Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2017

[andymorris]

---

System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4834186.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:19 am on Mar 2, 2017 (PDT -8)

---

CTR and position going up on the 28th, not to the december and january levels, but slowly up. Was doing an average of 6000 clicks from search, and on the 28th it got past 1000 for the first time since early feb.

[Robert Charlton]

I noticed that anytime i post a new article and it starts getting alot of traffic from search other articles that were on page 1 of google will be pushed down to page 5 sometimes they get pushed down to page 10. It seems like google is throttling or shaping my traffic

Possibly, you could be "cannibalizing" your own traffic. Are you ranking for the same terms, displacing the previous pages, or are these new terms you're ranking for? If these are the same terms, it's also possible that these are QDF (query deserves freshness) type terms, so that newer pages on the topic will tend to displace the older ones.

[Halaspike]

@Robert Charlton am ranking for new terms & they are not QDF type terms. Anytime i start ranking for a new term, old terms that were ranking well will be demoted and the terms have nothing to do with each other so it's definitely not the QDF effect taking place. It's like google has placed a ceiling over my traffic so when i start ranking for new terms, old terms i was ranking well for will be demoted, that's why no matter what i do the organic traffic google sends me remains the same. I don't know how long this will last but it's definitely google that's throttling & shaping my traffic.

[browndog]

I've just been whacked again. I guess my site must be spammy rubbish :( The fact that I work 12 hours a day on my content and Google deem it to be thin and poor quality is the most disheartening feeling ever.

[mboydnv]

@browndog, same exact thing happened to me. I got wacked again March 8. It's terrible. I have quality content. etc.

Seems all roads are pointing to rebuilding a backlink profile of better quality.

What sucks is my competition is dominating the top spots because he is buying domains with traffic and redirecting the traffic to his site. So google rewards him with organic traffic. Thus he makes money and buys google ads. Doesn't matter what kind of traffic he is redirecting, as long as his domain keeps getting hit, google loves him.

His seo sucks. his backlink profile sucks. I've beat him on so many factors, yet they sentence me to the 3rd page and no sales.

Lesson learned:

Google rewards sites that have traffic with more traffic.
They reward sites for spending on ads.

I've given up adding new content.

And nothing like the joy of busting your hump on social media only to get 2 people a day from it.

Internet sucks more than ever in 2017.

[browndog]

I think you are right, myboydnv. What stings is I am beaten on a very comprehensive (thousands of words covering everything) with a very thin 'product' article which isn't even in the same niche as me.

What also really bites is that it feels like Google assume everybody is out to play the system (which is not true), and they say things like 'if you've been hit you deserved it', without actually knowing what was the cause, because they won't share that.

I know there are a lot of people who engage in gaming the system, but not everybody. If I knew what it was, I would try and fix whatever is making Google unhappy. I've never once tried to play them with any kind of black hat SEO.

I don't understand how they can think everyday sites like mine would be trying to link build with some of the seriously awful sites that link to mine. I don't know why these sites do, but again, guilty until proven innocent. It just feels like they think we're all a bunch of criminals. Gosh, I'm really missing Matt Cutts right about now, at least he gave out information.

How do you even build a backlink? I've never done it. I link to stuff I think is really good and hope people will do the same if they like my content.

[mboydnv]

@browndog, In two years, Google has stripped me of 75% of my income. Slick marketers lead me on goosehunt. There was always something else to do/fix. Move site to SSL, Check. Write quality content. Check. Got links on USA today, Original photos, social media tickling, it never ends.

The bottom line is Google could care less about small business. In just about every niche, you see the Walmarts of the niche at the organic top. And coincidentally they also are the ads too. Sometimes they get two spots. Its sickening.

The other thing that is irritating is the capping of traffic, sometimes to within 5 unique visitors. Really I'm supposed to believe that the same amount of people every friday is random, every tuesday etc.? Come on ..

I've noticed, the ads don't convert either most of the time. I.e. Zombie traffic.

So every month, here we are trying to figure out the latest on the algorythm?

