Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2016

[masterjoe]

Continuing from:
Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2016
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4793805.htm [webmasterworld.com]


Still suffering from zombie traffic. Not a single conversion since Good Friday. The "pocketliner" update is really aggravating me, not to mention they still haven't released Penguin. I should also mention that conversions have been dropping off slowly since my site started being blasted with exact match anchor texts and I submitted disavows. Maybe it has something to do with it, but I will wait to hear back from webmasters with clean websites.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:15 am (utc) on May 1, 2016]

[samwest]

Traffic continues on a drip basis. never more than 4 at a time. Unthrottled traffic used to surge and flow naturally. No conversions for going on 48 hours. Used to do 15-20 /day on only marginally higher volume. As is, you might as well pull the plug. Google adwords is still on, yet no conversions. At least someone is making money....by selling thin air.

[goodoldweb]

@samwest

I feel your pain. *Disgust* is the only word i can think of every time i think of what
Google has done to our natural traffic and online business.

Adwords and shopping campaigns are long shut off. The last thing we feel like doing is continuing to support these pigs.

[seoskunk]

Seen this on Social Media......

Search Manipulation

Although Google frequently makes changes to the algorithm it uses to rank search results, evidence obtained over the course of the investigation indicates that Google’s changes are generally made to improve user experiences. For example, Google takes steps to demote websites that attempt to artificially increase their ranking in the search results independent of the quality or relevancy of their content. The Bureau did not find adequate evidence to support the conclusion that Google’s changes to its search results were intended to exclude rivals in Canada.

[competitionbureau.gc.ca...]

Typical from Canada a weak country that lets the states piss all over it, lets see what next happens in the EU, a territory Google can not buy political votes for.

[Babadook]

One of the things I noticed in GWT whenever there starts to be a problem with conversion or even some traffic issues, there have been certain changes which make no sense. Even though I scrupulously made sure that I don't have any blocked resources, Google will arbitrarily assign blocked resources to a whole bunch of pages. In doing so, I think they are flagged for some kind of punishment. But it's funny how I make sure that all the resources it needs are available, many times not changing from when everything seems to be okay, then all of a sudden there will be the steady rise in pages with blocked resources. And yet, when you look in the crawl section it will say that there were no problems crawling the website. This is what I mean by no one knows what's going on. The people at GWT have an opening page says that you want to be found on the web, we would like to help. And in my heart of hearts, I really believe they do, but I don't think they know what they're up against in the rest of the company which is doing things that they have no control over. The algorithm itself is artificial and that's why it's so frustrating, there's very little human intervention anymore. And what that means is that the artificial intelligence they're using to crawl and score websites is highly imperfect. I don't use them for regular searches anymore because their results are horrible. It always kills me that Google makes the point for all of us to make sites that are user friendly, but their site is completely non-user-friendly. I know they won't do it, but why don't they put a thumbs-up or thumbs down on the every page of their website and serps to see what kind of feedback people give it. I think they would be surprised. Meanwhile the rest of us suffer through ups and downs that seem to be related to nothing but the internal workings of the system that can no longer be controlled by any human being. So when I see my blocked resources on the rise, I know I'm in for a difficult time and plan accordingly. When they start to go down again, back to 0, I know that we are in for good times again. There is no reason for it, there's no cause for it. And by the way, I quit using ad words or Google shopping over a year ago and have never looked back. None of it had any ROI. With all the things that go wrong, you would think they would want you to do that and produce results. But unlike other traditional sources of advertising, they don't care if you get any result. The idea of original advertising was the more successful you were with it, the more you would buy in the future. That's gone out the window, that world doesn't exist anymore in online ads. No one seems to be ashamed that they're not delivering results, as if they never knew what advertising was for in the beginning.

[sqimul]

Something Shocking Happening Right Now. I Lost All My traffic Moments ago. While other days I saw around 300+ users online, right now its 32 users ! What is it, I got Hit By Penguin ? Anybody else ?

[renatovieira]

Here everything normal. Bad as ever since the updates from the beginning of the year. Certainly not the penguin. Just some oscillation.

