Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2016

[jmorgan]

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System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4820506.htm [webmasterworld.com] by aakk9999 - 10:16 am on Nov 3, 2016 (gmt 0)

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Something really strange happened yesterday. Analytics showed a complete tank of traffic for a duration of 2 hours between 10pm to 12am Melbourne, Australia time (equivalent I think to 7pm to 9pm EDT).

My revenue dip seems to reflect this. No server outages were reported during this time. Was there some kind of event happening out there, an internet outage or something?

Traffic today so far seems normal.

[Uber_SEO]

LOL - gone again today.

[BushieTop]

Just to report in because there seems to be alot of chatter, we're still seeing much fo the same, although traffic is terrible despite strong ranking positions. The traffic we get is non converting and we are STILL seeing domains littered with EMAT rule the roost. I would happily stay where i was if those that were spamming their way to the top got penalised!

[mosxu]

At least half of traffic coming through is questionable. I would not describe it as mismatched or not correctly geo located, they seem to...

[glakes]

Possibly zombie spread? If so, don't waste much time trying to make adjustments to please a search engine who's growth model requires that they take more out of our pockets than they already have to put into theirs. Ecommerce sites can sell in different marketplaces, forge new alliances with industry related businesses to cross-promote each other, take steps that encourage past customers to spend again, etc. And who knows, increased traffic from sources outside of Google may help to bolster signals that Google's algorithm will interpret favorably.

For me, the $40 a month Amazon Pro seller fee and their 15% cut from each sale offers a much better ROI then Adwords. That's how I broke free from the zombie insanity. Plus I have customers referring new customers directly to my site now, which has definitely helped the bottom line.

Don't forget Rank Brain does get taken offline to learn. If your site has all the ingredients to rank good, when Rank Brain is offline you may see spikes in traffic and/or conversions. Although just a hunch, I think one of Rank Brain's main goals is to maximize CTR on ads. To accomplish this, ecommerce sites are routinely dropped out of repeated buyer keyword queries from the same users - making it more difficult to convert users from research to actual customer. Making it more difficult to gauge this effect, rank trackers tend to produce often wildly inaccurate results as compared to an individual's search. This I suspect is because Google knows all the host IP ranges from ISP ranges, and can generate a list of search results for any given query accordingly.

[lonewolfseo]

Follow-up from my previous post: Both sites dropped close to 20% WoW and YoY (non seasonal) from Tuesday-Friday, rebounded to normal levels Sat. and now are up ~10-15% YoY...I'll take the extra traffic, but I really wish there was more of a pattern to grasp here--hard to tell what exactly is happening.

[mosxu]

ecommerce sites are routinely dropped out of repeated buyer keyword queries from the same users...

sounds like somebody else is doing the conversion rate optimization for the e-commerce websites, do not bother making great user experience on a ecommerce site since zombies cannot make the difference...

[Dimitri]

I don't know if it's of interest, but I just noticed something.

I have a site, which I switched to https, last May. I set up all the redirections, etc… and in September, in Google's SERP, ALL the pages from the "http" site were definitively replaced by the "https" ones. There were no more pages from the non secure URL.

However, today, I see that Google is displaying 15,000 pages from the "http" site. I don't know what it means. I checked, all my redirection and configuration are all in place, and working fine. So I don't know if Google restored old data.

[Uber_SEO]

Hi @Dimitri - I'm seeing something very similar. Looks like Google is disregarding 301 redirects and canonical tags, and is simply making up which domains to rank.

[mosxu]

takes to 2-3 weeks max for old http pages to disappear, maybe the problem is similar with legacy 404s that keep coming back after deleted, some zombie affected sites been reporting

[BushieTop]

Are you guys seeing crawl errors on GSC - I have a feeling this isnt anything to do with penguin and is infact a re-run of Phantom. Patterns here and from what you are discussing there look really similar.

[Uber_SEO]

Yes to crawl errors in GSC. I think a roll-out of Phantom would probably describe what we're seeing, far better than Penguin. Would be great to at least get some confirmation from Google though so we know what needs to be worked on to fix it.

[BushieTop]

@Uber we got absolutely killed by Phantom back in June, took me alot of hours to but my finger on it. Nothing this time though, fingers crossed!

[seoskunk]

Phantom - just another excuse to hit small business?

[Robert Charlton]

Phantom...

Phantom tends to be about site quality (user-engagement, usability, user-experience factors, depending on how many hairs you want to split about what you call them). For a good thread about the Phantoms of a year ago, with reference to other Phantom studies and discussions, I suggest this one...

Nov 2015 Phantom updates: user-engagement factors + Panda
Dec 2015
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4780955.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Note also that on Nov 11, I posted a thought here that the Nov 10 shakeups might have had to do with the mobile-first index....

...because of the age of the site you specify, I'm wondering whether there is a mobile version, and whether testing of a new mobile-first index might be a factor.

Lots I've been seeing since, in the serps and including some articles around the web, also suggest the new mobile index. I should add that a mobile-first index is not in any way inconsistent with a deeper look at usability factors that a mobile index would entail....

Google Announces Mobile-First Indexing
Nov 4, 2016
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4824607.htm [webmasterworld.com]

quoting Shaddows' Nov 8, 2016 post in the mobile-firest thread...

...To my mind this could be the biggest dance since Mayday/Caffeine, possibly Florida (though I stress, for completely different reasons than either- they were ranking factor or IA changes, while this will be a total change of source material).

