Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2015

[Mentat]

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System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3003161.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 4:35 pm on May 1, 2015 (gmt 0)

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Just thought I'd join this thread.

Our traffic from old man google has been consistent +-5% since panda 4 in May 2014. Our main site IS mobile friendly and wasn't hit on the 21st of April, however it suddenly lost 10% of Google traffic yesterday. Many our top 10 positions dropped 1-2 spots.

I'm almost 100% certain it wasn't panda (as other pandalized sites in my niche didn't drop positions in the queries I'm watching).
I'm about 95%% certain it wasn't penguin either as I did a massive disavow in mid Feb and not that many scrapers, weak sites have been linking to us since then


So what the hell happened on the 28th (29th Australia time)?

The rank drops occured on both desktop AND mobile.

@ColdRum

I believe it has something to do with that huge disavow file..

My disavow file is ~ 20 000 domain lines, gathered with a lot of work from a lot of sources, but my traffic follows a very strang downward path in the last 2 years, so I've said that I need to try something.
I've used as source only the info from WMT and I've selected only the worst spammers for 2 of my sites.

Guess what? I see increases in the last week!

P.S. All my sites are mobile friendly.

[Mentat]

For me this weekend update looks more a panda update +/- above fold update.

[Martin Ice Web]

For me this weekend update looks more a panda update +/- above fold update.

no, it looks more like: Lets see how long will users use google while we stuff the first page with only amazon, ebay and 1 brand.

offtopic:
with the updated addon for adblock+, google ads aren´t filtered out. You have to click "don´t filter non annoying ads" ( what seems like a big joke ) to remove the ads. google must have paid a lot of money to adblock+.

[engine]

According to reports around the Net, thin content may have been the target in the last few days and it may have been manual penalties. It's an entirely subjective and separate debate as to whether a hit site has thin content or not.

[Spiekerooger]

Gary Illyes (Google Trends Analyst) spoke at SMX Sydney about changes to Googles Core Algo according to Jonas Weber (former Google employee, now at a German SEO company).

Translated from German by Google Translate:

Large shifts in the rankings last week, we have some changes in the Core Algo, things that are secret and we do not communicate. But apparently has nothing to do with the Mobile Update.

Source: [translate.googleusercontent.com...]

[aok88]

This may explain things: it could have been a 'Phantom' update much like the 5/13 update:
[hmtweb.com...]

[BertjeBel]

@aok88 That makes sense. It is a lot like what i see happening.

Only thing I can't explain is the conversion, Time and day traffic differences and the huge bounce differences ( 27% to 84%). I saw this happening before when updates rolled out. Mostly after a week it was back to the statistics before an update. This time it keeps unstabble. That I find strange about this 'update'.

Maybe someone has an insight on that?

[edited by: BertjeBel at 2:34 pm (utc) on May 12, 2015]

[Martin Ice Web]

So if it is an Phantom update, why does google say there is no update? They communicate every little funky update ( Mobilegeddon ) like a new kind of SE has been arrived. And an update that realy shjake up the serps, they deny. Is it because it cost a lot of webmasters money ( adsense, conversions ? )

[engine]

Martin Ice Web, Google doesn't really want to announce any updates to avoid "The Google Dance." Most of the changes are kept as low key as possible, and, really, I don't think that the Google employees that communicate outwardly, nowadays, really know what's coming through the pipeline unless they are working on it, or it's been a specific missive from HQ to them.
Avoiding "The Google Dance" is why the update pattern has smoothed considerably, and bigger changes appear to be sanitized.

Panda and Penguin are likely to be the big hits, and that's been a bit quiet of late.

[BertjeBel]

@martin ice web

I think that if Google can get a few % more ctr, they will get it. Already they own the most of the ctr through layout changes, adwords, shopping. The trend is that people are getting inmune for 'ads' on webpages. I can imagine that this happens to the layout of Google also. If so, then they will change the layout again to preserve ctr (income).

From a users point of view. I liked Google. I don't use Google but switched to a different SE. My reason is that Google tells me what I need to find instead of me finding the results that I want. Also Google gives me about the same results ( there own mostly ) at different phrases.

I'm curious how long it will take before people in general will switch engine because of the predefined results which Google thinks is good for you (them)

[Hollywood]

MY update

Lost huge traffic on d-day around the end of April, the end of April we had amazing conversions just before the shift/update. My site was hit by Panda and Penguin a while back, we fixed everything, we also had a manual penalty also lifted a long time ago (1 year almost). We have a huge disavow file as a % of our incoming links. Since about this past Sunday we see better conversions and better daily visit counts, almost back to normal (maybe back about 88%).

My question is.. I am thinking that some of my disavow file links might now be worthy of coming off my disavow list submitted to Google, does anyone know a good tool to easily re-analyze my entire disavow file and bring back any good links (juice) so that I can then resubmit my list after it being cleaned up again? Or even a good service that can do this PROPERLY for me?