[masterjoe]

Very interesting observation Babadook - I will keep an eye on blocked resources to see if there's any correlation. Also just on a side note, conversions have been going for the last few hours, perhaps Sunday's are my new non-zombie/throttle day. Will keep an eye out for next week and see if this happens on a schedule. It has been insanely low conversions this entire week so I doubt I'll recoup all my losses.

[ionguy]

@sqimul
the same happend to me
its started on friday
can you see any changes in gwmt?

[sqimul]

From My end, in my GWMT , I can See everything was normal till 23/04. My Server Load is normal right now, Do you use Google Analytics Only to monitor traffic ? Server Load is normal, If I'm Hit, wheres my DIrect traffic gone ?
Problem with GA ?

[sqimul]

I've Just Replaced My Old Google Analytics tracking code with a new one, and everything seems normal now. I was warned around 2 months ago about "Too many URL's" with my site.

[samwest]

The same old oscillation, Traffic is now increasing yet conversions decreasing proportionally (or thereabouts). Signup page is like kryptonite.

[SEOcomfort]

A normal day for my site. Conversions are actually looking good in comparison to the amount of traffic I am getting. Seems like my site got a small uptick over the weekend.

[Jez123]

The idea of original advertising was the more successful you were with it, the more you would buy in the future.

Why ARE people spending more on Adwords? Are they seeing results that I didn't? I canned it after losing a fortune with hardly any sales 18 months ago. Now that there are no sales to be had on organic seemingly, I don't know which way to turn.

This week has been as dead as last week was productive. How the trolls on SER are not seeing anything like it is beyond me.

[masterjoe]

Conversions off again. Just like clockwork.

[samwest]

I'm down to 1 or less conversions per day...not even worth enough to keep the lights on. Even worse than last week.

[wgchris]

Had a bunch of conversions 04/18 - 04/19. ZERO SINCE. ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in 8 EFFING DAYS!

If there is ever a class action scenario at play, PLEASE let me know how to sign up. G is broken or crooked. OR BOTH.

[jambam]

You really should not waste your money on adwords it is a con. Instead you should just print out some vouchers for your website put on your best smile and give thme to people on the street or a place where your customers hang out. now that really will get on googles nerves muahahaha.

[OldFaces]

Hey all - I see a lot of discussion about a lift in zombie traffic (that rivals the undead we saw in Sept. 2015). We noticed a significant overall organic traffic decline from Google (e.g. 6-9% drop day versus same day previous week) that began April 13th-April 14th PST. The only chatter I could find were a few posts on here, and that Mozcast was higher than usual those days. Comparing April 25th to April 4th we are now down 16%.

This is overall organic traffic from google - not just zombies. Anyone else notice these days as the start of a problem for your site(s)?

[Lake]

Hey all - I see a lot of discussion about a lift in zombie traffic (that rivals the undead we saw in Sept. 2015). We noticed a significant overall organic traffic decline from Google (e.g. 6-9% drop day versus same day previous week) that began April 13th-April 14th PST. The only chatter I could find were a few posts on here, and that Mozcast was higher than usual those days. Comparing April 25th to April 4th we are now down 16%.

This is overall organic traffic from google - not just zombies. Anyone else notice these days as the start of a problem for your site(s)?

One of my mid-size news sites (that ranks primarily for "brand / famous people" terms had a higher-than-average April that started declining at around the 13th. Still declining this week back to the site's March levels.

[OldFaces]

That's very helpful Lake - our site is also about people. Interesting...

[samwest]

The traffic on my site looks FAKE. I know how a human navigates the site, but these zombies are hitting one page and sitting there for very long periods of time without transitioning to other pages, like a human visitor would do. None of the main pages are being hit, only very obscure blog pages. The signup page is still silent. This is too weird. After 15+ years how can site traffic be whittled down to nothing?

[renatovieira]

@samwest

Your words reflect exactly what is happening to my website from the end of February.

Only one thing is certain at this point, you are not alone.

[masterjoe]

Who wants to wager that we'll receive absolutely no explanation from John Mueller on this issue?

[glakes]

The traffic on my site looks FAKE.

