Google Updates and SERP Changes - Sept 2015

[silentneedle]

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System: The following 17 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4760634.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:16 am on Sep 3, 2015 (PDT -8)

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So is/was Panda 4.2 a "slow rollout" or "no rollout"? For me it looks like they just announced 4.2 so that the webmaster community shuts up.

[Nutterum]

@Martin Ice Web - It is good for me. I use it as a catalyst. Not get in to too much details however I noticed something interesting with the zombie traffic I receive on some of the competitive keywords I rank for. The bad traffic I get ranks very high on Google international organic, but poorly on Bing and Duck Duck Go. What this means for me is that for some unknown reason Google favoured a page in its broadest sense when it shouldn't have.

See, I believe many people feel entitled that when they finally reach the first or second spot on Google they should have rewards in the shape of conversions flowing to them like castaways swimming towards the shore. The reality however is that many search for the broad keyword term for various reasons unrelated to your product or service, thus what happens is you get a-lot of traffic coming from all over the place that is zombified. Let me give you an analogy. If you rank above Wikipedia for the word "tires" it will not matter that you geolocated your website for Canada only. People using all kinds of settings from all over the world will land on your website, bloating the traffic and reducing the conversion rate while increasing bounce rates. You might ask by why do I have hits from Japan, well the answer is pretty simple. The guy landing on you page searched for Canadian Tires or information on Goodyear in the past and because he wanted non jp results he changed his language to EN-US, fooling Google into showing him results that are not meant to him. He expects Wikipedia or some info website, but lands on your awesome tire article and bounces.

That is how Google operates. I see it on a daily basis on our biggest property. It is global organic website, welcoming traffic from everywhere, even though the main service we offer is for international businesses to do work in Europe. Every now and again I start ranking for the broadest keyword for my niche and get a lot of traffic that I don`t need and that I know are not business people searching for the service we offer. I refrain from ranking for these words as they are useless, yet sometimes it happens and hoards of zombie traffic people start visiting and bouncing off my website. I needed 2 full months of data crunching to make sure this was the cause of the unwanted extra visits.

So yeah, the subjects of search bubbles , zombie traffic, strange SERP results and so on, are essentially one subject - what is the logic behind Google's UX. If you manage to understand it for the niche you operate in - you can exploit it to your advantage.

[Martin Ice Web]

I needed 2 full months of data crunching to make sure this was the cause of the unwanted extra visits.

Do i understand u right if i say, our website did have "a problem" and aufter 2 month u found the problem and fixed it?

[Robert Charlton]

Martin and Nutterum. Thanks. I'm thinking that we should start a new thread on the topic, with references to some of the old classics. I'm up to my eyeballs in deadlines, so it's going to be a bit of time before I can get to it... but it would be a shame to have the discussion lost in the Update thread.

Nutterum... it sounds like you have a more hands-on take on this than I do, so if you feel like starting a discussion on another thread, please do. Otherwise, I may not get to it until the end of the week.

My own highly speculative (and badly worded) take on what's happening, btw, is that Google is testing personalization on some of these terms, which include geo-localization, and that for testing purposes... as kind of a control... they may be selectively switching these on and off. Thus, the zombie traffic comes in spurts.

Several members, you included, have reported that the traffic shaping has given them increased conversion rates, even though not all report, as you did, increased traffic. Some have seen more conversions with less traffic.

Over the years this zombie traffic has occurred just before or just after an algo change, my feeling either to check a new set of heuristics or to "calibrate" the old ones. It's not like this is a steady state. Again, we should be discussing this in a dedicated thread.

[Martin Ice Web]

@nutteru, when u see zombi traffic, is it that this traffic comes from different telecom providers? Or is it most a range of IPs from one provider?

[engine]

@Robert_Charlton

engine, FWIW, I find that when I can't find good results on both Google and Bing, it means that the information isn't there, at least not in an accessible form.

I agree that may be the case in some instances, but in this instance I was describing, the information was there, but the SERPs were not showing it. The SERPs were infested by non-local, US returns, when that's not what should have been returned. It should have been country-specific, and if I was expecting traffic, I would not have gotten much. Bing is not so good at the long tail, in these instances. Clearly, between those dates something was going on with the SERPs filtering, in addition to any other re-working.

