Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2017

[reseller]

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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)

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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 :)

[samwest]

Traffic is spotty, SERPS basically unchanged, but since last week visitor quality is WAY down. Nothing but tire kickers and abandoned carts. Reporting form multiple white hat, non-adsense sites. Where weekly patterns held for years, those patterns have inverted. A once busy Sunday and a dead Wednesday have switched. This pattern has been holding for several months. All on very similar positions, so the only thing that is changing seems to be what we're being fed. Not to sound repetitious, but when they keep making 20% quarterly gains, the cash has to come from somewhere.

[Cralamarre]

My website has been the most popular non-YouTube-channel website on its topic for years. Yes, I use Adsense ads, but sparingly and tastefully, with never more than one ad above the fold (pushed to the right so as not to block any content) and one ad below the article. That's it. No other ads. No link-building or traffic-buying nonsense. I have always focused on one thing - the content, and I cover each topic in depth.

For years, Google has happily sent tens of thousands of visitors a day to my site, always ranking my articles at or near the top of the search results. I've never once ran into any issues with Google during any of the previous updates.

That is, until last March when I suddenly lost 20% of my traffic from Google. And now last week, another 20%. My articles remain in the same top spots for their keywords, yet my traffic has disappeared. Not entirely, but enough to cause serious worry. And since I do nothing to deserve having my traffic taken away, there seems to be nothing I can do about this except hope that this nonsense is only temporary.

[Cralamarre]

Sorry for my previous little rant. Just frustrated. However, has anyone else noticed that the page in the Featured snippet is back in the normal search results?

[Wox9999]

22% Traffic Drop From Google Search Only.

[nettulf]

@reseller, I can confirm some English language adult related sites down 30% since last week (started decline on the 14.th).
Other languages using similar content is not hit (yet).
No snippets involved.

[reseller]

I think the current Algorithm Update of May 17 - May 18 is still in progress. Accordingly we see posts of affected sites still coming.

I think we are dealing with a Panda related Algorithm Update.

[Cralamarre]

But wasn't Panda's main target sites with excessive ads? That doesn't seem to be the case here, as sites with no ads have been affected.

Also, I keep seeing Adult sites mentioned, and I've seen Price Comparison sites mentioned, and sites with Adsense ads, but I think if we start listing every type of site that's been affected, it could become a long list that serves little purpose. The update may not have anything to do with the type of content. It may be something else entirely that the affected sites have in common.

[Cralamarre]

Forgot to mention, this update does not, at least in my case, appear to be a site-wide penalty. I have articles that saw a drop in traffic, but others that did not see a drop, and still others that saw an increase. Unfortunately, the ones that saw a drop were usually the more popular, resulting in an overall decrease in traffic. But the point being, not every page on my site was affected, or affected the same way.

Yet as I look for obvious differences between the pages, I see none. They're all structured exactly the same way.

[Shepherd]

@rustybrick For the keywords that I watch the sites included in the featured snippets (text and images) are still in the normal search results.

As for our own traffic over the last week, it is increasing.

[samwest]

Something is totally whacked. GART shows absolutely no traffic, yet sessions are reported to be up 83%. Monday's audience overview shows the highest level of traffic in recent months, yet in the real world, it was the deadest day ever. It's the Zombie apocalypse! :D

Bounce rates go up and down like a yoyo from 40% to over 70% on no site changes, which would indicate a change in audience or a serious server speed issue. Problem with the second possibility is that the server is a dedicated box, constantly tuned and monitored. No speed issues reported. That leaves Zombies as the culprit or AI noise.

[edited by: samwest at 12:49 pm (utc) on May 23, 2017]

[Cralamarre]

My Google traffic was up nearly 10% yesterday from the 18th (the day I was hit the hardest by the update). Not enough to return things to normal, but enough to give me hope.

[Cralamarre]

@Shepherd Did you at any time in the past few days notice that the sites in the Featured snippets had disappeared from the normal search results. For me, the ones I watch disappeared for a few days, but as of late yesterday, they've returned to the normal search. It looks like Google has come to their senses on that one.

[westcoast]

15% loss over last 3 days, large informational heavy site.

Sigh.

[reseller]

A relevant post from Search Egine Roundtable of May 23, 2017:

Google Search Ranking & Algorithm Shifts Still Underway

That Google algorithm update from last Wednesday seems to still be going on. Yesterday I posted a theory that was probably not fully accurate, hence a "theory." In short, I said maybe the tools that were going nuts had to do with the featured snippets test. It seems that this theory might not be accurate.

