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?

[ecommerceprofit]

Zombies are hitting me today. Zombies are random. Your site along with many others may be zombie free today and on the same day people like me are receiving zombies...

[BushieTop]

Just like that, they're gone again. All of the SERPs that I had seen big gains from have just reverted back..... Had me going for a minute...

[masterjoe]

Yes, myself and another member were previously having opposite days for on/off conversions at reasonably precise times. It may have been some kind of way for Google to prevent us from pinpointing exactly what the issue is, because last year almost all of us that were having this problem were having it at the same time.

[smilie]

>> 8/19/2016 @ecommerceprofit: Zombies are hitting me today. Zombies are random

Same here, literally so far under $100 worth of orders. Adwords budget depletion is on the lower side, but still probably going to run through a good portion of our budget.

Nothing but zombies, not buying anything other than making Google profits and taking their stock to new highs.

If it wasn't "incidental" (wink-wink), they should've invented zombie traffic.

[samwest]

This appears to be the new Panda everflux. It seems to cycle results weekly because as bad as it seems day to day, there always seems to be one random day that performs well and each week the same target is hit...almost exactly every week. +/- 1 conversion.

[jmorgan]

I've seen a 10% drop or so in traffic over the last couple of weeks. My theory is that it's due to the Olympics. We'll see if it bounces back when the Olympics end.

Anyone else see a drop in traffic corresponding to the Olympics?

[Robert Charlton]

jmorgan - I was thinking that the Olympics would probably be affecting traffic, but posters here are talking about conversions and not about traffic.

[samwest]

Like I said, it's the new everflux. Don't expect static SERPS again...ever.
Why not work a little chaos into the algo to keep it hard to guess.
Google watches us and just laughs their butts off.

[samwest]

Have I just not been observant lately or did Google just start taking a survey?
"How satisfied are you with these results?"
1. Very Satisfied
2. Somewhat satisfied
3. Neither satisfied or dissatisfied
4. Somewhat dissatisfied
5. Very dissatisfied

[hasek747]

I've seen this survey (or something very similar to it, not sure if the same) at least 3 years ago.

[Martin Ice Web]

This appears to be the new Panda everflux

It feels like panda, but it seems not content related.
Whatever they did serps change within seconds and its 99% zombies.

This sunday was the worst we had in 15 years. Fortunatelly google is amazon and ebay biased, so we had a bucket full of conversions. This made me cut off spending in PLAs immediatly as we now get sales through the big platforms. Finaly we do not have to pay for zombie traffic. Big thanx to google.

[BushieTop]

Traffic is poor for me after Brexit, but its SERPs related. We saw a massive hit. I reckon our visibility diminished by 25% with whatever happened. A lot of our SERPs now are loaded with domains with high % of exact match referral links. Whatever has happened, imo, its made the quality of the results worse.

[smilie]

jmorgan: Anyone else see a drop in traffic corresponding to the Olympics?

I do see slight. And a drop in conversions too, that's relatively larger than drop in traffic. Our product needs reading and research , people either don't have time or don't bother.

Martin Ice Web: Fortunatelly google is amazon and ebay biased, so we had a bucket full of conversions.

You've been fortunate. We've been finally kicked out from Amazon, last company standing among my friends that I am hanging out with who are in ecommerce. I predicted this to happen in February-March, we held this long. How can you not kick out a 4.9 out of 5 star merchants that are leader in the niche, if they don't bother paying your "inside PPC" scam and don't fall for your "let's do Amazon fulfillment so we can steal your bestselling products" (Amazon took over more than 25 and some of them are now bestsellers, not falling for that anymore). And when you invent 15 different metrics , some of them so absurd there's no way for small merchant to handle (like "Return dissatisfaction").

[ecommerceprofit]

Thank you for your Amazon report Smilie...that's why I left Amazon...I knew someday they would kick me out so I decided to work on my own web site before they did. It was tough going for a while but I forced myself to do it. Then I kicked them to the curb first. Now I control my own destiny or so I thought... Now I am slammed by zombies...will work through this too. Google really is the only game in town. Waiting for Facebook, Pinterest, etc. other places to get their act together and truly create competition for Google.

Glakes...this is what I am talking about. Amazon is not your friend. They could kick you to the curb at anytime. Google is not either as we both agree on.

[smilie]

ecommerceprofit, sure. I am reflecting common concern of small merchants.

I've seen writing on the wall with Amazon since we started, you can't trust that company. Once they started taking over our bestsellers and making them theirs it was obvious. The last straw was when any garage-based guy who wants to make beer money, or a chinese junk seller, can attach to your products and sell it at lower cost, making basically beer money at best. And Amazon is the one who makes the most, 15%-17% on each order. We have a very strong ecommerce presence, 90% of our orders were on our site even when we sold on Amazon. So our presence in Google is strong , we are typically on page 1 or 2 for our thousands of keywords. And, I saw people fall off Amazon, good merchants, especially since late last year, and was preparing for this like there's no tomorrow - we've launched a redesigned site this month.