On zombie days, that's exactly what it looks like to me. Some sort of hit bot with random settings to stay parked on a page. Thankfully I'm not paying for that crap anymore, because it got expensive really quick. Live, learn and move on. I'll take whatever good traffic Google sends, which is rare these days. If Google gets any worse, they may just end up getting blocked like the other bots.

Who wants to wager that we'll receive absolutely no explanation from John Mueller on this issue?

I think he will because the number of people asking about zombies will only increase. He probably will follow the same script adwords reps and managers are following - deny it all. Our stats prove otherwise.

[Babadook]

I agree with you JamBam, I've been watching for some time as there are new advertisers in our sector. The old ones have all dropped adwords. But you know, there's a whole new crop of people that don't know what's been going on and they think it actually works. The real secret is it doesn't and the sooner more people realize this and drop it, the better off we will all be. Google will never be as good as it was maybe 10 years ago. At that time it wasn't trying to shape the web or police it like it's trying to do now. It's not the job of a private company to police the web, nobody asked them to do that. But by voting with your feet and using other search engines, you will be making it better for all of us. Remember when Eric Schmidt told everybody that the Internet was a cesspool? And in saying that he implied that they felt it was their job to clean it up, but they were going to clean it up to favor them. The other thing Mr. Schmidt said was that people really prefer brands. In saying that he was indicating that they're going to favor brands because they feel that's what people really want, big huge entities to deal with. So there it is in a nutshell, Google feels the need to clean up the web which is a cesspool the way they feel it should be done monetarily speaking. And they've chosen to favor big brands. That's all you need to know, there's your guiding principle as to what they're doing. I think what's interesting is that there has never been a better opportunity for a better search engine to come along and steal it all away from them. and right now there is one company that could absolutely do it today. Why doesn't Facebook just start a search engine to compete head-to-head with Google. Because of the positive vibes that a lot of people get from them, there would be a lot of people willing to use Facebook search. I may not like that prospect either but some healthy competition would be good, let these twin demons #*$! themselves silly. The key to making this all better is stiff competition, not regulation. The moment that competition got to be really high then you would start to see some customer care coming from Google and other search engines. As it is, there is little. It seems odd that they don't care about the people that spend money with them.

[masterjoe]

I think Google is scared that FB will in fact launch a search feature that will rival them and eat into an even bigger part of their lunch. Google will simply have no choice but to try and extract every last dime out of webmasters pockets before they start crashing and burning. You never know, they might already have foreseen something like this and want to cash out before becoming a straight up ad engine. You can only milk cows so much before they find greener pastures.

[glakes]

The key to making this all better is stiff competition, not regulation.

While I agree, I also believe that any competition to Google's search dominance would not flourish in the current environment. Facebook is about the only player that can do it, which you mentioned. Regulation is still needed to rein in the growing dominance of Google, with a focus on restricting Google's ability to grow their dominance through acquisitions. No competition will ever see the light of day if Google buys them up the minute they appear to be a possible threat to their dominance. Google already has many mini monopolies, and they should not be allowed to further solidify their dominance through even more acquisitions.

[Some_Bloke]

I've also just reached 8 days without a conversion.

The contrast in traffic quality is quite stark. January was the best single month for sales in 11 years. February was nearly as good and I was getting hopeful - but then around mid March everything died. This month looks like being the quietest in the last 6 years. All this without a single change to the site.

I've been doing whois lookups on some of the zombies I'm getting. Most appear to be from various cable or communications types of companies from different parts of the world. (I mean the actual company - not someone using them as a service provider) One or two page views at a time. Often the same page several times in succession. And I see the same ones return on different days. I don't know whether this happens all the time or they're just standing out because "real" traffic has all but shut down.

[masterjoe]

Interesting - I had double my regular amount of traffic today... but it did not reflect in my conversions. They were still below average for what I would get with half that traffic.

[samwest]

Awoke this morning to zero traffic...guess it doesn't get any worse than this. GA has rarely been flat lined.

A few trickle zombies here and there, but there is NO WAY a human comes in and sits on a single page for 10 minutes without transitioning to any other page. Total Zombies. Ridiculous and infuriating.