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.

[Spiekerooger]

German mozcast copycat is at about a 100° F. (mozcast hasn't updated yet)

Domain-clustering/-crowding all over the place.

Smells like an update/change that is big enough to notice.

Seeing changes in SERPs as well (Germany).

[Johan007]

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

Well that would because Good sites appear at the top naturally. Obviously the data is being captured using Chrome but Google has said the only UX factors currently used earlier this year have so far been Mobile only.

[thejimster]

We had a huge day yesterday with conversions. Traffic was normal. Today rankings have plummeted. We'll see about conversions at the end of the day.

Remember those terrible SERPS at the end of March basically ignoring page titles? The SERPS don't look anything like that time, but there's a correlation there..

[aristotle]

German mozcast copycat is at about a 100° F.

That's about what weather thermometers show for the air temperature in the eastern U.S.

[Spiekerooger]

That's about what weather thermometers show for the air temperature in the eastern U.S.

Please send some of those degrees over here (not all, so you'll keep enough to have it warm & pleasant). We're below 70° here.

btt:

Mozcast updated for tuesday showing >100°F.

And Webmasterworld is quiet. What is going on? All tools wrong?

[Bones]

It appears to me that more local businesses (based on my IP) are showing higher in the serps.

[mrengine]

Mozcast updated for tuesday showing >100°F.

And Webmasterworld is quiet. What is going on? All tools wrong?

Not many small businesses have been in a position to feel any ranking flux in Google for a while. It's all big national and multinational brands dominating ecommerce just has it has been (and gotten worse) over the last couple years. Maybe the MFA crowd is different, but all I see are Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, etc. with swapped positions.

[superclown2]

Fair bit of movement today in my UK niche. Spammers with unbelievable link numbers doing even better than before.

[EditorialGuy]

Maybe the MFA crowd is different, but all I see are Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, etc. with swapped positions.

Dunno about e-commerce or MFA sites, but in our informational/editorial niche, things look pretty quiet. No spikes or dips in our Google traffic today, either (overall or in specific countries).

It's certainly possible that any ongoing tweaks are targeted toward specific industries, types of queries (e.g., "transactional"), local searches, or something else.

[armstead98]

Sinister traffic surge - I've had a big ramp up on my product pages from Google, these pages are relatively new. Last time this happened I got hit with Panda. The question is, does the sinister surge ever NOT result in a penalty?

[seoskunk]

I believe this goes way beyond spam now, for reasons unknown google seems to be on an agenda to crush independent business online. I find it ironic that Bing and Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter are now the refuge of small business.

It's not about "quality", this is a systematic dismantling of a market in favor of large brands.

[chrisv1963]

I believe this goes way beyond spam now, for reasons unknown google seems to be on an agenda to crush independent business online. I find it ironic that Bing and Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter are now the refuge of small business.

It's not about "quality", this is a systematic dismantling of a market in favor of large brands.

I'm seeing/thinking exactly the same. Google is rapidly turning into a crap search engine. I don't want to find the big brands with often crappy and difficult to navigate sites and content written by a guy or woman with a deadline at the office.. I want to interesting websites, with lots of information and built by people who really love their niche. Also, I don't want to find Pinterest on the first page of the serps. If I want to see stolen photos or spam photos uploaded by brands then I will go to Pinterest directly. I don't need Google for that.

[Jez123]

Yawn! I see ebay and Amazon have paid their dues and are once again flying high in my SERPs. The pair of them have gone to 1 & 2 for most in my niche. I am guessing that the assimilation dial has been turned. To 11.

[mikhailblaze]

Rankings for one of my client's sites are dropping - from the top of page two, we somehow ended up in the middle.

It's kind of sudden considering that we've been holding this for a month or two. That aside, I've been getting a lot of spam referrals as well.

I beg to differ with regard to Google stamping out small businesses: it's doing a good job in local searches, but hey, it seems to be inclined towards large brands..so...

[toidi]

I don't track serps or statistics for my sites, but my sign up rate is way up and the quality of the sign ups is top $$ and this has been going on for about a week. I don't know if it is my network of empty sites or my content heavy site but i hope it lasts.

local real estate sites

[netmeg]

My primary client's (small brand) B2B site has had a huge surge this month both in organic traffic and revenue, and I can't really put my finger on why. The site is badly broken (we're relaunching next month) but it's been around since the mid 90's. A couple of its (also small brand) competitors have jumped too.

[EditorialGuy]

It's not about "quality", this is a systematic dismantling of a market in favor of large brands.

We had a thread about the topic of "large brand preference" a while back. It was started by Martinibuster, who wrote an article titled "Brand is Not a Ranking Factor" for TheSEMPost in March:

[thesempost.com...]

Opening paragraph:

"I’m surprised the SEO industry continues to perpetuate the assertion that Google prefers 'brands.' The word 'brand' is used as if it is a ranking factor, like PageRank. This thing that SEOs call 'Brand' is a symptom of a site that has their ranking factors in order. Brand is not the ranking factor itself. If 'brands' dominate the SERPs it’s because their ranking factors are in order and more importantly, because the competition is still thinking in terms of '200 ranking signals' and optimizing like it’s 2006."

[EditorialGuy]

Posted this morning by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land:

[searchengineland.com...]

According to the story, Google acknowledged changes to the "core algorithm," something that happens on a regular basis.

[aristotle]

Well the bias in favor of big brands has been intentionally built into the algorithm by Google. For years they've tested various adjustments and manipulations looking for ways to boost the rankings of big brands. This is why they reduced the importance of relevance, because it was an obstacle to their goal of pushing big brands to the top of the results.

