Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2017

[EditorialGuy]

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System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4838449.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 12:55 pm on Apr 2, 2017 (PDT -8)

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We had a noticeable improvement in average Google rankings on the 29th (the most recent date in Google Search Console). Google organic traffic has also been up 6.0 to 9.7 percent for each of the last five days, compared to the same days last week. Another mini-update, maybe? (The changes definitely fall outside our normal week-to-week variations.)

[EditorialGuy]

Well, I'd like to know about the number of Mondays when Google didn't send glakes the exact same amount of traffic. What conclusion are we to draw from those numbers?

[NickMNS]

@shaddows as EG so eloquently pointed out, Glakes' reporting is biased and selective, and is a sample of three Mondays. The argument often raised here is "when you look at your screen you can see that there is throttling going on, anybody can see that!". So I ask what should not throttled results look like?

[Shaddows]

I'm not sure how far you can project backwards to have a realistic comparison base. I mean, a series of 13 Mondays would go way back through three months, and my traffic patterns are different then from now, and would be even without multiple updates. Nevertheless, 3/13 = 23% steady traffic, which is a relatively big number.

I suppose a lot depends on the precise meaning of "exact same quantity" - 134,654 being a lot more suggestive than 65, or "really close to 15,000"

Anyway, my broader point was that individual sites do not have to be singled out in order to see odd traffic patterns, because big, scalable mechanisms really should exist to distribute traffic more fairly, and this will cause weird results on the single-site scale.

[mboydnv]

@andynicky89 I too dropped from #11 to #28 on most terms.

I deleted 30 pages of thin content not relative to my niche. I strengthened existing pages and made them more of a complete guide, and reworked the menu (which helped bounce rate) and for my efforts I have zero sales this week and will be job hunting with my time.

I'm also thinking of gutting the wordpress site and moving it to Volusion. Any thoughts? I'm hoping by starting fresh on an ecommerce hosted site rather than host it myself and use wordpress . I'm sure whatever traffic I got will convert better. My question is do you think Google is hurting us at the domain level, rather than content and back links? So no matter what i do they wont give me any love because I'm on the same domain. Would I be better off starting a new domain and trying to get backlinks? Backlinks are so hard to get in the Grand Canyon tourism niche.

[NickMNS]

Mozcast reported 93 for yesterday, and I had my second best day in terms of traffic ever, with strong AdSense earnings. Today is looking like it will be similar.

[mosxu]

mboydnv

A new site will be heavily educated into spending and if you are in a cooked industry you may see only zombies.

Reseller suggested a few ways to change yr site, haven't done one yet but I will share with you the results

[smilie]

@NickMNS: Mozcast reported 93 for yesterday, and I had my second best day in terms of traffic ever, with strong AdSense earnings.

Ah, that's why I am having one of the busiest days of the month. Doesn't look like the best from numbers standpoint, just calls for now.

Not to worry, it only lasts several days a month. Google will take this away plugging holes in current algo by running the next one and downgrading your pages below poorly created on .gov and large brand domains who have 0 clue in your niche.

[mosxu]

@glakes

Not possible to have 3 Mondays same number of visitors that tells us the machine is capping traffic or maybe somebody is creating traffic to make up the numbers of the previous mondays?

[smilie]

@mboydnv: My question is do you think Google is hurting us at the domain level, rather than content and back links? So no matter what i do they wont give me any love because I'm on the same domain.

Yes. G is downgrading you because of your keyword-related backlinks and poor quality ones. As some of them carry negative weights. (Penguin). And because of too many KWs in the content (Panda). I would check content first for keyword stuffing (these days anything above 1.5% density is stuffing).

>> Would I be better off starting a new domain and trying to get backlinks?

If you have 0 traffic yes. I you do have some, consider starting a new domain while old one is up to see if your content starts to get more traffic on a new domain. If not, then domain is not an issue.

[EditorialGuy]

Anyway, my broader point was that individual sites do not have to be singled out in order to see odd traffic patterns, because big, scalable mechanisms really should exist to distribute traffic more fairly, and this will cause weird results on the single-site scale.

I'm not at all sure that mechanisms should exist to distribute traffic more fairly--after all, the target audience for Google Search consists of searchers, not owners of Web sites.

Still, if Google did want to spread its love around by setting quotas, it certainly would be entitled to do so. We also should note that what might look like a cap for a site on any given day could be a boost for that same site on another day.

