Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2018

[Shaddows]

System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4894234.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:34 am on May 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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We've seen a huge shift in traffic patterns today. Traffic and conversions are relatively stable, but destination pages are very different.

In terms of products sold, it is very similar to the pre-March profile (which is different to the various iterations over the last 6 weeks)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:51 pm (utc) on May 1, 2018]
[edit reason] Split to new thread. [/edit]

[Steven29]

"Facebook's "popularity" system has weaknesses that are notoriously easy to exploit from the outside. Google's results are much harder to manipulate from the outside."

So it sounds like you agree? I think the new algorithm is using our websites to actually promote, almost like shared stories with facebook.

[Brand kw] [talking positively or negatively] [other website factors ] = ranking

[aristotle]

Steven29 -- I think we must be talking about different things.

Facebook has been infiltrated and manipulated by outside interests. That hasn't happened with google.

[Travis]

That hasn't happened with google.

ah ah

[samwest]

That hasn't happened with google.

ha ha!

[MayankParmar]

That hasn't happened with google.

hehe

[mosxu]

Of course not,

[RedBar]

It must be Xmas ...

HoHoHo ...

[glakes]

i disavowed about 130 domains.

Not sure why you are spending time disavowing links unless they were man-made by you. In most cases Google devalues links that its algorithm feels are of no value instead of demoting your page/site as they used to a couple years back. Unless your site is penalized, you may up doing more harm than good. See [searchengineland.com...]

[Halaspike]

@glakes i used the disavow tool because i was really disgusted by the amount of spam sites i saw linking to my site. Looked like a competitor was doing something to affect my site.

I might delete the disavow file & upload a blank one so google can devalue what they feel like devaluing instead of mistakenly hurting my ranking tho i know the links i disavowed are 100% spam.

[Halaspike]

I've deleted the file and notified Google's bot to recrawl the whole site. A good thing recovering from a disavow mistake is now real-time.

[Cralamarre]

I've never disavowed any of the more than 130,000 links to my site, and have never run into a problem. I think it's just one more technical issue that people waste time on.

[Halaspike]

@Cralamarre I'll never disavow a single link ever again.

Deleted my disavow file some hours ago & traffic is gradually coming back.

[Travis]

Deleted my disavow file some hours ago & traffic is gradually coming back.

Interesting to know. This is odd, but it shows it has a real impact. (I try not to touch anything)

[MayankParmar]

@Travis 130 domain is a lot. Disavowing 10-20 domains is fine. That's why I use Semrush, only the worst ones are removed.

[JesterMagic]

Deleted my disavow file some hours ago & traffic is gradually coming back.

Highly doubt that has anything to do with the disavow file. Google doesn't work that fast. Maybe your traffic is coming back because of the original disavow file and now you have just messed it up by removing it ;-)

130 domain is a lot. Disavowing 10-20 domains is fine.

I disagree. If it is 100% spam domain then disavow, the amount of domains has nothing to do with it.

Google has said that the disavow file really isn't needed anymore. I had stopped using them for a while until I saw in my logs the google bot was being referred by some of these spam domains so I added it back in.

[Martin Ice Web]

amazon revealed e new statistic saying every second ales is from marketplace and amrketplace salers are 95% small to medium range business. They say small to medium business are the backbone of amazon. And every year more business migrato to marketplace.
This is one of the success factors that made amazon that big.

So why google still bets on brands when small to medium range business is what users prefer?

[Shaddows]

So why google still bets on brands when small to medium range business is what users prefer?

There are two logical errors in your post.

First of all, Amazon say SME are the backbone of their business. Not Google's business.

Second, SME get a boost on Amazon because sales are backed with Amazon's reputation. Buyers believe Amazon will make good on Sellers' promises. Not so with Google- no one thinks they have recourse to Google just because a site was in SERPs.

Look, if Amazon works for you, stop moaning about Google. Google and Amazon are competitors. They do different things. Google has no interest in being more Amazon-like.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Shaddows, that is not correct. Users prefer to buy from the shop with the best price. This are not brands in any way.
Then in 90% of cases SME on Amzon have delivery times between 5-8 days ( in germany ). But users still buy from them,

Buyers believe Amazon will make good on Sellers' promises. Not so with Google- no one thinks they have recourse to Google just because a site was in SERPs.

wrong - googles quality updates, panda and penguin say different things.

