Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2018

[lostshootingstar]

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System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4913603.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 12:54 pm on Sep 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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It's a holiday weekend in the USA, I don't think anyone should really worry about traffic volume until next week.

However, I did see some negative ranking shifts yesterday that are concerning and can't be explained by a holiday.

[samwest]

My test site continues to see wild traffic spikes out of the blue. After months of #1 and #2 position on page one, it now appears to be getting slammed with traffic waves. The waves come and go and are completely non interactive and non converting. Yes my friends, Zombies.

Yesterday the pattern was low volume, high quality traffic and record conversions. Today it's high volume low quality. Without some major fiddling, traffic just does not do that naturally in the wild.

BTW,, the site is on Cloudflare Pro, and all bad actor countries are blocked, so it's not Russian or Chinese bots.

These waves are intermixed with a few apparent humans. So out of 100 "visits", which are all directed to the home page this time (in past months it was to cornerstone content pages), only a tiny fraction are traversing the site. It's fun to watch, but lacks any reward.

I'll wait for the data to collect before making any speculation or assumptions. This makes for some interesting viewing. Rank brain must be on extended vacation and I'll bet my bile duct that this does not last.

UPDATE: As quickly as it came, the wave of 100+ is gone and the site is back to 3 clearly human visitors. Looks like I can keep on drinking....I'll need to in order to handle the now non stop flow of incoming Google business page calls and hangups, 6 so far this morning.

[Milchan]

i get the same kind of behavior - handfuls of people on the site then all of a sudden a surge of visitors , that seem to sit on the landing page they arrived on then drop off nearly all together after 5 or 10 mins. I block a big long list of bots but obviously cant get everything. I think I will tail the longs and compare them next time I notice the spike see if there is any pattern

[penitentman]

To @southernguy and everyone else who has done their research and came to the conclusion the serps are now worse since August 1st, did you submit your findings with examples on Twitter? Seoroundtable reported that John Mueller invited anyone to submit examples of poor serps. I'm very curious if he or any Google representative has followed up with you. I understand some may not want to reveal their website but you can submit queries and not mention your site by name. Plus, this is a rare opportunity for 1 on 1 support from Google. If your site is truly playing by the rules then bringing attention to it should not matter.

John's post on twitter:
[twitter.com ]

Barry's piece on SEOroundtable:
[seroundtable.com ]

[mosxu]

@ sam

Interesting, you are right that traffic used to be more consistent before the update

We will see probably less and less traffic but still mixed with zombies

I do not think zombies can go over night

[NickMNS]

then drop off nearly all together after 5 or 10 mins

I assume you are watching this in GA real-time, in which case the drop off after 5 minutes is an artifact of the reporting. GA shows users as being active for 5 minutes after the last interaction with the page (specifically triggering of analytics code). What this means is that if a user lands on a page and then bounces (no interaction) after 2 minutes, the user will still appear to be on the page for an additional 3 minutes. The reason is that Google has no means of detecting when a specific user has left your website. (Technically they likely could know if the user goes to another GA enabled property but GA ignores this info likely for privacy reasons).

Also note that if the user stays longer then 5 minutes without interacting with the page and then leaves. Real-time will show the user leaving after only five minutes. This does not impact the "time on page" since the time reported for all users that bounce is 0.

If this reporting "artifact" is a concern, one can use events. You can implement an event that trigger on scroll, or even a timer based event (I think!). This will cause an interaction for GA without needing the user to make another request.

[Milchan]

@nikMNS - nice explanation thanks . although even taking that into account I would say it still remains that the pattern is 1.SPIKE of visitors all at once that 2. NONE of which visit another page - when I have an average of about 5 pages per visit normally. So the behaviour seem abnormal to my usual visitors.

[NickMNS]

1.SPIKE of visitors all at once that

I see that too, but I chalked it up randomness. I would be more worried if I would see a constant and predictable feed of users all day long (over a short time period).

2. NONE of which visit another page -

That is a bounce. Have you seen an change in bounce rate?