[Nutterum]

@Robert_Charlton I`ll start a new thread. I just need to get my work done as I work from Germany and I have some tasks to wrap up at work before the end of the business day.

Will get a thread going in a few hours.

[aristotle]

I don't have a clear understanding of the difference between zombie traffic and mis-matched traffic.
Maybe someone can explain it

[samwest]

@Aristotle - Some of us have different definitions of Zombie traffic, but since I was likely the one to coin the phrase or at least harp on it nonstop under my old screen name (backdraft7 in discussions with our beloved, late Tedster) I always defined Zombie traffic as non - interacting, non-convering traffic. A visitor would arrive, sit on one page for several minutes and then leave. Live, human traffic moves quickly page to page and converts. It's a very easy pattern to ID just observing on GA Real Time or Piwik. Some theories are that these are mobile users who just drop in and then leave that web browser page open as they get distracted back to Facebook or whatever, which they very well could be, but when I see desktop traffic doing the same I have to wonder. Tedster thought this was due to some traffic shaping mechanism.

Recently I've been noticing another traffic shaping phenomenon that I call Phantom traffic....it's a sudden appearance of low volume yet very good converting traffic in the middle of the night. 4 of 7 nights per week I get sales after midnight and mostly around 2 to 3 am. I might get one more in the early morning hours before 8am, but then nothing all day. That's weird! It's also repeated itself way to many times and seems very unnatural. It also seems to have manifested itself shortly after the recent "Phantom" update.

Just one reply for RC...Yes, while I do have a paywall to access my documents area, the doc descriptions, testimonials, and a tons of related blog articles are all out in the open for free. If G doesn't like me charging for docs, then that is anti-commerce. It would be like holding it against Amazon for selling books.

My biggest question right now is "what happened to daytime traffic and conversions?" If I could make that back...I'd be back in business.
As it is, I get nothing but non converting Zombies by day, and a couple of Phantoms by night.

[aristotle]

samwest -- Thanks for the explanation. Somehow I wondered if it could refer to people who behave like zombies when they browse the web. :)

[Shaddows]

Regarding Zombies, I've posted a new thread awaiting moderation, but the original thread is here (2010) [webmasterworld.com], while the main thread is here (2012) [webmasterworld.com]

Samwest, as backdraft7, I think you and I generally made the running in those old conversations. It's a subject I'm really interested - not least because it's one of the few prisms that lets you see "under the hood" of the algorithm. For all the fatalism I see recently that "no one can understand Google, anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves"- this is a good place to start to take a peek.

[samwest]

^ This is true - nobody understands Google and it's that way by design. - I only did a quick search, but I was yackin' about Zombie traffic is 2011 and traffic was on the upswing then...at least for a while. [webmasterworld.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

Shaddows, thanks for the new zombies thread and references to the original and main discussions. Location of the new thread is here...

Zombie Traffic / Traffic Shaping / Throttling
Sept 8, 2015
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4766446.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Some who've posted comments in this updates thread might want to add those thoughts to the new discussion.

[Jessica]

Our positions have been dancing since the start of September. Between first SERPS and second pages - back and forth.Traffic is 100k one day and 50k next days, and this goes back and forth.

This is mainly for US traffic, all other countries seem to be more stable.

Any idea what is going on? Just some kind of major update that is taking longer than usual?

[goodoldweb]

@samwest

What you are experiencing is traffic shaping and Throttling by Google. I have 3 ecom websites and i see exactly the same patterns you describe. I also often notice google ip addresses (US and/or India) accessing these sites just before getting a temporary spike in traffic... and then 30 minutes later, dead quiet for the next 10-18 hours.

Quit disgusting actually!

[LuckyLiz]

Could Labor Day being late this year, plus schools in the North East starting at different times - most before Labor Day, and some after, be related at all to the traffic differences?

[glakes]

Our positions have been dancing since the start of September. Between first SERPS and second pages - back and forth.Traffic is 100k one day and 50k next days, and this goes back and forth.