First of all, Amazon say SME are the backbone of their business. Not Google's business.

Never said that. Please read the post.

Look, if Amazon works for you,

? I don´t know where you get this from. Did you realy read my post? I doubt.

[Shaddows]

They say small to medium business are the backbone of amazon

First of all, Amazon say SME are the backbone of their business. Not Google's business.

Never said that. Please read the post.

Must be my mistake(!)

wrong - googles quality updates, panda and penguin say different things.

Amazon enforces refund policies and delivery policies and descriptions on Marketplace. Google just lists sites that users might like. If you buy through Marketplace, you trust Amazon to enforce these things. If you buy from my site, and I do not refund, you do not complain to Google. Argue if you like, but you're wrong.

I don´t know where you get this from.

From this:

And every year more business migrato to marketplace.
This is one of the success factors that made amazon that big.

Maybe your business was not one of these "success factors", in which case why not?

[glakes]

They say small to medium business are the backbone of amazon. And every year more business migrato to marketplace.

It is also said that over half of the sellers on Amazon are based in China. Because of excessive fees (15% per transaction, 2% currency transfer in addition to warehousing and pick/ship fees for Prime sellers), many domestic businesses have avoided or left Amazon. Then there's Amazon's ridiculous policies where the buyer is always right, even on returns where the buyer returns an empty box. To a large degree, Amazon condones fraud and encourages it through such policies. A new Amazon policy set to go into effect will force all sellers to give qualified business customers credit via invoices that are paid on Net terms. Sell a product on Amazon to such a business and you will be paid for it in a couple months or less if you are lucky.

For many domestic products sold on Amazon the above results in higher prices. Google, lacking severely as they are in presenting products to their users, gives no consideration to price. Yes, Amazon has a trust factor that no business I know of could even come close to. But how could they when Amazon routinely gives sellers products away for free (buyer complains, Amazon tells them to keep the product and get a full refund)? Does Amazon deserve to be in Google's SERPS? IMO, yes. But Amazon deserves no more than one listing returned from any given search query. Amazon restricts what can be displayed on pages to such a degree that shoppers are incapable of being fully informed, which for some products is rather important.

Let's not forget that Bezos was an angel investor in Google. Having rubbed elbows with Google's founders from the start, I'm sure has produced returns beyond his initial investment. And with many ex-Amazon execs having served on Google's Board of Directors, I'm sure Amazon's vision to some degree has been baked into Google's algorithm. Regardless, we as a business have a hard time converting buyers from Google. But when two or three Amazon pages appear in the top organic positions, along with their paid ads, Google has left no room for anyone other than Amazon to be seen for many of our important keywords. If all roads lead to Amazon, that is where we must be and have been for a couple years. As a business we factor in Amazon marketplace fees and buyer fraud condoned through policy losses into our prices.

[Shaddows]

Great points, glakes. We are an SME, and would never consider selling on Amazon for the reasons you outline. And same deal in ebay/paypal.

It is a category error to conflate SME success in Amazon (which is backed by gold-plated, fraud-happy AMZN policies) with saying customers prefer SMEs in general. Hell, most Marketplace customers probably have no idea they are dealing with an SME.

Then there is the fact that Amazon uses Marketplace as a risk-free way of learning about new products. As soon as a retail product sells well, they source direct and cut out the Marketplace SME. Amazon have the purchasing power and no transaction fees, so win every time. We have seen a few competitors die by feeding the Amazon machine until it ate them too.

[Travis]

The last few messages are very interesting, but seem off-topic.

By the way :

Then there is the fact that Amazon uses Marketplace as a risk-free way of learning about new products. As soon as a retail product sells well, they source direct and cut out the Marketplace SME. Amazon have the purchasing power and no transaction fees, so win every time. We have seen a few competitors die by feeding the Amazon machine until it ate them too.

Exactly what Google is doing too. When they see that a site/service becomes popular , they start doing it themselves ...

[Shaddows]

When they see that a site/service becomes popular , they start doing it themselves

Or buy it.

