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]

[flatfile]

Apparently these are just normal fluctuations

Google: The Changes In The Search Results Are Normal Fluctuations
Mar 27, 2015 - Barry Schwartz
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-changes-search-results-normal-fluctuations-20063.html [seroundtable.com]

quoting Google's John Mueller...

We did take a look at this internally a bit because people have been writing about it… But from our point of view these are just changes as normal. Normal fluctuations that always happen as we kind of update our search algorithms and update our search data. It is not something specific that we would point out.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:31 pm (utc) on Mar 27, 2015]
[edit reason] made link clickable, added article title and clarified attribution [/edit]

[Wilburforce]

we kind of update our search algorithms

I kind of thought that.

[RedBar]

It is not something specific that we would point out.

Hmmm...that doesn't make total sense:

we kind of update our search algorithms and update our search data.

"We kind of update"...either you update or you don't, you do not "kind of update"!

Ok, we know they make hundreds of changes a year however some are more noticeable than others and something in my sector has definitely "kind of" been changed.

[supercyberbob]

One time, at band camp, I was kind of pregnant.

Panda will be a rolling monthly update, but not.

And for those of use old enough to remember,

"I am not a crook."

[thejimster]

Not seeing much SERP or traffic changes in my niche. VERY low conversions though. Started yesterday.

I've also noticed the shortened titles with mostly "Keyword - Brand" or just "Brand".

ecomm, US

[EditorialGuy]

"We kind of update"...either you update or you don't, you do not "kind of update"!

Well, you can update to different degrees. If he hadn't qualified it (admittedly, using imprecise off-the-cuff wording), we'd see headlines like "Google confirms new update" on the search-engine news sites, and Walgreen's, CVS, Rite-Aid, and Boots would run out of smelling salts.

[heisje]

These for-profit bandits are still allowed to literally play with millions' of peoples' fortunes at their whims and fingertips, with utter irresponsibility and lack of accountability.

This cannot last for much longer . . . . .

.

[webw]

Something VERY WEIRD is happening to 2 of my sites.

Both were authority in their niches, and both have all but disappeared from the rankings. It happened in the last couple of days. Here is one very odd thing I noticed...

So I am ONLY finding the high ranking pages now with WEIRD url strings attached to the end.

For one, it is widget.com/widget1?wptouch_preview_theme=enabled

For the other it is widget.com/widget2?pp=0 (that is an extension that Pinterest Promoted pins gives the URL when you use their advertising platform.

So why would my root URL's for the pages be replaced with these weird extention versions? This is not just a 1 time thing, as the EXACT same thing happened on 2 of my authority sites.

UPDATE: I am also seeing this added to the end of my authoity page URL's, which have replaced the main ones. ?PageSpeed=noscript

[Mentat]

Google is stupid!

In the last month, they tweaked the local SERP, so sites in local language can have a better position.
The problems is that there are huge sites that are using automatic machine translation and are now in top positions with local domains, followed by their .com domain !

It's incredible and frustrating!

[Rasputin]

@mentat, that's interesting.

When converting to French using google translate there are several basic things (that appear in lots of sentences) that always get mistranslated.
These are such simple mistakes (eg il ya instead of il y a, ce est instead of c'est) that I assumed they were included intentionally so that they could quickly spot machine translations and demote pages using them.

[netmeg]

For one, it is widget.com/widget1?wptouch_preview_theme=enabled

Are you using the WPTouch plugin to make a mobile version of your site?

You should probably go into GWT and look at the URL parameter section, and list out exactly what you want Google to do with these parameters.

[webw]

Sorry, I think it was an issue of getting de-indexed by Google due to temporary server issue, and nothing related to a Google update. Do you think the extra URL strings appearing in place of the originals holds true to that theory?

[RedBar]

Friday's traffic across my sites were at about 76% of average, today is looking even worse at the moment but I can't see anything seriously wrong...I need to dig deeper, something is definitely happening with my widgets.

[Kelowna]

I thought April fools at first....

[snip]

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Mod's note: You were right the first time, Kelowna. It can also be taken as a bit of obvious link bait to an SEO company.

For those who haven't seen it, the "press release" about Matt Cutts joining this SEO company was obviously an April Fools joke, but in its own way was also a new genre of spam.

Anyway, not for us, and sorry to those whose comments I've had to remove.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:01 pm (utc) on Mar 28, 2015]
[edit reason] removed spam url [/edit]

[Mentat]

@ Rasputin
You forget that there are a lot of automatic translations services:
ex: Google Translate
Bing Translate
Babelfish
etc

About Matt Cuts, if It's an April Fools Day, I'm missing the fun part...

P.S. Very low traffic today.
Maybe an update?

[RedBar]

P.S. Very low traffic today.
Maybe an update?

Saturday saw my third lowest PVs of the year after Jan. 1st/2nd and today, already after 12 hours for me, is looking absolutely dire and when I write dire I mean after 12 hours my biggest sites are on 17.25% of average PVs.

Mueller can deny all he likes, something major has rolled through my widget sector.

