Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2016

[JS_Harris]

Continuing from:
Google Updates and SERP Changes - Feb 2015
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4788898.htm [webmasterworld.com]



I think something major might be changing right now, my 'search analytics' data in Google's 'search console'(ie:GWT) has not updated for a full week. The last data showing on the page/keyword reports is from Feb 23rd.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:44 am (utc) on Mar 1, 2016]

[Jez123]

Same here JS Harris. Hopefully it's Penguin at last.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Redbar, yes itīs germany serps that got hit. Zomnie traffic is at 95% right now. I wonder if Zombies are users with ad blockers?

Since 4 days we see that between 2 am and 5 am the traffic from google suddenly plumps to zero. The last time i saw this behaviour a phantom update was on the way. This and the very low content sites on first serps page and foreign traffic are a sign for a new rolling update, IMO.

[engine]

What analytics service are you using to measure the traffic? Google, Piwik, your own server logs, etc.?

I've noticed the local is taking more prominence, too.

[Jez123]

I've noticed the local is taking more prominence, too.

Me too.

[Jez123]

I am seeing HUGE changes when searching with TOR. Massive churn - different every refresh. Something is happening I reckon!

[Martin Ice Web]

@engine, i use my own written tracking tool.

[engine]

Thanks, Martin Ice Web, that's good to know as it won't be subject to the vagaries of a third party tracking system.

I wonder what others are using to measure traffic.

[SEOcomfort]

Have seen an uptick in traffic today. It's looking like a steady increase of roughly 10%. I have also noticed that my long tail keyword rankings have been improving over the last week, but broad keywords are falling slightly. Conversions are normal and steady for this time of year.

[RedBar]

My biggest realworld business site looks as though it may have its busiest day of the year, already at 4th busiest and up 50% so far v average, with a good spread across many countries, tomorrow's analysis will be interesting:-)

[motionz]

Some of my keywords are showing massive spike in rankings. I hope they stays :D

[robert76]

Yesterday I conducted a search for a product available at many places, and Amazon occupied the first seven spots. I've seen 2 or 3 before, but never down almost the entire first page like this.

[randle]

I think something major might be changing right now, my 'search analytics' data in Google's 'search console'(ie:GWT) has not updated for a full week. The last data showing on the page/keyword reports is from Feb 23rd.

Anyone else seeing this? I get nothing since Feb. 23rd as well.

Going on 8 days here.

[Shepherd]

Last update in GWT search analytics for us: 2/23/16

[el_torito]

John Mueller already confirmed that the data in Search Analytics was not reporting and it was a bug. Pretty sure everyone is stuck on Feb. 23.

Regarding visits, seeing a spike in trafic since last night on my side too.

[renatovieira]

Yesterday I had a significant drop in my pageviews. This has not happened for years.

[Martin Ice Web]

@robert, in my niche amazon has multiple entries >3 for high commercial keywords. One can think what he wants, but making the organics a monoculture (amazon) and pushing out more PLAs simultaneously looks not as they are interested in organics anymore.

[Robert Charlton]

martin, I'm not the "robert" your question was address to... but I've seen this happen a bunch of times before... so to ask a key question, how many results per page are your search preferences set for?

In the past (since, say, July 2012), if your preferences were set to show 10 results per page, and the query was for "high commercial" phrases and not long tail, then Google was in testing mode. If your preferences are set to show, say, 50 or 100 results per page, or maybe even 20 or 30, this might not be unusual at all, though I would certainly check further if this was a noticeable increase over what you've been seeing under the same settings.

But it's important, because of how Google clusters results on a page, that everyone discussing this is discussing serps with the same results-per-page setting. Forgive if this is obvious, but it turns out that it isn't always clear in this type of discussion.

[trinorthlighting]

Update is churning, google has been crawling our website like crazy and I noticed all the cache dates are changing to a more recent date. I am noticing a lot of crawling from the mobile crawlers as well.

[anneconq]

I've noticed that too. I can see our traffic going up and also ranking.