[samwest]

"Pro-Google algo" debunked: So for those who standy by the assumption that positive user behavior affects traffic positively, here's my latest test site Google Insight report:
Audience -
Users: down 7.45%
New Users: down 7.10%
Sessions: down 4.34%
So with that, you would assume that user behavior blew the same way, right? wrong...
Behavior -
Avg session duration: UP 12.77%
Bounce Rate: DOWN 0.45%
Pages / Session: UP 1.46%

Just looking at bounce rate alone on a static site tells me that the site did not change, but traffic quality did. The rest of the behavior data suggests throttling/ (or "traffic shaping" for the TPC crowd) is confirmed.

Once other observation regarding GA - it's not tracking all traffic. Two seconds after posting the above data, a sale came in, and at the same time I am monitoring GA live...none of the page data for the customer appeared...and I'm using the Cloudflare GA app that tracks ALL pages.
Same thing happened yesterday morning, GA showed zero traffic, yet a sale came in and was never detected by GA. Later in the day, other sales WERE properly tracked. GA is confirmed FUBAR.

[edited by: samwest at 2:02 pm (utc) on May 8, 2018]

[aristotle]

NOTE: A lot of people don't like to order through the mail. They've had bad experiences with it in the past. What they received, if they received anything at all, wasn't what they expected or wanted. But now some of them are starting to order through Amazon because of the trust factor, but still won't order from other sites.

[Shepherd]

When they see that a site/service becomes popular , they start doing it themselves

Or buy it.

or fund and promote a player in the niche. [gv.com...]
It would be fun to take a look at the main money keywords in all of the niches represented by the companies listed in the GV portfolio and see how those companies rank in the serps for those keywords. Would also be nice to see how the average CPC of their adwords ads compare to the competition not funded by GV.

[Shaddows]

@samwest
Interesting stats. What's your new Vs returning visitor ratio. I ask because you lost returners quicker than you lost new users (-7.10 new vs -7.45 total).

In general, that looks like your traffic quality increased. Maybe Google just stopped sending the junk?

RE: GA. Personally, I block it using noscript and also have a loopback entry in hosts. The less Google know about me, the happier I am. I might have bought from you!

look at the main money keywords in all of the niches represented by the companies listed in the GV portfolio and see how those companies rank in the serps for those keywords

Hah! Although the likely correlation would be explained in reverse: we backed them because they are strong performers, not the other way round.

[Shepherd]

we backed them because they are strong performers

Good thought, would be pretty easy to see historical information related to how a company ranked before/after being included in the GV portfolio.

I do think it's more complicated than that though, the collusion, if any, is deeper. In our niche, one that has a GV property as a player, the serps for the money keywords are diluted, washed out generic results with Wikipedia entrenched in the top spots. Adwords is dominated by the GV player and to unseat them requires a CPC that turns ROI into DOA.

I don't care what google does with their serps, never been big on the anit-trust initiatives. However, if you're selling me a product/service (adwords), I would think that a level playing field should be assumed. I don't like gov intervention but it would be nice to see:
- how CPC/adwords spend stacks up between GV advertisers and non GV advertisers in the same niche.
- proof of payment from GV entities for adwords spend.
- if there are any "extra" layers of algo rules for SERPS in niches with GV players.

[glakes]

Once other observation regarding GA - it's not tracking all traffic. Two seconds after posting the above data, a sale came in, and at the same time I am monitoring GA live...none of the page data for the customer appeared...and I'm using the Cloudflare GA app that tracks ALL pages.
Same thing happened yesterday morning, GA showed zero traffic, yet a sale came in and was never detected by GA. Later in the day, other sales WERE properly tracked. GA is confirmed FUBAR.

Probably someone like me who uses custom settings in an ad blocker to prevent GA code and other Google spyware from firing.

[mosxu]

“Probably someone like me who uses custom settings in an ad blocker to prevent GA code and other Google spyware from firing.”

Then there may be an algorithm in place anticipating conversions based on previous behaviour of a person on different ecommerce sites:

Anyone blocking the scripts will not send enough information to help AI predict the conversion therefore should be sent to nonbelievers websites.