Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2016

[Jez123]

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System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4811319.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 9:11 am on Aug 2, 2016 (PDT -8)

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It seems to me that whatever happened over the weekend / last week has now rolled back. My positions were quite mixed up with some gains and some losses but traffic up overall. And sales were great. I am now seeing the results I have had for months again. It's too soon to tell is sales / conversions are on or off yet. Is anyone else seeing that?

[BushieTop]

@Jez, what vertical, location?

[Jez123]

Ecom in the UK.

[BushieTop]

Yeah, i'm the same. Looks like i might be a loser in this fight? Can anyone tell me if their seeing the same?

[Martin Ice Web]

We are seeing the same. Very big losses on high traffic keywords. Sales are complete off since last weekend.
Biggest winner is amazon. In our vertical it is hard to find a query very amazon hasnīt at least 4 but 7 entries in a row.

In germany there is some rumours about Phantom Update 4.0. If so, quality and diversity have been cut down to lowest degree i have ever seen.
Some say that this update has targeted catagorie pages and pushed single item pages. If so, that would completly working against panda algo. As we habe summary pages for items that differ only in color / lenght ... all the item pages have a canonical tag to the summary page. If this summary pages are now targeted would be a silly step towards spamming the net with single item pages.

[BushieTop]

@martin you're onto something there. I discovered the same pattern and we work the canonical in exactly the same way. I've played around with ideas of taking it off, but that would mean adding layers and lengthening user journey. Site that seems to have done the best after this update doesn't use canonical tags.

[Martin Ice Web]

@bushietop, what about amazon in your niche. Is it ruling the serps?

[BushieTop]

@martin no. I have domains that are built on open source sites, reems of dupe content and literally no use of the canonical and in one case the Robots.txt ranking at the top. We have multiple listings for our big money term, but have descended from 3 to 8 & 9. Also on a side note, the #1 solely builds EMAs and shouldnt survive a penguin update.

[Spiekerooger]

Anyone else seeing a total rollback of last weeks changes?

Google Germany, ecom. (a German mozcast-like-SERP-tracker has it's temperature at about 100 deg. F).

[Jez123]

Yes, see my reply above.

[masterjoe]

Things seem to be "on" for the last 2 days... sales have quadrupled. But at the same time, the previous days before that were far below average. This uncertainty is certainly not helping with adwords spending and I've turned it on at a fraction of the budget just to try and figure out what's happening. It's pretty irritating because there seems to be a massive push to upgrade my budget and get help from an "adwords manager", who I'm sure will tell me to increase all my bids even further.

[ecommerceprofit]

We have been on fire for a while now but I know the zombies will back soon. Whenever an adwords manager has called me I have always seen a downturn that lasts for about a week...think i's just coincidence but I hate hearing from them. Whatever I tell them about blatant adwords violations from competitors or about zombiues goes in one ear and out the other...they are like sales zombies. Some of their information is helpful and they truly want to help but they are zombies nonetheless.

Whenever the zombies come I just turn off my advertising until they go away. My "guess" is that most advertisers do not know what is happening to them regarding zombies and just keep running ads. Otherwise, Google would not be smart to allow this zombie problem to continue...if everyone knew to turn off their advertising they would lose money.

[SnowMan68]

Whatever rolled out overnight seems to have already rolled back. Seems to be a big test IMO. ecom usa

[BushieTop]

When you guys are saying you've seen a roll back to the original positions, when roughly were those original positions. We have been seeing severe fluctuations since the 23rd June?

[msenza]

We have been seeing severe fluctuations since the 23rd June?

Same here, specific page types were hit, no recovery. Happened simultaneously in Canada and Australia.
On the other hand, in India, I see these couple impacts over the month of July, with the rollback last week (although it isn't a full recovery)

Do you guys think these updates are related and just differed per region? Or do we have 2 (or should I say 3) separate large updates happening since the end of June?
If it is the same algo, I find it weird that on some ends they would roll back, and others they would choose not to

Also, on the same day (June 23rd) we saw all our enriched snippets disappear overnight (averaging 110k daily impressions to literally 1 or 2 hundred daily impressions).
This was done sitewide, regardless of internal quality content.
I've read that Google now only chooses the 2/3 most trustworthy websites and show structured snippets for those... Early Christmas present to Amazon...

[BushieTop]

We've seen no recovery whatsoever either in the UK. Some of the most popular, longest serving, online companies in our sector have completely disappeared off the map. Bad for me, but far worse for them.

[SnowMan68]

I saw it roll back again around 1am EST today in the USA. Now it reverted once again.

[Spiekerooger]

@Jez: sorry, missed your post. So we're probably seeing the same.

@Bushietop: I can report a complete rollback of last weeks changes yesterday for Google Germany. Everything going back (up or down) to the state before the large fluctuations end of last week.

[Jez123]

Now it reverted once again.

@snowman - are you seeing a revert to the "update" SERPs or the normal? I'm confused.

[BushieTop]

@Spiekerooger weird, we didn't see much fluctuation then (that was any different since the 23rd June). In my experience its just been transient since then.

[SnowMan68]

Sorry, saw the first big change 36 hrs ago, it changed back to pre update results within hours of the change, then rolled out again about 4 hrs ago, but within the last couple hours it has reverted back to pre update results again. Seems like two data sets and they are testing something.

[WpSEOit]

Here in Italy is the same!
Yesterday 95° in Mozcast.
We confirm that is a sort of roll back of the update of the 27th july. Here in Italy after the update of the 27th july we saw some serps where the winners was low quality sites and other serps where the serps were cleaned from low quality sites. Today all was back as before the 27th july's update.
And as usual during this kind of update, the Search Console data was paused. Almost every time there is a big update the data in the search console are not updated. The 1th of August in the search console the last data were form 27 July.

[glakes]

Though the end of July was horrible in terms of converting traffic (the worst Google traffic I have ever seen), whatever Google released on August 1st resulted in excellent conversions. If Google reverts back to the August 1st data set, I guarantee I would jump back into Adwords. Traffic on August 1st was definitely more engaged (more page views, time on site, etc.).

[masterjoe]

I can also confirm that August 1-2 have been excellent in terms of conversions. Seems to be back on zombie mode now so Ive turned off adwords altogether. No conversion no money for Google.

[seohhh]

All this roll out and roll back just makes me think Google has no idea what they're doing.

[BushieTop]

Conversion low again today and bounce rate is back to being through the roof. Bizarre state of affairs

[Martin Ice Web]

I can confirm this ( bushietop ) . Absolute zombie day.

[WpSEOit]

can you share the topic of your sites?
we experiencing high fluctuaction (and the rollback) only for specific serps about "gadgets"

[redgorillas]

Hi, was readying this topic for last month and just want to share information from my projects. I don't know details on update that was available on June 29 but it simply cut traffic from my old Penguin penalized site on 30%. It was slowly dying and organic traffic was almost the same 250 for last 2 years. I have seen short recovery right before June 29 but no traffic is down and conversion is also going same way...

The same problem happens even on another clean site with out any penalty. This site got drop in organic traffic for 35%. The funny thing is that we don't see such fluctuations in SERPS as we see changes in traffic.

[BushieTop]

@WpSEOit Automotive, UK.