Google Updates and SERP Changes - Oct 2015

[charliekoen]

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System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4765618.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:46 am on Oct 1, 2015 (PDT -8)

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Another long time lurker here, interesting to read all of the previous comments about this and we've definitely seen a big shift.

We operate in the UK market and took over a client from another agency about 6 months ago. Everything seemed ok, link profile wasn't too bad etc. The one glaring thing that worried me was that they had a lot of location-type pages -- e.g. keyword-location.html. In fairness, the company operates across 4 cities, but nevertheless, these pages seemed a bit excessive. I advised our client about this and they wanted to keep the pages as is because they were obviously working for them.

They were doing pretty well in the SERP's -- usually in the top 3 for keyword + location queries. They also had the beginnings of a national footprint and were at the bottom of page 1 for some competitive terms.

All pages have unique content, around 750-1250 words and aren't keyword stuffed so I'm not sure if it's a Panda thing, but my instinct tells me it is.

They saw a HUGE drop yesterday -- pretty much obliterated all rankings. Then a slight recovery today.

Just wondered what people's thoughts are on what this update is. Seems like a mix of reactions from positive shifts to negative shifts.

[Simon_H]

@Kratos Yep, you're absolutely right with the penalty vs filter thing. Just conscious that 'penalty' is easier to understand by readers than 'filter'.

Interesting that you have a site that has increased as pretty much everything on here and other forums is about losses in traffic or conversions. Good to know if the site stays up or comes back down again.

[RedBar]

@Simon_H

Why doesn't your posts counter work correctly, any idea?

[reseller]

@Nutterum

Thank you for the kind encouraging words. Much appreciated.

I do expect Google to go public with their new algo in a few months, considering how vague the new head of spam is.

That would be very exciting, indeed!

[reseller]

@Kratos

Edit, anyone else miss Matt Cutts? I've always been pro Matt Cutts and you can learn a lot from him if you know what to look for.

I'm a big fan of Matt Cutts, and I miss him. IMHO the days of Matt Cutts represent the Golden Age of communication among Google search quality team and the webmasters/SEOs communities. I recall Matt use to guide us and kept us informed during Google updates and changes. I consider Matt Cutts videos library as the most valuable informative resource for webmasters and SEOs.

Thank you Matt Cutts. Much appreciated.

[reseller]

I'm reading what WebmasterWorld member Barry Schwartz has posted on SER about our current discussion on Google updates thread.
Google Update Underway? The Tedster Update?
[seroundtable.com...]

[apc4455]

I just saw that Algoroo added "2015-09-23: Localisation Tweak" to the big spike that happened on the 23rd last month.

I however fail to see any source whatsoever or any site talking about that at all. Where do they get this "localisation tweak" from and what does it even mean?

[Simon_H]

@oak88 Not saying that Panda counts no-indexed pages; the general view is it doesn't count them. But if you have a load of low-value content that you know is low-value, seriously, just get rid of it. Don't try to play Google, especially if you want to recover from Panda. No-one knows exactly how Panda works and what is and isn't considered. Just get rid of anything remotely crappy and ensure anything that remains is genuinely great content for users. And even then it will require a big dose of luck to recover.

[wgchris]

@Simon_H It’s true to try and assimilate all of what is happening and tie them together but the best barometer here isn’t all of these symptoms. It's the fact that the website was unchanged and I have a reasonably upset client.

One question for everyone, on affected websites, have you ever in the sites history disavowed links? I had to when I picked this client up because his link profile was a mess. Anyone have these symptoms and not begged for forgiveness in the past? I can’t find any of these links now but am curious if that’s a cute little boolean F-U flag in the algorithm DB?

“Thumbs up their asses” ~ Michael Bolton - Office Space

[Simon_H]

@wgchris Yep, we submit disavow files monthly (because of negative SEO) and I asked exactly the same question on seroundtable! But it may be tricky to form a correlation there because I bet pretty much everyone on this forum submits disavow files regularly.

[wgchris]

Id' ask John Mueller for clarity on that point but the response would be:

[davidnaylor.co.uk...]

</levity>

[reseller]

Folks

Assuming Orangutan is a search quality update.

I suggest you study the following few questions regarding the sites which you have mentioned on this thread as being affected by rolling out of Orangutan on/around 2nd September and/or changes on/around 23rd September:

- Are those sites in accordance with Google quality guidelines?
[support.google.com...]

- Have the said sites clean backlink-profiles (maybe you have already Disavowed possible "bad backlinks" in order to have a clean backlink-profile) ?

- Are those sites considered Mobile-friendly?
[google.com...]

[syedyasir]

Last year in September and October, my site received 25% and then 25% more traffic in different updates. My site's overall ranking was increased during those months. The boost Google gave is now gone from the start of last month. It is if Google reversed those two boosts from the last year.

From time to time, I do see quality traffic that result in Sales and also good Adsense earnings. However, it does not last long [less than 24 hours], and it happens randomly after several days of worthless traffic.

My site's overall rank is down, which is reflected in many keywords I monitor. Another thing I noticed is that I am getting less traffic from India [which I don't mind as this traffic does not convert] and several other countries that my site used to get traffic from.

