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]

[renatovieira]

@billyfresh - I joined this forum to report exactly what is happening to you, is what happens to my site.

Since February every passing day I await a positive change, but not to come.

[billyfresh]

@renatovieira I know what your going through, i am sure this is managed by G and what ever they are doing its having a serious impact on sites.

[masterjoe]

I just did a search for one of the keywords my site is on page 2 for... basically, this is a somewhat commercial term, but the front page looks like absolute spam.

Firstly, there is 2 ads, then an answer box from Amazon (not an informational query -- this is an Amazon listing for a product), then a nice large shopping widget on the right. So much for telling webmasters to not have too many ads "above the fold", when they are making obscene amounts of money for doing precisely what they don't want webmasters to do.

[xelaetaks]

This may sound pointless but I think maybe if people continously pointed out Google result fails in a respectful way to John Muller and Gary Illyes maybe we can influence them somehow.

They seem to be the only ones in Google who even speak to webmasters in public. Not that I think they can directly change things but I imagine they have meetings about serps once in a while.

Also I'm not expecting Google to change their priority of raking in the ads money, but maybe their results can be a little less garbage. I'm astounded to see in my niche sometimes 4 Amazon listings show up in a row. It's simply weak search results in some cases.

[Shawn2988]

GWT is working fine now and showing data too. But something major is definitely going on as I have seen continuous changes on my top ranking keywords.

Google continuously changing the first result which I’ve seen last week, sometimes the result is displayed with featured snippets and sometimes not. Don’t know what to do. One of the top ranking page moved to 100.

Have you guys seen such type of changes?

Btw, I’m new to this forum… Hi to all

[Titi12]

If they want us to buy ads it would be great that we have some sales to pay them !

[chetanjadhav31]

I am ranking in 2nd page on Google's SERP for high volume keyword. but last two days my site not even seen in top 100.

[mrengine]

Do I take that to mean that you are still spending on AdWords however there are few/no conversions compared to say a year ago even though the traffic levels are similar?

@RedBar

Yes, I am still spending on Adwords and there are extended periods of time (measured in days) where paid ads produce no or very few sales. One or maybe two days a week we see what I would consider historically normal conversions. Organic traffic from Google follows the same pattern. One or two "normal" days are not enough to compensate for the bad days. By compensate I mean not only the revenue produced per click, but the time involved in managing active Adwords campaigns (our time may be better utilized elsewhere). Being a manufacturer of what we sell provides us with larger margins to work with. If I were a retailer stocking and selling our products, there is no possible way I would be able to be in Adwords. I wonder how retailers are surviving in other industries in this environment? As a manufacturer, I'm ready to pull the plug on Adwords. Adwords has become that bad.

[samwest]

After a short break from Zombies, they appear to be back. I beat last week's sales in the first two days of this week, but now totally shut down again. My ads are running too. They are useless! Seems when I toggle ads on and off, it seems to shake something up.

[masterjoe]

I still seem to be having okay traffic, but I am on a roll this week. I've acquired a few very high authority links, which appears to be pushing up my keyword rankings. Conversions are in the "okay" range, however... I still think this is mostly zombie traffic. Why? Because each of the orders I've received over the last few days is a single person ordering multiple items. It could be 1 in many zombies happen to order something through my site.

[wgchris]

My site in question has climbed SERPS, traffic is flat and conversions are still completely dead. Not one.

[mrengine]

each of the orders I've received over the last few days is a single person ordering multiple items. It could be 1 in many zombies happen to order something through my site

My site in question has climbed SERPS, traffic is flat and conversions are still completely dead. Not one.

I've given up on judging Google's value by ranks or total traffic because it is clear the relationship between conversions, total traffic and ranks has been broken. Are the majority of the visitors Google is sending us even real? I have to ask this question because it is difficult to believe that on at least one day a week conversions are normal and the rest of the days bad.

Google does measure buyer intent and in Adwords we can set our bids to increase when Google encounters a searcher with increased buyer intent. I tried adjusting that setting to increase bids by 20%, which is above our already mainline bids (top bidder) and that does nothing for conversions and just increased our cpc. Giving Google the benefit of the doubt, maybe they are trying hard to match buyers with sellers and are doing a horribly bad job at it. But I doubt this is the case. This zombie problem has been around for too long, and it looks like the newer people here complaining about it is an indication that the problem is spreading.

[Martin Ice Web]

that the problem is spreading

that is your (our) sight. But from googles view it is great and could be more. However, stock has to go up.

[ecommerceprofit]

* This zombie problem has been around for too long, and it looks like the newer people here complaining about it is an indication that the problem is spreading *

This would be wonderful! Spread the pain! If Google did this to everyone in adwords and organic I would not complain. I believe in not having too many eggs in one basket and as long as everyone has the same problem I'm happy.

[thereign]

Quick question: Of those experiencing zombie traffic from Adwords ... are you using PLAs or traditional text based ads? I am preparing to start a thread about PLAs and their relation to zombies and wondered if those here experiencing zombie traffic from Adwords are referring to text based or PLA ads.