Because Amazon puts pressure on prices to be down this way, normal merchants don't make money. So you are either selling something that has crazy margins, or low margins and get paid very little. Or you don't provide support (like amazon). Or you start getting lower cost products. There's only 3 options. Which in our niche (and most) means you are selling chinese junk. The Walmartization of Amazon has been completed.

Neither one is your friend. Check my last post in the Analytic thread re zombies: [webmasterworld.com...]

[BushieTop]

I'm still seeing SERPs change every 4/6 hours....?! Anyone else seeing this?

[glakes]

I'm still seeing SERPs change every 4/6 hours....?! Anyone else seeing this?

I'm not seeing SERP changes myself, but the traffic pattern would lead me to believe some data centers are changing SERPS. My last visitors from Google were from Albania, India, Korea and Pakistan. I don't sell or ship to these countries, so the traffic is worthless. But most of the traffic Google sends these days is junk anyway, so not much new there - just a change in where the junk traffic originates from is all.

[samwest]

Highest traffic in months occurred yesterday. It was all tire kickers, zero conversions. I won't say the Z word.

[BushieTop]

Anybody still getting legacy crawl errors in GSC?

[glakes]

I won't say the Z word.

No need to. I have a hunch it is BankDrain (aka RankBrain), Google's artificially intelligent ATM machine that shakes down entire economies.

FWIW I'm seeing the same poor converting traffic from Google as you. ecommerce - USA

[edited by: glakes at 1:08 pm (utc) on Aug 23, 2016]

[Simon_H]

@BushieTop Yep. Had a massive surge in legacy crawl errors on 5th August and they're continuing to jump up far faster than normal.

[smilie]

@glakes, BankDrain is a good name for it, indeed!

I'm also in ecommerce, usa. I have statistically same traffic on week-to-week basis, but in spurs - good traffic when we convert like crazy, and exactly same pattern but when nothing converts.

Ironically, I had Google rep ask me "what's your best converting days" - had to explain to poor fella that this no longer exists for 3 years or so, our best converting days are when Google rotates paying and non-paying "a.k.a zombies" traffic and we get the paying ones. And this happens now randomly on days (or hours) we can't predict anymore.

@glakes, you might also be interested in my last 2 posts in "Removing Analytics" thread [webmasterworld.com...]
Where I attempt to explain what is zombies and why it occurs.

[smilie]

+1000 at what Dooku says.

Google is your competitor. They also are at liberty to make or break your business by sending you converting (or NOT) traffic. So, you giving away all your conversions, you are asking to be robbed blind.

You are asking "I was getting free traffic, now I deserve it back" , when Google is looking at it this way "this sucker gave us away their converting customers for free. how can we resell it with highest possible profit". So YOUR visitors get resold , not to you because you still expect "honest" way of operation and free traffic. And the game in Billions of $ is no longer honest, it is BIG BUSINESS.

[samwest]

You are asking "I was getting free traffic, now I deserve it back" , when Google is looking at it this way "this sucker gave us away their converting customers for free. how can we resell it with highest possible profit". So YOUR visitors get resold , not to you because you still expect "honest" way of operation and free traffic. And the game in Billions of $ is no longer honest, it is BIG BUSINESS.

First, you are in the wrong topic area. There is an entire thread for this. Second, if any of that held a drop of water, people would have already been jumping ship for unfettered organic en mass. Third, I personally never used GA for tracking goals, so they never know what converts. Besides, if they want that data, they'll get it any way they can (Chrome). I'm sure they 're not going to leave a door than large hanging wide open.

[glakes]

Third, I personally never used GA for tracking goals, so they never know what converts.

Even without goals enabled, most smaller ecommerce sites are using platforms that have a similar order success URL that can easily be defined as a goal on Google's backend. And many order confirmation emails get sent to a Gmail account. Most data gets sent back to Google in one form or another.

[masterjoe]

Dankbrain, tankbrain, stankbrain, bankbrain? Just wanted to put in a note on a total zombie day today, after having a pretty decent weekend and start of the week (in case anyone is having similar zombie time frames).

[Martin Ice Web]

@Bu#*$!op , thousand of crawl errors, pages that have been delete 4 years ago are now showing up as crawl errors!

While we still have buckets full of conversions from eaby and amazon, google decided to give us another hit. so we are now at 55% of traffic before this update.
This is realy strange as we moved up for many keys to 1 to 5 place.
So something other must have been changed to. I think that it has somehting to do with ecom rules ( buyers get diferent bad serps ) and with query suggestions.

Strange is also, that we saw this same pattern last year at the same time.

[samwest]

@masterjoe - Zombies everywhere! higher traffic over then past 24 hours, but zero conversions. It's pretty tight again and always getting tighter. Has anyone here every seen a sustained positive move and held it? I haven't.

[ionguy]

@martin ice web
history repeats itself
a l l w a y s !

@samwest
im getting t same here
another strange issue is traffic. up and down everyday since 3 weeks. does any one noticed something similar?
yeah and 1000s conversions per hour. . . . . . . NOT!

[BushieTop]

@martiniceweb - its interesting how our patterns are so cohesive. We too sure a surge in rank but a drop in conversions.