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]

A new low traffic period from traffic arrived. google user engagment: Zero, sales : Zero, bounce 100%, foreing traffic 50%,
traffic mismatch 100%.
All top traffic pages are gone.
Seeing it on 5 sites right now.

THIS is aacounting only for google trafffic. bing and other sources are stready up.

And again: this smells like Panda.

[toidi]

This thread would be much more helpful if people would post what their sites actually are trying to do. ie, ecommerce, adsense, affiliate, service provider etc.

This would help identify if certain sectors are being affected.

[Martin Ice Web]

toidi,

sorry, i thought ZERO Sales would imply that this are ecom sites.

ecom, germany

[mrgwizz]

Our keyword postions have not changed and we dominate our Niche with spots 1 and 2 for lots of keywords.
Our website is a mix of info / ecom.
We have made no changes to the site but some reason all we see is Zombie, non coverting traffic.
Only good quality traffic we get now is from Bing, Twitter and Facebook.

[mrengine]

Our site, ecommerce USA, sees swings from zombies to quality traffic from Google. These abnormal patterns are not replicated on other search engines or marketplaces. There is no question that Google is rotating the limited number of legitimate buyer traffic within our industry. My company is a market leader in this small industry, and I could only imagine how bad it is for smaller and less known businesses. Total sales from non-Google sources are beating Google out by 2-3:1 margins even though Google sends the most traffic, if traffic is what one wants to call the poor hits they are sending.

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H thanks for asking the question during the G-Hangout about what the non-existent links showing up in the link report.

[EditorialGuy]

There is no question that Google is rotating the limited number of legitimate buyer traffic within our industry.

It would seem to me that, if there's a "limited [amount] of legitimate buyer traffic" in a given industry, the problem isn't how search traffic is allocated, it's an imbalance between supply and demand. Regardless of how Google allocates search traffic, a lot of people are going to be unhappy until natural selection thins the ranks.

[Simon_H]

No worries @NickMNS! I was going to ask it anyway as we have loads of pages showing in GSC that don't exist or aren't in the index. Some of those pages have meta robot index tags, some are noindex,follow and some simply don't exist at all. I've already mailed John with examples of all three.

[NickMNS]

@Simon_H I sent some of my examples as well. It will be interesting to hear what he [John Muller] has to say. I will let you know.

[ecommerceprofit]

I watched the Google hangout with Simon and Barry. John had brought up that he does not really know if more animals will be released in a joking way. Would have loved to see someone in the hangout mention perhaps "zombies" are coming instead.

I see Simon dance around the zombie issue mentioning panda, penguin, site links, etc. because I know he's analytical...wants to see cause/effect, etc. of other stuff that may or may not be affecting zombies...my theory, which could be wrong, into what's in Simon's mind :-)

Simon, have you sent him links to these threads and the ones on roundtable? Thinking of asking him directly about zombies?

[Shepherd]

thought ZERO Sales would imply that this are ecom sites.

Well, zero sales may also indicate that a site is a "brochure site", by design or not.

[samwest]

Today I am seeing extended zero runs...that has never really been the norm, only an occasional occurrence. Now its more the norm. The GART graph runs the whole 30 minutes now without a hit. It's pretty clear that I will continue to drop in organic results. You could sled down my 30 day search query graph.

Funny though, I still make the occasion sale...btw, this is a membership based / paid content site in case someone in a previous post was curious. That was popular years ago, but today everyone wants free even it it's ad riddled. It's very useful / quality info tho, and in 15 years only enough complaints to count on one hand. Me thinks Google would rather I open up my content to the public, paginate the daylights out of it and fill each page with ads. I have considered this, but not a great UE.

[Simon_H]

@ecommerceprofit I haven't mentioned zombies to John for a while, because I can't (yet). If I say we're seeing strange traffic patterns, John will quite rightly point out that we're hit with multiple filters, so it's expected that the remaining traffic will appear abnormal. He'll suggest focusing on recovery from those or starting afresh. John doesn't deal with the paid side of things, so I can't raise that this also affects paid. I need to be able to demonstrate zombie traffic from a clean site. So if you can (and I think you can!), then join a Hangout and ask John.