[Jez123]

Whatever google were doing / have done seems to have settled. I was checking my rankings on Tor and it was shifting wildly constantly. This didn't seem to show on whatever database I had access to on Chrome or Firefox. There was a lack of filters seemingly, sites that had previously been filtered were not, there was no domain crowding and a lot less of Amazon and eBay and other huge brands. It made me wonder about white lists, black lists and grey lists. I do think that trusted sites such as Amazon are whitelisted, sites like mine are grey listed and other sites are black listed. I think that in times of turmoil such as I was watching on Tor, show the raw data with no filters or white, black, grey lists.

My own sites were ranking very high and some newer sites of mine were also doing well, as were some competitors but it's all gone now that the filters are back. :(

[Wurger]

Hello everyone,

To me, it seems that on Mar 1 Google released a pack of updates to some of its SERP features which may affect your organic traffic. Below are some of them:

1) decreased percentage of search queries with knowledge panel boxes (knowledge graph in sidebar)
2) increased percentage of search queries with ads (and even bigger increase today)
3) increased percentage of search queries with local pack results (and bigger increase today)
4) slight decrease of search queries percentage with "related questions" feature (" people also ask ")

As I don't want to look spammy with my first post, I wouldn't place a link to my blog post with appropriate graphs, etc. until I have permission to do so. You can see the proof of the changes above in RankRanger's Google SERP features search intelligence tool.

Thanks.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Robert C, itīs 9 results per page. And this behaviour is only for high commercial phrases. I canīt catch this up with "beeing in test mode". 7 entries from amazon in a row is not a test mode.
7 different entries/sites would be testing mode. This looks more like making the user say: OK there is only amazon on the organics, lets have a look at the ads.

google gives the user only choices by clicking on ads, not organics. That is pretty fly but it makes google itselft useless.
google organic serps has allways been seen as trusted ( ads have never been seen as trusted while google beeing payed for it ). What do you think will users finally up to? If there is only amazon on first page?

[mrengine]

To me, it seems that on Mar 1 Google released a pack of updates to some of its SERP features which may affect your organic traffic.

While I saw a brief change in the results, and most certainly sales and telephone inquiries, I believe Jez123 is correct in stating:

My own sites were ranking very high and some newer sites of mine were also doing well, as were some competitors but it's all gone now that the filters are back

Maybe Google was testing something, took a filter offline for work or something else. But all has returned to the normal low quality traffic Google has been delivering for months.

[Martin Ice Web]

Seeing big changes today, not for the good though. All zombies, bounce is way up, foreign traffic, fully mismatched..... winners are brands no matter if they sell the item or not. Not matter if it is a compelling site or not. ......

It is like google lost the rest of its competence if there was some after panda.....

[Wurger]

It is like google lost the rest of its competence if there was some after panda.....

Today most of the SERP volatility monitoring tools show spikes (RankRanger, Serp.Watch, Accuranker, Ayima Pulse). Considering that there are no big changes in SERP features (answer boxes, ads etc.), we may assume that it was a core search algorithm update. Which, as you stated, is about quality.

[RedBar]

WTH have they done today?

Across 30 sites I'm seeing their lowest-ever traffic, I have sites with zero traffic ... I've checked a few SERPs keyword phrases and, so far, all seems normal, the entire world doesn't simply stop searching for my products on the first Saturday of March.

This seem to be very coincidental after the spike in traffic earlier this week.

Anyone else?

[jambam]

Im seeing an increase of just written for amazon affiliate link spam in search results.

[renatovieira]

@RedBar - I'm having the same problem. Some graphics are normal (Google Search Console & Analytics), but when I analyze my pagviews, are in constant decline since the week beginning.

[RedBar]

Hmmmm ... in the past hour I have seen 20% of my traffic for the preceding 12 hours!

I'm checking to see if my webserver has been down since I seem to have gaps of hours with zero traffic across all sites and I usually have good Asian and Middle Eastern traffic.