Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2017

[Jez123]

---

System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4870905.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:13 am on Nov 1, 2017 (PDT -8)

---

I am seeing amazing conversion rates since Saturday night / Sunday morning. Traffic remains fairly normal but conversions are through the roof! I have never seen anything like it yesterday. Is this coincidental or has something changed? Is anyone else seeing anything like it?

UK ecomm.

[Atomic]

Today there is a national holiday called Veterans Day. Or at least today is the day banks, schools, and government offices are closed to observe it.

[Cralamarre]

@Atomic Oh, so everything is closed in the US today? I live in Canada. We have Rememberance Day here (which is also observed on the 11th) but it's not an actual holiday.

[Atomic]

Not everything is closed. But if you have a child and school is closed, you might have to stay home, too. So I would expect traffic to resemble a weekend.

[Cralamarre]

Well, most of my direct traffic comes from schools, so if they're closed, that would certainly explain the traffic drop today. Between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, must be nice being a student in the US in November.

[prounckk]

i see a drop of USA traffic today. i guess it's because of Veterans Day. Next drop is November 23.

[EditorialGuy]

Between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, must be nice being a student in the US in November.

Schools in France and large parts of Germany were off during the week of All Saint's Day, and you certainly could see the effects of that in Italy. (Lots of French and German being spoken, and plenty of families with blond children around.)

There's always a school holiday somewhere, it seems. In the U.S., the traditional school vacations were two weeks at Christmas, a week before Easter, and much of the summer, but nowadays many school districts have shortened the traditional vacations and added other, shorter holiday periods in fall and/or spring. Old assumptions don't always apply anymore.

[HereWeGo123]

Anyone noticing any volatility in SERPs? Earlier this morning US, I noticed many KW datasets flickering back and forth but it has since calmed down for the past 6 hours.

[Cralamarre]

Sorry that this is a bit off topic, but has anyone noticed how quickly Google now updates when you make a change to an existing page title? This morning, I made changes to the title of two of my articles, and within literally a minute each time, the new titles were appearing in the search results. One of the changes even resulted in my article jumping into the Featured snippet, bumping out the article that had been there forever. I verified the changes on multiple PCs and devices. Is this a new thing with Google, instant updates?

I'm used to seeing these quick changes with my YouTube videos since I'm making changes directly to the YouTube database. But usually, it takes Google a while to re-crawl and update with any changes to a web article. Not anymore apparently. It's nearly instant. Anyone else notice this?

I am using Fetch as Google in the GSC to let Google know about the changes, but still, I've never seen Google update so quickly.

[purelocal]

Probably best to wait a few days and ignore day-by-day metrics?

I have submitted a sitemap to Google , 1 year has passed and they have only "indexed" 80k of the 197k URL count.

Why would Google do this?

<snip>

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:07 am (utc) on Nov 13, 2017]
[edit reason] no forum signature links or urls [/edit]

[MayankParmar]

Umm... US traffic down here since 3 three days. Weird.

[Riya agarwal]

can any one tell is there any changes in panda algorithm

[RedBar]

US traffic down here since 3 three days.

Me too, in the bottom seven of all time, however I have attributed that to Armistice Day on Saturday, Veterans Day (USA) and Remembrance Sunday.

[Jhurwith]

People seeing a drop in conversion this month?

[penitentman]

Gotta love when you scratch your head about traffic drops and then realize it's because of a holiday. Happened to me this year on halloween and veterans.. A big Phew followed by a DOH

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld penitentman

@HereWeGo123

Anyone noticing any volatility in SERPs?

Definitely new cache updates and improvements, a new site I am constructing is doing extremely well in the SERPs but yet to get much traffic from it, BUT at along last I am seeing sites that ought to be ranking well actually being listed at the top. When I write that I mean the original product manufacturers in my widget industry rather than Pinterest and Houzz which only have the product names and NOT the actual products whatsoever.

I am seeing new pages being indexed nice and fast, so far out of 370 new pages 350 have been indexed by this morning from scratch on 15th October, images are not being indexed as fast but much faster than they used to be.