On the paid side, I've already sent Google (paid support) very strong evidence of intermittent mismatching of Shopping results and am due a chat with our account manager about it.

[ecommerceprofit]

I wish that I could join the conversation. I would make a concise and unemotional argument to resolve the zombie problem. I would followup constantly in a professional way and spread the word. Unfortunately, my situation is unique in two ways preventing me from being the first to really push this critical issue.

I am surprised no one has directly brought this problem to Google's attention. I am even more surprised that webmasterworld and roundtable are basically the only major webmaster outlets discussing this problem. S-watch / journal, major organic / paid search blogs, and the others seem to be ignoring or lagging behind in keeping up with cutting edge industry trends.

I truly think Google is hurting themselves in the long term which is making Amazon stronger. I enjoy watching John Mueller...he's smart and seems to really care. He is the perfect face for Google. Not sure he is the one to fix this...multiple executives need to be contacted.

[samwest]

This is very interesting that what I called "Zombie" traffic back on June 7 2010 (when I was backdraft7) is finally, six years later being seriously discussed.

If you want to use my site as an example, it is still in operation, but almost completely wiped out now. I'd love them to take a look or more appropriately a post mortem, because it's likely affected by a whole fruit salad of filters that have evolved since 2000. I seem to be the first to have observed this phenomenon or hallucination...whatever you like to call it. Below is the first mention on WebmasterWorld.

This algo update just happens to coincide with a seasonal lull in sales for most sites. Add to that the struggling economy and you've got a perfect storm of conditions to make your sales even weaker. My rankings are still way up there and my traffic is nearly the same as last year this time. I just can't figure out why conversions just shut down on May 17th. The traffic I'm seeing seems to be what I call "Zombie" traffic. I see it almost every spring and I just can't explain it. Whatever it is, it is not targeted traffic. It's either search engines going gonzo, recently released school kids or something else entirely, but it surely is not buying customers. On top of all this, the algo update just makes matters worse, but at least it's not happening during the holiday season. As always, this too will pass. I hope!

Funny how that post sounds familiar even after all these years.
The problem seems to have spread.

[renatovieira]

Today particularly is the worst day of the year. Basically there is no one on my site at this time. This is bizarre especially for the time I have higher peak traffic.

GSC is OK. Main keywords are even better than yesterday.

Even the zombies are gone ...

[aristotle]

EditorialGuy wrote:
the problem isn't how search traffic is allocated, it's an imbalance between supply and demand.

You're overlooking the possibility that one particular site could be getting the lion's ahare, leaving just a few scraps for all the others combined.

[NickMNS]

Further to aristotle's point, it is also possible that Google is funneling searchers and ranking sites based on the searcher's intent, site "A" may rank high for searchers with the intent to buy, whereas site "B" may rank for searchers with the intent to find information about a given product. The keyword used to search may be the same in both cases, that is if intent is determined by other means such as search history. In this scenario it is possible that site "A" would see a drop in traffic, but an up-tick in conversion, whereas site "B" would see a rise in traffic paired with a significant drop in conversions.

Presumably this would provide an improved user experience, maybe the competition (site "A") is selling the same product for marginally less, so the users on average prefer to buy from them, whereas site "B" provides more comprehensive product descriptions and information.

This is the type of outcome you can expect from ML/AI algo like Rank-Brain. The algo is really doing a great job interpreting user intent. For the webmaster of site B it totally sucks. It is like when shoppers go to a brick and mortar store to check out some product, try it on, then leave, go home and buy on from on on-line retailer.

Note that my example segregates between those with the intent to buy vs intent to find information. The possible intent types can be many, another obvious one would be an unknown intent.

[EditorialGuy]

Building on what NickMNS said, even if visitors to site B are motivated to make a purchase, they may not feel as comfortable buying from an unknown site as from a familiar source like Amazon, Target, or Home Depot. So they're likely to end up practicing the behavior that NickMNS describes (scoping out the product on Site B, then going to Site A to make a purchase) even though their overall Google search intent is to buy, not merely to search for information.

