Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2017

[reseller]

---

System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4842918.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 4:18 am on May 2, 2017 (PDT -8)

---

Last month April 2017 hasn't been a nice month to webmasters as far as Google Algorithm Updates and SERPs fluctuations are concerned. There are several WebmasterWorld friends who have lost big portions of their organic traffic. If you just take a look at RankRanger's Google SERP Fluctuations chart you would notice dates of medium to high levels of fluctuations on April 17th, April 20th, April 25th, April 29th and April 30th. Those are just indications of the "volatile SERPs environment" of April 2017.

I'm just wondering what would the current month brings us of Google Algorithm Updates surprises :)

Personally I wish to see on this thread happy posts reporting recoveries and the return of at least parts of what have been lost of Google organic traffic during the latest few months. Let's hope so :)

[traiana]

all these 148 keywords are long tails because get very few impressions every day like 1 to 20. Thanks

[aristotle]

traiana -- have you determined which keywords account for most of your loss of traffic? It seems to me that long-tail terms that get very few impressions probably wouldn't make much difference. When there's a big loss of traffic, it's usually due to the main keywords.

[traiana]

In my Google Analytics account I see 21k keywords untill now. There isn't one major keyword that bring 50% from traffic. The "not set" group bring like 14000 visitors (so I can't see the keywords ) but the overall KPI looks good. The rest of traffic is brought by those 21k keywords. The biggest traffic from a keyword is 350 visitors for entire month.

Thanks

[aristotle]

traiana -- well in your previous post you were talking about 148 keywords, not 21k. So I still don't understand your analysis.

[traiana]

aristotle the entire website is getting 21 k keywords in GA, the FAQ page only shows for 600 keywords in Google, for the date of 17th the page shows in Google for 148 keywords.

Hope more clear now

[reseller]

The question is; what was the high level SERP fluctuations of May 17 - May 18 all about? was it "just" some kind of Panda Refresh :)

[samwest]

Folks, there is no need to scramble. Your site is not broken. I'd venture a guess say either Google's AI is once again trying to get a grip or the internet anomalies many of us have been experiencing in the past week are intentional. Not to sound TFH, but consider that a president of a world super power is traveling to hotbed countries...the timeline matches. it would not surprise me if powers that are way above our heads intentionally inject AI generated "noise" into the system to disrupt communications. Yeah I know it sounds far fetched, most of my theories usually are. You have to consider these possibilities because our old worn out "blame it on the algo" logic no longer applies or makes any sense.

Not to talk conversions, but last week Thursday I had a 1/2 day of conversions on the hour. There has been 1 since. Yeah, 1 in three days. That's FUBAR. How is this relevant? I communicate with e-comm webmasters around the globe along with my own clients and they are all seeing the EXACT same pattern. So it is more of a network wide issue than just your site. SERP's in my vertical appear unchanged. So it's very likely one of the two aforementioned possibilities....or something else entirely, your guess is as good as mine.

While you are waiting, checkout ColdfusionTV on youtube. They examine where Google Deep Mind and other AI systems are at and where they are headed. It may scare the crap out of you. See: [youtube.com...]

In the mean time, what can you do? Absolutely nothing...maybe go out and mow your lawn...which is what I intend to do today. It might blow over....it might not. Time to diversify and stop watching one source of traffic.

[traiana]

I go to play tennis, but still afraid that was an update :)

[samwest]

If it was an update, why have SERP's not varied one bit, yet traffic is ON/OFF? Mostly OFF. This ain't my first rodeo...never seen it this bad. Enjoy your game.

[traiana]

then why other websites have the same traffic?

[aristotle]

traiana -- As I asked before, have you identified which keywords, or types of keywords, lost the most traffic? I think that should be the first step in your analysis.

[traiana]

Semrush shows that 154 keywords lost their positions.

In my GA I select 19.05 and compare it to 12.05. I can see that almost 3857 keywords lost their position (some are severe from 1 to 40) and 3300 keywords improved their position (some abrupt improvement from 40 to 1).

Mostof this keywords don't have any impression

[Cralamarre]

For anyone who DID see a drop in traffic last week from G, have you noticed any sort of improvement lately? For me, today seems to be better, at least so far. My traffic today has been on par with the same day last week (before the update, or whatever it was). It's still early here, but traffic does seem to be nearly back to normal today. Got my fingers crossed.

[glakes]

Flux is still active, so I would not get too concerned yet. Though I doubt this update will do anything about Google's poor traffic quality for ecommerce sites. Just a different day with a different pile of Google manure that smells about the same as yesterday...

[traiana]

no improvement so far, yesterday was a bit higher but because of Sunday, usually in weekends I get higher traffic

[Cralamarre]

I may have spoken too soon about the improvement. Traffic seems to have dropped off again. I'll wait till the end of the day to see what happens.

