google?

[en.wikipedia.org...]

"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"

I can't imagine why I thought of that:-)

[nuthin]

With the current dataset that Google has been displaying for me over the past 12 hours, all of the websites that I have launched strategies for over the past 6-9 months have been given a "big boost" and are now starting to appear higher in the current set of results for the particular high volume keywords that we aimed for.

Anything that I have done over the past ~3 months of course still looks to be too fresh to hit this update that I am seeing. If anything is to go by at the end of this "dance" -- they should have allowed through a quite a number of sites that have been putting in the required effort over the past 6-9 months.

From experience this is not a minor daily update or boost under secondary keywords or minor boosts that jump you a spot or two, this is about stabilization of particular websites that have put in the hard yards and have been waiting patiently for a major update and push.

These should be kept .. and I'm pretty sure they will tighten up the filter on those ultra authoritative sites that I'm seeing which simply shouldn't be ranking for local queries. I'm sure they know this and everything will come good in a few days. :-)

Happy to see work really paying off to tell you the honest truth as expected.. One client who actually left me a few months ago because he wasnt seeing much in the first 6 months under ultra competitive is now ranked first page for his main keywords... BAH, don't you hate that?

Quite fine though.. just reinforces my overall perspective on things, good things come to those that wait and know how Google operates.. other than that I get bored, Until I see results like this. Which generally excites me.

Now I can go back to sleep.. seeya again in another nine months. :P J/k

[Kratos]

Guys, something is going on.

[Sand]

I think he quite clearly says the data has not updated since october

You're right. There hasn't been a data refresh since October, but it's possible that Panda has been run since then with the same data. Any Pandas beteween then and now would only impact new sites, I'm assuming, and not sites that were impacted in October.

[rish3]

There hasn't been a data refresh since October, but it's possible that Panda has been run since then

I assume that "data refresh" roughly means "updated quality data for web pages and web sites in the index".

If it hasn't been refreshed, then running it over and over is almost worthless.

At best, it could demote newly created pages on existing domains that are already panda afflicted. And that's assuming Panda has some "site wide" effect.

Worse, it would mean:
- spammers (scrapers, content auto-generation, content farms) just churn with new domains, free to run wild for 4+ months
- web sites that made honest efforts to improve don't see any improvement for 4+ months

Maybe they aren't happy with Panda's effectiveness anymore? Why would you leave it neglected for 4 months?

[EditorialGuy]

Nearly two years ago, Google said that Panda was about to be integrated into the main algorithm (as opposed to being an infrequent batch process). So whatever a "data refresh" may be, it isn't likely to be like the Panda updates of 2011 and 2012.

[rish3]

Nearly two years ago, Google said that Panda was about to be integrated into the main algorithm

That doesn't align at all with what John M said in the video.

[EditorialGuy]

That doesn't align at all with what John M said in the video.

Maybe not, but it's what Matt Cutts and others at Google said back in March of 2013. The announcement got quite a bit of press coverage. There was a discussion about it at Webmaster World:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[rish3]

Nearly two years ago, Google said that Panda was about to be integrated into the main algorithm

Yes, I remember that. It's just so at odds with that discussion.

[samwest]

@Mentat - Google must not think you were excited enough about the results. ;)

[aok88]

Goog said Panda was going to be run monthly as part of the 'regular' algo updates or whatever a long time ago. Then Panda 4 rolled through and some people started thinking it was run sometimes. I'm not sure if 'we' or JM knows wtf is up with Panda and when it's run and whether sometimes it is a data refresh or more or whatever.

[glakes]

I'm seeing an expansion of the knowledge graph. Keyword positions remain the same, but knowledge graph definitions are now appearing for some product keywords. Though the definitions contained in the knowledge graph are not about the products themselves but instead about what the products do.

[Martin Ice Web]

German serps now only have 9 organics. With 3 ads on top, 8 for PLAs and 8 ads for Adwords it make a ratio of 53% ads on first serps page!
9 out of 9 organics are brands ( including our site/ maybe we are considered as a brand now? )
This continues to page 2. After page 2 mostly garbage is ranking. Smaller ecoms are gone.
It hink Google is not interested in page >=3 as most users are now clicking on ads on page 1.

Do no evil!

[RedBar]

I'm seeing similar MIW for my products in the UK making it 62.5% ads on first page and it actually rises to 65.5% on the second page!

[olenoides]

Within the past few days our site has begun to receive a decent amount of organic traffic from many of the non-US Google sites (France, Germany, Spain, Russia, etc). Before we might have gotten one or two visitors a day from them. When I check their indexes (both in local language and english index), I notice our site appears substantially higher than at Google.com For example our main key term we are #8 at Google.com but #3 or #4 at the foreign Google sites. Similar with all of the secondary terms and long tailed terms.

I've never tracked are rankings on them before, but given we suddenly started seeing traffic (it's real and converts). I've got to guess that there was an update 2-3 days ago to the indexes on many of the foreign Google sites.

Interestingly we've done a huge amount of SEO work in the past 6 months, new site architecture, lots of new content, acquired a ton of authoritative links organically through marketing efforts. Since the Panda update in October we've seen next to zero movement in any of those key terms (not just our site but for all the sites in our searches) despite all of the changes. Given that the sector is relatively uncompetative the scale of the changes in the last 6 months should have caused pretty significant movement.

I'm wondering if Google may have rolled out a index or algorithm update to the non-US google indexes, and it maybe being tested before rolling out to the US one.