Unlinked URLs have a ranking effect?

[Shai]

Ok, something very interesting happened to us today. we have a website that was incredibly stable at position 7 for a competitive key phrase. It has been at that position for at least 2 weeks now and the previous position was 8 and it was on that for at least a few months. So a very slow rise and that is understandable as we are not pushing it that hard.

However, one of our campaigns has gone viral today unexpectedly and the site went up from 7 to 4 and now its at 3. We overtook massive competition.

What happened was that we got a story viral (not intentionally I might add) and it was included in most of the national and local newspapers. Mail, Sun, Express etc. In fact I bet some of you read it today at some point and many will probably read about it on their way to work in London tomorrow. The problem is that although every single one of those online newspapers mentioned the URL of the site, due to this being the weekend and we were unable to get the original copy changed to a linked version, only one actually had it hyperlinked. The one that had it hyperlinked, has not had the page crawled yet. Regardless; as it was a local paper, I would doubt it would have the power to kick it that high on its own merit.

So, the only difference between yesterday at number 7 and today at 3 is:
1. The non-hyperlinked links from very high authority sites and
2. The traffic. (from the one local paper that did link to it and some from people copy/pasting the url from the rest)

Which do you think caused the effect? combination of both? or just the non linked "links"?

It will be interesting to see what happens when on Tuesday the story dies down and with it the traffic. Will the ranking drop back down to 7? Will it drop a little and stabilise? Will it remain at 3? Or go even higher?

Predict what you think here and we will see who is right. I predict it will settle at 4. :)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:40 pm (utc) on Nov 22, 2015]
[edit reason] edit per poster request [/edit]

[3zero]

Google follow text based citations of a site but do not attribute the link pagerank according to John Mueller.

"Google uses these URLS, even though they are unlinked, to discover new pages. It does not influence rankings but it does influence discovery."

Many seo's swear by citations though.

[Shai]

The thread had to be moderated so while we waited, the key phrase went to number 2 last night (uk) However, this morning it's at number 6.

[aristotle]

How much of an increase in Google organic search traffic did you get when the ranking jumped from number 7 to number 3?

Also, any time a site gets a big increase in traffic, for whatever reason, it should gain new backlinks and citations out of it, because some of the new people who see it will mention it elsewhere and possibly link to it as well. So the site's long-term prospects should improve even if the burst of increased traffic is only temporary.

[Shai]

The website normally received hardly any organic traffic. Around 10 or 15 / day. Yesterday 1888 and today already up to 1529 (with 3.5 hours to go). The traffic is from people copy/pasting the address or directly clicking on some of the linked links. I thought it would die down today but it just re-burst as MSN and AOL picked it up so its gone international. Many don't even mention the website name. Quite a few sites do but unlinked. Up to now, I have found 3 good sites with proper followed links. I would say at least 30 or 50 good sites with unlinked urls.

The site is now at number 1 for its keyword. Its been there for the last 3 hours so most stable its been for a while. I am assuming it will drop tomorrow if the traffic drops. It will be interesting to see where it settles down.

The domain is an EMD containing 3 words. www.sellbluewidgets.uk

The site is now ranking number 1 for [sell blue widgets] even though most links are not linked.

What's interesting is that although other terms went slightly up, none have seen even nearly as much increase as the main keywords.

edit: 15 minutes later. #2

[aristotle]

Well but shouldn't you currently be experiencing a big increase in Google organic search traffic because of the higher rankings?

[superclown2]

I had a site a couple of years ago that attracted a lot of non-linked mentions as a result of a newspaper advertising campaign. It rose slightly at first and then tanked, and has never recovered.

I've no doubt that Google look at citations in the same way as links - they look for a natural balance, which is reflected in higher rankings, and an un-natural one that results in penalties. Where the mid point lies, only they know.

[Shai]

The traffic is purely from the tens of online papers that have published the story.

They are now at number 4. Traffic has not dropped substantially yet. 748 right now at 13:16 uk time.

I am planning on contacting the good sites that have not provided a hyperlinked link and ask them to hyperlink it.

[martinibuster]

It's possible that it's a topical boost. Google lifts a site if it suddenly becomes topical, which means more relevant for the moment. It's highly likely there are links you don't know about. Google/Bing/Yahoo don't show links in real-time, neither do backlink reporting services. Which is why I say it's highly likely there are links you do not know about.

If this had happened five years ago the title of this discussion would be "Social Media Have a Ranking Effect?" because "social mentions" was the unsubstantiated rumor of the day that, like unlinked citations, was expressly denied by search engines as being a ranking factor.

What confuses the issue is that just because something is not a ranking factor does not mean it does not play a role in a different part of the ranking process. Remember, there are several algorithms and ranking processes. The ranking engine is only one part of it. As I recall, John Mueller said that unlinked citations are used for discovery. Discovery relates to the first part of the ranking process which is the Indexing Engine. The Indexing Engine is where awareness of data begins, telling Google that a resource exists. The Indexing Engine doesn't rank the resource. It only records it.

That's where the confusion about CTR, social media signals and unlinked citations enters. There is an idea that the algorithm is a single beast with multiple tentacles, or like a meat grinder where web pages go in at the top and are cranked out as SERPs on the other end. No. It's a series of processes, with each part playing a different role. So while social signals, CTR, and unlinked citations may play a role in a part of the process, that process is not a part of the ranking process. It's a different process altogether.

