Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2016

[engine]

Continuing from:
Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2016
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4802991.htm [webmasterworld.com]



Monday was a public holiday in the U.S. and also Europe, and I know that many kids in Europe are off school this week, probably on vacation with the parents.

Depending upon your sector, you may be busy, or quiet.

Have you seen the branding tests in Google SERPs?

Put in a search and add the brand name. The brand name appears at the end of the entry, slightly clipping the title.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:03 pm (utc) on Jun 2, 2016]

[Martin Ice Web]

@aristotle, best post for month in this forum! Thanx. The bad about this is, that one donīt have any influence on it. U can do whatever u want to do with our site, it will not influence google algo to switch users with buying intention to their ad system.

german serps are meanwhile back to be stuffed with foreign sites. I even saw pages from danemark with only the matching query in german on it. We have visitors from all over the world, even japan ( 5.000 miles away ).
It seems like the whole EAT, quality content, sub-content aso. what they say a site should have is not counting anymore. Big brands are ruling in front of smaller specilized sites/shops.

[Simon_H]

Guys, is anyone noticing no updates at all on inbound link reports in GSC? I appreciate the link data in GSC is always really stale and some domains end up still there months after links have been removed, but I haven't noticed any changes in any numbers *at all* for almost 2 weeks. Maybe it's always this bad and I've just never really noticed it before, but this seems worse than normal to me.

[masterjoe]

Simon there seems to be some sort of update or change in bow google processes links. Lots of low quality pages seem to be getting deindexed, the time is takes to index/reindex a page is taking much longer. That might have something to do with it. I also notice it takes far even if I manually fetch and resubmit a page whereas it used to happen almost instantly.

[Simon_H]

@masterjoe Indexing and what you see in GSC are two different things. There are always plenty of pages shown in GSC that aren't in the index and vice-versa. I'm not seeing any delays in pages being indexed, just delays in any changes being shown in GSC.

[samwest]

RC - Nice, but do you have anything more recent that a 3 year old topic that nobody (ok one guy) replied to? I'm sure things have changed drastically in the past 3 years. Right now the home page is getting much less traffic than a handful of my admittedly "better" blog posts. There must have been a major update recently that shifted results considerably.

Today bounce is way down. No changes to the site of course...just traffic changing like the weather. Used to be I could set my watch by traffic behavior and conversion rate.
No converters so far today...seems there are three levels if traffic, bouncing zombie garbage "one & done's" - just curious "tire kickers" - and real buyers. Looks like tire kickers today.

[masterjoe]

Simon, what I mean is that pages seem to be unable to be found through the site: operater at certain times, GSC updates a lot slower than the real time index. This could be affecting the links that show up in your console - maybe they're refreshing it or doing some type of clean up to get rid of garbage. Penguin is supposed to happen "soon", so that might be a reason.

On another note, I've had a complete zombie day today.

[Simon_H]

@masterjoe The site: operator is fairly useless. If you want to see when a page was last indexed, type the full URL into Google. If it doesn't appear, it's not in the index. If it does appear, click the arrow next to the page in the SERPs, view the cached version, check out the date.

Also, remember the link report in GSC isn't showing what's indexed. It's showing the link graph (or a cached version). Not the same thing. But, yes, perhaps because Penguin is coming, Google is taking a lot longer to update the link graph following index which is in turn causing delays in GSC.

But the questions is... is anyone else seeing the link report in GSC remaining completely static for a long time?

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H it does seem to me that it has been while since the link report updated. As far as I can tell the last update was in the last days of May.

[moradi]

this algoritm is very strong and not way please help me

[sqimul]

Back to low quality and fewer traffic again. Traffic from Search is like a lottery, one day good, 6 days worst. Nothing touched or changed in site .

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H this morning, I am seeing an update of the link report in GSC

[renatovieira]

@Simon_H - My link report in SC is constantly updating. No longer fixed for two days. What I do not understand is this wide range of backlinks that appear and then disappear.

From yesterday to today appeared more than ten new backlinks.

@sqimul - Here the same. We do not have what to do, except wait. I believe that major changes will happen soon.

[Simon_H]

Yes, this morning I've also finally seen a links update in GSC after nearly 2 weeks. Usual stale content though; some linking pages have correctly been removed as they no longer exist, but other pages that haven't existed for weeks are still showing even though they're not in the index.

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H I am seeing a similar situation with stale links. About six month ago my server admin made a mistake and copied files from my site into a folder of another site on the server. The error was corrected within about two hours, but for some reason, I guess Google happened to be crawling that site. Google picked up the internal links on the misplaced pages and showed them as back-links to my site. Well six month down the line, and these links keep fluctuating from 20 to 50, back to 25 and so on. It is a very strange phenomenon, for links that never really existed.

