Google Updates and SERP Changes - Dec 2015

[doc_z]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4775925.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:18 am on Dec 1, 2015 (PDT -8)

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Seeing some shift in the SERPS for the last few days. I believe Google dialed up the domain age ranking factor.

I saw a lot of shifts in Germany around November 21st. For example, I saw old domains (classifieds) with changes of 10-20% (some up and some down).

However, I don't believe in the domain age theory. It doesn't fit for me. My guess is that it's either Panda related or (like the phantom update) a change in the core algorithm.

[mrengine]

Traffic and sales from Google this weekend were bad. Mozcast shows some SERP changes on Saturday. Feels like Google taking another swing with a club over our heads.

[aok88]

Yeah but Algoroo shows no major activity - I wish they would line up more.

Anyone else notice changes to their rankings/traffic/conversions/usage stats over this weekend?

[Atomic]

My rankings shot up significantly on Thursday and have edged slightly higher each day since. Not sure if it was an algorithm change or a result of all the recent UX work we've done recently as well as changes meant to improve engagement.

BTW, did anyone notice a spike in crawl activity? I had a massive crawl over the weekend. A big one on Friday and then another twice as big on Saturday. These were the biggest crawls in months.

[SEOcomfort]

I noticed a slight decrease in overall rankings this weekend. Nothing major though. Traffic is average for my site and conversions are looking better than the previous days in December.

@Atomic My crawl activity was up a little but nothing like you are describing.

[glakes]

aok88, not many changes on the site at all except for some minor product image swaps. Saturday and Sunday were horrible, but today seems slightly better.

[engine]

In the last few days I found a great number of non-geographically relevant entries in the SERPs. Why, when searching for a specific item which i know exists in one country, should I get returns for .com's that are not specifically targeting the location. It seems to have settled, so unless it was a broken filter, or an update to a datacenter, which is more likely, I doubt it generated good results for sites not appearing in those SERPs at that time.

[Martin Ice Web]

Something big is going through. Traffic is down by 80% since this morning, conversions are down to 20%. Bounce is near 100%. Serps are full of lousy, contentless and very bad sites with many ads overt the fold an on the sitebar..
I saw this dataset coming up once a while in the last few days but now it lasts for a longer time. From a users point of view i would say g has lost the plot completly.
bing is considerably up since.

ecom, germany

[jsompinm]

@Martin Ice Web Sounds like something what I reported a couple of weeks ago. Basically we saw a bunch of scam sites suddenly ranking for our high volume keywords on Google. Totally agree that G is messing up the serps big time. We managed to get the scam sites out of index, but our traffic did not return to normal.

[Martin Ice Web]

jsompinm,, i wonder that google dares to show this serps as it destroys their reputation.
It is not only us that have been vanished but also some very good competitors that have been on page one for years.
Winners are scam sites, ebay and amazon.

It feels like a panda update that went wrong.

[glakes]

I am seeing a substantial increase in traffic. But the majority of this traffic comes from markets we do not serve: Bahrain, Netherlands, UK, etc. Since we do not ship to these countries, the increase in traffic is useless and if it sticks may cause unwanted product information requests from people that we don't sell to.

Google must be really messed up to be doing these changes during the holidays. They always used to wait till the holidays were over to make these types of disruptive changes.

[aristotle]

Google must be really messed up to be doing these changes during the holidays.

Do you mean that Google knows that the SERPs are badly messed up, because otherwise they wouldn't try to make big changes during the holidays? In other words that they must feel an urgent need to do something.

[Nutterum]

Looking at the SERPs so far, the website I monitor seems to be unaffected by the change. However if I look at the more broad keyword SERPs, yep there is something going on. The general keyword terms have more and more spammy websites ranking, Wikipedia pages lost positions (from first to second/from second to third). I can't tell for sure where this latest update is headed, but some plugged spam holes seem to be opened.

Niche : Global B2B organic

[Jez123]

Yes, it definitely seems like something is happening. Something slightly different to what I have seen bubbling the last week or so.

[aok88]

But the majority of this traffic comes from markets we do not serve:

Same here, but from India, and time on site and page views are double the usual, very strange.

[mrengine]

Geo filters may be getting updated, turned off or something else. No change in traffic volume or quality from our home market, just a spike in traffic from countries we typically see spam originate from.

[jsompinm]

@Martin Ice Web Yes, totally agree with you. I documented some of this rubbish that started 1st December on Medium: [medium.com...] Check it out if this looks familiar.