[seroundtable.com...]

[Cralamarre]

Is there any chance this update has anything to do with https, targeting sites that are not yet secure? Just putting that out there.

[Nutterum]

There was actually was a shift of a particular type of pages ranking, that got reversed after a couple of days. The pages contained a graph, chart, table or other aggregated information from a global information provider API (think stock price or forex price API) combined with a borderline overSEO-optimized text explaining what is the graph about and giving some 101 tips or other basic Wikipedia-like information. These sites funneled traffic to most often e-commerce or e-book (not amazon rather direct company domain) site. I was actually happy about the algo change, but then, it all got reverted back to pre-May SERP arrangement. A bit disappointed to be honest.

[Shepherd]

Did you at any time in the past few days notice that the sites in the Featured snippets had disappeared from the normal search results.

No, at no time did I witness featured snippet sites absent from the regular serps. However, I only monitor a small set of keywords.

[MrBlack]

OK, in my niche I can see a new feature on the front page, a very prominent 'top stories' snippet with thumbnails. I have never seen this before in my particular niche. The stories are only slightly on topic for the query. The snippet takes up the 3rd organic spot leaving 2 above and 6 below plus a bunch of ads and of course G's own poor attempt at price comparison.

I have seen this on loads of queries where I used to have a lower spot on the first page. I am now page 2.

[westcoast]

Just dug into the numbers a bit, now that we've got Mondays to compare:

Last Tuesday (16th) we saw a huge spike in traffic, and then Wed on the plummet started. I've seen this happen before... huge spike as some hidden penalties are temporarily lifted, and then plummet as those penalties are re-applied and strengthened.

Steady decline every day last week continuing yesterday, which saw our weakest Monday in 15 years (our site is 22 years old, 900,000 indexed pages)

Traffic to our home page and main content areas are down 5% or so, but given the winding down of school years it's not completely unexpected.

But, the long tail and informational content is just getting hammered... 15 to 20% down on all queries from people searching for informational queries.

Note that our informational content has been carefully edited for accuracy and is constantly maintained, so it really shouldn't have inaccuracy penalties applied to it.

It does feel like Panda to me though, as we have been (irrationally) hit by this over and over in the past. I'm curious if other large, old websites were hit harder than other sites.

I've maintained for over 5 years now that Google has some very small bug in their Panda code which cumulatively keeps creating larger and larger penalties for old websites unintentionally... analogous to a memory leak, that isn't noticeable with each iteration, but which builds over time to create large, out sized penalties.

It's something I can't prove, but to have the same content drift lower and lower year after year after year in the rankings against little new competition, while new sites with equivalent content get huge ranking bonuses, has always seemed odd to me, particularly when compared to Bing's treatment of the same content.

[edited by: westcoast at 3:56 pm (utc) on May 23, 2017]

[Halaspike]

My site was offline for like 6 hours today but now back online. Will the outage affect my ranking? I'm really really worried because this has never happened to me before.

[samwest]

I've maintained for over 5 years now that Google has some very small bug in their Panda code which cumulatively keeps creating larger and larger penalties for old websites unintentionally. Like a rounding error or something that, with every pass of the algorithm, it seems to levy a larger and larger penalty. It's something I can't prove,

Definitely see the same thing on my older sites. It started on the MayDay 2010 "update" and has been punitive ever since, no matter how much white hat and juicy content you throw at it. The only thing we can prove about this "bug" is that G keeps increasing profits by huge numbers each quarter as the cumulative masses seem to keep declining. Connect the dots, nice bug for them. The AI is sniffing out opportunities and if you're not a well funded profit center, you're likely on the decline. Of course it's not 100% repeatable so some slip through the cracks. I have a theory on how...but I'll keep that one under my hat.

[samwest]

My site was offline for like 6 hours today but now back online. Will the outage affect my ranking? I'm really really worried because this has never happened to me before.

Unless it was simply your hosting company having a routine outage, then join the club...I have the GART display pulled up all day on my old iMac and it shows terrible ON/OFF traffic cycles. Zero for almost an hour, followed by normal level of traffic and occasionally surges of up to 100 visits which disappear withing minutes and never convert. There is no natural pattern to traffic these days and I've been monitoring it for over a decade.

BTW - whatever the cause, it won't affect your your ranking. Nothing you can do about it anyway.