[mboydnv]

@smilie re "Yes. G is downgrading you because of your keyword-related backlinks and poor quality ones. As some of them carry negative weights. (Penguin). And because of too many KWs in the content (Panda). I would check content first for keyword stuffing (these days anything above 1.5% density is stuffing). "

Thank you for this, what tool would you recommend for cleaning this up seo moz? And what tool shows the density of each page ...keyword stuffing? I'm in wordpress, so Yoast SEO?

also

I do have an aged domain but not many links to it, if i take domain 1's content and put it on domain 2, wouldn't that be duplicate content? Because domain 1 has the cannonical url set, i guess I would unset that on domain 1 to allow domain 2 to prosper?

thanks so much

[timemachined]

@NickMNS: Mozcast reported 93 for yesterday, and I had my second best day in terms of traffic ever, with strong AdSense earnings.

Nice isn't it, when you see the clicks to merchants like that. It reminds you that you're still doing things correctly, it's just the Google board that are demanding more profit. I don't know how website owners, retailers and others got blind sighted into supplying Google with so much data that it actually makes them subservient to a search engine. Everyone should remove Google Analytics and whatever else.

Remember, Google bought an affiliate network so it could find a way to get rid of affiliates and be the main one itself. Sold that once it figured it out.

[smilie]

@mboydnv, for kw density (Panda) look for "keyword density checker" in your favorite SE and find tool you like best.

As far as backlinks (Penguin), I can't tell which one. I have not used moz. This area is as clear as mud sometimes.

Aged domain. What do you actually do with it? Are you black or gray hat, which is when this starts to become important.

Here's an idea on how to check for penalties. Go to Google and do a search for "site:domain.com". With your domain name. If all pages show up it's a good sign. If home page shows up above everything else it's another good sign, it means your home page (and thus domain) doesn't have a manual penalty. Then I would do the same for some of your main KWs, for instance "blue widgets site:domain.com". If the page with the correct content shows up first for that KW, it means it doesn't have heavy or manual penalties.

If you do searches like that and they are mostly or all positive, then I would not change domain.

If you find a penalty, you can have ... for instance 301 existing page to new one. Or block existing page from G bot via robots.txt on the domain 1.

[mosxu]

@EditorialGuy

"Still, if Google did want to spread its love around by setting quotas, it certainly would be entitled to do so. We also should note that what might look like a cap for a site on any given day could be a boost for that same site on another day."

Quotas defy the concept of competition. Quotas should be made public, why keep them secret and John Muller keeps denying them if they are so legal?

As a last wish for webmasters who do not want live forever in the matrix can AI tell us what is that traffic coming when quotas finish? Webmasters still get plenty of traffic from both adwards and organic...

[Halaspike]

Slow day, 40% drop in organic traffic.

[Shaddows]

EG was responding to my suggestion that there is a mechanism for distributing traffic.

I'm open to the idea of quotas (though I believe them not to exist), but I am 100% sure that there is a mechanism that has the effect of distributing traffic, even if that is not it's primary purpose.

I further believe that from a single sites PoV, this traffic shaping could appear to be a quota, even though it isn't.

Google is not running a ranking competition. No one should "win" the SERP lottery, when 1000 sites could equally serve the searcher's requirement, and another 100,000 sites are close enough. It makes sense to distribute the traffic because then there are many sites capable of handling traffic such that Google's users are not malignly affected if the Lottery Winner has an issue, and a hitherto untested site has to step up.

But that is not the main reason I think traffic is distributed, just a happy consequence. The main reason I think it would suit Google to distribute traffic is that they have personalisation cohorts, and they have closely-scored websites. They need to match one to the other. They also have a massive AI project that needs to learn. It is incomprehensible that they would not use multivariate testing to run different cohorts against different sites, to train the AI, and also to get massive real world feedback on AI performance based on user behaviour.

This multivariate testing would, by definition, distribute traffic. And again, possibly by coincidence, possibly as an artefact of methodology, a single site may perceive this as a quota, when it isn't.

Edit to change mis-typed sentence "I further believe that from a single sites PoV, that could appear to be traffic shaping, even though it isn't."

[edited by: Shaddows at 11:35 am (utc) on Apr 26, 2017]

[mosxu]

@Shaddows

We need to stay away from assumptions and look at the adwards legal terms of service first and as for organic we are not going to tell AI what to do with their index

[Shaddows]

We need to stay away from assumptions

Around here? Chance would be a fine thing.

Also, I am not making assumptions, I am speculating. Assumptions are of the type "Google wants everyone to use Adwords" and then fitting the evidence around that. Or, conversely, "Google is an altruistic organisation that just wants to organise the world's information" and disregard any other viewpoint.

as for organic we are not going to tell AI what to do with their index

No on is telling anyone anything. Google shows a SERP to a user and sees what happens. Nothing webmasters or users can do about it. Apart from removing yourself from Google (webmaster) or using another SE (user). Although then you would not need to be in this forum, worrying about what Google does.