PM me if needed, appreciate any assistance greatly guys/gals.

Thanks for the great posts on WebmasterWorld here.

~Hollywood

[Kelowna]

So if it is an Phantom update, why does google say there is no update?

Because they did not update their algo, they just twisted the knobs a bit on the old one. I have been feeling the effects big time, one day Canadian sales through the roof and USA nothing, then the next its all USA and not Canadian, then all as usual. I love what I see but they need to stop twisting those knobs and leave it alone.

[webcentric]

Well, whatever they did, I'll take it. Seeing some nice positioning shifts. Looking at a site that's about a year old so it could just be some natural traction but saw an important page on my site make it's first appearance (on page six about a week ago) and then jump to page two a couple days later. Pretty sure I didn't do anything to cause this (well other than my normally continuing publishing process). Also seeing other pages jump up for some fairly competitive queries.

[Martin Ice Web]

@mods. On mobile view there is no page selector at the end of the threaths.

[Robert Charlton]

Pagination issue has been reported. Thanks.

[jameswilliam724]

Recently Google has released a Mobile friendly update. This update affects only in mobile search. But there are some fluctuations i could see though.

[Nutterum]

Look at Mozcast - every 7-9 days the SERP volatility spikes to the above the 80 degrees areas. Its been like that since november last year. Its how Google gets changes live that changed. They have way faster release cycles than before. And since it is a tweak and not an update they can say pure heartedly that no algo update was released and if asked whether they tweaked something, they can say they always tweak and test and caveat.

All in all google did up the speed of their tweak implementations to the SERPs and is the reason why more and more the SERPs look more of a mess than something you can frame in a logical model.

[RedBar]

and is the reason why more and more the SERPs look more of a mess

Which begs the question why Google cannot see the mess IF they're interested in quality?

I assume all they judge things by is the increase in PVs because people cannot find what they want easily any more and their increase in advertising revenue.

[Nutterum]

That is a possibility. Another reason is that we are power users while Google aims at the general masses that have no trouble with generic content from "highly trusted" sources. What we see as a mess may very well be our own skewed perception of the term "relevant".

[mrengine]

All in all google did up the speed of their tweak implementations to the SERPs and is the reason why more and more the SERPs look more of a mess than something you can frame in a logical model.

Which begs the question why Google cannot see the mess IF they're interested in quality?

Maybe the continual tweaks we see reported at places like mozcast are an indication that Google does see a problem in the search results and are actively working to correct it with many small tweaks?

[webcentric]

What we see as a mess may very well be our own skewed perception of the term "relevant".

I think everyone needs to take a step back and consider that statement. If you've been looking at results for the same keywords for years, it might be time for a change of scenery.

[masterjoe]

Personally, I can be very objective about the content I have created -- because it takes me hours to research, write, and edit everything, add images etc and then edit again once you enevitably notice mistakes. However, it makes my blood boil when I see thin, churn and burn affiliate sites ranking far above me because I have some bad old links (which were created when I was new to SEO). I fail to see how they're delivering the best user experience. While nobody knows what goes on in their little offices while they discuss their recent adsense fiasco, revenue declines over the years, the threats of bing growing, microsofts new browser, I think it is pretty safe to say that they wouldn't make these ridiculous changes unless it was lining their own and partner profits. Even a very minor change in their serp display can potentially generate millions of dollars.

[tmno]

My question is.. I am thinking that some of my disavow file links might now be worthy of coming off my disavow list submitted to Google, does anyone know a good tool to easily re-analyze my entire disavow file and bring back any good links (juice) so that I can then resubmit my list after it being cleaned up again? Or even a good service that can do this PROPERLY for me?

@Hollywood:

I built a little tool using PHP/MySQL that I use to manually review every domain that links to me. I just upload a list of links, it sorts them into domains with up to 5 "sample links". For each domain, I manually look at a sample link to see if it's just BS spam or if it's a real link. Then I click to disavow or whitelist. The tool then prints my disavow file which I can upload manually.

Yes it's time intensive, but I've created a disavow file of about 3,000 domains, all of which I have checked myself. I'm considering going back through the disavowed domains and re-screening manually to see if there are any which I could remove. I also think the 3,000 domain disavow file might be hurting my rankings, especially when Penguin doesn't actually get updated more than once a year!

[disspy]

For me, disavow tool looks like a placebo. I didn't find any plausible evidence that sites which submitted disavow files do any better after disavow process. The entire disavow idea is completely sick, and I think obsolete, although still not officially.

During Google's after-Cutts-era they don't seem to be interested in webmaster feedback anymore. Actually, imagine you were a multibillion-dollar corporation and you are desperately trying to hear what millions of webmasters have to say? Hehe, I don't think they care much, because with or without webmasters, the last word has Google and their bright minds behind the Search Algo (if any).