[samwest]

In my case, I'm about the only source online for what I sell....yet still nothing but tire kickers. When it's on it's ON, when it's off it's really OFF...like now. Traffic goes to zero for 20-30 min then active for 20-30 min, rinse & repeat all day in this pattern now.

[jambam]

Sometimes action speaks louder then words found this site recently for eu citzens to report net neutrality violations. worth a shot

[respectmynet.eu...]

[Jhurwith]

Does anyone know what the Google Search Console update was on 4/17/16? I try to click the learn more link, but it doesn't work.

Thank you.

[blend27]

US/Canada - ECom site(since 2003)

A Year, 2, 3 years Ago for the first 10 main phrases.

1. Oldest Ecom - Site!
2. Amazon
3. Ebay
4. Ecom - Site!
5. My Site - Site!
6. Ecom - Site!
7. Pinterest
8. One site that has been around for over a decade.
9. Ebay
10. Ecom - Site!

Currently - Today:

1. Etsy
2. Etsy
3. Amazon
4. Amazon
5. Ebay
6. One site that has been around for over a decade.
7. Ebay
8.Oldest Ecom - Site!
9. Pinterest
10. Big Box( irrelevant spammed doorway page )

My site was in top 4-5 sites for most of my 2-3 keyword phrases, for over a decade(as it is still on Bing). Past 3 month no converting traffic from Google = 0 sales from Goog referrers and MOST traffic is from EU or US Zombies.

Site is Mobile friendly, Responsive - Custom and very Light weight CSS framework, Response from the server is between 700ms and 1.2s on a first hit and under a second for the rest of the visit. Renders beautifully on Mobile & Desktop. Mo content is hidden between Mobile & Desktop.

Largest catalog page is 103.4 KB and That includes 25 high-res/optimized product images, a logo, 2 CSS files, 2 js(under 500B each) files and a whooping 5.2KB of HTML. No code bloat. Every product image on a site was taken by me, all unique products.

Bing, Yahoo, DD, FB(users) and most important New and Repeat CUSTOMERS - LOVE it and send converting traffic.

[robzilla]

Does anyone know what the Google Search Console update was on 4/17/16? I try to click the learn more link, but it doesn't work.

The box won't disappear if you click the graph at the point of the update. It links to [support.google.com...]

We refined our standards for calculating clicks and impressions. As a result, you may see a change in the click, impression, and CTR values in the Search Analytics report. A significant part of this change will affect website properties with associated mobile app properties. Specifically, it involves accounting for clicks and impressions only to the associated application property rather than to the website.

[Jhurwith]

Thank you!

[seosutra]

We too have noticed some strange behavior from google traffic since April this year on 2-3 different websites... conversions have gone down considerably on all of them. We also dropped out on serps for many key phrases... and have taken a 30-40% hit in traffic. In the past 3-4 days... we have noticed that our impressions have improved a bit... lets see if it holds up and traffic quality improves.

[masterjoe]

Been extremely quiet this week too - about 1.5-2 weeks ago things were going fantastically well. Zombies all day today. I am trackinh sales and opt ins too, strange thing is that a penguin hit site is seeing some fairly decent movement. I don't really care about seeing an update anymore but they're probably still testing with average results.

[sqimul]

Things have become like:

1.(if) Today we are facing lower traffic, that means It's a better day for us. We will have at least some conversions.

2.(if) Today we saw an increase in traffic. Okay guys, you can go home, u not gonna earn the bread and beer money today.

The thing, whatever we should call it Zombie or anything else is a major problem for every white hat site we own.

[Simon_H]

@sqimul Do you know which search terms convert best for you on the good days? If so, try them on the good days vs the bad days and see if there are any differences in sites appearing in text ads and Shopping ads. I've been doing a lot of research on traffic quality/zombies and I think the trigger is actually ad scheduling on competitor ads. (By 'competitor', I mean search term competitors, not necessarily business competitors).

[sqimul]

@Simon_H I asked John Mueller on twitter, and he said " Would love to hear details, the ones I checked had nothing crazy, zombie-like. Broad threads don't help, I need URLs, queries, etc."
I'll work on it, do some research and provide details to him.