Head down, only another couple of thousand pages to go by Xmas !

[Cralamarre]

@penitentman Yep, I nearly had a heart attack last Friday when my US traffic dropped. Being in Canada, I had no idea Veterans Day in the US was the culprit. And let's not forget Thanksgiving in the US coming up later this month. Maybe there could be a thread on Webmasterworld listing all the holidays so we can check there before we panic.

Thankfully, traffic has returned to normal today.

[RedBar]

Maybe there could be a thread on Webmasterworld listing all the holidays

I'm in the UK however my Lumia phone, connected to my MS account, lists all USA holidays, I used to remove them however now find it useful them being there.

[MayankParmar]

The US traffic is back :D Thank god.

[Jez123]

Is anyone else seeing 5 results only per page on mobile UK Google search? Several different searches, all with just 5 organic results! I hope it doesn't stick. I hardly have any SERPS in the top 5.

[seoskunk]

No not seeing it

[Jez123]

Still seeing it here. On every search.

[samwest]

Have not had a reason to post lately as things WERE going better...suddenly and without any changes on the site it's back to zero and zombies. What I really gotta love though is the Google "intelligence" insights I am getting, here's today's gem:

Some of your top landing pages perform worse on bounce rate this month: Landing PageSessionsBounce Rate
/4.1K,+45.41%57.13%,+27.90%
Over this time period, the overall bounce rate of your site was 62.58%. If these pages improved to match their previous performance, your overall bounce rate would have been 57.58%, a 7.99% improvement.
If there have been changes in the traffic sources to these pages, have you made sure the content is relevant to that traffic?
If you changed the content on these pages, did you notice a change in user behavior?

So, Google is suggesting that I changed something about the site to affect traffic when in reality, I did not change anything but Google changed the traffic, that much is very clear. FUBAR.

How does bounce rate just change 28% in a month with no site content changes? Again, it doesn't, Google just sends us different traffic.

[Jez123]

Back to 10 results per page on UK mobile search. What was that all about?

[BushyTop]

I'm seeing changes in the top 3 results. We've seen drops from ~#2 to ~#4

[lee_sufc]

In my niche, there seems to be quite a lot of movement? My site in particular shows in position 7 (where it's been for over 18 months), then 5, then 13, then back to 7. Other KWs have dropped a few places. Always seems to be a lit of uncertainty this time of year.

[HereWeGo123]

I'm seeing KWs jumping around too, fortunately in our favor.

[lee_sufc]

I'm also seeing some "random" and frankly, odd sites for particular keywords...some of which relate in no way to the search string. All over the place at the moment. However, I'm wasting far too much time obsessively watching the SERPs and think I should instead try and get some work done and hope for the best!

[penitentman]

@samwest When the serps shake I see an increase in Zombie traffic. I believe that Google is yes sending me different visitors from different kw's to analyze the engagement. Once they have enough data they will decide what traffic to keep sending and what traffic to stop. I had a couple weird weeks in October with a lot of Zombies. The first week in November was steady again.. Last week I saw a few days with Zombies again. Yesterday was back to steady. Monday analytics is always a good indication of how I'm doing. If I have a bad Monday. I know something is very wrong. Monday are always when I get the most traffic and rebound from any traffic drops.

[Jhurwith]

Does anyone have experience moving over a site to AMP on the CMS orchard? If so, please message. Thank you.

[samwest]

@p-man Yes, they do send different traffic, but my specific gripe is that their "intelligence" insights seem to blame the site content for the flux rather than their own traffic quality flux. They really are fluxed up.

Yesterday I had two "lucid" traffic moments where conversions were less than 10 minutes apart, followed by 5 hours of zombie zip then another dual conversion within 10 minutes of each other. These ongoing examples are further proof that it's not our sites, and it's not necessarily the SERPS, but rather the quality of the traffic that is allowed through by Vinz Clortho, keymaster of Gozer, Volgus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. (my stale Halloween reference, lol)
I've never seen these wacky patterns under anything other than "supernatural" conditions.