[Simon_H]

@NickMNS So you temporarily had some pages that looked like they linked to your site (because they were duplicates of your site pages but under a different site), but then you removed those pages? What happens when you try to hit those removed pages now? What status code do they give? 404? 410? 301? Assuming you have full control of the other site that had the wrong pages, have you done a fetch in GSC and forced a reindex on each and every one? Might be best to ensure they return a 410 and then do a fetch in GSC on each one.

[samwest]

the funnel is getting slippery again

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H:
I don't know actually know what pages exactly were affected. When I try to access the links shown in GSC they return a 404.
I do not have control of the website, it belongs to an associate, so no access to GSC, but I could get the admin to change status code to 410.
The discovery date in GSC for the links is July 7, 2015.
I really wonder if these links have any impact on my site.

[Simon_H]

@NickMNS Copy the URL of each linking page and paste into Google so you're searching for the URL itself. If the page itself comes up in the results, then it's still indexed and Google is potentially still counting it. If it doesn't come up in the results, then it's not in the index and John M has said in the past that this won't count towards any algorithmic penalty. I sincerely doubt why after all this time any of these pages would still be in the index, but who knows.

This still doesn't explain why GSC continues to show links so long after they've been removed and when they're no longer indexed. Something I have found (anyone, please feel free to comment!) is that when entire domains expire, they drop out of GSC far faster than when simply the page containing your link is removed or just the link is removed. This suggests that the GSC delay isn't purely a caching issue; perhaps Google intentionally holds on to certain links longer than others even after they're removed.

[samwest]

spoke too soon, knew it couldn't last more than a few hours.

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H checked all the ones listed in GSC and none show up in search.

What is really strange is that I had another legitimate link pointing to my site from another site on the same server, that link was removed as a result of a site update of the linking site. It disappeared from the link report within 2 weeks and I haven't seen it back again since. The link existed for close to two years before being removed. Meanwhile the links that existed for only a couple of hours are still showing after close to a year.

I would agree, Google is intentionally holding some longer than others, and they are definitely not showing you all the links they have found.

[MrBlack]

Something strange happened on Google UK yesterday, they sent me some buyers. Everything back to normal today though.........Widget price comparison UK

[Martin Ice Web]

Could it be that this last updated was a new Panda round?
It feels and smells like Panda.
Traffic from google is so bad, no user engagement, no user interaction, bounce nearly 90%.
This is the first time we see something bad for 10 month now.

But i like that they opened to webmasters. All the help they give, all the good infos, anouncements. ( Ah sorry this is only for ad buyers).

[samwest]

No Zombies today...in fact no traffic whatsoever! Now at a big goose egg. Follows the worst week of the year so far.

[MrBlack]

@samwest I see exactly the same as you on my price comparison site.

Do you think it is panda? I have checked it against the various google penalty checkers and it has never taken a hit on any panda or penguin penalty before. But this year I have seen a gradual decline in traffic/quality of traffic. It seems to come in waves of decline followed by a spike, then further down again.

[renatovieira]

@MrBlack - Here exactly the same.

[masterjoe]

Seen more movement than I have in almost 1.5 years on a penguin hit site. Maybe its coming for a visit? Nothing significant especially just from 1 site, but if you guys are seeing it too that might mean something.

[ionguy]

,- and same here - all dead - if i wouldn't know it's monday i would say its saturday or sunday night.
traffic: low // users activity: low // number of emails with stupid questions: low (strange) // conversions: dead (strange... nooot!)

[samwest]

I did notice one big change...while all my long tail has evaporated since May 2010, now they are moving me down on my 15 year old #1 holdings. For the first time in 15 years, I an now #2 for my main key phrase, usurped by a blog article from one of my site members. My images have all been assigned to scraper sites. They show up under Google images, but not ONE is connected my site anymore. Only the scrapers are ranking...with my content. I suspect a competitor who is an SEO firm, decided to attack several years ago with a negative SEO campaign. It's working...along with a constellation of Google changes and niche encroachment.

[SEOcomfort]

I am seeing an increase in traffic today, despite a lot of people saying their sites are declining. But of course, the traffic is poor quality and not converting.

I have also seen some pretty decent movements for my long tail keywords. Broad terms are pretty stable though.

[samwest]

Mobile traffic is about all I get now. It's gotta be pushing 80%, so I decided to remove all sidebar content and consolidate it for better a mobile experience. The loss of all those sidebar links (many were actually redundant) seems to be why the #1 positions are dropping. I figured it would help, not hurt to remove redundant links and advertising.