[Milchan]

yeah, it can be considered a bounce but law of averages says that if there was say 10 people and I have an average of 5 pages per visitor then at least some , say min 2 or 3, of those 10 would visit more than one page , when in reality it is 10 arrive exact same time , none visit more than the landing page , then all of them drop off at the same time. There is the odd time of course during that time I get other "normal" visitors and they behave normally , but it is clear to see the block of 10 people or so that do not.

additionally , of these blocks visitors all at once , they never seem to land on the home page - just on random product pages, when usually 25 to 30 percent of my visitors land on the home page.

[samwest]

@Nick, Good answer. I knew about the bounce behavior, but bounce rate remains stable. Seeing a lot of ON/OFF periods today. A natural distribution (which we enjoyed pre 2010) is what you would expect from such a massive audience. G's playing their traffic shaping games now, so we have to just smile and play along.

@moz - zombies will never go away., IMHO it's an anomaly of the evolving traffic shaping and profiteering efforts. The latter is easy to see every quarter.

[NickMNS]

they never seem to land on the home page - just on random product pages, when usually 25 to 30 percent of my visitors land on the home page.

There was an update in August, it would seem that your home page may have lost ranking in favor of your product pages.

If users are landing directly on the product page, they may well be finding exactly what they are looking for. Whereas previously they landed on the home page and then needed to navigate through a variety of pages to finally find what they want. So this increase in bounce is not necessarily a bad thing.

When I last updated my website made significant changes to layout and presentation. I also added many new features and pages and expected that pages per session would increase substantially. Another major change I included was to eliminate the tree like link structure that forced users to navigate through a series of essentially useless pages to find their way from the home page to the desired content. I added a search field instead. Well the result was a drop in pages per session. Few users were actually clicking through my links, but those that did, clicked through many pages. Eliminating that structure more than offset the page views gained from the added features. I see this as a positive outcome as bounce rate and average time on page both increased. Fewer useless page views resulted in more engaged users.

My point is that if it took a user 5 page views to decide to/or not to purchase your product and now it is only taking 1 page view that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Assuming of course the conversion rate has not changed.

If the skipped pages are import and of value, then you should also consider adding links to those pages from the product pages, essentially reversing the flow.

[mosxu]

I do not see product pages outranking categories or home pages to have the traffic in analytics so erratic.

[NickMNS]

GA Audience Overview is stuck for me. It's frozen at 18:00 (EDT). Real-time is working fine.

Anyone else?

[lostshootingstar]

Yes, stuck for me too. Nearly had a heart attack at first glance.

[NickMNS]

Its strange 7pm just updated but by only a few users and 6pm hasn't changed also stuck at just a few users.

[Soupmaster]

GA is stuck for me as well. Seems like the same issue that happened a month or two ago, except real time traffic appears to be accurate this time around.

[BushyTop]

Had a surge in G bot activity this morning!

[southernguy]

To @penitentman yes I did see that on Seoroundtable and actually saw the twitter posts of some of the submissions some of them were pretty funny and yes the searches were way off but I did not submit any info myself. What I am noticing with my competitors who have some bigger authority sites with what I believe is good site structure they are slowly tanking day by day.

One thing I have noticed as many here is the Zombie traffic, one minute nothing and then a huge influx of traffic that then stops. One more thing is that this morning I noticed one of my exact match domain sites which were hovering bottom of page one has gone to page 5 and is now outranked by an old PBN of mine (I had completely forgotten about) on position one, I will see if it stays for a while if it does I may try to monetize that site.

This whole thing is totally weird I'm just wondering if it's gonna change for the better or if Google is just trying to kill off organic search altogether.

[heisje]

Any observations on e-commerce sites? The ones I follow (multiple niches) have been affected very negatively and no recovery in sight.

[Milchan]

Any observations on e-commerce sites?

depends on exactly how you define e-commerce I suppose but I consider my site with in that bracket but in the travel niche. I use magento , which is clearly an e-commerce framework. Ive been hit hard and am unlikely to survive in all honesty. I just don't know how to fix it and that seems to be a common thing im reading.

