Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2017

[westcoast]

The following message was cut out of thread at:
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4866125.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 2:26 pm on Oct 1, 2017 (PDT -8)

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My site is plummeting in rankings today under most keywords. Anyone else seeing this?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:42 pm (utc) on Oct 1, 2017]
[edit reason] Splitting off from September thread [/edit]

[RedBar]

Whatever they did yesterday has been short-lived for me. Overall traffic has gone back to normal whereas yesterday visitors came from all over the globe.

Today, Tuesday, after 11 hours of my Google day I have had 10% of yesterday's traffic, awesome G, you know you have it in you to return a decent SERPs yet deliberately manipulate it to try and force me/us into AdWords.

Here is news for you, it ain't going to work!

[andymorris]

Basically lost all my visitors on AMP which is like 3K a day, sometimes more. What the hell have they done ? Also Google search from desktop site is down from 10% to 2%

What.the.hell.google

[seoskunk]

Whatever they did yesterday has been short-lived for me. Overall traffic has gone back to normal whereas yesterday visitors came from all over the globe.

They rolled back the update.

[aristotle]

Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't jump into this thread and proclaim that a major update has started. So I go and check my sites and almost always everything looks calm on all of them.

It's like the boy who kept crying wolf. Just because someone sees a big change on one or two sites doesn't mean that a general update for the whole web has started

[seoskunk]

aristotle you free to believe what you want of course, half the people on here have other agendas they don't disclose, I was just calling it as I saw it happen, maybe you want to call it fantasy now, thats your call, if you wanna go that way.

[Cralamarre]

@aristotle My thoughts exactly. Absolutely nothing happened with my site. Yesterday traffic in the US was down because of Columbus Day, but everything is back to normal today as expected.

[seoskunk]

Ermm interesting Cralamarre...... ¯ö¯

Anyway I will say when I get things wrong and I realise it I will correct, a while back there was a thread on here on the benefit of deleting Google properties like webmastertools and analytics, I felt at time people were being paranoid - I no longer believe that. So I have posted about it again (currently in moderation).

[Cralamarre]

@seoskunk, I tried to repeat your name for the so-called update (Sunday B... Sunday) but for whatever reason the middle B... part came out like I had said something bad, so I just deleted it. There's nothing more interesting about it than that.

[seoskunk]

@Cralamarre ¯ö¯

[seoskunk]

Is it a coincidence that I'm getting this cr@p after my post advocating deleting all Google Properties from your site is held in moderation?

[aristotle]

seoskunk -- I wasn't talking about just one person. Many different people have reported these false alarms at one time or another.

This also isn't the first time I've brought this subject up. I've been seeing this problem for years.

[seoskunk]

No problem aristotle, the update started Friday apparently and was pulled back shortly after I posted I tracked the money terms and there was major shake ups and thats why I posted. Other people noticed too. I think there is still a major update going to happen, but something was not to Google's liking with this one so it got pulled. more info here [seroundtable.com...]

[Jori]

@aristotle

maybe because "global updates" don't exist anymore. It's all about small updates, targeting some of us. Maybe only the french? Only the financial sites? Only the ecom? That's why some of us would shout loud "look update!" when others don't see anything.

[aristotle]

In my opinion roll-backs of MAJOR updates are very rare. Instead, I think that google conducts a lot of tests that might affect 5-20% of the web, and when the test is stopped, it could look like a roll-back.
P.S. Jori I didn't see your post until after mine went live, but agree that could explain some of what takes place.

[samwest]

Woah! after a very brief "fooled ya" positive move, traffic is now at total zero. Shame on me for ever thinking a move from Goggle would be positive. Shame indeed. I had to check to see if I paid my hosting bill. Spam email volume however was at an all time high today.

[edited by: samwest at 9:27 pm (utc) on Oct 10, 2017]

[seoskunk]

True but when your algo was about to decimate a major Company that spends several million with G per month and advertises on TV...... well that causes a rethink.

[seoskunk]

I had to check to see if I paid my hosting bill.

Too funny

[NickMNS]

more info here (seroundtable.com...)

Lol, the typical circular reference. We at WW talk about a possible update, SER reports the chatter here, and then someone here uses the reports on SER of our chatters to substantiate their unsubstantiated claim... Tremendous!

[samwest]

Well, some good news...one of my client sites which typically got 500-700 visits per day started going crazy on October 5th
Here's the trend...
date - visits
10/4 - 591
10/5 - 1,866
10/6 - 4,476
10/7 - 4,875
10/8 - 2,560
10/9 - 2,435
10/10 - 9,001!

Wonder if this is an anomaly or if it's actually going viral... it looks to be real human traffic as the typical one or two leads per day jumped to 15 today and the newsletter captures is over 50 for the day. I must say, in almost 20 years, this is probably the first time I've seen a site take off like this.

[bw3ttt]

I had a great day on Sunday and Monday. Tuesday has been the worst day yet. Frightening. I'm down 50% since May.

[mara89]

I had a 5- 10% traffic dip after Sep 26 Huge fluctuation. any pattern to identify that to improve or over come that current algorithm changes.

Kindly any one help in that Current scenario.

[saboces]

there is already some variation.

[RedBar]

Spam email volume however was at an all time high today.

Has anyone else had a massive increase in French spam this past month?

It's almost as though they've bought every email list going and are firing them willy nilly all over the place.

[mosxu]

@samwest

Great news for your client the increase in traffic is fantastic and I assume rankings are the same.

Is this client seeing improvement on the same server with the rest?

[samwest]

@mos - oddly I can't see any obvious changes in the ranks. The site is on the same server. Heavy traffic pattern continues today.
It's funny, the site seeing improvement is not even performing that well. C/D on GTmetrix, so you can pretty much throw out the "speed factor" theory on this one. They wanted a bunch of bloated WP functions, so a lot of requests and a 6 second page load time.

[edited by: samwest at 2:50 pm (utc) on Oct 11, 2017]

[Reinhart]

Anyone who is down using the WP plugin WPTouch? Noticed 2 of my sites that are down use it and since this is likely a mobile first update...

Anyone with responsive sites down?

[MayankParmar]

Isn't the responsive sites already mobile friendly?

[zvhipp]

Well, I see that I am not alone. For last 7 years or so, my website has been steadily growing in traffic and it has been on 2nd line on 1st page for main keyword and now its nowhere in 4 pages.

[mosxu]

@sam

Very strange that the site shows now to all traffic bypassing filters.

Speed could have been influenced by slow loading bots before the miracle started. Analytics should provide some comparison

[samwest]

@Reinhart - I have one client using WPTouch and it's up and running. However, WPTouch does not play well with other plugins. I think W3TC may have problems with it and requires special code edits to work together.

@mos - just a little more insight on what is happening...the client's site was picked up by a news outlet and is now featured in the "Top Stories" block at the top of the SERPS for a very high volume key phrase. It's going viral as more and more outlets are picking it up in copy-cat style, each one altering the title slightly and regurgitating new versions of the article. It's pure traffic gold. Once you catch fire, it's hard to put it out....sorry Californian's for that reference...you get it more than anyone.