Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2017

[Versado]

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System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4851947.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 6:51 pm on Jul 1, 2017 (PDT -8)

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Seeing a lot of changes even on a daily basis specially with new URLs and pages that have got new backlinks. Some pages appear on top 5 and after a few hours they return back to page 2.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any movement on pages that have been already ranking on top 3 for months.

It seems to me like an algo refresh not related with Panda or Penguin which has not finished yet.

[aristotle]

Can someone explain how feedspot.com works? I thought you had to submit your site (or feed) to get into it.

But now a page from blog.feedspot.com is suddenly ranking at no. 3 on a search for a list of a certain category of websites. But it looks like their list only includes sites that have been submitted to them, which includes a lot of obscure sites but omits the most prominent sites in the category.

Why would this be ranking so high in google? Can someone please explain?

[seoskunk]

This article gives an ok explanation but the comments enlighten more

[uk.pcmag.com...]

[aristotle]

seoskunk -- Thanks for the link.

I've never had any involvement with RSS feeds or feed readers and only have a vague idea of how they work. Judging by those comments, some people have a low opinion of feedspot.

Anyway, to clarify what I saw in google's results, it would be as if you searched for "top widget websites", and the third result was a list of widget websites that are on feedspot. Most likely they accept almost anything that's submitted to them. Some of the sites on the list that I saw didn't even appear to have much to do with "widgets".

[reseller]

A relevant post from Search Engine Roundtable of Jun 30, 2017:

Google: There Was No Fred Update From Our Point Of View

In this morning's Google hangout with John Mueller, John said "from our point of view there was no Fred update." This is after they officially did confirm the Fred update a couple months ago. In fact, we covered this update in great detail and documented the patterns of the types of sites that got hit by this Fred update.

[seroundtable.com...]

[MayankParmar]

I'm not sure what is happening exactly. I just published the article and its rank was 2nd. Checked after 10 minutes, still 2nd. I just checked now (after 30 minutes) I don't see the article. Can someone help please? :(

[samwest]

Google: There Was No Fred Update

Right, it should have been named FUD.
WM's losing income and rank with unknown reason for sudden change leads to Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

What's left on Google is a mess.
Happily there are alternatives.

[reseller]

A relevant post from Search Engine Roundtable of un 27, 2017:

Huge: Google Fined $2.7 Billion By EU Over Anti-Competitive Search Results

Google has been officially fined by the EU $2.7 billion over their shopping search results and how the company gives an "illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service." Meanwhile Google said they "respectfully disagree" and will consider an appeal.

The EU told Google they have 90-days to make changes or fines will continue to mount for the search engine.

[seroundtable.com...]

[MayankParmar]

What is the connection between 2.7$ Billion and Algorithm Update?

[Shaddows]

RE: €2.4 Billion fine
There's a thread about it in the Google/Alphabet Corporate Forum here
Google hit with $2.7 Billion Fine by EU [webmasterworld.com]

RE: Connection to SERPs
Though it's not a current change, the EUC has decided that some algo updates are more aimed at disadvantaging competitors, than improving things for users. Here's the quote:

On the other hand, rival comparison shopping services are subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including demotions (which lower a search entry's rank in Google's search results). Comparison shopping services in the EEA are prone to be demoted by at least two different algorithms, which were first applied in 2004 and 2011, respectively.
Emphasis theirs
Factsheet [europa.eu]

See also
EUC Press Release [europa.eu]
Google Response [blog.google]

This is a facts-only post and does not contain my views either way, so as not to derail the thread. Suggest engaging with the conversation on the relevant thread, if you are interested

[Martin Ice Web]

This last "NOT Update" vanished all buying visitors. Traffic from google is the same but all zombies.
Even GSA donīt convert.

[ionguy]

another drop in traffic since 'not an update' update
about 40% down; nice; may i keep my shoes guys?

[reseller]

WebmasterWorld history has illustrated with no doubt that our webmasters/SEOs members are qualified and have enough resources to notice, register and discuss possible Google algorithm changes. Accordingly our WebmasterWorld community is not in need of any twitter happy merry Googlers to confirm or deny any of Google algorithm update(s) which we have noticed, registered and discussed on this thread or elsewhere on our forums.

God bless WebmasterWorld community!

[ionguy]

@reseller holy true; if someone would pay us for any update we noticed we wouldnt need to run a business lol

[Martin Ice Web]

And this goonopdated was very hughe. It was clearly big brands/reseller biased, a lot of domain crowding. Only zombies left.

[Awarn]

Have any of you seen any changes in activity since about June 28? My sales have increased which is good. The pages indexed in WMT dramatically decreased. Position has not changed.

[MayankParmar]

According to Console my position improved. But the impressions is down drastically. Have any of you seen this?

[Nutterum]

A question towards all people complaining about traffic loss. Have you checked the total traffic for the month and do you have the historical seasonality of the keyword cloud you are monitoring? I am asking, because it is the 3d time this week I had to point to a simple google trends graph to dispell clients/peers about "an unseen update" that "hit" their traffic.