[Cralamarre]

My site is a 10 year old information/education-based site, heavy on the information, and many of my articles saw a 20-25% drop in traffic beginning on the 18th. With the school year coming to an end, it's difficult to know how much of the drop is seasonal and how much was due to the Google update, but the timing of the update and the severity of the traffic drop seem to indicate the update had more to do with it.

One thing I've noticed lately is that when it comes to information-based search queries, Google now seems to favor the quick answer over the in-depth answer. I've seen articles with only one or two short paragraphs (the same short articles Google used to criticize) ranking higher than my in-depth articles. Also, content structure seems to matter a lot. Google seems to prefer the "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3..." format.

[masterjoe]

I've had slightly improved conversions the last few days, the only thing I can tell in the search results is that they got rid of the ridiculous "people also ask" box right under the featured snippet. I made a complain a few weeks ago that they scraped my questions and used the answers I curated and linked to all the sources provided... except not a single link to my own page. Google's thievery of content needs to stop. For those with the Google spy device (ahem, "home" device), do they read out the URL of the websites after giving the answer they stole?

[Samanthatouch]

@westcoast There was an article a few years ago that claimed to show older sites being hit incorrectly by Panda. It used information from a tool Microsoft had out at the time called Scroogle or something like that which they were using to try to show Bing had better results than Google.
I searched for the article a few times in the past and never was able to find it again. It wasn't on RustyBrick's site.
If someone remembers where it was, I'd like to see it again. (one of my sites is 20 years old).

[Cralamarre]

According to comments from Bill Lambert on the SEO Roundtable article, this is a Penguin refresh, and the big update is coming on Friday.

[seroundtable.com...]

[westcoast]

@westcoast There was an article a few years ago that claimed to show older sites being hit incorrectly by Panda. It used information from a tool Microsoft had out at the time called Scroogle or something like that which they were using to try to show Bing had better results than Google.

I would believe it. I have been a part of the launch of other new, smaller sites that have never been affected anything nearly as bad as our ancient 22 year-old site.

It almost feels like to me that there's "historical data" from decades ago that is being used in some of these calculations which is simply bad data, or data inconsistent with how things are modeled these days. I have tried to contact Google numerous times over the past few years to discuss this issue, but they are impossible to contact.

I am fairly confident that if we were to register a new domain and move our entire site over to it our rankings would surge. Unfortunately, we've got enough built up in our brand and backlinks that we can't do that.

[edited by: westcoast at 7:15 pm (utc) on May 23, 2017]

[smilie]

>> @Cralamarre: I've never once ran into any issues with Google during any of the previous updates. And since I do nothing to deserve having my traffic taken away, there seems to be nothing I can do about this except hope that this nonsense is only temporary.

Welcome to the real world.
After 3 businesses being killed by Google, I'll tell ya. Everything is temporary. Even 10K+ visitors per day can be so temporary and disappear within one month.

This all happened since Google changed it's algos to what used to be "nobody can harm your site in our SERPs" to "just about anyone for $5 can harm your site".

>> According to comments from Bill Lambert on the SEO Roundtable article, this is a Penguin refresh

It's great that some big SEOs are big and earn millions by just billing for SEO services. SO you are going to see a lot of dancing around and calling all this "quality update".

For what it's worth. Penguin in the latest incarnation in my experience is usually run after regular algo. Which means some sites may see a bump and then next day or so a fall. If that's the pattern, and your site either went up-and-down, or straight down, it is likely Penguin, but could be Panda as well as on-page factors are also updated. Really hard to tell.

[Cralamarre]

I'm confused. If Penguin targets sites that engage in shady link building or sharing schemes, and my site doesn't engage in any sort of link building or sharing at all, how and why would a Penguin update affect my site?

According to the Google Search Console, there are currently 460,555 links to my site. The vast majority are from sites I recognize as big name, high value sites (like Pinterest, Blogspot, Tumblr, Reddit, etc). There may (or may not, I don't know) be some low value sites out there that also link to my site, or to one or more articles on my site. Would the Penguin update penalize my site for such links (assuming there are any) if my site has nothing to do with those sites? Surely you can't be held responsible for every website in the world that links to your content. Can you?

[Cralamarre]

Sorry, one more question... A lot of people on here, myself included, have stated that their Google traffic has dropped even though their search rankings have remained the same. Would a Penguin update cause that? Does Google somehow throttle or block traffic to your site while you're being penalized by Penguin, without actually lowering your rankings?