Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2018

[Martin Ice Web]

---

System: The following 7 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4885490.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:35 pm on Mar 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

---

Biggest drop ever. Much bigger than every panda or penguin.
All the work does not pay off. The only winner in this game is google itself.

[canuckseo]

On a couple of my personal site - older sites with history - I started losing rankings in December - dropping slowly but steadily from page 1/2 to pages 5-10. Over the past few days however a few of those phrases have taken huge jumps since Mar 1.

Most of the phrases I'm monitoring are local phrases, and most of those have improved after dropping for the past 2-3 months. In fact, out of 36 phrases I monitor for 1 of my sites, 22 have improved in the past few days - some as much as as 5 pages!

I haven't made any changes to anything over the past 6-8 weeks. I was getting frustrated because I've been focusing on site speed since October or November and it seemed like the quicker my sites got the farther my rankings dropped. When my site was loading at 8-9 seconds I had tons of first page results. When I got down to 1.5-2 seconds rankings and traffic started to tank - down about 30% in search engine traffic.

But maybe these improved rankings are a sign of things to come?

[Jhurwith]

Great gains starting March 2nd. Start of warm season however.

[System]

The following messages were cut out to new thread about Google pushing localised SERPs, harder for international sites [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: goodroi at 7:41 pm (utc) on Mar 8, 2018]

[lostshootingstar]

The rankings in our niche are COMPLETELY shaken up today like nothing I've ever seen before. I can't believe there is no chatter about a possible update.

[Atomic]

I haven't seen many rankings changes yet but high intent traffic , especially mobile traffic, slowed to a trickle. It lasted a few hours then returned to normal. But I could find no ranking changes.

I am eagerly awaiting the morning's reports.

[HereWeGo123]

@lostshootingstar – I agree with you, I have been noticing major dances in the SERPs during the past few days, and am too surprised by the minimal chatter in the community. Usually in instances like these, the chatter will follow during the next couple days. It's an established pattern… :)

[mosxu]

One hour only desktop traffic,

Rankbrain you are very good, the site loads under 1 sec on mobile and you still display fossils loading in 10 sec...

[Maximum44]

Last week we gained a lot back that we lost in January and February. This week is dreadful. We lost everything and then some mostly on mobile. Anyone experiencing something similar?

[MayankParmar]

@Maximum I'm in same boat, Maximum.

[samwest]

I can't believe there is no chatter about a possible update.

With recent community criticism about what is being reported, it's no wonder you don't see feedback on this topic. Sadly, nothing throws an ice cold bucket of water on the topic like complaints about those freely sharing SERP traffic and quality observations. Many have also just given up trying to "reverse engineer" the $109,650,000,000 gorilla in the room.
They moved your cheese. My friendly advice is to find alternate channels and methods to market your business.

[mosxu]

They moved my cheese for sure

[goodroi]

Constant ranking flux is becoming the status quo. I would say the flux started really dialing up back in December and has only continued and spread. Formerly stable serps in different industries are now looking like more like a Jackson Pollock painting with plot points all over the place. The good news is that if you do solid SEO you can still enjoy an overall positive trend. Its harder but still possible.

[breeks]

I have gained just about everything I lost at the beginning of the year. Results were in and out for a few days and have remained steady for a week.

Here today gone tomorrow, you never know with the Big G

[Shaddows]

Seeing two distinct datasets today. Very likely an update rolling through, given other (limited) chatter here.

I agree with @samwest. Specific reverse-engineering is an old-paradigm thing. The best that can be achieved is batch-analysing movers (which are normally positive, for all the "penalised" chatter) and emulate/avoid perceived practises.

But frankly, even finding common factors is a challenge. As is identifying the batches in the first place.

I'm not even sure the monthly thread makes sense any more, except for the sharing of traffic patterns (something I used to hate about these threads). I mean, what actionable information are we expecting here?

[deriklogov]

I notice organic traffic drop since March 8 and continues , site not mobile friendly so i was expecting it is related,
but then I notice that number of visitors drops equals to desktop so not sure.
Anybody else notice anything ?

[Maximum44]

@deriklogov Seeing a drop here as well, mostly mobile it seems. But our site is mobile friendly. Definately noticing a drop.

[MayankParmar]

What a coincidence! Mined dropped from mobile as well, while I get 60% traffic from desktop.

[mosxu]

Well, you are not the only one under attack:

[theintercept.com...]

[NickMNS]

@moxsu "Do no evil"

[mosxu]

@NickMNS

Agreed,

[Maximum44]

From being stable for the longest time, we now see a rather big drop across the board on mobile positions. Desktop is not moving.

[browndog]

I used to sit on 100 live visitors at any given time, despite hundreds more articles, with unique content and images, summary and then in depth content, responsive, ssl, scheme, I was sitting on 40 live views, now I’m down to 15-20. Meanwhile my competition, who is now copying every new article I write enjoys positions 1 to 4.

[hzt2050]

Hello.

My website since yesterday March 9 has lost traffic drastically, I have 50% less traffic. The web has been growing during the last months, keeping the first positions and yesterday suddenly the traffic began to descend... Keywords in 1-3 position, now have dropped to 10 or 30 position.

The onpage I think is good, compatible with mobile version etc. Does anyone have an idea because these movements in the serps?

[Spiekerooger]

Seeing the same as goodroi.

Even big flux in top 10 where there wasn't any movement in 2017 at all (you always see movements in top 30 and the like).
It even has a feeling of old google dance times w/ different data centers showing different results.

I first saw better site metrics (time on site, visitors, etc.) and than rankings going up. Nothing changed at site or links and also no big changes at competitors. It feels a bit like mobile index coming in tranches.

[analis]

who enters mobile first loses visitors, who is not mobile first increases visitors.


I found a site that is not optimized for mobile devices, since December is growing a lot, others entered in December in mobile first have lost.

[hzt2050]

Hi Spiekerooger,

Thank you for your response.

I really do not understand what is happening because on our website we have a low bounce rate, good time on site, original content, good page speed etc.

Until yesterday everything was correct and suddenly it has dropped drastically.

[enotalone]

Analis, how do you know when a site became part of mobile first. I see your are giving specific dates for specific sites and I am not aware of any tool or interface at google to check if and when a site is part of mobile first. thanks.

[lostshootingstar]

I think it was John Mueller or someone who said if you check your server logs you should be able to tell if you are on the mobile index or not. If mobile, 80% of Googlebot crawls will be with the mobile user agent.

[deriklogov]

So looks like traffic drop going for both desktop and mobile, for desktop about -20% , for mobile/tablet -25%
Its only hit specific sites so I can assume that as always to hide everything and to get everyone confused its going mobile/something else update.
I have a few similar sites and only 1 site got hit out of them so I think it could be links too.

My verdict: Mobile/Links Update.
p.S. One of the site which outranks me is website scraping Google results and reprint on their site, with very low domain rating. This is just unreal.
I guess we need to wait and see what is going on.

[Maximum44]

@deriklogov if that is the case then it will hopefully just be temporary. At least that is what I am hoping. We lost rank in mobile (never been lower) just of a sudden.

Maybe it is their way of pushing AMP and we don't have any AMP pages, but we are very mobile friendly. Who knows.