[raseone]

One of the sites I monitor had recently slipped through the cracks and actually started getting daily sales again after nearly 4 years in the panda trash can. Traffic volume stayed almost identical but I guess google messed up & started allowing real humans with actual credit cards to see the site again. The change lasted about 2 months. Recent changes stopped it in its tracks and the site is once again just getting several hundred completely useless visits each day that produce almost 0 sales, emails etc.

For this site a small portion of the good old days came back with no sign of any significant, new incoming links or mentions... then as suddenly as it started it just stopped. It's happened a few times before to a few of my sites.

... but still there are many that will deny that there is anything fishy about stuff like this. My Panda/penguin first hit I noticed a sharp rise in useless traffic from far-flung, non-english speaking countries. That helped to explain how when only 40-80% of google traffic had disappeared from some sites nearly 100% of sales & emails & other actual activity had disappeared.

Strange stuff.

[masterjoe]

raseone we had already vented about our frustration with this in the zombie thread. I am also of the belief that there is something very fishy going on, sales turn off and on at similar times for myself as well as another person who visits here. Some people simply feel Google is testing some random change, but it is way too calculated for it not to be blatant manipulation. I don't understand why people don't think it's possible,

Google would do just about anything to avoid paying any more tax than they have to, why does anyone think they wouldn't start skimming webmasters too? I am personally done trying to keep the website legtimate and have moved on to blackhat strategies. If you know what you're doing SEO wise, I suggest you do the same. It is actually quite safe when you understand the penalties and how to get them, so you can avoid them too. Traffic is moving up nicely for me, and I am seeing a slight increase in my sales since I start about 2 months ago.

[Spiekerooger]

Searching Google.DE w/ settings pages from Germany and language German I see English/American sites as well as Czech and Slovakian sites in SERPs. Sth. messed up again.

[Jez123]

I am seeing an odd set of results for my site. Phrases that I am usually very strong for I have dropped - quite drastically in some cases and others that were not that strong have risen. It looks like google has got my site and my competitors sites mixed up! He has dropped where I have risen. Some searches are unaffected. It's strange so far.

[jsompinm]

@Jez123 Are you tracking individual pages or this is happening across the board? We have something similar from 1st December when a few very high volume pages basically disappeared from the index. I'm talking about pages that used to get 50-65k sessions per day dropping to less than 1k.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Nutterum, I see this to. Spam actually ranks very well in german serps while "compelling" sites lost ground. Engagement fromgoogle send users is very low.
Not all keys seem to be affected only the high traffic volume once. Seems like a Christmas money rush...

[Jez123]

@ jsompinm this is just over individual search terms. I haven't had time to look in any more depth than that so far. Some are totally unaffected but that's not to say other stuff might be rolling through. I don't look at enough competitors to know if anything similar is happening with them.

[jsompinm]

@Jez123 Cool. It's hard to keep track on all of these things. We had our first hit around 15th November (Phantom update 3) and then some hackers managed to outrank some of our high volume keywords (starting 1st Dec) for couple of weeks before being removed from Google.

[glakes]

Do you mean that Google knows that the SERPs are badly messed up, because otherwise they wouldn't try to make big changes during the holidays? In other words that they must feel an urgent need to do something.

From the changes I am seeing the changes look to be less about quality and more about taking advantage of the holiday shopping season (money). Not much different than any other business, with the exception of the invalid adwords clicks some have reported [webmasterworld.com...] and the questionable traffic quality/patterns many of us have seen in the last couple of months from both paid and organic.

[seunome]

That's interesting!

"Searching Google.DE w/ settings pages from Germany and language German I see English/American sites as well as Czech and Slovakian sites in SERPs. Sth. messed up again."

My brazilian, all portuguese writen website started to show up Czecks ads from adsense this week totally disconected from the normal!

And today my search engine traffic dropped by 40%!

[Jez123]

I'm seeing at least 3 different data sets buzzing around at the moment. One of them is something new I think. Possibly big.

[aok88]

I'm seeing a huge spike if visits today, and bounce, tos and page views very much improved as well. Conversions seems to be not as improved however, or at least not seeing that yet. Anyone else seeing similar?

[seunome]

Did you guys notice that googleweblight.com traffic from low speed phone version of site is missing like mine?

[superclown2]

I'm seeing at least 3 different data sets buzzing around at the moment. One of them is something new I think. Possibly big.

Yep, same here. I'm also in the UK.