Precisely what I'm seeing too. Yesterday was another 50% day of what Google normally sends in traffic. Today we are off to the same start with Google .ae, .ie, etc. traffic - all markets we do not serve.

@ LuckyLiz
Originally a thought I had for some, but my traffic from Bing/Yahoo remains consistent. The large swings in traffic I am seeing is the result of Google doing something.

[Martin Ice Web]

We can see this traffic swings too. Yesterday was way very good. Today started bad and it stayed bad till now. They weekly overall traffic will be the same. A good day will be followed by a bad day. Serps IMO doesn´t change taht much. Ranking for a certain keyword is not possible when u are not amazon or a very big brand. My guess is that google is just upgrading the personal search / users with buying intentions search results.
And i can see this happen every time a new panda was released. Even more non converting traffic arrives with every new panda, while converting traffic is less. But it is not that GSA traffic will convert, no it is one of the biggest holes you can put our money in.

This has nothing to do with vacation, long weekends. This traffic swings have never been before panda has been released. This is google manipulating users / traffic for their own advantage. If i were in their position, i would do it and every one else would do it, too.

[Mentat]

I can see massive moves on my niche.
I believe this will be a very, very hot weekend!

[reseller]

Mentat

Have you also noticed any changes in google traffic to your site(s)?

[Jessica]

So we all agree that something weird is going on.

The question now is WTF is it?

[supercyberbob]

Not even <G> knows what is going on. Hence the delay and stall tactics with Panda and Penguin.

[glakes]

Wow, what a horrible day for traffic from Google. This daily low surpasses even the lowest days since traffic started going haywire on 9/2/2015.

[samwest]

Although traffic just dropped WAY off we've had a distinct ON period in the past 48 hours. It started at Thursday 11am - and continued to Friday 6:30 pm...been off since. Almost back to "normal" conversions, but on very, VERY low traffic volume. Unfortunately I was not here to watch it, I was on the road. Figures...I get back to my office and it stops. This was definitely "catch up" traffic. Weekly totals landing on the exact same figures... again. Incredibly accurate, I'll give 'em that much. I predict nothing for tomorrow.

[Kratos]

I can confirm for sure that something is going on, and it's a serious thing. We have over 100 websites, with websites that have gone up (benefited from) with every Panda iteration. Many of them are going down hard in traffic.

[vlexo]

Saw a drop for a very high volume term that has been quite stable up until the latest announcement of Panda.

[samwest]

Pretty much spot on with my prediction...no traffic and no sales today. I figure with G losing to ad blockers, it's going to put pressure on to either force ad buys (which I won't do) or just squeeze us out so they can take all the traffic. Not sure how to explain my #1 positions yet no traffic.

[robert76]

[#1 positions yet no traffic]
Possibly #1 just for you? Personalized results?

[samwest]

^ Not my first rodeo R76...ingonito mode verified...as well as via other methods.

[seoskunk]

If that's the case, isn't it time for people to stop obsessing about Google and move on? Why beat the proverbial dead horse?

Google - It just doesn't work anymore, buyers have become frustrated by their results and the lack of choice. Google have killed their own market with draconian penalisation and an unnatural emphasis on high street shops for ecommerce. The ROI investment through adverts is poor. Its still the best search engine for non commercial terms. BUT.........

The shopping results are poor
The Serp results even worse
And the content network even worse still

If I am buying something I'd rather go to Amazon or Ebay than Google

[glakes]

Google - It just doesn't work anymore, buyers have become frustrated by their results and the lack of choice.

I see this to some degree as well. For example, when we and our product are difficult to find in Google our Bing/Yahoo traffic doubles. Today was absolutely horrible for Google traffic yet our Bing/Yahoo traffic is three times the norm with high conversions. People are obviously searching for us and our product. Thankfully it looks like some people are searching for us outside of Google when Google just can't deliver relevant results. If Google's results were relevant, then people would not have to go to Bing/Yahoo in the first place.

Today was a great day for sales despite whatever is going on with Google, and that's fine with me. My only hope is that Google continues to become as irrelevant as they have attempted to make many small businesses.