Hummingbird - Client took hit. Anyone else?
-
I recently landed a client about 2 months ago. About 1 month ago organic started to go down. I'm not 100% sure it's Google hummingbird. Has anyone else looked at their GA or GWT and seen a decline?
-
I have experienced a few huge ranking drops (eg 28 positions in one week) in the last month. I was wondering if it was to do with hummingbird?
-
Look at the keywords in Analytics and see if there has been a shift/drop in actual generic organic to branded organic.
If you use MOZ can see how the rankings have dropped? - if not then find a popular organic keyword that worked previously and search for it in a incognito chrome window (to rule out personalisation) and see if its showing on Google.
-
According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable http://www.seroundtable.com/google-hummingbird-17442.html, there was a Hummingbird update on August 24, 2013. On that exact day my client's visits started dropping. I looked at organic visits for sources Google, Bing, & Yahoo separately and only Google organic dropped.
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
-
I don't think we are seeing a drop in traffic in September, more likely the opposite.
In late September we had an alert in GWMT by Google of a spike in soft 404's maybe others have experienced this. We had never seen it before, it was always a stable factor in our reports and only started around the beginning of September. We have rectified this by explicitly telling Google what pages are 404 which after after doing made even more positive changes to our SERPs. As I understand it Google does not like soft 404's and deems them detrimental to search quality. We feel that Hummingbird may have had a hand in is since it occurred around the same time that Hummingbird was rolled out.
Might be worth looking at this in GWMT for similar reports for your client.
David
-
How much did your client's site go down? It could be just from natural fluctuations or SEO work from competitors.
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
-
Does anyone know what causes the long meta description snippet?
You know the ones I mean... Google have been infrequently displaying some meta descriptions as 3-4 lines long for some time now. But recently, I've been noticing them more. Not sure whether it's just a coincidence that I've been seeing more for my searches, or whether Google are displaying more in this format. Does anybody know what causes Google to prefer the longer meta description or extended meta description for some results?
Algorithm Updates | | Ria_0 -
Help Me Change My Client's Mind
My client wants to build a second site to provide targeted links for SEO to his main site. He's interested in buying a TLD with some near topic authority/links and then build the second site's authority up from there. He is clear that this could get him in trouble for a link scheme, but thinks it can all be hidden from Google. Off the top of my head I was able to recall a few of the pain-in-the-neck things you'd have to do to not get caught, but he seemed unconvinced. I recall you'd have to have: Different registrar Different contact/WhoIs Different site host Different G/A, GWT Logging into second's site's G/A, GWT with different IP address not used for main domain With the exception of the last one, he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. Aren't there more difficult maneuvers required for hiding this from Google? I want to be able to point out to him how ridiculous this low integrity effort will be, without losing the client. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
Anyone Notice Google's Latest Change Seems to Favor Google Books?
I've noticed a change in the search results lately. As I search around I notice a lot of results from books.google.com Seems a little (ok a lot) self serving... JMHO
Algorithm Updates | | get4it0 -
Our organic search traffic went flat for 2 weeks Oct 2 - Oct 17\. It has since resumed to more normal numbers. Anyone have any idea why this would happen?
Does anyone have any insight as to why our organic search traffic would go to nearly nothing for roughly a 2 week span Oct 2 - Oct 17th? Our regular traffic remained fairly consistent so we were still being indexed. It has now resumed to more normal numbers but I cannot think of anything we did that would make this happen? We did make a 302 switch to be a 301 permanent redirect on our site in early August but that is all I can think of? Any insight or help would be appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | mwuest0 -
Hummingbird Advice
We are looking for actionable insights about how to recover from hummingbird. I read the post that suggested checking the Google Webmaster Tools "Manual Action" tab for a notice about unnatural links. I did this and there was no notice. So what other steps can we take to troubleshoot?
Algorithm Updates | | larahill0 -
Organic Traffic dropped 50%. Anyone want to have a stab at why? (URL listed)
Just curious what the pro's on here think is the reason why our site got hammered recently. The URL is www.jobshadow.com. We've got gobs of quality content that had been ranking for quite a few keywords. Even one from Rand himself http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-seo-and-seomoz-founder-rand-fishkin/ Rankings for even the exact match domain keyword 'Job Shadow' have been pummeled. Anyway, we've got a pretty solid link profile I would think. We also have a very high user time on the site, thus suggesting the organic traffic was engaged when Google ranked us for those keywords. We have lots of unsolicited inbound links and even recent ones from PBS. I'm not really sure what it takes to please the "machine" at this point. Curious as to what everyone here thinks.
Algorithm Updates | | arkana0 -
If you got hit by a google update what you do first?
I have not been known the Panda. My site statistics knows it. I manage to endure and get back where i felt everytime with change of design, ad placement, content... I am very curious: if i did nothing, my site will turn back? why i kicked in every big update? Simply if you get hit by update, without any act, could your site healed?
Algorithm Updates | | MaxCrandale0 -
Has anyone starting using schema.org?
On the 3rd June 2011 Google announced that they are going to start using Schema. Do you think this will change the way search engines find content, from briefly looking at Schema I'm concerned that the proposed tags could just turn into another keyword meta tag and be abused. Have you started using this tags yet and have you noticed a difference?
Algorithm Updates | | Seaward-Group0