Why don't figure out why we are still using some Russian billionaire's Search engine who could care less about American small business?

Imagine a world of everyone saying no more to that engine, and switching to something else because it just feels right.

Hello duckduckgo.com

[browndog]

You know what it feels like...getting a traffic infringement in the mail, but they won't tell you why you've been given a penalty, just 'you broke the road rules'. You didn't intentionally break the rules, but something you did, broke those rules. So you're blind. You can't stop breaking the rules because you don't know what rule you've broken. You don't intentionally speed or drink and drive, or let your 5 year old behind the wheel, but you've still got an infringement. All they will say is 'you deserved it'.

This is my house that is on the line, I know that is dramatic, but that is what is where we are at. And all they can say is 'yes there was an update, and we hit sites that deserved it'.

[Jori]

"What sucks is my competition is dominating the top spots because he is buying domains with traffic and redirecting the traffic to his site."

Precisely my case, mboydnv.

It doesn't matter any more the quality of content. I should add that I see a lot of PBNs working really great, even better than before. Why am I seeing, week after week, lower and lower traffic for my small website? It's nonsense, after all the improvings I made for users, and only users !

It seems to me that I must go out there seeking for backlinks. It's the only thing I didn't try these last weeks...

[browndog]

Interestingly for my site, the most thorough and well-researched articles have dropped and thinner articles are now rising in the ranks. Very strange. Today is shaping up to be better than yesterday, which was dire, but still way down.

[mboydnv]

I'm screwed browndog. Dropped 10 spots for main keyword. Feel free and message me if you want to compare notes sometime.

[Robert Charlton]

like...getting a traffic infringement in the mail, but they won't tell you why you've been given a penalty, just 'you broke the road rules'. You didn't intentionally break the rules, but something you did, broke those rules.

browndog, I empathize, as I've occasionally gotten such notifications myself, mostly from government agencies or large companies, and it's a dreadful feeling.

My last post in this thread, btw, about not cannibalizing search targets, and also being aware about possible QDF effects, was answered by Halaspike... but was intended for you both. I see in the current site improvement thread [webmasterworld.com...] that you're also aware of QDF. (That was an impressive post, btw.)

Let me ask both you and Halaspike... how often are you making changes? Could what you're doing be seen as tweaking, making changes so frequently that it might appear to Google that you were trying to reverse engineer the algo by constantly tuning your pages.

I ask in part because it seems like a natural thing to do if you're putting in a lot of time improving your site, but, depending on how you choose the roll out the changes, it could be seen as twiddling and it might backfire.

Here's the thread where discussed a particular Google patent that suggested the possibility....

Google's Rank Modifying Patent for Spam Detection
Aug 18, 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4486158.htm [webmasterworld.com]

...and while there's some uncertainty about whether the patent's been implemented, I'm almost certain I've seen it in action. Additionally, it reminds me of various overoptimization penalties from years back, pre-Panda, where using, say, too much similar internal anchor could produce an algorithmic backlash that would plummet your pages for a while from the top to the bottom of the results, "minus 950" as we called it. There were also intermediate states of limbo, -30, -50, etc, and I think that, at the time, a lot of changes were appearing to Google as manipulative. Read the thread... I think it might be helpful. The line between making a site more useful and tuning, say, internal exact match anchor text for SEO can be thin enough that I think you do occasionally have to be careful... always asking whether this is for Google, or for users, or is it for both (which IMO would be fine).

If a page drops in reaction to a change, the thing you should never do is to jump in and try to boost it. Let it sit for a while.

The other thought that comes to mind is that there's something in page changes now which requires time for the algo to absorb changes, and that potentially takes time. It's likely that received links are one of the signals that Google looks for... not many, but some good ones. If you're not actively building links (and I think it's wise not to unless you're really aware of what's going to raise flags), then you may want to try pushing some traffic via social or advertising to those pages, to build enough familiarity with your site to motivate natural links.

PS: These things can take months. You may be feeling too anxious.

Good luck.

