Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2016

[NickMNS]

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System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4814310.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:01 pm on Sep 1, 2016 (PDT -8)

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I agree with you that features such keyword, location, browser type and so on (not set) may well be someone blocking the info for privacy reasons.But @ionguy my understanding is that whenever the hostname is set to anything other than your domain name then it must be a bot, this includes (not set). In so far as hostname specifically is concerned (not set) is always a bot and not a privacy issue. Filtering out the hostname (not set)s and other foreign domain from your data is essential to getting accurate stats.

This is applies to piwik and other analytics tools as much as it does to GA.

[Paperchaser]

@wadsman I been seeing this for quite a while now as well. Low quality site being ranked extremely well due to their domain having keyword matches is getting old now can't wait for this update to hit it already...

1. Results that have the exact match keyword in the content, meta-data, H1 and URL.
2. Higher percentage of EMAT in content has a higher possibility to rank in the SERP’s.
3. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) were not as in effect as before.
4. Search results became more tailored to fit the keyword intent.
5. Majority results in SERP's are mostly information results rather than commercial results.

[BushieTop]

@Simon_H yes, i did 301 them and I see what you're thinking. These were pages deep into the site's structure, which possessed zero offsite equity - and given that it was an eccommerce site, little content value based on the fact they cannonical to the parent page.

I cant see that having an effect. I'm thinking like others on this thread - this is a reversal of whatever happen early Sept.

[javadth]

@Shai a mix of follow - nofollow - profile link - comment link - articles - sitewide - sidebars and ....


it is confusing because i couldnt Match any sort of google known updates with my sites or my competitors

at least of or two of them reversal google known algos

[BushieTop]

Looking at Analytics this morning my traffic is 29% down, day on day.... just ridiculous.

No webspam notification. No crawl errors.

[sench]

Exact and partial match domains are taking over, from what I can see

edit: I also noticed as some of you here, plural variation of keyword is ranking while the singular dropped (because it's less present in on-page elements). wow it's like a giant rollback to 2012 or what not

[Shai]

@javadth, that's exactly my point. You insinuate when you said:

after many standard linkbuldings and hard workings my websites dropped hard

and someone who cheating or buying backlinks is in his first position in top 10

that somehow people are cheating and making gains while your link building techniques are organic or "white hat". They are not.

You then said:

@Shai a mix of follow - nofollow - profile link - comment link - articles - sitewide - sidebars and ....

Comments spam, profile links (also spam) and article directories are also cheating.

I'm not having a go at you here, none of us are whiter than white nor do I claim here to never have dabbled in the black art but I note that its becoming very common for SEO's to say that they work hard at white hat organic link building and then list those type of spammy techniques in contradiction to their initial statement.

I'm not sure why but many people STILL believe that these type of link building techniques are within Google's guidelines and somehow Google is ok with it. We need to be clear, even though we can argue if they work, how long for and how they work, we can say with certainty that they are outside Google's guidelines and they are NOT organicand they are NOT "white hat"


In a forum such as this, you need to be clear as people are taking your word for it when trying to make sense of the algo update. If people were to actually think you did everything within Google's guidelines yet got a penalty of some sort, it sends them the wrong message and throws their investigations in the wrong direction.

Hope I made sense.

[BushieTop]

@shai - In my honest opinion the term White hat makes me shudder... I'm not sure its even a thing - how do you define it. Whatever your optimising, whether it be onsite or offsite, your trying to manipulate an algorithm to achieve better results - what is that?

[Simon_H]

@BushieTop Cheers. If those pages were already canonicalised, I doubt that 301ing them is going to cause Google to throw its toys out the pram. And soft 404s aren't a terribly big deal anyway.

More thinking... could you have accidentally messed something up whilst doing that, e.g. accidentally 301ed lots of other pages to the wrong place?

[Nutterum]

Seeing some fluctuations in the broad keyword spectrum for several languages. Exact match or keyword heavy domains are gaining strenght since the 6th, but I decided to wait before I report this. Languages EN/GB, EN/US, DE, BG.

[Shai]

@BushieTop - Which is why I put it in quotes. However, there is no denying that what Google want to see is more in the direction of link earning. I.e editorially given links. Links that are referrals to studies or well researched content for example. Although we can always find grey areas, I don't think anyone can argue that mass profile links or comment spam are anywhere near that definition yet I am constantly coming across SEO websites offering such services while referring to them as White hat or Organic. They are definitely not.

Although its a very interesting subject for another thread maybe, I fear we are digressing from the thread purpose.

[jambam]

I see 4 amazon uk, 1 amazon us, 2 ebay and to top it off 1 sentence glossary page rank on page 1 nowadays.

[BushieTop]

@simon_H no i dont think so, we used similar principles to when we moved to https - redirecting these legacy pages back to URL strings that we semantically relevant.

