Did Google Just Punish Organic For Showing Up In Local?
-
Google pushed the local search results in a prominent spot on a ton of search results. That means (for me) that all first page rankings (including a lot of 1st place rankings) have completely disappeared.
Subfolders still rank and homepage still ranks where local search is not included. This is weird. Is this a glitch or is there something we can do about this?
-
Hi Peter,
Like Pashmina, I'm wondering if what you are seeing relates to the Venice update. Did you catch Mike Ramsey's YouMoz post on this?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update
Some changes have definitely happened.
Miriam
-
Isn't this just a reflection of Google Venice affecting the algorithm? Now, search queries without geo modifiers will also return local results if Google believes it is relevant.
-
I dont know for sure what it is. That was just a guestimate.
BTW I did say "probably" and I was implying that Google updates are scrambling results.. Regardless of location.
-
What do you mean by that, Donnie? It is fairly clearly linked to the presence of local results on the query. Results without a local character are not affected (from what I see at least).
-
Probably preparing/ adjusting the new algorithms for over optimized SEO sites.
-
I'm having a similar experience at the moment.
-
I am seeing (as of this morning) that lots of the SERPs that I watch are completely scrambled. The rankings of sites are shuffling like the Google dances of 2003.
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
-
Https & Google Updated Guidelines
Hi We have https on aspects of the site which users directly interact with, such as login, basket page. But we don't have https across the whole site. In light of Google adding it to their guidelines - is this something we need to put into action? Also same question on the Accessibility point Ensure that your pages are useful for readers with visual impairments, for example, by testing usability with a screen-reader. Are we going to be penalised if these are not added to our site? Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
If Google Trends Doubles?
If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled? As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshBowers20120 -
Google is forcing a 301 by truncating our URLs
Just recently we noticed that google has indexed truncated urls for many of our pages that get 301'd to the correct page. For example, we have:
Algorithm Updates | | mmac
http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html as the url linked everywhere and that's the only version of that page that we use. Google somehow figured out that it would still go to the right place via 301 if they removed the html filename from the end, so they indexed just: http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/ The 301 is not new. It used to 404, but (probably 5 years ago) we saw a few links come in with the html file missing on similar urls so we decided to 301 them instead thinking it would be helpful. We've preferred the longer version because it has the name in it and users that pay attention to the url can feel more confident they are going to the right place. We've always used the full (longer) url and google used to index them all that way, but just recently we noticed about 1/2 of our urls have been converted to the shorter version in the SERPs. These shortened urls take the user to the right page via 301, so it isn't a case of the user landing in the wrong place, but over 100,000 301s may not be so good. You can look at: site:www.eventective.com/usa/massachusetts/bedford/ and you'll noticed all of the urls to businesses at the top of the listings go to the truncated version, but toward the bottom they have the full url. Can you explain to me why google would index a page that is 301'd to the right page and has been for years? I have a lot of thoughts on why they would do this and even more ideas on how we could build our urls better, but I'd really like to hear from some people that aren't quite as close to it as I am. One small detail that shouldn't affect this, but I'll mention it anyway, is that we have a mobile site with the same url pattern. http://m.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html We did not have the proper 301 in place on the m. site until the end of last week. I'm pretty sure it will be asked, so I'll also mention we have the rel=alternate/canonical set up between the www and m sites. I'm also interested in any thoughts on how this may affect rankings since we seem to have been hit by something toward the end of last week. Don't hesitate to mention anything else you see that may have triggered whatever may have hit us. Thank you,
Michael0 -
Google visits falling at the expense of Bing
Has anyone else noticed their percentage of search visits from Google slipping in the last few weeks at the expense of Bing? We've seen a 4% swing in the last month. Obviously Google is still the dominant presence (acconuting for 88.4% of all organic visits to our site kenwoodtravel.co.uk) but still it would be interesting to know if this is just a blip or more of a trend?
Algorithm Updates | | BrettCollins0 -
How Does Google Treat External Links to URLs with # Anchors?
Here are two URLs to explain this example: **Original URL: **example.com/1/ **URL that points to anchor within the webpage above: **example.com/1/#anchor Does Google treat these two URLs as separate entities or the same? For example, does an external link to the anchor URL pass full PageRank value to the original URL? How does Google handle this? Is there anything negative about this situation? Are there any risks associated with links to the anchor URL? Finally, is it more valuable for an external link to point to the URL without an anchor?
Algorithm Updates | | SAMarketing0 -
Google decreased use of Meta Descripiton Tag
Over the past month or so I have noticed that Google is not using the meta description for my pages but is instead pulling text from the actual page to show on the SERP. Is Google placing less emphasis on meta descriptions?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0 -
Google Cached Pages
I made some on-site changes to a site last week, in particular their page titles. This was all done on the same day at the same time. Now, one of those pages, got re-indexed on August 8th and has my updated changes, which also helped with my ranking. The other page I made changes to still shows a cached version from July 27th, which is before I made the changes. Why wouldn't google have an updated page from August 8th for both pages, not just one?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
If Google turns down the weight of keywords in domains then what will they be turning up?
Per Matt Cutts video "We will be turning that keyword in domain down." http://youtu.be/rAWFv43qubI So what will they be turning up?
Algorithm Updates | | Thos0030
