Google Slower to Trust New Pages than One Year Ago?
-
It seems to me that Google is slower to trust (and rank) new pages today than in the past.
I used to be able to put up a new page and it would go right to the top of a competitive SERP.
For about the past year when I launch a new page it starts deep in the SERPs, sits there for a few weeks, then starts slowly moving up. These pages still eventually rank on the first page of Google - often at #1 or #2 after wikipedia or another strong site - but it can take a few months to get there, several months in a competitive SERP.
These are not "hot news" topics where freshness is an important factor. Instead they are product pages or general information articles.
Anybody else seeing this?
[ Just stabbing in the dark here... I am wondering if Google is relying more on visitor behavior these days and the delay is while they collect data?... Just stabbing in the dark.]
-
Thanks for the report, Jesse.
-
Thanks for the analysis. Your description makes a lot of sense. Maybe that is what Google is doing. Assessing to see if all of the boxes are checked.
-
The keywords that the articles target have a Moz KW Difficulty of about 50%. All of this is being done without any linkbuilding or other promotion. Just the ranking power of unique, substantive content on an authority domain.
A year ago these pages would have gone to the first page of Google within 24 hours. Now they still go to the first page but it might take 24 weeks.
-
Is it weird that I like this way better? It's making me work harder, but I think it's much more "fair."
-
Nice work on getting those quick rankings.
These types of results are becoming hard to get.
-
...in the past you'd see them have a big jump quickly and then start to fade back down...
Right... in the past a good page on a strong site would bust right to the top and Google would play "whack a mole". Now the good pages on a strong site will start deep in the SERPs and without promotion, they will climb slowly to the spot that you would have initially expected them to rank.
Instead of "whack a mole" google is saying... "prove the you deserve it". At least, that's what it looks like to me.
-
So I just 404'd an old page and changed it's URL and re-launched it last Tuesday. Today it has been indexed and is on page 3 for a fairly competitive keyword. That was much quicker than I expected.
Granted, I built a few links for this one last week and didn't let it just go without but I still find this relevant.
Also, I still feel like a few months back this would have happened by Thursday/Friday of last week.
Anyway that's my latest findings.
-
I'd agree. I think the reason is because there are so many boxes to tick nowadays if you want to have good rankings in the SERPs. Google is looking deeper into every website now (after Penguin 2.0) and this is clearly having an affect on how quickly websites are ranking for keywords on deeper pages.
On the flip side, whereas rankings would jump around quite a lot in the past, as Google as delved deeper into a website, hopefully once a new website has its rankings, there shouldn't be too much fluctuation which is great as you can put some budgets, strategies and plans in place.
-
It must depend on the keyword because in the past few weeks, I've had a couple of brand new domains hit the first page of Google very quickly. It's not for ultra competitive keywords, but it isn't for bad keywords that people aren't searching for either.
I've got well over 1,000 website that I do testing with, I'll add another 50+ this week to do some testing on.
Any particular keywords you guys want me to test? Give me something that is middle or the road, nothing too hard or easy, that way we should get some pretty quick results.
-
Good chance either some or all of these things happened:
a.) your competitors had built links through black-hat seo firms
b.) you are a victim/beneficiary of the Google Honeymoon (keep building links/content and don't be sad if you disappear in a few days back down the SERPs. You can gain it back quickly!)
c.) your content was stronger and your keyword/on-site SEO work was done proper
-
Social media plays a big part in getting noticed, crawled and indexed faster by Google, Bing and Yahoo. When launching a new website, try registering the main social networking channels (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn) and complete user profiles, including the URL of your new website. If you regularly update each social media channel, connect with other users, and post relevant content, you may find that your new site gets indexed faster.
-
I launched a dental website a couple of months ago and within a month, we had incredible keyword rankings ahead of many of the competitors in the same town. We had a brand new url, brand new content and everything. So in this case, we seemed to rank well in a short amount of time. Our content was nothing special, but unique of course. I am still scratching my head to figure this one out!
-
ABSOLUTELY!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Lately I've re-launched a few penguined pages with new URLs so the 404 would rid the black-hat action. The keywords have slowly regenerated whereas in the past you'd see them have a big jump quickly and then start to fade back down (if your SEM campaign didn't keep up of course.)
Anyway I definitely have been seeing this lately. Good topic. Makes me feel better.
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
-
Google Index Issue
2 months ago, I registered a domain named www.nextheadphone.com I had a plan to learn SEO and create a affiliate blog site. In my website I had 3 types of content. Informative Articles Headphone Review articles Product Comparision Review articles Problem is, Google does not index my informative articles. I dont know the reasons. https://www.nextheadphone.com/benefits-of-noise-cancelling-headphones/
Content Development | | NextHeadphone
https://www.nextheadphone.com/noise-cancelling-headphones-protect-hearing/ Is there anyone who can take a look and find the issues why google is not indexing my articles? I will be waiting for your reply0 -
Google won't index my website because "certain conditions" weren't met
I found the answer on this -- interestingly, I had changed registrars and they didn't pull over the DNS information correctly. This caused the above issues. Once I identified this, I updated the DNS correctly -- at registrar and server -- and things worked fine.
Content Development | | newbyguy0 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
How to optimize content pages with ecommerce?
Some content pages act as buyers guides for certain products for example Used Paddle Boards for Sale - http://www.islesurfboards.com/used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx this is a content page that gets huge amount of traffic and is pure content with no products on the page, but we also have a ecommerce section of the site that is Used Paddle Boards for Sale -http://www.islesurfboards.com/buy-used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx however this page just has a small paragraph and all the ecommerce product related to this section on the page. The content only page above gets all the traffic and rank and then they click over to the actual ecomm section wiht the products from a link on that page. Should i merge these two together so its just one page and put the content on the ecom page? If i do all the content with push the ecommerce products down which is not good so what does anyone recommend as a best practice? Also will this mess up the content pages rank is i merge them assuming i redirect? or Keep them seperate like i have with a content page regarding "used paddle boards for sale" and an ecommerce page that sells acutal "used paddle boards for sale"
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
On page content and PDF - Dup?
Hi We are writing a useful article which we want to put on our site, but we also want to add it as a pdf which people can download - will this be classed as dup copy?
Content Development | | jj34340 -
Word Press Page vs Post
Hello, I have a site that is dedicated to real estate. I designed it in dreamweaver. I also attached a blog to it with wordpress. Its self hosted. My question is what is the best way to increase my search rankings with wordpress? Page vs Post? Any tips?
Content Development | | bronxpad0 -
I need to feed our companies blog into our facebook business page
Hello can anybody help me. I'm trying to setup a feed from our company blog to our companies facebook page. When I try and Google it the advice is out of date.
Content Development | | catherine-2793880 -
How does google react to duplicate shops on ecommerce sites
Surely shopping cart sites are going to have a lot of duplicate content? Does google recognise this? Is there anything I can do let google know?
Content Development | | borderbound0