GWT: Anyone else seen this weird data trend?
-
I have a client who came to us after recieving a manual unnatural link warning, and probable Penguin penalty.
After a lot of hard work, we had the manual penalty revoked, and have done everything we can to get the Penguin penalty lifted. This all happened after the last Penguin data refresh (early Jan), so we're still waiting to see a recovery; but in the meantime, we're seeing some very weird impression data in GWT.......
The website targets UK users, and has very little US traffic, except every thursday, GWT reports a massive spike in search impressions from the US. Could this be Google testing the new Penguin data?
See our US impressions for since Feb here - http://imgur.com/2Bl9a3f
-
That's very odd - I'm afraid I haven't seen anything like that. A couple of questions:
(1) Does your analytics data match the GWT data? If so, can you segment it at all?
(2) Is there any reason Thursday might be meaningful? For example, do you publish new content on Thursday or resubmit your sitemap (sometimes, even little things can have an impact)?
(3) Do your logs show anything suspicious, such as bot activity on Thursdays? Do your logs match this data at all?
If all three are "no", I'd venture to say it's a GWT glitch and not to lose sleep over it. If it is a Penguin update test (and I'm not seeing evidence of a weekly pattern), you should see the impression changes in your analytics and logs. They shouldn't just be an artifact in GWT.
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
-
Why is the AMP tool saying I have invalid structured data when the structured data tool shows no errors?
Why is the AMP tool saying there's missing or invalid structured data on http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/flavorful-chicken-fajitas/amp when the structured data tool shows no errors? In addition, I'm not able to see a preview of the rich card in the AMP tool like I can for other recipes like https://allrecipes.com/recipe/19621/eggs-on-the-grill/amp/. If you check https://allrecipes.com/recipe/19621/eggs-on-the-grill/amp in the AMP tool, we get this message: "Page has valid structured data. This page is eligible for extended AMP features." Google has instructions on how to get rich cards for recipes (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/recipes), but i'm not sure if we're violating anything other than image aspect ratio. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | dianedragan0 -
Anyone else notice a global Google cache issue?
Im noticing a huge % of pages on my sites and those picked at random from Google searches, high traffic pages from big sites like booking.com have not been cached since 22nd Oct by Google. Anyone else noticed this or got insight on it? Andy
Algorithm Updates | | AndyMacLean0 -
Have you seen what happens when you Google Academy Awards 2014?
Hi All... Just wondering if it is a new feature on Google's side (knowledge Graph)? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BeytzNet0 -
Any SEO thoughts about Google's new Data Highlighter for products?
After searching around on the web for a while I couldn't find any case studies or interesting posting about Google's new feature to highlight structured data. In Google Webmaster Tools you can now tag your products to be displayed as structured data in Google's search results. Two questions that rose immediately: 1. What effect will Google's new Data Hightlighter for products have on your SEO? Can we expect better CTR's for productspage results in Google? Better conversion rates perhaps? Any case studies that show KPI improvements after using structured data for products? 2. I would love to see some examples in the search results to see what productpages would look like after Data Highlighting it. Your thoughts or input about this subject will be much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | SDIM0 -
Interesting SERP trend I'm observing
I know Google has been favoring brands a big names lately, but I'm seeing something a bit more alarming Our company offers custom embroidered patches, and through keyword and search research I have discovered that almost all searches for "embroidered patches" are by people who need embroidered patches and are looking to purchase them, or learn more about the process of purchasing them. The SERPs for this term used to be all embroidered patch companies such as ours. In the past month: We've been outranked by a page on Amazon that's fairly irrelevant. An equally irrelevant ebay page has emerged The Wikipedia page for "embroidered patch" is now number seven. This has pushed three other embroidered patch companies off the first page (not that I'm complaining because it wasn't our company . . . yet). My question is, has anyone else noticed something similar happening, where large sites are gaining ground, in spite of the fact that they have low relevance to the search term?
