Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2015

[Babadook]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4755384.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:40 pm on Aug 3, 2015 (PDT -8)

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Zzzzzzz......we've seen quite a lot of traffic, but conversions slow. Anytime there is a major update, this always happen, almost like something shut off.

[Nutterum]

Anyone noticed the big crawl spike on Bing? All my websites see a big crawl rate jump since Friday. Thoughts?

[hasek747]

Same for me, huge bingbot activity on all my sites.

[Martin Ice Web]

biggest drop ever for us. Starting on friday we had a hughe spike in traffic, on monday first big hit 50% and today another 70%. So we are at 15% what is normal.
Serps itself seem not be changed much.
Never seen something like this before. Everone else seeing something similar?

ecom, germany

[hasek747]

Can't say anything about ecom sites, but my info sites are all seeing growth. Sorry to hear about your drop Martin, hope it recovers very quickly.

[RocksSing]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4763922.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 10:57 am on Aug 25, 2015 (gmt 0)

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Hi,
There is huge drop in Google ranking for our main keywords. Is it happen with you ?
Is there any update ?

Kindly suggest me the process to recover it

[Martin Ice Web]

It seems only ecom related. German serps are flooded with alibaba, google books ( YES for shopping queries ) , ebay-kleinanzeigen, aliexpress, amazon, ebay and sites like zeppy . io . Never seen a site more useless than this but is ranking fine for shopping related queries in germany. For me it is not understandable why alibaba is in german serps. 99% of users with shopping intention want to by in germany maybe in austria but not in china!
This remembers me of panda pushing up all bad sites google could find and then vanish it. But this bad this keep staying on spot.

[deadsea]

Something changed for Monday. My site started getting 30% more traffic on Sunday afternoon August 23rd.

According to Google Analytics, I started seeing more traffic at 19:00 GMT Sunday which is noon Sunday pacific time.

This is a site that has gone up or down with every iteration of the "too many ads above the folds" algorithm updates. Because of that history, this update seems likely to me to be a tweak to that algorithm.

(global, multi-language, finance)

[OldFaces]

We noticed a large drop in position according to Search Console on 8/23, and a significant drop in Google organic traffic (8%) on 8/26. Anyone else notice any changes around that time span?

[Nutterum]

I actually saw an increase of overall positions since 25th. From 22.3 to 18.1 , followed by a juicy convert happy traffic. Keep in mind I rank for over 600 core search terms and over 10k longtails so it is normal for my average to be around 20-25th spot. Still very happy with whatever change Google did.

[samwest]

Just the opposite here...good conversions starting in the very early morning hours of Monday (2am) and continued until Monday evening. Since then I've been checking CAT5 connections to be sure we are still connected to the ISH. (Information Super Highway - a now laughable term...more like the Information Back Water) Nothing but referral spam again.

[Mentat]

Something happened last night, very low figures, even for weekend.

[samwest]

^ Something happened April 1st 2015 and has clamped us down ever since. No seasonal rise in traffic. Every time we trend up a tiny bit, we are hammered right back down...just like the old "Whack a Mole" game. Revenue has been flat lined all summer. How does Google expect us to buy their useless ads when we can't even afford to survive? From six figures to below poverty income....while Google rolls in billions.

[syedyasir]

Very low traffic today, 29-AUG. Ranking seems to be the same. Not sure why the traffic is less.

[diberry]

Post edited because I can't delete it.

I had originally reported a dramatic drop in Google visits that started at 9am today.... which is about the time I switched over to a new mobile theme... into which I did not put my analytics code. Hmm, can't put that one on Google. LOL @ self.

[Babadook]

Yes, the drops have been dramatic. It's odd to see the search results being exactly the same even from different IP's from across the world. The search results used to be simple and therefore better. There is no change for us in the serps but yet there are times of spikes, then down to nothing. I can always tell when we will get conversions based on what I see. It's not a ratio you can predict, but you can see it. And when I see results these days, they are so diluted with garbage links and sites. So this is quality Google? I never use them because I can't find what I'm looking for. And no, I can't spend ad money with them anymore, it doesn't work, it doesn't convert. If they are trying to drive us all to use ads, then they SHOULD BE CONVERTING ADS. That's what ads are for, right? To turn the conversion down on those as well makes it worthless or even worse. Someday in the future we will find out the truth about what they were doing right now. They're the only entity that can promise results while working against the very advertisers that are paying for a service in good faith. What do they call that? Hmmmm....let me guess.

[Martin Ice Web]

SHOULD BE CONVERTING ADS.

the point is, if users now find with one click on the ads what they are searching for, the overall clickvolume and the money they are making with it will go down. Meanwhile i think this money printing machine makes organics and ads worse. Everyone is scary about loosing traffic and they will stay within google ads. My ROY from shopping ads ( <1%) .

Plaese have a look at the IPs from your visitors. I can see that non converting and non traffic times ( meanwhile at 90% ) are coming from only one telecom provider and some static IPs but when the gates open all the other telecom providers are flooding in. This is so strange and i see it since some weeks now.

Edit: And low traffic times are full of users that only get one page and then leave. AT good traffic times users are going to get more than 5-6 pages in a row. Sometimes return and buy. Defenitive this is on googles site, as i know when i am search with google ( and this are only 1 out of 10 times favouring other SEs ) i have to go through plenty of sucking pages . Pages from same brand domain with little changes to the previous pages. Pages from some poeple explaining some technical things about an item that only 5 poeple in germany own. If i would like to see this, i would have searched for it. If i would like to see amazon, ebay and brands. I would have search for it. But i think this is quality and i am just a insubordinate who does not know what is good for him.