[edited by: martinibuster at 3:24 pm (utc) on Nov 24, 2015]

[aristotle]

The traffic is purely from the tens of online papers that have published the story.

Do you mean that you're not getting any traffic at all from Google organic search?

You said that this is a "competitive key phrase", and that you "overtook massive competition". So if your site climbed as high as number 1 and number 2 in Google's rankings, as you said, shouldn't you be getting traffic from Google organic search results, in fact a lot of traffic. I don't understand.

[Shai]

@Martinibuster - I tend to be able to spot the linked links as they show a proportionally much higher level of traffic being referred from that source when monitoring with Clicky. i.e a linked link from a high quality site will have tens/hundreds of traffic flowing from that link whereas an unlinked link does not as the readers are much less likely to copy/paste the link into the browser.

You are right though, I may spot many more links in a week or two on Majestic or Ahrefs but not from sites that produce lots of traffic. This have already been spotted. :)

@Aristotle competitive term is not the same as High volume. Not always anyway. This is a high competition term for a very high value items so not high volume. Just high competition. I used the term 'Purely' in the quoted portion a little hastily. We were getting traffic from it but in the grand scheme of things (i.e out of the 1800/day the articles produced) its negligible. Sorry for the confusion.

The term is now at 6. :(

[edited by: Shai at 5:35 pm (utc) on Nov 24, 2015]

[martinibuster]

Yes! You're right Shai, one can see traffic flowing in from a good link! I meant to add that to my post but my editing time closed. My point is that some links don't send traffic, and not just because the host site doesn't have traffic itself or has less quality.

[Shai]

Just an update. We have spotted more new powerful links such as Elledecor and Goodhousekeeping. Ranking has dropped back to almost normal level. Last night it was at 7 which is back where we started and today at 6. All other keyphrases are the same as before this went viral apart from a very slight rise.

Most of the articles which these publications are publishing are almost identical. Some change a few words, but most don't. Could that be a factor in the lack of ranking changes for so many powerful websites?

[aristotle]

Could that be a factor in the lack of ranking changes for so many powerful websites?

But aren't all of them basically the same link?

In other words, the backlinks from all the republished copies might not count for much, or perhaps even not at all, since they're just copies of the original backlink.

[Shai]

Well, we will know more in a week or two. The links are on different domains and there are differences between the copy but the publications all tend to syndicate the content rather than re-write it completely. Also, relevancy may play a larger part in this than expected. These domains may be incredibly powerful when you look at them statistically (I.e DA70+, PR 6+, TF50+ etc.) but if the site is a newpaper, containing a spectrum of subjects of mainly completely unrelated content like some of these links are, it may well have a much lesser ranking effect than I originally thought. Don't get me wrong. Always knew that relevancy is important but if anyone said to me that if I manage to get 10-20 extremely powerful links I wont see any long term effect in ranking, I would not have believed them.

It especially strange as when you see some competitors still paying for guest blogs on far weaker sites which results in giving the site a much more pronounced rank increases.

So, now that the traffic has died down, we are back to 7. Height of traffic, we reached number 1. Quite a statistic right there.

10 - 20 very good links, hundreds of unlinked links and brand mentions and no stable ranking increase.

Amazing how you think you know it all and then something like this happens and you are sitting and scratching your head once more. Its all a learning experience though.

Will keep the thread updated.

[aristotle]

Well there's an old theory that Google limits the power of a newly-discovered backlink for say a month or two, then gradually begins to give it full credit.

Another part of the theory is that Google gradually reduces the power of old backlinks that have reached a certain age.

So according to this theory, the power given to a new backlink gradually rises, eventually reaches a plateau, and then begins a slow decline.

In any case, I still say that all of these backlinks from republished copies of this article are basically the same backlink, and that Google may treat them as such.

[Shai]

Maybe. To be honest I have seen single backlinks that have more effect than this seems to have had. Lets see what happens in the month ahead.

[martinibuster]

Ranking has dropped back

Likely a topical boost (as I suggested) helped along by links. Topical ranking boosts are temporary.

Well there's an old theory that Google limits the power of a newly-discovered backlink for say a month or two, then gradually begins to give it full credit.

Topical boost. It's caused by a burst of links, signaling that something is of interest for the moment.

[Shai]

Would love to accurately track rankings with traffic next time something goes viral like this. Anyone know of a rank tracking software that would allow you to monitor ranking on a more granular level? maybe every 15 minutes?

[Shai]

Just to keep the page updated. Up until yesterday the site was back at number 7. Seemed like all increases over the last week or so completely wiped out.

Today, major increases in rankings. The main term is hovering between no.1 and 2 and all of the rest of the important terms are in position2 and a few at position3. The interesting thing is that this time there is no corresponding traffic increase. In fact, traffic is almost half of what it was yesterday. I am sort of hopeful that these increases are the real effects of the links rather than just another burst.

Will keep the thread updated.

[vlexo]

Hi Shai, would you say that this story increased your brand's visibility - therefore searchers would have been looking for your brand when searching for that particular keyword? That would potentially influence CTR and therefore give you a burst rank improvements - as CTR studies have shown.

[Shai]

No. The domain name is an EMD so not very 'brandable'. The "best grilled steak" experiment showed similar results but as with the initial results recorded in this very thread, the effects were temporary.

However, the site has now held on for its position 2 ranking for almost 3 days. Too early to get anything concrete from this but will keep it updated as/if anything changes.

[Shai]

Just an update, Position remained stable at 3.