Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2017

My US traffic seems to be down today for some reason. Or at least, it's been bouncing between normal and way below normal since around 8 am (when US traffic usually kicks in). As I'm typing this, it seems to have bounced back to normal again, but overall, it's down roughly 10% so far today.

Everything seems normal in the SERPS from what I can tell, so I don't know. Maybe people just have other things on their mind today. Maybe it's nothing. I swear, some days I just want to give all this up and get myself a nice, steady job in the fast food industry.

low traffc today
mon - tue all was great; today it's 50% down

My traffic definitely isn't down 50%, but it seems to have reverted back to what it was on Monday when it was down because of Columbus Day (which happens every year). So again, not sure what's going on.

My US traffic is down too and I don't know why the direct traffic is down while the organic is up.

I'm wondering if this is maybe related to Google's mobile-first index testing. The reason is that my AdSense earnings don't seem affected by the drop, and I use AdSense mainly on my desktop site (my site is responsive and most of the AdSense ads are set to "display:none" for mobile screen sizes). Of course, I'm just guessing, but that would explain the drop in traffic without a drop in AdSense earnings.

Another strange observation is that when I do a search for my site's main keyword on Google, using incognito mode and in multiple browsers, it appears that my site has actually jumped up a few spots on the first page of the SERPs. Yet traffic is down.

We had a quiet day today, sessions were down but enquiries were dead. We have just implemented https so expected some variations. Hope for better in the rest of the week.

@Mark A, My site is still http. I know I need to switch it to https at some point but quite honestly, I'm afraid to do it because I've already lost so much traffic this year from Google updates in March and May. I keep reading stories about sites experiencing large traffic drops after switching to https, and I just can't afford to lose any more traffic. I feel like Google is forcing me into a position (converting my site to https) that's going to do nothing but take away even more traffic.

my website traffic lost 50% traffic :(

So with my site, Monday's traffic was down 10% overall. I thought it was because of Columbus Day in the US, but now I'm not so sure. Yesterday, traffic completely recovered from Monday's drop. But now today, traffic is not only back down, but it's back to the exact same level as Monday, right down to an hour-by-hour comparison. It seems like on Monday, something was turned on. On Tuesday, it was turned off, and now today, it's been turned on again. Maybe tomorrow they'll turn it back off.

@Cralamarre I am doing as much as I can to seek quality visitors from non google sources. Like probably many I am over google dependent which can't be a good thing.

@Mark A I completely agree that I am overly dependent on Google, and it's a frightening situation to be in. I've actually started making YouTube videos of my articles which have been going over very well so far. I embed the videos in my written articles, hoping it gives me a "quality" boost from Google, and it's also slowly moving traffic from my website over to my YouTube channel. I've noticed, at least from my limited experience with YouTube so far, that Google changes seem to have no effect on YouTube traffic. My channel's traffic has remained steady, and slowly but surely increasing, no matter what happens with my main website's traffic.

Google has traumatized me so much over this past year that I swear I have PTSD. It's hard to function when you're always so worried.

@Cralamarre - what type of traffic generation have you seen via youtube. Yes, I know PTSD I have had to take this week off work, the time I should be writing - to get over all the trauma over the last few weeks. :-)

@cralamaree - I went https because of the traffic job i had in Sept I think it is better to bite the bullet and go for it. This game is not for the faint hearted, I have lost sleep over it but I am going to fight and keep on keeping on :-)

@Samsam What I do with my YouTube videos is, I create a video for one of my popular articles, make the video publicly viewable on my YouTube channel, and then embed the same video in the article's page on my website. I place a link directly below the video on the article page that people can click to view more of my videos on my YouTube channel. I also include a link to the article page, as well as a link to my website, in the video's description on YouTube. So basically, I have my website now promoting my YouTube channel, and my YouTube channel promoting my website.

I haven't seen too much traffic coming to my site from YouTube, but I'm generating nearly 1000 video views a day so far, split roughly 50-50 between the embedded videos on my article pages and my actual channel page on YouTube. I only started this a couple of months ago, so I think it's off to a good start.

I'm actually much more excited these days about my videos than I am about my website, because my YouTube channel is actually growing, unlike my website which seems to die a little more each day.

It's very strange what's happening. :) For one of my top sites only a single keyword dropped from #1 to #48, than #32. Now it's nowhere. This is happening only on google.com. The traffic for other keywords increased.

On mobile devices nothing changed.

But, for that keyword we were getting 5-10 visits/month so whatever...

I hate to be eating steak and lobster while everyone else here seems to be eating bread and water, but this viral surge is just amazing. Yesterday traffic was about 9,500 visits - today it's at 22,164 at 9:45pm. Last few months the site was getting 500-700 per day max.
Keep the faith, if you promote a site enough, eventually it will catch fire. The traffic is definitely out there.
I am however not expecting this to last for long.

Congrats Samwest! Whatever you're doing, keep it up! We need more success stories on here.

Managed to penetrate dozens of news outlets...even Fox News! 25k visits total for the day. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

@samwest that's great news, congrats. I, unfortunately, am seeing the same. whatever rolled back was doing better for me. I'm trying to get AMP integrated on every ecom page now - hopeful that if it is MFI, we can take advantage through that.

And again one of the biggest drops about -80% we are seeing right now.
And I would like to thank google for this very kind way of communication. After month of complete silence and announcement of FRED Update this new period of communication makes every webmaster heartbeating.

German serps look now like all smaller business has been killed and only brands left.

@sam

What are you talking about?

Am I the only one finding top 10 amazon review sites ranking everywhere now? Written by robots with VERY poor grammar on page 1?

I went over to https and made a few mistakes, which were corrected a week ago - now 1.4% up then 1.4% down hour and hour some strange throttling going on!

Am I the only one finding top 10 amazon review sites ranking everywhere now?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Pounding your head against the wall just waiting and expecting organic SERPs to improve is simple madness.
You can tweak your site all you want, but the chances that it will just start working again are thin to none.
As I said before, they moved your cheese. You need to work other sources of traffic.
Create something unique that has the potential to go viral, and believe me, it can.
Took me months, no YEARS to finally wake up to this fact, but it works!
The only question is, for how long?

Too early to know for sure, but it's looking like my traffic is recovering from whatever caused it to drop yesterday. So, down Monday, back up Tuesday, down Wednesday, and now maybe, hopefully, back up today. If I needed more proof that I have no control over anything, this is it.

@Cralamarre UK based or US?

@BushyTop US

Haven't posted here for a while, but I have not seen any major flux in terms of traffic or ranking for major keywords. However, I seem to be suffering from an extraordinary amount of zombie traffic -- completely worthless tyre kickers. I even turned up my adwords budget (keep it on $1 until I see conversions happening instead of turning it off because I know it converts).

Things were going well until the last 3 days or so, I have had 1 sale for a minimal order. A very large reduction from the converting traffic I was receiving earlier last week and before.

So much computing power, so little results.

@Cralamarre lets hope its coming to the UK

@Samwest Telling people to create something with the potential to go viral is like saying "Write a song with the potential to be a hit". No one knows what will catch on, and the vast majority of things never do. Plus, most things that go viral are shallow, pointless and short-lived. Unless you've suddenly become a YouTuber making prank videos, it doesn't sound like much of a long-term strategy.