[Halaspike]

@Robert Charlton i hardly make changes to my site because it already has all what search engines and users need. Only thing i do is post new great content daily bringing back alot of returning visitors. Like you said "maybe am feelin too anxious", i know they will stop throttling my traffic so my site can reach it's full potential, i just gotta be patient.

[mboydnv]

@Robert Charlton , @Halaspike. I got to tell ya guys, I've literally tried everything over 12 years. I've done what you suggested. No results. I've done the social media stuff.

Here's my opinion. You guys and others IMHO subscribe to the belief that the system is NOT rigged. That you can still work hard and get to the top. I don't believe that anymore. Sure maybe in 2012. Here's what i believe, and I feel I have evidence to this thought from what i've seen over the years and what i observe in log files.

My list of why your site may not be ranking anymore (assuming you are doing honest things, building links, great copy etc)

1. Site may be hacked by Russians. Yes, Russians. They've been all over wordpress sites since November with brute force logins and spamming Anayltics etc. Causing headaches. Webmasters say block them at server, use wordfence etc.

- I believe they have an engenius hack that somehow is hurting sales, or they are pounding the server and Google is punishing you for that. I don't know, but I smell something fishy.

2. Pay to play. If you are not paying big money for adwords, then you will not get top organic traffic. It's a viscious circle.

3. Google is walmartizing the results. My niche (tourism in Las Vegas) is saturated now with multimillion dollar companies at the top. It's sickening.

4. Zombie traffic. Why is this existing? This should not have ever existed. But it does. It's dishonest. You pay $1 for a click it should be a human being clicking not a bot on your ads. I smell click fraud, India boiler rooms etc tied to google ads.

5. Stop listening to slick marketers, yoast, patel etc. They don't exist to help you. They too are money driven. Think for yourself.

6. Don't trust Google anylatics or webmaster tools. They are spying on you and learning your sales patterns and then will use that info against you

7. Google is capping traffic. Same numbers every week, no matter what season. same average traffic on Monday as last Monday etc.

8. I've done it all, moved site to SSL, interlinked posts with intelligent thought. Added 2000 word posts with owned photos for a guide section. Wrote 1000 word blog posts. Used no 1 best selling wordpress template. Switched hosting, switch registrar to Google. Used webmaster tools. Robots.txt file, htaccess, backlinks on major papers USA today etc. Partnered with other sites.

The party is over. Google has kicked small business to the curb. It's not about weeding out the spammers anymore, it's about maximizing ad revenue. Those who pay will get organic listings.

America has CVS and walgreens, multiple bottle water companies, blue jeans etc. why are we stuck with one mega engine? That is screwing us all?

[browndog]

Thanks Robert. That's a valid point about editing. I've become a bit of a perfectionist with some of my recently edited articles and keep tweaking them. Not to play Google, but because I keep wanting to add more information or change the format, especially on lone articles as I don't want to scare readers away with the sheer volume. I will step away from those ones and just focus on new content in the meantime. The only exception is adding custom ordered diagrams which I hope will help the reader to understand a bit more.

myboydnv, I am so sorry to hear your site is still being hit. I know how much blood, sweat and tears we put into our sites, mine is like my firstborn, actually is my firstborn, the site is older than my oldest child. You feel proud but protective of something you have worked so hard on. I really really hope things do turn around for you.

Mine is up again today. Yesterday and today I am seeing some major swings. Definitely think something is happening.

[mosxu]

@mboydnv

I feel your pain but if you think your website has been hacked and this is why you are getting zombies, that is not making sense.

You will get a warning in the webmaster tools that your site has been hacked and should get no bogus traffic instead.

Who ever did not like you and put a quota on your website is being responsible.

There is no transparency we just have to guess the rules of the game...

[EditorialGuy]

I've done it all, moved site to SSL, interlinked posts with intelligent thought. Added 2000 word posts with owned photos for a guide section. Wrote 1000 word blog posts. Used no 1 best selling wordpress template. Switched hosting, switch registrar to Google. Used webmaster tools. Robots.txt file, htaccess, backlinks on major papers USA today etc. Partnered with other sites.