[Dimitri]

I don't know if this is of interest, but since 5 hours, my traffic from Google increased by 30%, compared to the last 4 weeks.

[Jez123]

I am seeing some movement on a couple of SERP's. A reversal of the P4 reversal perhaps. Not all searches are back how they were but I ma only just seeing it starting. Anyone else seeing anything that looks familiar to when P4 was rolled out (before it was rolled back or whatever it was that happened).

[BushieTop]

@Jez not seeing anything yet, however i didn't see a complete roll back when you guys were discussing it. I still think it could be something different. @Robert Chalton, would you not agree that indexation and particularly the handling of redirects is a sign of quality? We saw huge spikes in bot rates and crawl errors pre phantom last time. With mobile becoming the primary index, maybe it needs to re-run there - just a thought...

[Jez123]

indexation and particularly the handling of redirects is a sign of quality?

So legacy redirects could now be an issue? Good grief.

[ionguy]

@seoskunk
playing cat and mouse

[Martin Ice Web]

Today is a zombie day and a big shake up in our vertical. Not for the best user experience thus but for google earning money....

[BushieTop]

@Jez, I've always been a firm believer that Phantom, not only looks at user quality signals, but it looks at indexation too. 404's and redirects can effect user experience and so i would say the way that these are handled has an effect on Phantom.

[mikeinjersey]

why can't we quote others in this forum? seems like nonsense to not have this feature. Guess I have to do it manually.

>>"I don't know if this is of interest, but since 5 hours, my traffic from Google increased by 30%, compared to the last 4 weeks."

complete opposite on my end. several of my adult sites dropped 80% of it's traffic during the last 12 hours. Their doing something..
all legit sites too / good seo / no ads.

[MrSavage]

Beam me up Scotty

Sample quote above. A quote from a famous bumper sticker. It's only half the bumper sticker sentence, but discovering the rest of the sentence can be part of the fun, as it were. Fitting? You be the judge.

[mikeinjersey]

wheres the option?

or maybe u need to have a thousand posts first..

[keyplyr]

@mikeinjersey - If you use the Post Reply button below, you'll see the Quote options.

[Robert Charlton]

mikeinjersey... A PS re Quote options... you've got to copy and paste, and then highlight your copied selection and hit the quote button to enclose it in quote tags. Note that there's an automatic double space after the quoted selection, and there are some buggy features that you'll get used to.

The site's been a work in progress since it was converted to responsive. It's what we have. We do the best we can. It was an amazing accomplishment to convert it from fixed to responsive while maintaining functionality.

There are also several sets of posting guidelines that might be helpful... one to the left of the text entry window, and a whole selection of helpful hints below it. I sometimes use the edit coding buttons up above... sometimes I hand enter BBS HTML Style Codes per syntax you'll find in a link below.

BBS code will help you develop bad habits if you also code regular html by hand. ;)

And there's a link to the forum Charter under Forum Options menu up top, and another one in a tiny font in the text at the top page of each forum. The Charter of each forum on WebmasterWorld is slightly different. Our basic guidelines are to be nice, be considerate of other members and be tolerant of different ideas, don't get personal but try to discuss ideas, don't editorialize either pro or against Google, avoid promotion, and avoid politics and religion.

On some WebmasterWorld forums, we need to talk about specific software or the discussions don't make sense. On the Google forum, we avoid talking about tools unless they're in common use. We pro-actively avoid promotion. Members who've established themselves as part of the community can link externally. New members generally should not link out, unless to authority sites.

For everybody's protection, public site reviews are available only in the paid Supporters section.

We generally try to stay on topic, and this post about how to use the forum is off topic to this Updates thread, which is about Google Updates and SERP changes, but I think it might be helpful to everyone, so I'm taking a chance it won't turn into a discussion of its own and derail this thread. Hoping this all helps. Welcome to the forum.

As I see you've discovered, Google just had a big Nov 10 update... probably Mobile-first and Phantom combined... and it's taking a while to settle down, but I think that some of the obvious mobile usability issues were what got hit first.

[Martin Ice Web]

FYI, Google just had a big Nov 10 update... probably Mobile-first and Phantom combined... and it's taking a while to settle down. Hoping this all helps. Welcome to the forum.

It looks like Phantom but in a very bad way. Big brands have been pushed regardless of quality, user engagament.
I think that this is a christmas shopping season push included.

[ionguy]

@martin ice web
its phantom menace

but seriously something happens this week
traffic
mon around 1250
tue around 1600
wed around 1200 (z guys)
thu around 1200 (return of the z guys)
fri till now around 400 (z guys strikes back)

[Dimitri]

In my case, yesterday, was very good. Good "quality" traffic, good time on site, good number of page view per visitors, good adsense incomes. And for the first time, it looked like what I am expecting.

I mean, I have a site targeting English speaking audience, and for the first time since a very long time, my traffic was finally in line with the expectations, with mostly visitors from US, Canada, UK and Australia. Usually, most of my incomes are from "non" English speaking countries!

I have a generic site, nothing seasonal

Today, seems to continue this good trend, fingers crossed.

[ionguy]

over half of the day 600 uniqes z guys going crazy ;
no new hope phantom menace doing ihis job

@dimitri
same here non-seasonal generic site
it's the issue page views/sessions all looks well but conversions are dead