[wgchris]

^^^ I gave a 10 page overview of the data I have on this to my client. I've stopped worrying about it because I'm fairly certain there is nothing else I can do. Told him to make a G shrine and get on his knees.

[Simon_H]

@thereign That's a great idea - yes, please start the thread! We're all PLAs and have a lot of data on its relationship with zombie traffic.

[Martin Ice Web]

I think google has a big problem. While they are only the middleman bewtween buyes and shops, they lack having a selling platform.
Where there is "google it" hard coded in the brians for informational questions, there is "look at amazon" for commercial intentions.

While amazon givers a sh*t on google, google has to compete with amazons reputation regarding shopping experience. google has to offer shops beeing equal or better than amazon. That is why trust is counting more than content and brands rule the organics.

With every day amazon gets bigger and will substract potential buyers from google. I know poeple that do not even search on google for shopping but going direct to amazon. Lost for google.

This is a main reason for zombie traffic. I don´t think that this are bots. It is google traffic that is not matched. For google it is not clear if it is informational or commercial queries. E.g. adding shop, buying, best price ... to the query will produce other serps than just the keyword.
When we as webmasters are looking for changing serps, we are looking for our keyword combinations and see that they didn´t changed or rankings are better than before. But that is not how poeple are searching like. google knows how poeple search and small update changes for queries with specific keywords ( shop, buying..) can make a big difference.

[Simon_H]

Something unrelated to zombies... Guys, have any of you noticed GSC search analytics data has been complete crap since it broke on 23rd Feb? It didn't update for a long while and then it came back again, but the data we have since looks like random noise and doesn't correlate with Analytics.

[Elegant Web Service]

Google Showing some signals because last one week our website conversion and traffic goes down. I think google going to released any updates.

[Agario]

Hmm. I don't know.

[SEOcomfort]

Over the past week I have seen a lot of fluctuation in the quality of organic traffic. Rankings have actually improved slightly but one day my conversions will be well above average and then the next day they are below average.

Some days I only get conversions in groups (for example, I might get 2-3 conversion right at 1pm and 4pm and the rest of the day nothing). Something very weird is happening. I have actually been able to predict overall conversions for the day after spending about 10 minutes each morning analyzing traffic for that day.

Usually if my traffic is slightly lower in the morning, I know conversions will not kick in till roughly mid-afternoon and that happens every time. If traffic is above average in the morning, I know my conversions will be in groups throughout the day. Very rarely have I seen a steadiness in conversions lately.

One thing I am going to check is if this pattern is specific to certain days in the week.

[mrengine]

are you using PLAs or traditional text based ads?

I'm in both and both suffer from zombies.

Guys, have any of you noticed GSC search analytics data has been complete crap since it broke on 23rd Feb?

I always wondered if/how those glitches in Google's other services may impact the serps. Google collects a lot of data, and they would be foolish to not use it to build better search results, target ads more precisely and so on. If this is the case, problems in WMT or Analytics could theoretically influence the search results.

[Simon_H]

@mrengine Or it could be the other way round. It's not that GSC/GA are broken (any more than normal). It's that Google had a major problem with its data and so quickly stopped GSC from showing it to give the engineers time to rectify the problems. We noticed that the final day of data when Google paused GSC was way out and even the SER article about the GSC problems includes a screenshot of SER's own data that shows the final day way out. I was expecting this to be corrected when GSC was unpaused, but it's not corrected. In fact, everything from then on is nonsense.

So I'm wondering if Google had some major data issues. Does your GSC search analytics appear normal from 23rd Feb?

[ionguy]

strange thing I noticed (besides yet another day with zomibes) is a number of results per keyword
not sure how long this happens however at the begining of this week I noticed a big drop of results
for my main keywords before I was getting between 4 000 000 and 5 000 000 dependly from keyword
at the moment I'm getting less than 500k, for example: About 410,000 results (0.35 seconds) for one of them
It has something to do with zombiescalypse? another rollout? I need better glasses (my oculist will be happy with yet another treatment)?
since zombies appeared at our websites at the begining of Sep 2015 I didn't noticed this kind of drops in results

[Titi12]

@ionguy

I've already seen this too, and I thought it was coming from different datacenters....

[billyfresh]

Another bad zombie day what makes matters worse it that Google Adwords is not converting. What the hell is Goolge upto

[renatovieira]

It seems that today things are very hot on Google. Looking through the tool (rankranger) is very clear.

Analyzing other tools (algoroo, serpmetrics, mozcast etc) I do not notice any abnormal activity.

PS: I do not see anything abnormal in my Google SC or Analytics.

[mrengine]

@Simon
Nothing out of the ordinary in WMC, except on 3/9/16 our average search position dropped to 41 from it's normal 10 or better. The average position is back to 9, which is normally where it hovers around.

It seems that today things are very hot on Google.

Glad you see something hot renatovieira, but my sales do not reflect any type of hot activity. Even Adwords is not converting like billyfresh mentioned.

[renatovieira]

@mrengine - You're right. It was just a statement.

My graphics are dead. I do not believe any penalty or kneeling on my site in Google organic. My keywords are even better than before. I do not understand this.

Anyway, I hope that after this storm at least return everything to normal.