Google Algorithm change this month - theories ?
-
Hi Moz fans!
If you've not had the chance to check out moz cast go check it out it seems Google has been busy and so much so it broke Moz cast. There has been some discussion on seo round table about the changes and something seems to be going on.
I wanted to find out how you guys are all finding it have you had a change in rankings? Any theories on what you think Google is up to? Personally I've seen rather a few of my sites go up in the rankings last week or so.
As always look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings on it Moz.
-
Thanks Marie,
You can also read more about it on Dr.Pete's Moz post here-
http://moz.com/blog/panda-4-payday-loan-2-and-ebays-very-bad-day
-
Mystery solved. Two major changes happened today:
1. Payday loans algo update - affects very spammy queries: http://searchengineland.com/official-google-payday-loan-algorithm-2-0-launched-targets-spammy-queries-192027 - This is what looked like Penguin but it wasn't Penguin.
2. A big Panda update - https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985. Google doesn't usually announce Panda updates but I suppose if they affect enough queries it's worthy of announcing.
-
We saw some gains on Friday on a few terms that had fallen out of the top 50 quite a while ago. This morning though we saw some major gains. This is for an eCommerce site that was hit hard by the first panda update and also had a manual penalty for unnatural links (though the penalty was removed in late 2012).
-
Our data on eBay can fluctuate a bit, since both the main domain and "popular.ebay.com" occupy a lot of real-estate, and seem to shuffle around. Historically, though, this is a big drop for a "Big 10" property.
-
I've seen Ebay take this kind of hit in the past. Then, after Google settled down, new auction pages began to appear.
I think that Google is playing with stale data because I see old versions of recently changed title tags. With so many pages on ebay being ephemeral, I bet Google deleted them temporarily. But, who knows what they are doing?
-
I think the SSL thing is more Matt's personal crusade than a near-term change coming from Google, but it's hard to say. I suspect it's too early for that, personally.
-
Posted some preliminary findings on Google+:
https://plus.google.com/b/112544075040456048636/+SEOmoz/posts/Tj2H3QDwX56
TLDR - definitely seeing unusual activity, and it doesn't seem to be a glitch. The last week we saw historic lows, so the contrast is very telling. It might be that Google kept changes light before rolling out something major.
I can confirm EGOL's observation that eBay took a big hit (also mentioned in the G+ post). This is unprecedented for a "Big 10" site, but it could well be temporary. An eBay-sized site moving in the SERPs that far could move the overall needle a bit, but I don't think it's the whole situation.
This feels more Penguin-like than Panda-like, but that's just my gut, and I think we have to be careful putting everything into those two buckets. With in the ballpark of 600 updates/year, there's a lot more than Panda and Penguin. If it's Penguin, we may yet hear confirmation from Google. If it's Panda, we probably won't.
-
A lot of people are saying it's a test for a Penguin refresh, but none of the sites that I monitor for Penguin issues are showing any changes. I spend a lot of time monitoring Twitter and SEO forums and here is what I am seeing:
-A lot of black hats are complaining that their sites are taking major hits.
-In the Google Webmaster Help forums there hasn't been an increase in people complaining that their sites are affected.
-A site that I monitor that gets affected both positively and negatively with many Panda updates is showing almost a 50% increase in organic traffic
So my conclusions? I don't know.
I feel like there may be a couple of things going on. I think there is a Panda refresh as we haven't had one in a little while, but I also feel like Google is doing something new.
-
I've noticed it too and Matt Cutts posted something on SSL on Twitter (he's talked about how he loves encryption before, but the timing is suspicious). Are your sites encrypted? Wondering if there's an update that responds well to encryption.
-
Thanks for the responses so far really great. Just a quick update Dr. Pete just mentioned the following - (attached)
Basically Moz cast just bottoms out at 40 degrees all time low!
-
If I was going to guess, this is a topic-sensitive update. Strengthening the rankings of sites that are all about something and demoting sites that are a little about everything.
