Is google rolling out a huge update this week?
-
I am seeing some huge shifts in SERPS at the moment, for some keywords such as web design. Nearly every single result on the homepage is a different company than 2 weeks ago. We are seeing some clients have huge jumps in ranks but also some are dropping.
Seems like we could have a big Panda/Penguin like update rolling out.
-
Something's going on but not determined what yet. I've seem a fair amount of movement in the SERPs for non-US territories (UK, IE, SE, IN, DE, FR, CH, +).
Assuming Google are denying a Pan-guin update of any sort there are a few theories about what it could be.
-
Crawl based link devaluation.
I'm inclined to think that this has something to do with linking but it would make sense that they include Penguin within the main algo if they can do it as they go. Specifically might have an effect on old links as well as spammy links. Alternatively might be ignoring anchor text on low PR sites. Maybe ignoring some directories specifically. -
Disavow data.
Doubt they've had time to sort through the amount of data they've been getting, but they'll have to look at it at some point. -
User metrics.
CTR, return to SERPs within same session, refined searches. I'm not leaning towards this one as most of what I've seen slip has been among the (if not 'the') best result. -
Social signal devaluation
If Facebook can figure out what likes are fake then Google can probably see which 'authors' are fake. They're definitely pushing for authorship, rolling out something to figure out who's legit could have an impact, but I'm not sure authorship rank is a big enough of a part of the algo currently to affect this kind of change. -
EMD update.
Not keen on this as a theory. Not seen anything to back it up and plenty of EMDs still up there. -
Google are telling lies!
Somebody's made a change and they're not letting on or haven't told the people communicating the changes.
Ultimately I'm shooting in the dark here. Although I'm seeing a lot of changes not all of my sites have been effected and I'm doing similar promotion for most.
If anybody wants to chime in maybe we can put our heads together. I'm seeing a bit more clustering again with the same domain showing up more often in the results (though not as bad as it was). Anybody else seeing any sort of pattern?
-
-
Definitely seen that. Some of the most competitive terms out there being hijacked by new domains practically. Seeing huge lifts and drops across many verticals on a number of sites I monitor daily. Changes every few hours when running AWR across a lot of terms yesterday in particular. Deeper pages seemed to be affected more than home pages.
-
Client was a design agency, and it was in the UK. We changed nothing in the 5 days for the result to come back. To be honest in that period we were doing research and did not want to rush things.
Only happened to one client.
-
Hi James,
Sorry was that UK or US or other results? Did you change anything in those five days? What niche was it in? Did it happen to any other client sites? Has it happened again since Monday?
Cheers
-
Hi James,
Sorry was that UK or US or other results? Did you change anything in those five days? What niche was it in? Did it happen to any other client sites? Has it happened again since Monday?
Cheers
-
US results. Very specific regulatory training keywords. I can understand why some HR sites would be ranked but they should be on page 3+. Only helpful to people working for that specific company or going to that university. Totally unusable results right now and these are ranking I've held consistently since 2009-2010. Other updates have never really affected me.
-
Have to agree big change looming seeing sites doing the dance big time.
-
A client of ours who has some really decent links, no directories articles etc. They dropped off for 5 days last week then just bounced right back. But the 5 days they were off the results for their keyword was horrendous. Absolute junk that was not useful to the consumer one bit.
It felt like we were back in 1999 having to search back a few pages to get what we wanted.
-
Hi Gundogs I feel your pain - so for exam related searches you site has declined. Is that in the UK SERPS?
-
My website which has been in the top three for years just slide to page two and the entire first page has been replaced by spammy sites or university HR pages??? Not good.Hopefully it doesn't last.
-
Hi!
My client's listing keywords are safe, but results for my domain name has let only the frontpage in good position, and other bad quality SEO pages, in which we have carried out online test (they generate a page with the name of everysite that do a test with them), has appear in the firsts google results.
If it is an update, why so many spam pages are coming up in good positions?
Update: Less than two hours later, the three sections of my site are ranking in the first three positions for my domain name. It changes a lot today.
-
Not sure myself but as you said they do seem to be changing a good few times a day. Some really poor results on page one that are useless for the user in my opinion.
I am pretty certain whatever change is coming in will be something we will be discussing for months to come like Penguin and Panda.