[Nutterum]

Hah @samwest, you know how to bring a smile to my face. Though I think it is a tad too early here in Germany to put my tin-foil hat on. What I really believe is happening is manually tweaked algo that extends or shrinks the personalization bubble of the SERPs. On high expansion of the personalization bubble I sometimes see conversions for keyword phrases ranking at 100+ place, which is ridiculous. When the bubble shrinks (usually on Fridays through the Weekend and early monday business hours), most of my long tail keywords are gone, leaving me with my high ranking core keywords. Rince and repeat since July (can't be bothered to dig out my post where I reported this cyclic behaviour) but now its more prominent, affecting even larger array of keyword clusters I monitor.

[Nutterum]

Talking with a few long time SEO friends, we jokingly reached to a shocking agreement that if google manufactures traffic this would be the best fit solution. Now I am not one to jump in to conclusions but I can`t deny It feels this way. Not talking about manipulating but creating traffic out of thin air, be it with bots or any other tech up their sleeve.

[jambam]

@Nutterum google has to keep the numbers up some how to keep people interested in adwords so makes perfect sense to me too! Most marketers think internet marketing is a numbers game and don't actually think that someone could be playing with those numbers.

[Jez123]

@Jambam - it's not that far removed from what VW have been doing, is it? :)

[samwest]

Hopefully most of you know my attitude toward the current SERPS, which is pretty much "I could care less anymore". The endless speculation here is entertaining at best, but utterly useless in the end. Black box is black box. In the words of the wise old Tootsie Pop Owl, "The world may never know".

Today's observation: traffic this week is way up over the last few weeks, however conversion remain non existent, but "could turn on at any moment!".

[reseller]

I'm expecting to see some of you folks on this thread to post that Almighty Google has sent your sites love yesterday and/or today and your sites have regained most or all the traffic which they have lost since 2nd September 2015 :)

[Some_Bloke]

Not much chance of that - it's completely dead here (both ecom and info sites in UK). No noticeable change in SERPS either.

[wgchris]

@reseller, Deadskis over here. Got nothing. Had a conversion last night but the contact submission looked like the lady was drunk.

[edited by: wgchris at 5:07 pm (utc) on Oct 7, 2015]

[wgchris]

Probably was a bing-er.

[reseller]

@Some_Bloke and @wgchris

Sorry to hear that.

In general, the current situation is complicated. I guess Google has rolled out at least 4 updates (Panda, Orangutan, Penguin, Hacked spam) at about the same time (September and October 2015) which makes it difficult for us to point out specific factors as reasons behind sites losing conversions and productive healthy traffic which have been registered her on this thread and the previous one.

I believe the current situation is a temporary one and things shall settle down within a month or so.

Meanwhile I would suggest that affected sites should check their backlink-profile, content quality and assure sites to be mobile-friendly.

[seoskunk]

Google's war on spam has become as morally bankrupt as the US war on terror. Honestly speaking Google is just a #*$! mess right now filled with whitelisted brand names.

[hasek747]

All good here so far. Around 10% increase in traffic and 6-7% increase in conversions (8 fairly large affiliate websites).

[reseller]

@hasek747

Around 10% increase in traffic and 6-7% increase in conversions

Is it happening today?

[hasek747]

@reseller

No, it's a steady increase that has been happening over the last 30-40 days (can't say exactly, but somewhere around the end of August/beginning of September). Is not in line with my usual seasonal increases, which start later.

[Martin Ice Web]

Since the last update over the weekend, traffic from google is up or steady, Sales are -99%.
Bing and yahoo catches up, slow but steady.

ecom, germany

[adder]

Hi,
I'd like to report something that looks a bit like a pattern but need more data to be sure this is not just a coincidence.

Anyone noticed a sudden unexplained drop in Google organic traffic around 12th September?

Please see these screenshots.

http://imgur.com/RJDInTc
http://imgur.com/1BAKSEO

Obviously, I can't share much details. I can only say the two sites are unrelated, one is informational, the other one is e-commerce. They're from different countries and serving different niches. Both are affected by the recent Panda.

One of them shows what "slow roll-out" actually means. With the other one, the Panda-slap happened overnight and the "slow roll-out" was not as distinct.

The one that took an instant slap did deserve it as it had copied a lot of content (and the owner was warned on multiple occasions #rant) and with this site it's also obvious where the main losses came from. Comparing search analytics on GWT, you can instantly see that the rankings have dropped mainly on popular and short keyphrases. Longtails haven't changed much.

With the site that was on the "slow roll-out" you can't put your finger on the ranking drop. It's up and down. The impressions have dropped significantly while the reported positions have changed very little.

Links-wise, I was unable to find anything sinister or anything that looks like negative-SEO.

Another peculiar thing is the crawl rate.
The site with slow roll-out received a very high number of Googlebot crawls (bordering on abusive) in early July but no suspicious crawl activity around 12th Sept.
The site with the instant Panda-slap had normal bot activity before the Panda update but an ENORMOUS crawl spike on 9th September.

So, has anyone noticed sudden drops around 12th September? Two profiles is not enough to establish a pattern and I can't find anybody else reporting this.

[reseller]

@adder

You may wish to take a look at posts of 11th and 12th September 2015

[webmasterworld.com...]

[adder]

erm, I did exactly that before posting my message, thanks @reseller
This is nothing to do with Zombie traffic, fluctuations or seasonal patterns.