@shai No i agree with whats black hat, as in deep and dark - i'm just referring to white hat.

[BushieTop]

Anyone else agree this isnt Penguin?

[Simon_H]

@BushieTop Definitely agree it's not Penguin. Just because some Penguin-hit sites are seeing ranking changes doesn't mean that Penguin has run.

[BushieTop]

@simon_H thank god, thought i was the only one!

[BushieTop]

@Simon_H are you of the opinion that this is a new update working, or rather, 1st Sept was the new algo, which has since been rolled back?

Interested to hear other peoples thoughts too....

[lightnb]

We also noticed a very slow day yesterday (9/13) and then around 2PM the orders just stopped. Nothing wrong with the site, but no orders in almost 24 hours. Traffic levels from Google organic look normal in Analytics.

We are also seeing the spike in not found old URLs showing in WMT starting on 8/29/16. A whole bunch that I thought Google had gotten out of it's system a few years ago just showed up. All return a 410 response code.

I should also add that I think (but of course have no way to tell) that our site was hit by Penguin due to NSEO. The spam links are all disavowed and we continue to disavow about 5 new spam links each week (they keep building them!), but are waiting for "Titanic" to refresh to see some recovery. We had a good day 8-16 - 8/17 where other users were reporting spikes in sales, but didn't see much change on the 9/1 and 8/1 dates other saw changes on.

[renatovieira]

The date for Penguin 4 is 9-23-16.

by: Bill Lambert

[Simon_H]

@BushieTop I really don't know. I try not jump to conclusions or make general assumptions with any of these things!

[Shaddows]

I am seeing extremely diverse datasets rolling through SERPs.

It's affecting our referrals in a big way, depending on what set is dominating. I can make myself see patterns as early as last Wednesday (7th Sept), but it's been clear since Monday (12th) and on steroids today.

We generally do not see swings like this unless a chunky general update rolls through - and we have never had any impact either way during the Panda/Penguin updates.

[BushieTop]

@shaddows you seeing positive or negative results....?

[aristotle]

Somebody said that some networks were brought down. A crash even in just one sector could cause reverberations back and forth across the web, since everything is inter-connected, until the disturbances die out.

[Ceej]

Hope this all settles soon. We've seen a sizeable rankings boost across our 1500 tracked keywords in Australia from the 2nd of Sep update. It's been very turbulent ever since.
Oh, and G'day everyone :)

[Shaddows]

@BushieTop
Both, it depends. We're net-neutral, but with big swings.

We have a pretty diverse portfolio, in a very large niche. One of our biggest categories of product is down significantly, but a number of smaller categories are up. Similarly, we will get periods where we have really low (value or volume) sales, followed by a couple of epic hours that brings us back to average.

Watching actual SERPs is a mugs game, but we're moving around for our perceived money terms, and our branded search is giving different 6-pack links than usual.

And an odd third-party review company is on page 1... there are various review sites (e.g. TrustPilot) that have literally thousands of reviews, but this one has 3. That's the number 3, not 3K or whatever.

[BushieTop]

@shadows - so your seeing general search quality go down?

[masterjoe]

I have also seen different 6 pack links for branded searches. The weird thing is that putting them into my demotions didnt do anything, they wer still there even weeks after. After I removed the demotions I got something closer to what I wanted.

Better pages, although I have still yet to see a return of quality traffic.

[Jez123]

I have noticed that after an initial jump in rankings at the start of this "update" or whatever it is / will be, but I can see that the rankings are drifting back down. I also didn't notice any real traffic gains from the rises in ranking but this may be more due to most reaching the top of page 2 and not hitting page 1. Anyone noticing similar jumps up then drift back down?

[BushieTop]

@Jez123 yes, more of a sudden drop than a drift though.

I know Mozcast is to be taken with a pinch of salt, but its showing 111 degrees for Tuesday.

[syedyasir]

I am seeing lot of a movement in Google.com
My site's ranking is dropping each day. For some keywords, I am seeing a lot of hacked sites appear in SERPs, again.

[Shaddows]

so your seeing general search quality go down?

Sure, but only because any time my site is not number 1, SERP quality must have gone down(!)

Seriously though, the review site is annoying. We have 95%-98% ratings generally on review sites, but this review site has ratings two bad reviews out of three.

In general, I see churn more than declining quality, at the top end anyway. Admittedly, I have not spent a lot of time rating the qualities of the various sites churning below us, so they could be worse then the normal incumbents, but not noticeably so. I generally find that in a mature niche, there are MANY sites who are of generally similar quality, but only 3-4 are going to be occupying worthwhile slots. During churn, 1-3 of those sites get rotated out with another 10ish similar quality sites.