Maybe that's part of the problem: Google has always said, "Build sites for users, not for search engines." If nothing else, time that's spent on trying to please Google (especially when you don't know what Google wants, and when you're aiming at a moving target) is time that could be spent on building a larger, richer, more engaging site that's harder for new competitors to overtake.

[mboydnv]

@browndog, thank you. I'm tempted to take my site and launch it onto another domain and start again. But maybe do it through a shopify platform instead of wordpress.

@mosxu "Who ever did not like you and put a quota on your website is being responsible. " would love to know more, has anyone ever proven this?

@EditiorialGuy - I've always built sites for the user. My domain is 12 years old. I was pretty much first to the game. Site is current and updated - feel free and visit. I'm afraid the system is rigged. Anything and everything I do send me down more. It's a slow death, been happening over 2 years. It's really crazy when you compare to my competition. I'm 300 a day now, they are 17,000. So sad. Looking for work next week , first time in 12 years.

Grrr!

[mosxu]

@mboydnv

We have been looking to websites competing in the same industry same keywords if you like and there is not good news.

[Atomic]

@mboydnv If the site you're talking about is the same as the one in your profile, then I can see why it could have trouble ranking. You should consider having fresh eyes take a look at it and conduct an audit.

[EditorialGuy]

@mboydnv, I think one of the problems you're facing is simply the fact that search algorithms may work better for information sites than for commerce sites.

With an information site, what ultimately matters is the content on the page. With a commerce site, there are many factors or variables that the search engine simply has no way of evaluating properly. How is Google, Bing, Yandex, or Baidu supposed to know who has the best tour, or who ships widgets the fastest, or who's the least surly when a customer writes in with a complaint?

Given Google's stated mission (to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible," which is a lot different from "matching sellers and buyers"), it might make sense for Google to take the path of least resistance and give searchers commercial results that are likely to be "good enough." (How many buyers are likely to complain because they were given commercial search results for Amazon, eBay, Target, or Expedia?)

Already, organic results are being squeezed between top and bottom layers of ads on commercial SERPs. I wouldn't be surprised to see the bread get thicker and the filling get thinner as the sandwich continues to evolve.

[mosxu]

Matt Cutts said that top Adwords advertisers provide good enough shopping experience so now the rankings should be filled with amazon, eBay and high street stores and not more ecommerce sites.

Problem is that if you try get into Adwords a quota may be assigned to your website that you will never know about it and you will be spending like crazy most likely on bots while the top three long term advertisers enjoy the converting traffic first.

And then you wonder what is wrong with your website!

[30K_a_month]

still the same, one product thin content webpages dominating entire niche sites, poor

[Nutterum]

Just think for a second. Who will you rank better? The themeforest WP customized theme reselling green spanners, or the multi-milion dollar site of the green spanners manufacturer with state of the art design and UI/UX experience website? The 1200 low/medium tier backlinks or 1,200,000 low/medium links with 1000 top quality links and multi-segment wikipedia page to boot?

The game is not rigged. You are trying to survive at the high-bidders table, is all.

[andynicky89]

There should be a chance to everyone mister Nutterum. I saw a lot of websites that ranked for keywords that has nothing to do with the search, only because they have a "1" a "b", just a number or just a letter in description, title, or domain. Where the hack is SEO in that equation? If i run a query and search for Football balls and Google returns 3 pages results about Football socks or Football shirts, where is the SEO there? Google algo right now is about nothing. Again, artifical intelligence can only destroy and not improve ( if is by default or not programmed just to kill)

[NickMNS]

@andynicky89

If i run a query and search for Football balls and Google returns 3 pages results about Football socks or Football shirts, where is the SEO there?

I am assuming that you are using "Football balls" as an example, since when I search for that specifically it returns results related to soccer balls.

