Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2016

[Robert Charlton]

Continuing from:
Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2016
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4798794.htm [webmasterworld.com]


Mod's note: In the April thread, Simon_H did an excellent job of saying something that needed to be said about off-topic discussion in the Google Updates and SERP Changes thread....

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of Google's business ethics, moaning about it on here is counter-productive. When SER covered zombie traffic recently, there was a backlash of the type "it's just another conspiracy theory from the idiots at WebmasterWorld". That's very difficult to argue against.

If you believe that there's no hope because Google hates you, then there's no point posting on here about it. If you believe that there is hope, then try posting unemotional details of what you're seeing and we can collectively try to work out what is going on.

We try to keep the Updates thread primarily about ranking and traffic changes. The point of the thread is that by comparing changes, we can sometimes see patterns with Google that are not otherwise clear, and give those topics dedicated discussions when a pattern is observed.

[masterjoe]

I did see some strong movement today, but not in a good way. This is for 2 completely "whitehat" sites, one of which has been blasted by a competitor with exact match keywords repeatedly. I think Google has done a decent job for now, because a lot of the links that show up in external crawlers aren't indexed and don't show up on webmaster tools. Only about 100-200 out of thousands have been picked up but it would still be enough to cause a penalty if they weren't disavowed.

[renatovieira]

Just another test. Google giving us heaven, then return in hell.

Yesterday my site had a peak of over 500%.

Today everything is back to normal, even a little worse than what usual.

[sqimul]

"Google giving us heaven, then return in hell. "
Kinda Same here. Last 2 days, we saw around 50% More traffic from SERP. Gone back today with a bit worse.

[sqimul]

I was like "Man, wait some days and you'll buy a new macbook air" and was listening "Baby you're a rich man" .
Broken Dreams :(

[renatovieira]

Updating what I wrote here yesterday:

Saturday was amazing. Sunday was very good. Today is being good.

Since January I did not have a sequence of three straight days of high traffic. Usually Google tests do not last more than a day. At least in my graphics.

Hopefully the blessed Penguin.

[sqimul]

Updating My last text too. Yesterday was a bad start for us, so I wrote that "Broken Dreams " part. But traffic started bumping up from mid-day and last night I saw the highest score in my career for our site. The server (vps) was almost dead, added extra 4GB ram hours ago to handle that today.

Lets hope it's not just another test. I'm following so many SEO related blog/forums (including Black-hats too), no one said anything like they got hit by something like Penguin. May be I'm wrong, but I believe it's a major update, but not the Penguin.

[renatovieira]

@sqimul - I do not know if it's an update or just a test. I just know that already is the third consecutive day of intense traffic, beyond the normal. And this not happened since the beginning of the year.

As you said, we hope that this will continue and not be another test.

[masterjoe]

I am now seeing some pretty low conversions after about 2-3 weeks of great converting traffic. Perhaps we are on opposite sides of the serp spectrum now. I don't think it's penguin movement, as I am monitoring a site that was hit in 2014 and traffic has been dwindling since then. It has died a slow death but I am keeping it alive so I can do some work on it once the update is released. Hopefully in this lifetime. Will be keeping a close watch to see what happens in the coming days.

[motionz]

@renatovieira I am seeing now 30-40% drop in traffic since yesterday (Monday). Are you facing this too?

[renatovieira]

@motionz - My site is with above normal traffic since Saturday. On Saturday 500% above average. And today continues with high traffic.

The @masterjoe commented as follows: "Perhaps we are on opposite sides of the spectrum serp now."

Difficult to deduce what might be happening. Let's wait.

[renatovieira]

After days of great traffic flow, this morning still quite high, suddenly in less than an hour, I do not see anyone else on my site. This is bizarre.

[samwest]

Traffic still very "spikey". On one minute, off the next. High surges of over 150 users suddenly flooding specific pages....then totally off. All coming from Google and unique IP's and all NON converting, one page and gone. It's as if the algo temporarily slips you higher, probably to page one, then back to page two or worse. I'm guessing these pages are borderline page 1 / 2.....in fact, doing some investigation shows that very situation is indeed happening. These are pages that used to be #1 or #2. Mostly being pushed out by Pinterest domain crowding and browser choking - ad filled - big name pages. Pinterest crowding has been eroding my ranks for months now. Great user experience.

[masterjoe]

Same here samwest, only had conversions within the last hour or so, been quiet all weekend and monday. I read somewhere that it's a public holiday or long weekend for you guys the in the US, so let's be a little more patient and see where this goes. Hopefully, they will revert to whatever they were doing 2 weeks ago, that seemed to be displaying decent serps and I could actually find stuff I was looking for.

[System]

The following 11 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4807611.htm [webmasterworld.com]
10:58 am on Jun 2, 2016 (PDT -8)