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Can anyone help me to understand why specific key words are no longer searchable on Google
I’m not sure where to start so please bear with me. I apologize now for the length of this question.Like so many others that I have read about over the past few weeks I lost my presence on Google search results beginning on April 24th. My website iswww.getyourphotosoncanvas.com .I have spent the past few weeks trying to figure out what the problem is and have read and participated in many forums and have read and re-read Google Webmasters Help and anything else I could to try and resolve this problem. I have submitted my website for reconsideration by Google twice and have gotten the following message: Reconsideration request forhttp://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ : No manual spam actions foundMay 23, 2012Dear site owner or webmaster ofhttp://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ , We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.I read this carefully and have tried to address all aspects of the message. I am not a SEO or website expert and have been learning along the way.First, we did not just loose ranking on Google, we went away from the top 100 on all key phrases searched including specific page titles that all rank #1 on Yahoo and Bing. Example: "Free Digital Proofs Photos on Canvas". This search returns our Like Us on Facebook page #5 and our webpage Free Digital Proofs is not listed in the top 100?Like Get Your Photos on Canvas on Facebookwww.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/like-us-on-facebook/UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TODAY! WE PROVIDE FREE DIGITAL PROOFING OF YOUR PHOTO CANVAS BEFORE WE PRINT! Customer Favorite Example... Basically get back what they think you want and not necessarily what you had in mind.The description text above is taken from the sidebar that is on all pages of our website and not from the title and description meta tags._Page Title: Like Get Your Photos on Canvas on FacebookPage Description:_Like Us on Facebook and keep in touch with Special Offers and information about Get Your Photos on Canvas!This page also shows up for other title page searches? It’s like Google is all confused?Sorry this is long, if you are still with me; Thank You for hanging in there!I have followed all of Google’s Rules, I’m not perfect but not bad either:I have not participated in link buying or building schemes, I have not used hidden text or Keyword stuffing, I use rel=canonical tags, I use noindex, nofollow on pages such as privacy policy, terms of use, and order confirmation pages, and blog comments.I have not considered a server problem with Gooblebot but maybe? The server seems to work fine for Yahoo, Bing, Ask and SEOmoz.I did change a significant number of page urls in January when we rebuilt the website and changed to a new WP format and Bluehost. That didn’t seem to effect Yahoo, Bing or even Google before April 24<sup>th?</sup>Using the tools at SEOmoz the website has no Errors, had a few warnings, fixed and in all looks OK.The On Page grade for "Free Digital Proofs Photos on Canvas" is "A" Here is an interesting test:Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap (we show up as number #2 on Google)Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Canvas (we are not in top 100 on Google)Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Photos (we are not in top 100 on Google)Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Photos on Canvas www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/gallery-wraps-vs-museum-wraps/****Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap, two options for your Photo on Canvas Prints. Find out the difference between Photo Canvas Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap.**I have considered the possibility that Google may see us as keyword stuffing. Our url has photos and canvas, our website title is "Get Your Photos on Canvas" and in our content we talk about "Canvas" allot, how can you not? We have used Picture and Photographs in content to reduce the number of uses of Photos. The content was not written for stuffing it is well written and reads well. I can’t think of substitutes for "Canvas" it is what it is.
Algorithm Updates | | rdominey
My Question is simple, Can anyone HELP?
What else can I do to try and find and fix the problem**0 -
Google spitting out old data as new alerts
Am I just unlucky or are others seeing this too? I have several google alerts. For the past 6 months, google keeps sending crap along with good stuff. its a bit like their search results. There are three types of Alerts they send that I'm not impressed with. 1. Alerts that are from unintelligible splogs that take real news stories and rewrite them with unintelligible garbage that makes no sense at all. Sometimes, they serve up new alerts from the same splogs I saw several months ago, that I felt sure they would have zapped by now. 2. Old stories, that have been around for months. I just received one that was from January, from TechDirt, a big site that must get a huge amount of attention from google. 3. Irrelevant stories because they love to show how smart they are by splitting my alert keyword text into multiple words, but it gives useless results. This is the kind of stuff that crappy search engines like AltaVista used to do. Is google reverting to the childhood of search with all these changes?
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0 -
Data on Google Vs Bing, et al and changes to sites.
I am curious to know if anyone has any data that correlates site/page changes like content or Title Tag, H1, etc. and subsequent movement in rankings on Google and Bing and Yahoo? The equation is for example: ABCSite.com/home-page/ makes a change to the H1 and H2 and one paragraph of content is changed. Over next 6 to 12 weeks changes in page rank for the 3 engines is tracked to see where it started and where it "stopped." Obviously, there are more factors than individual algorithms in play here. An example of that would be that a significant number of sites will be indexed in Google by a dev and not in the others. We see this regularly. So, at least from a timing standpoint, different sites are entering/leaving the fray at different rates. We are going to begin to track this but I would love to see any data already around or speak with anyone involved in such a study about what they found. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | RobertFisher0