You can easily see this bias by looking at the results themselves, where irrelevant low-quality pages from big brands often rank higher than much better pages from small sites.

Yes it's true that big brands have the "right" signals, but it's true only because Google adjusted their algorithm to give more importance to those particular signals.

[smithaa02]

Anybody else seeing correlations with the new new algorithm?

Some are suggested there is a correlation with being a big brand?

We've been told this is NOT Panda?

My very rough hypothesis is that there is a freshness factor coming in strong. I suspect each page has a freshness ranking (based on legit-nonspammy update frequency) and a contextual freshness ranking (based on the average updates/deletions of all pages on the site). Sites that are updated frequently tend to be doing better from my observations with the new algorithm? Is anybody else seeing anything similar for the key terms you follow?

[Atomic]

Some are suggested there is a correlation with being a big brand?

Does a day go by when someone here isn't correlating brands with something? Seems like SSDD to me.

[superclown2]

Sites that are updated frequently tend to be doing better from my observations with the new algorithm? Is anybody else seeing anything similar for the key terms you follow?

Nope. Some of my old, but popular, sites are doing very nicely thanks. Some of my bang-up-to-date, highly relevant sites have been pushed well down by brandspam. I reckon this is a popularity weighted update - people click on brands they recognise, and do business with them rather than with unknown sites IMO.

[superclown2]

You can easily see this bias by looking at the results themselves, where irrelevant low-quality pages from big brands often rank higher than much better pages from small sites.

Google is either a very poor search engine because it doesn't promote quality websites or it's a very good one because everyone uses it. Either way it's the one we've got because there's nothing else likely to take it's place in the near future.

In the meanwhile I'm seeing more of the usual in my niches - a gradual elimination of affiliate sites. Remember them? Perhaps it's not a bad thing, most of them offered very little extra value. Now if only Google could recognise that most of the brands are really just affiliates too, then the SERPs could become far more relevant. As it is, a lot of merchants are having to pay the brands a lot of commission to sell their business back to them - not good for anybody except the brands themselves. Particularly bad for the consumer who ultimately picks up the bill.

[samwest]

a gradual elimination of affiliate sites. Remember them?

Yeah, Google eliminates all affiliate sites then becomes the worlds biggest affiliate site themselves with "Shop for {SEARCH TERM} on Google" at the top of every page. Hypocrites.

[kewlchat]

Hi all, just chirping in, So after a big jump in the last week of may (about 500%) yes I was amazed as well. Now things seem to be on a gradual decline as of the last 3 days, international traffics slowly dropped a little each day, Ive been trying to fight it off some by adding new content and several 400+ word articles that I wrote myself and are of good quality, but it just has slowed it down it seams.

So far today seems to be a good start "sort of" im at 50% of my usual traffic but the stat program I use resets in about 4 hours.
So its not too good but the other sites in my network or 40+ domains that ive checked seems to be kinda up and down very sporatic actually and I cant tell anything much but my main money maker is on a slight decline at least its not a nose dive.

Im glad at least I made enough through may to now to buy a motorcycle and get some bills paid. Im going to buckle down and work for the next few days building decent content for all the best ones, and I think ill avoid any link building or aggress social shareing until the dust settles. Im fully mobile , super fast and running ssl, and have great content so not much more I can do besides more content. Anyway that's news slow decline 3 days in. - (porn/dating) global

[toidi]

. Now if only Google could recognise that most of the brands are really just affiliates too, then the SERPs could become far more relevant. 

Spot on. There was a time where if i wanted traffic i had to be in all the directories because they had the exposure. Then directories became taboo. Now, there is a new version of directories that dominate the serps, only they don't link to my site, i have to pay to get a tiny little spot on their site. Non of these sites offer any service, they just have the names of the service people who pay to be on the site.

the only saving grace is that these new brand/affiliate sites are not making money except what they get from their vc partners. My biggest competitor has received roughly $130M in vc money but they have yet to turn a profit. This house of cards will crumble, investors are not patient people.

I am not complaining, just pointing out what i see.

[smithaa02]

What else are you guys seeing for correlations?

Big vs little sites?
Specialty vs general sites?
EMD's vs non?
Meta title/H1 matches vs non?
https?
Page speed?

[EditorialGuy]

Google eliminates all affiliate sites then becomes the worlds biggest affiliate site themselves with "Shop for {SEARCH TERM} on Google" at the top of every page. Hypocrites.

Two things to remember:

1) Google is perfectly happy to index and rank pages that have affiliate links. It just doesn't want to index and rank "thin affiliate" pages. (Those of us who were around in the heyday of "pure play affiliate sites" can remember when results of all major search engines were cluttered with boilerplate affiliate dreck.)

2) Unless you seriously believe that Google and other search engines are "thin affiliate sites," it's hard to see what's hypocritical about those search engines not wanting to index and rank pages from sites that are. (Organic search results, answer boxes, etc. are perfect examples of the "added value" that Google encourages in its guidelines for affiliates.)

[samwest]

^ Sure, that's why affiliate programs are so successful and popular today. Need a Kool-aid refill?

[Nutterum]

To be honest, lately I have seen quite a few brand new domains populating 1st Page. I don't know whether this is a pre Panda grace period(I`ve seen this happen before) or something else but they are there. What is more after taking a closer look all these websites are run with WordPress with the SEO plugin and are stuffed to the hoot with meta keywords (in the thousands!). I know Google does not pay attention to them but I can't shake the feeling there is more to it than that because I know for a fact that the meta keywords help with your WMT content keywords section - something I am sure Google pays attention to.