I'm in this industry for more then a decade, and I'm pretty satisfied with our achievements. Our main partner was and still is Google, but at he same time Google is a judge and a slayer. Many of us here can witness how their algo hurt a lot of businesses, but a lot of them got skyrocketed in SERP's without any particular reason. Anyways, I think they got hit the real spammers hard, although the price was a huge collateral among decent DIY-content creators and whitehat-SEO people. This business is a double-edged katana, you can win big but also you can easy lose everything you have.

Recommendation for all of you guys with mainstream web properties - move/invest to/into another business before you got hit hard and/or try to build another powerful traffic source (we give it a shoot, but unsuccessfully).

[EditorialGuy]

Whatever happened to "Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2015"?

[Itanium]

Whatever happened to "Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2015"?

You just posted in it ;)

For me, all those changes from the beginning of may, stuck. Unfortunately. However, I've read, that this was an update of the core algorithm. They will surely tweak it ...

[samwest]

Here's an update: Same shoot different day. Robotic traffic, page sitters and some bot that looks like a human banging away on pages no human knows are there and have no links to them. Says it's "direct" but of course source is (not set). I know it's a 404 because it's a private and restricted URL yet this "visitor" is sitting there for 10 minutes. It's not a logged in user either. My login logs show no correlation.
My observation? it looks like a whole new fleet of bots are hotting our sites trying to look like visitors when there are none. Great way to satiate the masses. They are hitting pages that I allowed them to sniff for a day or two, then applied password protection. My own little sting operation. These are NOT human visits, but GA is showing them as such. Only G knew about them. Oh and oddly my privacy page is still getting a LOT of mobile hits and long sitters. Funny, on mobile it's a long scroll to find it, then open a reduced menu to get there. It's a bot. People could care less about privacy pages. That's why conversions are in the dumper across many sites. This bot fleet appears to have been unleashed on April 1st. Maybe "Phantom" update is intentional, for "Phantom" traffic. Plus it follows the "P" naming convention. Now I'll put my rose colored glasses back on and pretend like I don't notice.

[Some_Bloke]

Samwest

Could this possibly be something that's affecting you? .....

I noticed similar wierd behaviour in GA, with multiple referrals from the same domain (but always from various Russian locations when viewed "live" in analytics). I did some research and found it's getting to be a popular scam. I couldn't understand how anyone could profit from it at first.

I can't post a link as it's a commercial company but this is what they describe:

"essentially this method of ‘advertising’ is where your website is flooded with traffic from all different countries, IP addresses, devices and at different times during the week but all with the same website referrer. The hope of these spammers is that you will then notice the traffic in your analytics and investigate why the website is linking to you – to then convert to their service, or buy their product."

[Hollywood]

Samwest. good for you. LOVE this quote, so glad I finally saw someone say this here on WebmasterWorld. Google is all about the investors now, having billions they MUST HAVE MORE, so we sit getting bombed by their planned misinformation and deceptive practices in my opinion (algo), and the webmasters in the middle like me get to lose all our hard work over more than ten years online. Hope others feel me here. Your thinking below is spot on, keep me/us posted on your findings.
~Hollywood

"Here's an update: Same shoot different day. Robotic traffic, page sitters and some bot that looks like a human banging away on pages no human knows are there and have no links to them. Says it's "direct" but of course source is (not set). I know it's a 404 because it's a private and restricted URL yet this "visitor" is sitting there for 10 minutes. It's not a logged in user either. My login logs show no correlation.
My observation? it looks like a whole new fleet of bots are hotting our sites trying to look like visitors when there are none. Great way to satiate the masses. They are hitting pages that I allowed them to sniff for a day or two, then applied password protection. My own little sting operation. These are NOT human visits, but GA is showing them as such. Only G knew about them. Oh and oddly my privacy page is still getting a LOT of mobile hits and long sitters. Funny, on mobile it's a long scroll to find it, then open a reduced menu to get there. It's a bot. People could care less about privacy pages. That's why conversions are in the dumper across many sites. This bot fleet appears to have been unleashed on April 1st. Maybe "Phantom" update is intentional, for "Phantom" traffic. Plus it follows the "P" naming convention. Now I'll put my rose colored glasses back on and pretend like I don't notice."

[RedBar]

@samwest ... I'm not saying it's not happening but why would anyone do this? What's the point?

[samwest]

@Red - I can think of billions of reasons, but seriously, I won't even speculate in this forum. I'm pretty much disgusted with the whole gamed system. Five years of strictly punitive updates have taken their toll on most of us. What's the point in trying to figure it out? You'd have a better chance of swimming up Niagara Falls.

Since April 1, the only converting refers are from Bing, Yahoo and other direct links.