[yollo03]

There is no fix for it. The algorithm penalized websites. You can do as many jumping jacks as you wish, nothing will change until the algorithm is updated. It has been tweaked so far but thats all. All you need to do is survive this until google updates the algo again. I do not believe there is something you can actually do to fix this,

[Milchan]

All you need to do is survive this until google updates the algo again

unless thats happening this week doesnt look like I will - when sales drops by 80% and your loosing 1000s of usd per week , there is no choice but to pull the plug.

[yollo03]

I am in the same boat as you but cant say 80% drop yet about sales but my traffic dropped by 90%. I think its all about hanging in there if you can. If you focus on sales working on getting affiliates. I did make some changes but im not expecting to get any boost until the algo gets updated again.

[yollo03]

My suggestion is that if you have any errors in google webmaster, even if they look small to you get them fixed asap. I had a few things that I ignored and now that I fixed most of them my ranking has improved slightly but I cant say its even related but at least I am doing something.

[Milchan]

ive been fighting this so much now im just tired of it all and if im honest I was tired of it before the August 1st update , so im kind of resigned to pulling the plug and starting over. Kind of scary as this has been my life for 12 years and it will even involve moving country as there is nothing more for me where I am really. Im looking to go back into the IT again which is what I used to do , but focusing on cloud, devops type stuff - I ready to have a guaranteed wage and be able to forget about things at the end of the day and actually have weekends off. Ive not had a day off this year and that is no way to live really, so maybe its a blessing in diguise.

[heisje]

@Milchan : so sad seeing what you have built by much effort devastated in no time at all. So sad, especially knowing the deeper reason this is happening.
.

[mosxu]

@milchan

Do not give up just yet, wait for AI to become a trillion dollar company.

[Milchan]

i dont see there being much choice really - not a single sale today, nothing. Unless a miracle happens in the next days I will have to start winding down or debts will build and wipe out all my savings leaving me with nothing to build on. Better to get out now and use money I have to retrain myself, sell everything , move countries etc - which obviously takes a long time to sort.
The saddest part really will be letting staff go some that have been with me for 10 years or so, most have young children and some will struggle to get jobs. This is the reality of life that google is playing with, but everyone there is sat in their nice homes , driving teslas around without a care in the world But I guess google owe me nothing and neither does the world so we just get in with things. Off to buy a bottle of wine.

[lostshootingstar]

@Milchan, I had to let staff go in the March update. There is nothing worse than looking someone in the eyes who has loyally worked for you for years and telling them you can't pay them any longer because overnight Google arbitrarily decided our website is not worthy after more than 10 years of being an established service provider and top player in the industry. And to add insult to injury, there is no clear reason why and no clear path to solve the issue. Instead, spam microsites reign supreme now.

And people will say "Well you shouldn't have built a business that relies on organic traffic!", and maybe they are right, but in our case search is still the only real way people find the services we provide.

While we are not at the point of shutting down (yet), know that you are not alone.

[Milchan]

yes, im sure there are many of us and for those that say "Well you shouldn't have built a business that relies on organic traffic!" , like you said - well that was not the plan. My business was brick and mortar and when online started I quickly adapted , was first in line and that helped me grow and become the most successful in my niche. I didnt plan to build a business reliant purely on google, you follow what is working best at the time. Naturally the brick and mortar side receded and the online side became the main stay of the business. It did well, for a number of years, growing steadily until now and all of a sudden everything is taken away. In travel it simply isnt possible anymore to run a business that isnt reliant on google , everything in online and that means google.

[thinktwice]

We have an e-commerce site and are hit very, very hard, sales almost stopped completely, insane. In Bing and DuckDuckGo I can see our rankings like they used to be in Google. This has all been very stressfull, especially when you see some bad looking sites rank better and you don't know what to do.

A couple of months ago I spent all my time and effort in launching a new site, sales went up immediately and now everything is destroyed by Google. Besides from having survived 2 times cancer, this has been the second worst period in my live. Thanks Google!