-
Does appear to be some major swings in the UK SERPS. Lots of rankings changing almost by the hour. Seem some EMD pop up in the top ten. Any ideas whats causing it? What metrics are key?
-
Well, those new sites or the spammy sites usually pop up in the top 10 when there's a bit of a refresh going. Could be a sign.
Unless we're talking about payday loans of course. That's just a shitstorm of spam.
-
Each day I see different results for some big keywords. I have seen sites that are less than 12 weeks old with terrible spam links ranking for highly competitive keywords.
They get in the top 5 but dont seem to last longer than 8 weeks in that position.
-
I can definitely feel a big update coming. Either targeting fake social signals or making a real crackdown on disguised paid links.
In one of my other projects, I've seen a lot of volatility in the top 10 for a keyword - with all the major dancers having a huge amount of paid blogroll and homepage links in their link profile.
If Google is cracking down on them, I'd seriously love them.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Homepage is deindexed in Google
Please help for some reason my website home page has disappeared, we have been working on the site but nothing that I can think of which would block it. There are no warnings in google console? Can anyone lend a hand in understanding what has gone wrong, I would really appreciate it. The site is: http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ Seems to be working again but I had to fetch the home page in google console, any idea why this has happened cannot afford a heat op at this age lol?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Prevent Google from crawling Ajax
With Google figuring out how to make Ajax and JS more searchable/indexable, I am curious on thoughts or techniques to prevent this. Here's my Situation, we have a page that we do not ever want to be indexed/crawled or other. Currently we have the nofollow/noindex command, but due to technical changes for our site the method in which this information is being implemented if it is ever displayed it will not have the ability to block the content from search. It is also the decision of the business to not list the file in robots.txt due to the sensitivity of the content. Basically, this content doesn't exist unless something super important happens, and even if something super important happens, we do not want Google to know of its existence. Since the Dev team is planning on using Ajax/JS to pull in this content if the business turns it on, the concern is that it will be on the homepage and Google could index it. So the questions that I was asked; if Google can/does index, how long would that piece of content potentially appear in the SERPs? Can we block Google from caring about and indexing this section of content on the homepage? Sorry for the vagueness of this question, it's very sensitive in nature and I am trying to avoid too many specifics. I am able to discuss this in a more private way if necessary. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Why is google truncating my title tag?
We are trying to figure out why the search result for the term "au pair" is not matching our designated title tag or anything on our page. If you search "au pair", please see the result for the domain interexchange.org. We do not see this problem with other search terms.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jrjames830 -
How long does it take for google to update title and metadata?
I updated my site's title and description about a week ago, however for some reason it's still not reflected in google search results. Here's my site and try searching for 'shopious directory'. Any idea why this is? I tried looking at webmaster tool and it seems that google didn't have any errors. Why is it still showing the old data?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | herlamba0 -
Google local listing
I have a site and i registerd for local listing in google but i have not received any letter from google.It is second time i request for pin one month back and this time also did not received letter from google. what should i do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Google badge extracted to SERPs
It's a while ago that (i thought) I read the following information on the Google badge. Here https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/ we have the implementation guide, however I was under the impression the Google badge could be thereafter extracted into SERPs so the user could follow etc... direct from SERPs. I can't find anything confirming this. I think that it might clash with authorship data which does a similar job, but where a site page is not relevant to authorship at all, I would have thought linking back to the G+ page from SERPs was a sensible option. Can anyone confirm the Google badge can appear in SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richcowley0 -
Domain Favoured by Google
Hi there, We have just launched our website in Ireland .ie and was wondering would the .ie website be favoured by Google over a competitor with a .co.uk or .com domain? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Google places: 7 weeks and still not verified. Reasons?
I've created Google Places entries for the business' 25 locations in 8 countries. It's been 7 weeks and Google hasn't validated my bulk upload yet. Which of the following would you say might do the trick? URL: I have pointed to http://site.com/country/city for every location. Should I point to http://site? I've created categories in English, but being this about local I guess I should do it in the local language of each country... Should I cancel the bulk upload and do one country per country? My list of countries include Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia so I don't know if manual verification is done by google centrally and that might be a problem. Otherwise the entries are (IMHO) well written, detailed and all. But I'm kind of desperate now because it's 7 weeks already... thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TIBA0