But in general when query is ambiguous, as when it is simply an entry of a keyword, Google cannot guess a clear intent, they will return a variety of results that may appear to be only be loosely related to the term. The reason is providing the searchers with variety of answers based on likely intents and not a keyword. So for example if you type in Baseball ball, it may return a page about the balls used to play baseball but you may also get result describing what the term "ball" is in the rules of baseball. I assume that this heavily influenced by personalization and browsing history. So if you look for football balls, and then look for baseball you are more likely to get results about actual balls. But say you search first for baseball rules then you would likely get results about the term or the regulation sizing of the ball.

As a side note, this functionality is the reason why one needs to take the keyword ranking tools with a big grain of salt.

[EditorialGuy]

NickMNS makes some great points. Of course, if you're from a part of the world where no one knows anything about baseball, "baseball ball" may sound less ambiguous than it does to a baseball fan. :-)

[30K_a_month]

search for any electrical device. Thin pages with just an image and a few lines of specification from amazon or bestbuy ranking 1,2,3,4,5 in many search terms.

then we have all the other sites like huffingtonpost / lifewire/ techradar ETC

They can literally create any page they want and rank it top no matter what the niche or competition. All of these sites now churn out daily top 10 this top 10 that that link straight to amazon and google sends them straight to the top regardless of quality or relevance. its a mess

@Nutterum you are right unfortunately. not long before pure pay to play.

The rich get richer and the poor do not stand a chance,.

[andynicky89]

@NickMNS
Ofcourse, was an example. Google returns results that even doesn't have that keyword in title, body (text) or even meta description. But, actually there exists pages with that keyword in tittle, body or meta description but they are on page 4,5,6,7 and Google doesn't want to return them as a relevant results in spots 3,5,10 even 20. What's your explanation? Google is now totally reversed. They rank authority now but not relevant websites. That's the problem.

[NickMNS]

@30k_a_month, I have previously raised the idea that search was (with in limits) a zero-sum game, by the same token search is also winner-take-all game. Once you gain size, in terms of Google credibility, you can then point links to pretty much anything and make it rank. Now Google will say that is not so, as links are not the only ranking factor. But the other ranking factor can be heavily influenced once you have Google's trust. So take as example huff post. In general users trust it, so they create a lot of content, users go to the content, it may well be half-ssed. But since it trusted from the start it gets ranked, it pushes untrusted but potentially better content down. The better content isn't seen. So now Google looks at the huff post signals and sees that lot of people are linking, sharing and reading it. So it confirms its trust, making it harder to rank against it, despite the fact that it may not be the best. Now so long as huff post doesn't do anything that would trigger any flags at Google, they have basically cemented their position at the top and can push whatever content they like to the top.

Someone here, a few month ago, shared an article that showed that the search results were largely dominated by a few very large players that self promoted a multitude of brands to make it appear as though there was diversity, similar to how the shelfs at grocery stores a dominated by very few brands.

Even further back someone here (i think) posted a link to some Mashable.com marketing material that advertised that you could buy for about 20 or 30k USD a service, (an article on mashable) that would be pushed to the top of Google organic rankings and deliver thousands of users to your site. Essentially, they would published an advertorial to your site then point a bunch of links to it and then push it up to the top of rankings such that users would see the article and click through to your site. This isn't a link scheme per-se as all the links are internal to Mashable, but essentially they are renting out there link juice.

Is it a rigged game or simply the dynamics of the market your operating in? I think it is the latter.

[masterjoe]

It's because Google has handed a pass to anything that has "authority". These pages get spammed to death by the people that write them, and vendors on Amazon who will feel absolutely no recourse if they decide to blast their page with all kinds of links (because it simply won't get slapped). It already ranks high, s a few links to nudge them a few spots is nothing. Whereas people who actually spend time curating and writing quality content have to struggle, only to get outranked by the big boys with deep pockets. It is ridiculous. I have seen a lot more rubbish "top 10" or "top 5" lists that are clearly thin content and written purely for making money off Amazon.

And of course, Amazon knows they have immunity from any penalty, as well as a monopoly on almost every physical item that's available online. That's why they cut their commissions severely. These 2 companies are the pinnacle of anti-competitive behavior.