[mosxu]

I am not worried, I do not have 57, 000 employees

[JesterMagic]

Remember, Google bought an affiliate network so it could find a way to get rid of affiliates and be the main one itself. Sold that once it figured it out.

@timedmachine The internet changed with mobile devices. Google with Google Play and Apple with iTunes are basically in a way the biggest Affiliates out there since their app stores are monopolies on almost all mobile devices. They provide a way for users to find apps, rate them, and provide a payment system which apps are REQUIRED to use if they offer any products or services for sale. Google and Apple then get a large percentage of anything purchased.

[andynicky89]

Hi there guys. Have you noticed big drop in traffic in the last 3 days including today? My websites traffic is more than 60% less.

[smilie]

>> @Shaddows: Google is not running a ranking competition. No one should "win" the SERP lottery, when 1000 sites could equally serve the searcher's requirement, and another 100,000 sites are close enough.


I like that statement. Yet, when I do bidding on larger home or small commercial widgets , I typically run into four competing companies, two secretly owned by GE and maybe two real competitors. Technically , in my widget niche, we should be on page 1 or 2. Not Home Depot , Lowes or Amazon. None of these 3 are ever in competition for anything other than SMALL home-based stuff. Yet, I am not even in top 100, thanks to Penguin update and my affiliate network (that started in 2005) that points links at me (with affiliate IDs, naturally very easily recognized by Google).

Recognized and IGNORED, not negatively weighted. Which is what Google has done to kill affiliates, as they want to be the only paid traffic gatekeeper.

I agree with your other part,

But that is not the main reason I think traffic is distributed, just a happy consequence. The main reason I think it would suit Google to distribute traffic is that they have personalisation cohorts, and they have closely-scored websites. They need to match one to the other. They also have a massive AI project that needs to learn.

which makes running small ecommerce business extremely annoying and very , very hard. To a point where I am now investing into two non-website ventures.

[Peter_S]

@andynicky89, in my case, this is the opposite. Since 2 weeks, a constant increase of traffic, and the last few days, the increase was again faster, today, I am already at 50% more than last Wednesday. If it's the result of the rolling of the new quality thing, it pleases me very much. But I learned not to trust anymore fluctuation of traffic :)

[NickMNS]

As mentioned yesterday, the day before was my second best ever, now yesterday blew by the previous record. Overall I'm looking at about 15% increase in traffic. The increase seems to have started last week.

[EditorialGuy]

Quotas defy the concept of competition.

I don't think anyone here is defending quotas.

I wonder if a majority of us even buy into the notion that Google has "quotas"? The explanation in Shaddows's message no. 4846187 makes more sense to me.

[Halaspike]

Those who don't believe that Google has "quotas" what's your explanation for a blog with over 20 thousand quality pages but only receives about 3 thousand unique visitors daily for 1 year straight? And the blog has never been hit by any algorithm update. Please explain that

[ionguy]

@editorialguy
chking my analytics every day and i belive that quotas exisits
each day traffic from google hits up to 60 per hour unique visitors max and never more
in the middle of the day its 60 - 60 - 60 - 60; even stupid would noticed something is wrong
however sometimes - usually during updates - im getting 60 - 30 - 90 - 60 so average 60/h
from yesterday traffic 30% down
today looks very similar
mozcast weather 93 since apr 24th - another update?

[NickMNS]

@Halaspike:

what's your explanation

- There are other websites that provide more appropriate responses to the users queries.
- There are not that many people searching for the content provided by the blog.

How can a blog have 20k pages? @1 blog post per day (252 days a year) that is 80 years worth of blog posts.

[Peter_S]

a blog with over 20 thousand quality pages but only receives about 3 thousand unique visitors daily

Sounds already good to me. It's not because you have LOT of pages that you'll get LOT of traffic. First of all you might not be the only one writing on a given subject, so the traffic is spiting over all the different sites covering a subject. Secondly, lot of people are finding the answer right on the Google's search results page. I don't only mean the answer box, but when Google displays a fragment of the page. Personally, this fragment of page is often enough to answer my question, and I am not visiting the site. And overall, to evaluate a traffic, you would need to know the volume of daily searches for which your site is showing. This can be checked through the Google Search console, what's your CTR ?

ps: oops, Senior Member NickMNS answered while I was typing :">

[mosxu]

@ionguy

same here controlled traffic patterns, glakes also pointed out