Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2015

[netmeg]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4744522.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:38 am on Jun 1, 2015 (PDT -8)

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netmeg -- we don't know for sure how big of a role user metrics plays in Google's algorithm.

No, we don't, but I do know my own experiences and so far in my experience, sites that are really really loved by users who come back to them over and over again tend to rank pretty well and stay ranked. Pinterest is one of those sites.

[WebEnthusiast]

Website I take care off got 11% less traffic (B2B) but it is normal, every summer, when sun comes out the site have less users. During day it is all stable but we loses the one after 16:00. This pattern is same since 15 years. (Germany)

[samwest]

Since April 1st, it's been grim.That's all I gotta say.

[Paperchaser]

I feel you Samwest. Exactly the same mate

[Nutterum]

Two of the competition websites just received massive jump in rankings. What I noticed however was that they both have SEO WordPress plugins with over 1000 meta keywords placed there. Even though I am fully aware that Google does not take these into consideration, it bugs me when I see this sort of "coincidence" . Do they know something I don`t? Is this the usual pre pandas low quality website exposure before the big axe? I don`t know but I am quite irritated at this point.

[RedBar]

Has anyone worked out what happened on April 1st? I certainly haven't lost any rankings yet traffic and AdSense earnings continue to slide towards oblivion...is social-only The Net insofar as many are concerned?

[RedBar]

Here's an interesting reflection from this forum board, yesterday, Sunday, you would have got into the top 10 of contributors here with only 1 post:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Things definitely ain't what they used to be!

[vlexo]

I now believe Google's so-called Quality Update, updates in real-time.

We had a really spammy user-generated section on our site and we were impacted as a result of the Quality Update. We removed that section last month and this weekend, we saw a boost in our rankings back to our original terms for some very competitive terms. We've seen an overall boost on the domain itself for many different types of product related queries. This all happened over a period of a month.

[Martin Ice Web]

with over 1000 meta keywords placed there.

One of my suppliers added about 60 internal only text links on ever item page to other mostly not related items on his site. WUUUM! His ranking got a big boost so. I neever thought that something so obvious would go down directly into good rankings.

[Martin Ice Web]

Since April 1st, it's been grim.That's all I gotta say.

No it is quality. At lesast you can click on GSA to find something usefull.

But wait, there is an option: COMPELLING SITES!

[samwest]

It''s back to non interactive traffic, just like that! Something over the past 48 hours has changed and it's not the site. I couldn't give away solid gold bars to this audience.

[vlexo]

Something definitely happened from Friday to today. Noticing changes on the other websites I manage.

Possibly that Panda update that Gary Illyes was talking about?

I'm a little conflicted on this. One site that I work on ,which was impacted the Quality Update in May has seen big improvements. Whilst another site I work on has seen a negative impact. :/

[Atomic]

I saw some changes on Friday, too. We gained some rankings and lost others. Overall, we seem to have benefited from whatever happened. Search visibility tools indicate huge changes to some of my competitors. Most lost visibility. One lost 39%. Another, a big household name with TV commercials on every commercial break increased 24%. Most competitors lost 5% to 10%. Two of our biggest competitors lost about 25% each. We gained 9% visibility but traffic was virtually the same as last weekend. It will be interesting to see how things pan out this week.

[EditorialGuy]

I know some people get annoyed by hearing "no change here" (drama always sells better than "same old, same old") but it never hurts to have different data points.

Our editorial information site's week-over-week traffic for today, yesterday, and the last three days is almost an exact duplicate (hour by hour), and Google traffic is about the same, too (up about 1 percent today compared to last Monday).

Maybe Google updates are more targeted toward particular sectors or types of queries (e.g., informational or transactional) these days?

[samwest]

I'm just curious how informational sites measure success or failure? Ecoms measure success by sales conversions, MFA's (and maybe informational) measure it by adsense revenue. Two very big differences. If your site is tanking and it's your life blood, I'm guessing it's not informational (unless you have dozens of sites making $12/day each in adsense). Having a hobby site and comparing it to others who live off the web is apples and oranges. Just making the observation, not directing at anyone in particular.

Since April 1st I've been effectively out of business and running a loss between hosting and other software upgrades. Not speculating or blaming anymore, just throwing dirt on it and thankful for the years of a "free", "un f***ed with" internet.

[glakes]

I'm just curious how informational sites measure success or failure?

By clicks on Adsense ads of course. It's the next best thing to actually being on Google's payroll. Or in rare cases, some Adsense publishers act as if they are on Google's payroll.

[vlexo]

@EditorialGuy, both sites that I've been talking about are transactional for the most part with lots of editorial. One site is in the travel sector and the other in finance. ;-)

[petehall]

In the UK I'm seeing a fair bit of movement and a couple of result sets. I think Panda may have kicked off... looking positive! Lets hope so.

Edit: Is anyone else in the UK seeing this?

[Zagek]

Hi Pete,

I've seen fluctuations slightly out of the ordinary since Friday 12th June. Is that in-line with what you've seen?

[webmuppet]

In the UK I'm seeing a fair bit of movement and a couple of result sets. I think Panda may have kicked off... looking positive! Lets hope so.

Edit: Is anyone else in the UK seeing this?

When did you notice a change and how much?

[Johan007]

@petehall

No change in my feb/march 2011 Panda effected UK site (now 100% clean). Nothing from the web experts on twitter or blogs.

p.s. Pete do you work for a yellow company?

[vlexo]

Can anyone check their Crawl Stats in GWT (for sites that have seen an increase or decrease)?

For a site that's seen an increase in rank we've noticed a 100% increase in pages crawled per day. A site that I manage which has seen a decrease in rank has however seen a -80% drop in pages crawled per day.

[EditorialGuy]

I'm just curious how informational sites measure success or failure?

Circulation (traffic), revenue, and reader satisfaction. Same as in the old print days, basically.

By clicks on Adsense ads of course. It's the next best thing to actually being on Google's payroll. Or in rare cases, some Adsense publishers act as if they are on Google's payroll.

AdSense represents only a small percentage of our revenue. YMMV.

And now, maybe we can return to the topic of "Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2015"?

[DixonJones]

I don't think any recent changes are due to an algorithm change. I think they are due to temporary DNS outage on the web. Anyone know of any large dns servers going down a few days ago?

[Itanium]

I don't see any Panda-like changes on Google.de. Algorithm tracking tools don't show any spikes either.

[vlexo]

@DixonJones: Out of interest, what makes you think that is it?

[RedBar]

Edit: Is anyone else in the UK seeing this?

Sunday saw my lowest-ever PVs, yesterday I had my highest PVs since March at 250% of Sunday's! Something's rolling through, several sites all had higher than average traffic and, so far, it's continuing into today.

[DixonJones]

@Vlexo I explained it over here [webmasterworld.com...] as I didn't want to affect the point of this thread.

[Kelowna]

Getting lots of hits from visitors in the wrong country, we deal in Canada & USA but hits are from all over the planet, traffic up? YES Traffic we can use = no change

[Zagek]

@Vlexo I explained it over here [webmasterworld.com...] as I didn't want to affect the point of this thread.

That's interesting, but I'm not sure. When do you believe you first saw this happen? I've been seeing fluctuations in rankings since Friday.

[raindance]

Algoroo peaked with 1.95.
I see significant changes on SERP (Europe)