Ebay has taken major hits in all of my SERPs.
Retail sites with substantive informative content are up with double listings.... showing product page and informative article about that topic displayed together in the SERPs.
-
I have noticed some major changes today too, i hope it stays lol.
-
I have seen a remarkable positive change this morning in rankings on one site which we have been trying to recover from an algorithmic penalty, however this appears to be an isolate result unique to Moz. Other tools show no such recovery in rankings for that site. Other similar sites we are tracking in Moz show no significant changes this morning.
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 live blog schema
Live blog markup was rolled out to a selected group of publishers last year 2015. I'm trying to find out whether it has been released to other publishers yet (we are a news site). Not seeing any updates about it anywhere and wondering how I can find out if/when it will be available. This is the latest I can see which is not much help https://developers.google.com/search/pilot/open/live-blogs. Any insider info would be very much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | hjsand2 -
Any important change in SERPs between Nov 17th and Nov 20th?
I've noticed important changes in visibility for some websites, between Nov 17th and Nov 20th. Also some of the webs that monitor SERPs have detected similar stuff (Including Mozcast). Do you know if an important change in SERPs took place during those days?
Algorithm Updates | | emerlo0 -
Google indexing site content that I did not wish to be indexed
Hi is it pretty standard for Google to index content that you have not specifically asked them to index i.e. provided them notification of a page's existence. I have just been alerted by 'Mention' about some new content that they have discovered, the page is on our site yes and may be I should have set it to NO INDEX but the page only went up a couple of days ago and I was making it live so that someone could look at it and see how the page was going to look in its final iteration. Normally we go through the usual process of notifying Google via GWMT, adding it to our site map.xml file, publishing it via our G+ stream and so on. Reviewing our Analytics it looks like there has been no traffic to this page yet and I know for a fact there are no links to this page. I am surprised at the speed of the indexation, is it a example of brand mention? Where an actual link is now no longer required? Cheers David
Algorithm Updates | | David-E-Carey0 -
Strange Google SERP Layout: Anyone?
I haven't been able to repeat this, but I just saw a strange Google SERP layout. The screenshot is attached below. Has anyone else seen something like this? I kind of rubbed my eyes and wondered 'if it was kicking in'. ca2JqaP
Algorithm Updates | | Travis_Bailey0 -
Big hit taken on Google Search in Jan - Any Ideas?
Hello, I manage a news site that gets new items posted daily. We had had a pretty even keel with Google search and ranking for some time now only on the 9th Jan we took a massive drop and have no recovered except for one big spike on the 29th January. The only think we had done differently was not post as much over Christmas for about a week as people were on holiday but if this was the reason for it the posting is back to normal now and has been since the 6th Jan and nothing has recovered. The site is wjlondon.com - any ideas greatly appreciated. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
My site dropped from 1st to 5th Pagna google br
My site dropped from 1st to 5th Pagna google br mented in the key word, how can I find out why at and what to do to get back? He fell after he put the google analytic code on all pages of the site, it may have acid? Meu site caiu da 1º para a 5º Pagna do google br em tadas as palavra chaves, como posso descobrir o motivo e oque fazer para voltar ? Ele caiu depois que coloquei o codigo do google analytic em todas as paginas do site, pode ter cido isso ?
Algorithm Updates | | Guedes0 -
Domain Change: Leave The Old Domain Homepage Up
We are going to be redesigning our website and switching to a new domain. I think we will set up a permanent 301 redirect from each page of the old domain to a page on the new domain. We would like to leave the old domain homepage up with all content removed and have a link pointing to the new domain. Is there any SEO harm to leaving the old domain homepage up? Thank you! Jessie
Algorithm Updates | | JessieT0 -
SEOMoz reports now that google only reporting the average only the top position
Today Google announced "Previously we reported the average position of all URLs from your site for a given query. As of today, we’ll instead average only the top position that a URL from your site appeared in." Will this affect SEOMoz reports in any way?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0