[reseller]

A relevant post from Search Engine Roundtable of May 22, 2017:

Theories On Google Algorithm Update & Changes Last Week

Last week we reported on a possible Google algorithm update starting last Wednesday. We had most of the automated tracking tools light up but, as I covered, little chatter around complaints from webmasters or SEOs.

My initial impression was that something changed in the search results but it did not lead to any significant changes to the traffic one would receive from Google.

[seroundtable.com...]

[Cralamarre]

@reseller I noticed over the weekend, and again this morning while searching for keywords on Google, that pages appearing in the Featured snippet were gone from the main results. That could very well be the cause of my traffic drop, since I do have pages in the snippets.

[Peter_S]

pages appearing in the Featured snippet were gone from the main results.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Cralamarre]

Does this mean the new rule on Google is to write two articles for each keyword, so you have a backup in case one ends up in the Featured Snippet of Death?

[reseller]

I just read on Search Engine Roundtable about a webmaster who have some websites that don't have featured snippets, however they are down from pos 11-15 to 60-70. [seroundtable.com...]

It could be that the SERP fluctuations of May 17 - May 18 are not related to featured snippets at all.

[RedBar]

Last week we reported on a possible Google algorithm update starting last Wednesday.

And guess what I did last Tuesday and Wednesday?

I enabled https across all my sites barring one ... unsurprisingly my traffic is all over the place, a right mess, thanks G.

[sikosaurus]

Hello people (my first post) :)
I stumbled here while trying to find out what happened on 17th this month (I "surgically" lost one third of my traffic, network wide, big numbers).

Anyway, bare with me because I'm not a big stats person but I noticed that google now displays only 90 results all together? Is that something new?
When you click page 10 in google results you get:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 90 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

My traffic comes from thousands of big and small keywords, I'm guessing that update of site itself explains everything?

Sorry if I'm repeating something, I just didn't notice anyone explicitly said it this way. This is something new on google sites, right?

Thanks!

[smilie]

I also confirm seeing an update on 18th and 19th. As usual, Google with major update will let things fall randomly in favor or not of small sites, then next day small bus sites get hammered with Panda/Penguin incarnation.

Went up on the 18th of May, down as usual on 19th, below previous level. 18th-19th, I bet, was a Penguin, although it's hard to tell now, you know, with all the "AI" they are running (when there's only 1 free spot left above the screen fold in top 10, I am sure their marketing people lose much sleep on how to take that last free spot away from us fellow webmasters, you know... with their all powerful "AI").

This time they are getting it tighter , to not let small sites and businesses enough breathing room.

>> @reseller: As far as Google Algorithm Updates are concerned; we shouldn't expect ALL websites to be affected by a specific Algorithm Update.

Not entirely correct. This would be true if G just randomly chose sites based on quality. But when they chose sites based on them being big and having large link profiles and visually appealing pages. And for paying G via Adwords. However you don't see many webmasters of big brands and Amazons-Walmarts-GoogleWhitelistedFriends who are gaining all the space hanging out here, do you? No need for them.

[edited by: smilie at 6:34 pm (utc) on May 22, 2017]

[sikosaurus]

Quick addition - I forgot to mention, my sites are adult themed :)
Every adult keyword is reduced to 90 results. Others behave normally from what I noticed.

[Cralamarre]

Okay, so now we're finally hearing more reports of people being affected by some sort of update last week. I can stop thinking I've lost my mind (no comments, please).

[MrBlack]

Today my price comparison site has been totally erased from the 1st page for all keywords. It is basically dead. It's a 12 year old website and it's a good one, even if I do say so myself. Visitors love it and it generates lots of conversions (well it used to) Never bought a link or engaged in any dodgy SEO techniques.
Anyway, it appears to me that Google has got rid of any site that interferes with its own inferior shopping ads and even worse "price comparison" service. I have checked loads of keywords and the 1st page is completely free of any price comparison website, even the big ones are gone.

First drop was Thursday 18th then it went back up again on Saturday 20th. Now today, Monday 22nd it is dead.

[reseller]

Very nice feedback concerning Google Algorithm Update which have started May 17 - May 18 and is still in progress.

I'm not so sure, but it seems Google is targeting some price comparison sites, adult sites, Adsense-revenue sites etc. . It might sound like a Panda Update including some new quality signals :)

[Cralamarre]

I don't think it has much to do with Adsense revenue. I have Adsense on my site and my pages are still ranking the same as before. Also, I still see sites with ads plastered all over them ranking higher than mine for some keywords.

My Google traffic seems to be somewhat improved today from last Thursday's disaster. It's still not back to normal, but it's a bit better.

[rustybrick]

So those who dropped here. Did those pages get featured snippets or not? I am seeing sporadic reports on both ends...