[Kratos]

Mueller has been proven to not know what he's talking about on stuff that he isn't on the loop. I would not expect him to be on the latest of any updates or refreshes, unless it was something major. I am 99% something has happened and is still happening. I'm seeing some competitors who have great sites tank and be replaced by low quality ones in my industry. This will last for a day and then a new shuffle occurs.

I appreciate that Mueller does hangouts with webmasters and he's a reliable source for stuff like on page seo, but when it comes to webspam he tends to either give very vague answers or flip flops. I for one miss Matt Cutts, although he would not have commented either on anything going on for the last 2 weeks, but when he answered he was way more practical and on target than Mueller.

[RedBar]

So far today my US traffic has been destroyed by G, whatever's going on is annihilating my 15-20 year old sites and quite a few of my competitors meanwhile if you're Alibaba, Houzz, Ebay, Pinterest, crap forum boards or scraper sites, then congratulations!

[samwest]

I am 99% something has happened and is still happening.

Something is ALWAYS happening. I don't even bother watching anymore, I just work on building content and TCB. Even if you figure it out, there' no way to affect results fast enough before it changes again. It's that way by design.

[glakes]

Demoting well established sites, except for big brands, is one way to influence behavior. Disappearing in Google's search results should be seen as Google's way of nudging you to spend more on Adwords. It's a psychological game, and Google has it mastered relatively well.

[Martin Ice Web]

german serps are now allways 9 organics and >20 ads. frist page organics are brands second and following sites are full of rubbish.
What is annoying is that Google Labels the Shopping results as they were organics ( just only one small Label "Anzeige" in light Grey ).
IMO they should label it as "Google Shopping AD results....."

[RedBar]

It's a psychological game, and Google has it mastered relatively well.

I can assure you that it doesn't work on me, I've been practising reverse psychology for decades:-)

[hitowz]

hey guys first post here, my site was affected only by 1 keyword and its a big keyword. I made all the backlinks analyses and content research and from day 02-04 to day 02-05 my traffic decreased like 20% just cuz of that keyword, that isnt even a Brand keyword...any1 here recovered from that e-commerce update? (my site is a e-commerce)

[samwest]

OK, so I do still watch, but this time just reporting on more ridiculous / unnatural behavior. Did fine all month (except for a slow, month long decline), but as soon as we hit the 30th of March, everything shut down as if our traffic "quota" ran out. Zip on conv's yesterday. Today bounce rate is the highest of the month, approaching 60%. No changes to site.

[thejimster]

@samwest

Similar thing for us, except starting on the 26th. Conversions went through the floor. Traffic didn't really change much though. Our business is rather constant, so changes in conversions while traffic remains relatively constant simply doesn't add up from an analytic perspective. All I can make of it is that shoppers seem to be clicking around more on ads the past few days and buying elsewhere, or just not buying at all. The numbers don't make sense.

[Jez123]

@samwest , @thejimster Similar story here. I think it must be just fickle users as I am not getting any sales from ads or organic! Usually Easter time is the start of our busiest period - lets just hope it's the weather putting people off (UK). Let's hope everyone gets their pay cheque tomorrow as it seems like everyone is flat broke this week.

[unity100]

"............but as soon as we hit the 30th of March, everything shut down as if our traffic "quota" ran out. ..........."

exact same thing happened with almost all of the sites i have. they vary in topic, nature, subject, age, purpose, infrastructure, target - in every way. yet ~10 sites got their search traffic totally cut. the traffic was low already, but all of them having search traffic totally going away is absurd.

and one site which had~ 20,000 urls in a submitted sitemap now shows its sitemap 'newly submitted' and pending. just like that.

[Andem]

and one site which had~ 20,000 urls in a submitted sitemap now shows its sitemap 'newly submitted' and pending. just like that.

It sounds like a strange coincidence, but are you sure it wasn't just the "processed date"? I think Google just changed what they display in Webmaster Tools. I just checked ours and it's from today but I vaguely remember it used to display submission date instead.

On your universal drop in traffic: Do you run common software (like WordPress?!) on these sites or do they share any commonalities?

[Itanium]

I think Google messed with the referrer for a couple of hours on March 31st. Usually my main site has about 65-70 percent organic search engine traffic. Yesterday however, it was only 54 percent, even after it rose throughout the day. I the morning it was 30 percent (!).

But that's (luckily) not the whole story. While my search engine traffic seem to drop like a stone, the direct traffic rose to new heights - plus 38 percent. This led to no change in traffic (week on week basis).

My guess is: Google changed something when referring a visitor, not showing were they originally came from.

[Nutterum]

Actually, the first time around when the SERP outcry happened back two weeks ago I started closely monitoring three thin page directories popping from time to time on first page in my vertical. All three of them had significant drop in the SERPS.

Even though Google does not wish to make an official statement, I believe this is an ongoing Panda Algo update messing up with the SERPS in a similar fashion the Penguin does.

Time will tell whether I am right, but I am going to bite the bullet and prepare for such type of algo SERP fluctuations.