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.

[mosxu]

And so goes the illusion that all websites are treated fairly and quality is number one factor when it comes to rankings...

Forget rankings and seo we are getting only junk from adwards, hard paid money, looking at some absolute rubbish competitors who are ending up with a 5 times higher turnover than you and you spent double adwards and ranking higher than them everywhere!

What is the deal here ?

[seoskunk]

And it seems that the folk of Google like what they see :)

Profits are up shareholders are happy yes Google loves what its seeing. When e-commerce first emerged on the web things quickly went badly wrong, sites burned money with no sales and went belly up just as Google were emerging. They had no choice but to support the remaining people online that were mostly small business. As the internet grew in popularity so did Google so did small business. However there was a problem, high street stores couldn't compete with the internet traders and pretty soon were going bust.

Google were seen as the corporate enemy, breaking monopolies and giving the consumer free choice. And so faced with potential rival and exodus of corporate business they devised a plan. Starting in 2009 with update Vince they put into action a boost for Brands. Then they launched a set of algorithms designed to turn the internet upside down, putting Brands on top and small business where it belonged. Corporations were happy and reciprocated by investing in advertising and shareholders were happy because of increased ad revenue from both Corporations and Small Business desperate to keep afloat.

The 2009 update came less than six months after Google first attended the Bilderberg Meeting.

Panda, Penguin its all #*$! excuses to manipulate the web.

[johnhh]

@reseller called it All-In-One updates and @reseller, over the many years I have been on this forum, normally calls it right - perhaps you should forget google and move on to other avenues of interaction - i.e. social, newsletters,. etc

[seoskunk]

Google is perhaps the most sold out company in history, they were on a verge of real change but sold out for Corporate interests then they sold your personal data as well...

The sooner the internet becomes a non US commodity the sooner we see real change, its not just about changing your search engine, its everything the whole infrastucture is US based...

[seoskunk]

Putin once said the internet is a CIA project, no its a NSA project but apart from that he is correct.

[jambam]

@seoskunk There is so much evidence to support what you are saying especially the recent wikileaks about Eric Schmidt (went to Bilderberg this year ) harvesting phone data to create a voting database shows the level of manipulation google will go to get what google wants.
Although I am seeing less and less big brands showing up in the serps as well seems as though google is slowly pulling those back as well and just making amazon and other silicon valley pals the dish of the day all day every day more and more.

I am seeing also more and more amazon affiliate garbage sites all over the search results full to the brim with amazon links and anal content but sticking like glue and pushing actual sites that sell the products out the window....... if any other site created a system that lets people make money by linking to them then they would be penalized.

-This conversation is wholly relevant as if we understand better the motivation of google and if the system is just fixed then we can look at the search results changes better.

[Dimitri]

Just to say that today so far, my traffic from Google is twice what it uses to be on a Sunday. And it seems to be quality one, when I look at the time on site and number of pages read.

[samwest]

None of this has to do with ranking, It has to do with the variable "quality" of traffic we are sent. As I stated in my earlier post, the ON / OFF periods are what is most troubling for most webmasters, especially those of us who have been around over a decade and have witnessed the days of "natural" unfettered traffic. With a little work, anyone can rank a page to the top ten. With plenty of back links, semantic / long tail results kick in and it gets even easier.

I track my rankings very closely on certain sites, and without any changes in rank (sorry, I'm repeating myself) conversions go HOT and COLD. Today is a perfect example. It's a Sunday and I do my highest traffic volume of the week on Sunday. Sunday used to convert like mad simply because of the higher traffic volume....however, EVERY Sunday has now become a zero conversion day. Tuesday, which used to be my slowest day, now is my best converting day and that pattern repeats week after week. My end of week totals are also clamped to a certain amount and never exceed that. Even seasonal variation has flattened.

All available evidence points to some mechanism that limits traffic quality on select days of the week and it's highly repeatable. Other variables are clearly at play, but so is hard core traffic shaping. That's just my observation. Your mileage may vary.

[reseller]

We might assume that we are dealing with two versions of Google organic traffic; Productive and non-productive. As expected the "Productive Part of Google Organic Traffic" is the most important factor for revenue-generating websites.

As some posts on this thread have illustrated, it seems that the volume of Productive Part of Google Organic Traffic received by a website is neither related to ranking of the website main keywords on Google serps nor to increase/decrease in the total amount of Google organic traffic received by the website.

In fact we are talking about Google following on its own serps a very sharp and effective ANTI-SEO-STRATEGY! Keeping in mind that majority of traditional SEO work is focused on main keywords ranking and boost of volume of organic traffic.

[mosxu]

the strange thing is that productive v non productive traffic behaves unusual and this is why it started to stink, webmasters are not stupid AI messed it up

[samwest]

See? What everyone seems to be describing is the same thing. Sudden conversion follow by sudden nothing. That's not natural at all. Totally off for days again. Yesterday had another freak surge of mobile traffic to a single post article. While the site overall was sitting at zero visits, this surge went from zero to 78 visitors all at once and all mobile. Lasted 5 minutes then back to zero. Looked just like a load test. Needless to say, no conversions and no page to page interactivity, Again, not natural at all.

[ionguy]

after dead day i had 6o minutes of non-z guys traffic yesterday evening ; results?!? conversions; 60 minutes to earn the money; nice!
thank you brother g for your grace but its not enough; where s the rest? where is the other 23 hours?
today whole day dead again;
whole day dead again ...whole day dead again...whole day dead again... did i told ya whole day dead again? maybe i should speak up louder?

[mboydnv]

ionguy, samwest

The same is happening to our business. It's terrible. Worst month of sales in 12 years. I get new ranking positions everyday according to Semrush, always stop at #11. They never go higher than that.

Ads don't convert either. All my google traffic show up to the home page and then leave. Rarely find them going through the site.

Had zero sales on the 27th. Cybermonday I made normal money again, they turned it back on. Then Zero sales on Tuesday. and today so far one sale.

Blows my mind how Google filters us to not go above position 11. Somehow I really believe they are stealing our conversions. They turn a switch on and we make money, then the switch goes off and we make zero. Nevermind that I have an affiliate in position #5 for great terms, I got twitter, instagram and facebook humming, where are the sales?

Very frustrating.

[goodroi]

Mods Note: Welcome to the monthly Google Update & SERPs Changes thread. Please be careful to stay on the topic of Google updates and changes to the serps. If you post off topic comments they are very likely to be removed.

If you aren't happy about Google business policy, please share your opinion in our Google Finance & Business section [webmasterworld.com...] and keep this thread on topic :)

[System]

The following 11 messages were cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/4827670.htm [webmasterworld.com]
1:19 pm on Dec 2, 2016 (utc -5)