1) It is not your traffic by any means unless they exact match search your brand name
2) It is summer in the northern hemisphere - people change gears, go to vacations, celebrate 4th of July etc. , don't start hyperventilating before you've crunched the numbers!
3) If you still see traffic drop, check whether your competitors have similar traffic drops too. Crosscheck your Moz/Ahrefs/similarweb/GKT to theirs (it will never be 100% accurate but at least you will know the direction the wind is blowing)
4) If you are the only one seeing traffic hit when step 1 to 3 are checked - check the traffic coming to your brand and your "hidden" referral traffic (aka direct traffic). Do you see a dip? If yes, perhaps Google is not the one to blame.
5) If all else checked out and your organic traffic still plummeted, - maybe some algo- readjustment caught you off-guard. Feel free, to post here for help/discussion.

Not hard, just work.

[Mark_A]

Is there any research on how many searchers go past the top of the first page? because for many of my target key phrases that would be ads only, no natural listings before the first page down.

[Nutterum]

Mark_A - In the words of Google Devs themselves, You can hide a dead body on the second page of Google. Are there some very competitive high-value niches that benefit from the second page? Sure. Chances are you are not in one of them, or you would not have asked this question.

[Lake]

Barry "failed to find any patterns" after analyzing 70 sites that submitted information after they were hit.

Over the past week or so, I've been collecting data on the June 25th Google update. I have received over 70 web sites that claimed they were hit by this update and then I also requested data from SEMRush and RankRanger of the URLs they found that lost a lot of visibility around that date.

I can tell you that after checking both on page and link data, nothing really stands out as a single pattern. The categories of sites that got hit cross between blogs, news sites, e-commerce sites, directories, and even basic corporate web sites. So there is no pattern by genre of site. There is no pattern of the industry any of these sites are in. Many of these sites have no ads at all, some have normal ads, and some have insane penalty worthy ads. Some sites have average content and some have horrible content. Some have very mobile friendly and fast web sites and some do not. Some have very few normal links and some have lots of normal links - some have horrible links.

[seroundtable.com...]

[EditorialGuy]

We gained from the update (if it was an update), with a fairly significant jump in Google traffic on June 25, followed by day-over-day improvements during the rest of the week. Some of the gains appear to be sticking. It'll be easier to tell next week when the effects of the July 4 holiday in the U.S. are over.

[samwest]

Every day I see nice new analytic insight messages saying this page had a 500% increase and that page had a 12,000% increase in traffic, yet sessions have continued to drop like a rock. lol

[Martin Ice Web]

@Nutterum, i canīt proof your findings.

There was and update on 25 June. Sure while summertime has less traffic, google traffic stopped immediatly like 4pm and cut off.
Traffic since comes in surges. As i manage more sites i can tell you that all sites have the same pattern. Long times with pure zombie traffic or no traffic followed by short converting traffic.

A short look to the serps changes offers a complete sight of what happend.
amazon
big german reseller ( big blue C )
ebay

are dominating the first page. It allways them all competitors are vanished.
I think that some ranking factors are overriding content, speed and what else factors when it comes to ecom searches.
None of these site provide deeper widget information. Just plain manufacturer description. amazon is one of the worst when it comes to detail desctiption.

Something to Fred update an all goonoupdates:
Could it bee that this changes apply some factors to similar pictures? I have never seen google sayed anything in their WM guidelines but it happened now to be there.
So this algo could score the content arround a picture in relation to other pages with the same picture.
This would explain the why so many ecoms got hit.

[mosxu]

@martin

You are right,

It looks like ecom searches are displayed to drive conversions to certain players. Nothing to do with quality of content and number of quality links.

Just imagine what would happen if anyone will be allowed to compete on some sort of 20% buyer traffic? Can you feed with 20 pieces 100 players and keep them all happy?

Forget justice it is called collateral damage.

[Choiceed]

Hi.
Could someone explain one moment?
My site in google recently got up from 25 to 15-10 position on the main keyword.
But I have not received an additional gain on visitors from google on my site (on others requests). Is it ok?

[Shaddows]

That's going from the 7th circle of hell to the 6th. You are a long way from meaningful traffic changes related to position changes.

And that's before you consider that what you see it not necessarily what most other people (perhaps any other people) see, due to personalisation.

[glakes]

Could someone explain one moment?
My site in google recently got up from 25 to 15-10 position on the main keyword.
But I have not received an additional gain on visitors from google on my site (on others requests). Is it ok?

Even if your ranks improved, pushing you from page 3 to page 2 of the SERPS you won't see much if any traffic gain. That's normal. You want to be on page 1 above the fold, which is increasingly difficult to do with ads, big brands and Google cross-promoting their other services/features which pushes smaller players down the page and out of the game. But at least you are moving in the right direction.

[aristotle]

My site in google recently got up from 25 to 15-10 position on the main keyword

Are you depending on one "main keyword" for most of your site's google traffic?

If so, that's not the optimum situation. It's much better to get traffic from a lot of different keywords.

[samwest]

wow! is Pinterest the new flavor of the month? or is Google about to buy them? They now dominate every SERP in my niche. Page one is ads, ads, ads, pinterest, pinterest, pinterest, 1st organic well below the fold. With all due respect, anyone who contends there was no update recently is off their rocker.

You can hide a dead body on the second page of Google.

love it nutt! couldn't be more true...but below the fold is not much better.