[Babadook]

The way ads are done online these days is that an ad is considered successful when it makes an impression. At least I think that's what the search engines think. See...you have all sorts of impressions that means it's getting in front of eyeballs. But just somebody seeing an ad or have it in their presence doesn't make it valuable. The only thing that it has any value is when it converts. It used to be many years ago that newspapers or radio or TV ran ads with the idea that they wanted you to have a result. Most of them understand that if you get a result, you'll run more ads. That's not the way Internet companies think about it. They believe that if you get all these impressions and we give it to you for such a low per click cost that you should be happy with that. You see, whatever filter they put on regular organic results, they've also put it on ad results. So whether you pay or don't pay doesn't really matter, the result will be the same. I've never seen such a blatant lack of respect for customers who are spending money to get a result, but nobody seems to care if something converts. After I quit running ads I would get calls from Google, the real company. And the representative would explain to me why I needed to use ads more and that I "might" get results then I gave them a diaperload of the truth, that they don't get results like they used to a long time ago and nobody seems to care if I ever do. The rep was flummoxed and seemed confused like I told them there was no Easter bunny or Santa Claus. They actually believed that they were doing good things and that they were effective. They have no idea and they are only going off what people have told them, not the reality. It seems strange that a company that would want you to pay for ads wouldn't give you any results. Unlike a newspaper, which doesn't control the end-user or buyer, search engines do control what the end-user is doing to some degree. So you have a situation where an advertiser is controlling the whole transaction from the attraction to the purchase. This is a new wrinkle in advertising that was never really done before. The understanding was that you place an ad and will get you as many people to call you as possible and get you results. Now, with Google it will bring a lot of impressions and maybe a few people and even fewer results. The thought being we can't give you all the results you want, we have to limit those results. I was in advertising and we never did this. We wanted people who spent money with us to get maximum results hoping they would come back. And I guess that's the lesson, if ads aren't working for you or the conversion is very low, you must quit using them. I think many advertisers had the idea that if they just get a lot of impressions people will eventually see it again and again and there's some truth to that, but not much. So organic search results and ads are hopelessly intertwined into some kind of a death spiral perpetrated by an entity that controls the transaction from beginning to end. I remember years ago when you could use other companies for ads and it would get results, but then Google made sure they don't show up anymore so all you were left was with them. And they are no better than the companies they excoriated for being some kind of parasite on their search results. You're not helping yourself by using them, you're actually making it worse because it perpetuates bad business practices of which this is clearly the case. I think some of the people that work at some of these large companies need to have a refresher course on ethics.

[Nutterum]

I tend to agree with Babadook, but then you have to answer this question. If what you say is true, why are there more advertisers and ads ran year-on-year since 2008? Someone has to benefit from their ads right? Or are ads just like organic searchers, brands and big budgets are the only things that win the internet?

[Martin Ice Web]

Or are ads just like organic searchers, brands and big budgets are the only things that win the internet?

With ads takeover the first page of serps its natural that more poeple pay for ads as their traffic goes down the drain. There is only one winner in this game.,,,


@babadook, if our ENTER Key is broken, i might have some in exchange for you ;)

[toidi]

In my vertical, i don't see nearly as many advertisers as there used to be and i when i see somebody new jump in, they don't stay around for long. I just spent $5k on adwords and bingwords without a single conversion. That same money would have made me money in 2 other traditional advertising formats. Guess where my money is going this month?

[Babadook]

I talked with many business owners and when they mentioned that they use ads they just really complain that they have to outlay this money. Typically they're being told by somebody in their organization who has a vested interest in using them to monitor them, that they should be done. That's the problem, there's really no critical thinking going on. Everyone assumes at the top that the ads work in some way. But if they really looked at the hard numbers and looked over the shoulders of those people managing the account, I believe they would see a different story. So are business owners stupid? They can be. There's a general ignorance at the top when it comes to the Internet. They still look at it like it was about 15 years ago with most of them that I talked to. They have that mindset, they still believe it's like that when clearly it isn't. It also is the lazy human belief that if you just throw enough pasta against the wall some of it's going to stick. It's a very poor way to do advertising and an even poorer way to run a business.

Nutterum, the reason I believe that there's been more ads and advertisers year over year is because of the ignorance of many people who have the mentality that we just have to be there. It's an incredible waste of money because it doesn't work. And because there is no critical analysis at the battle lines, no one really knows how much is being wasted. I would guess that probably 70 percent of ad dollars are a complete waste and you will get no result from them. That means that you're just giving money to someone who is giving you the feel good perception and then returning no results. The results are poor and now it requires a whole new way of approaching online business.

[Kelowna]

I guess there has been no news in a long time regarding google updates that this thread now talks more about Bing crawling and people paying for ads. Maybe it is time to renew the name of this "Google Updates" thread to something more relevant?

I have not seen much change on Google for a very long time. Every time some sort of panda/penguin or whatever update is announced that the only change we see is in old backlinks getting nuked. Any time a site of ours starts dropping all we do is add fresh links and within days it is back ranking again, works every time, has for years.

Any of you who are complaining about your site dropping, it is most likely because of the backlinks being dropped or discounted by Google, just add some new backlinks and carry on. With Google it is the links, it has always been the links.

[Babadook]

Yeah, that's it, a new name for the thread, something more relevant. Alphabet Outhouse. Now excuse me, I have to get back to connecting to those link farms!

[Kelowna]

ya link farms work great... 15 years ago. Let's not mis inform the nebies

[System]

The following 17 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4765618.htm [webmasterworld.com]
10:16 am on Sep 3, 2015 (PDT -8)