Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2016

[Jez123]

---

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)

---

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?

[samwest]

Yesterday's boost disappeared as quickly as it came. Right back to zero traffic as the rule. Spotty onesy visits that's it.

@Nutterum - mine is a non tangible paid content site, so doesn't work with Amazon. I do run an ad on eBay though.

So this month we had two really good days; Monday the 1st and Monday the 29th, just like like two bookends or two slices of bread with a sh*t sandwich filling, We get the message Google.

[glakes]

Looks like a lot lower traffic from Google this morning. Checked ranks and nothing has moved - possibly some datacenters are showing something different. The quantity of traffic does not matter much anyway because Google's traffic quality is about the worst on the market.

[samwest]

I think BankDrain took a day off but is clearly back on the job today. If Google thinks one good day of unfettered traffic and sales will bring us all running back to Adwords, they are sorely mistaken. Traffic still at zero. Incredible.

Looks like MOZcast is two days behind so who knows what happened on Monday. Its had to be a temporary shift in data sets or a rollback to 2010.

[ionguy]

@samwest
i had and i still have this kind of . . . . "sales" . . . . since bankdraincalypse began last year. i'm sure i mentioned about this. two maybe three days per month are great then sh*t days goes back
funny observation - each time i see 'the great conversions day' or in other words 'my f***king happy day' im noticing drops in wmt - position, hits, expressions all down
so very few visitors make my day. i mean 'my f***king happy day'

[masterjoe]

Back to absolute trash traffic. Of course we all dont have enough money to throw at pOogle so our businesses don't deserve any type of stablitity, instead we (once) paying customers should get ripped off hard and fast so we can grow Google as a charity. Really angry because yesterday things were far, far better off and obviously nothing has changed on any of my sites.

[Dooku]

I have been doing some statistics checking today in my server log files and statcounter and in my custom admin panel of some of my websites:
- google traffic is absolutely worthless
- Bing and Yahoo outperform google by a large margin.
- My conversions are divided by normal google (trash) traffic and from all the specific content links I have created over the past year. The result is that conversions from the latter are MUCH better than from the "normal" traffic from google.
- Traffic graphs from at least 2 years back look normal, the well known wave pattern for each week and order amounts correspond well according to any particular day of the week.
- FRom about 18 months back the traffic graph become more spiked(highs and low's) and very random.
- I have gotten this more or less under control for the part that I have created all those content links for. But the rest of the normal google traffic is just randomly spiked and correspond more or less with algorithm updates, but a large part is still random for which I can not connect it to any "event".
- The only steady traffic I can rely on is whenever I send out a mailing to my customers which causes a spike from direct traffic.
- I have now implemented a popup message box on half of my websites on the checkout page and mailing list field requesting customers to use any other email address but NOT Gmail (and giving them a few examples of email services in that same popup box). To my surprise this has produced very good results in that I notice much LESS Gmail email addresses being entered on those websites that have that popup box compared to the other websites.
- There is really NOTHING I can not do with the server log files and statcounter compared to GA, so why use GA? Besides, there is not much use is staring at stats for hours in GA because in real life there is NO info in there to actually improve your sales results big time. When google removed the keyword/phrases data in GA that displayed what people were typing in google as the search terms it became utterly useless any way.

I know some of you are giving feedback as to the current state of traffic(or lack of it) from the past days and I understand you find it important to vent that info on this forum. But it also might be useful to try and find different way's of improving your website's traffic by moving to other platforms to do advertising be it organic or paid and giving feedback about that. The more people see this and start to implement the other options the better this will be for all of us in the long run because the only way to make google get off their lazy (adwords oriented) arse is when they see there are several real competitors that people are starting to use........the world is not "all google".

[BushieTop]

Cant believe there's those of you that experience traffic changes and no rank change. Our traffic changes hourly, but thatys because our ranking can change too. I left the weekend ranking at #5 for our big money term... today its at #9... go figure!

[BushieTop]

Ooops, back to #7

[masterjoe]

Great post Dooku. I am with your sentiments, the only problem is that some markets are off limits for advertising purposes on Facebook which can be very touchy to anything remotely targeted towards adults (not #*$! or other related industries, but things that are targeted towards adults). This will require some changes on a few of my websites, but the ones I've modified and started to use Facebook on is already seeing some good results, and with a bit of tweaking will surpass adwords very quickly.

I just can't understand the idiocy at Google about how and why this is happening. I think we all gave them the benefit of the doubt for a while, hoping it may be some kind of bug or error that they would resolve... but since last year, there has been nothing but astronomical growth for Google, while we're all out making a lot less money while paying Google more. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the money went SOMEWHERE. What an absolute #*$!-show.

[ionguy]

@dooku
you made a few good points + im quite sure most of us moving from google to other platforms to survive or simply to could see the whole picture (ie stats from piwik or server logs). its natural, its logical and like we can all see its necessary
the most important is (well i think it is) there is very few places where people discuss about all what we have discussed here considering thousands different cases, conspiracy theories, reports and so on
i remember when samwest (i guess it was him) mentioned about some necessary revolution if nothing will change
hopefully all what you have mentioned will be some kind of begining of the revolution
and yes, i 100% agree with you < cite >the world is not "all google" < /cite >
the problem is google does nt listen the most important part of community - i mean us, webmasters
i would give you a vote however not sure why its not working on my profile :P

who yet remember a netscape browser? huh?

@bushietop
there is a 1000s of a variables which takes an impact on the ranks and traffic ie compete doing everything to put you down, weekends, summer holidays, back to school, day and night, thanks giving, christmas and so on
and now we have yet another eighth wonder of the world called rankbrain ;)

[samwest]

Woah - I don't think I ever mentioned any revolution, not that it's a bad idea. The point Dooku makes is that you shouldn't put all your eggs in the Google basket. In fact, these days I wouldn't put any eggs in that basket simply because it's too unstable. Yesterday was the perfect example. I've run FB ads and even those don't get much traction anymore. Probably more due to broke ass millennials than anything. What I HAVE said in the past is that this is likely due to big money and expanding capitalism. It's a natural flow from free market to owned market. No matter how good the content, cash and big brands always win.

[glakes]

the problem is google does nt listen the most important part of community - i mean us, webmasters

I doubt they ever will listen to webmasters as long as they remain as gullible as they are now. Most webmasters have been monetized by Google (Adsense, feeding Google data, etc.) and earn much less than minimum wage and in some cases don't get anything at all. Plus webmasters have been easily trained to accept no support and jump at Google's every command. Unless government steps in, Google will continue to grow like the cancer they are and consume as much of the global economy as they can - leaving less competition and driving wealth inequality among not just individuals but businesses.

I know some of you are giving feedback as to the current state of traffic(or lack of it) from the past days and I understand you find it important to vent that info on this forum. But it also might be useful to try and find different way's of improving your website's traffic by moving to other platforms to do advertising be it organic or paid and giving feedback about that.

Very good point an one that can't be mentioned enough. Google is not the be all, though they are very important. I sell on Amazon and sales have been great. The quality of buyers on Amazon though is less than Bing, but far better then the junk Google is sending. I have some promotions running on FB, and that has been great - helping to drive sales and discussions that will help me shape our future product development to the needs of our customers. I won't go on a SEO binge and try to do anything for Google though. I have good ranks, but Google's traffic sucks whether it's free or paid. <snip>

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:39 pm (utc) on Aug 30, 2016]
[edit reason] WebmasterWorld terms of service violations [/edit]

[masterjoe]

Back on the zombie train. Conversions have slowed down to a halt, maybe they need to show us who's boss after that little bit of free flowing traffic they sent yesterday.

[sench]

Just one quick question - how can you quickly determine if it's zombie traffic or not? I'm seeing that term repeated here quite a lot and wonder what tools you use to responsibly make the claim? Could it be just a less purchase-minded user (which is 99% of those who search for something online for the first time)? Thanks and sorry for newbie question :)

[ionguy]

@sench
you can 'determine' it by noticing unnatural bounce rate, low conversions when traffic,sessions and anything else looks perfectly
or use any analytics tool like piwik.org, clicky.com or even g analytics on real time and track visitors. zombies usually visit your site then do nothing until they disappear

[NickMNS]

@ionguy have you checked the hostname on the Zombie traffic. According to GA I get about 1% of my Google traffic coming from (not set) host, 100% bounce rate and geo (not set).

[BushieTop]

@ionguy never seen such instability in my years of service. Its in a complete state of flux.

[hasek747]

10+ websites here, information/reviews oriented, multiple unrelated niches. No e-commerce. Everything stable, no flux whatsoever since months.

[masterjoe]

Had a thought earlier - is it possible that the green ad text is confusing people? (for example, accidental clicks?). I imagine this would be an issue for inexperienced internet users, who are looking for some type of information and then suddenly land on a page wanting them to buy something or sign up to an email list or whatever. Ever since the green ads went into effect, I noticed a lot more zombie traffic, and not to mention when they decided to move all the ads to the top and remove the sidebar. This is just a brain fart, and maybe even backtracking on what we know so far... but any possibility should be discussed at this point.

I've had a "few conversions", but nothing substantial and not enough to make up for the garbage that rolled through yesterday.

[ionguy]

@samwest
forgiveme please wasnt sure it was you or someone else the point is if nothing wll change or the things go worse then we can expect some revolution

@nickmns
the problem is 'not set' can be a bot (getting 100s a day) so its difficult to treat it as a piece of puzzles
from the otherside if yu decline 'not set' visitors from stats you miss all these visitors who cares about privacy

@masterjoe
same thoughts here but this would mean bidding kws has been set wrong. i cant imagine someone looking for aaabbb click yyyzzz ads only because its appeared for the kws he used. hpoefully users are not so stupid. arent they?
if this would be the case we would noticed this longtime ago when ads was yellow and I think a lot less noticable especially on worse devices
other point is check ads on your niche using google.com and lets say google.de where ad means anzeige so no two short 'a' and 'd' letters but greatly visible 7

[MrSavage]

Guys, my boosters are in place. All lights showing green. I can't seem to keep the RPM down though, but no biggie. This thing is ready to roll (or blast if you prefer). Other than a slight rattle sound, I'm good to go. If I was to summarize, I'm fully juiced. There are little green guys appearing out of the corner of my eye. Zombies? No idea. I'm just thrilled with life and the power of positivity. I'm ready for the ride! My next report will be random observations from outer space (or under the sea if you prefer).

[System]

The following 4 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4817284.htm [webmasterworld.com]
3:01 pm on Sep 1, 2016 (PDT -8)