Early Feb Update?
-
After the Google "Mystery Update" in early Feb (Algoroo marks the flux as Feb 5th) one of my B2C e-commerce sites has gotten absolutely hammered. We had some trouble last May but cleaned a whole host of on-site/site quality issues over the summer and as of early Sept we began to regain rankings/traffic quite nicely...until Feb when we've almost given it all back.
I was doing a little hunting around on SearchMetrics.com and saw lots of big ecommerce sites took a hit as well (eBay, Kohls, Target, etc…). I had read someplace (I think it was the SearchMetrics blog) that the Feb 5<sup>th</sup> update had to do with sites ranking due to misspellings. We do have several domains variations of company name redirecting to our site, I was wondering if that could have hurt. I dropped the redirects as a test since they do not drive traffic.
I was wondering if anyone else has seen similar issues and/or could shed some light on the situation. It is very disheartening to see all that hard work simply "go away" so quickly.
-
Hi, sorry I don't seem to have this email. Can you either PM me here at Moz or send to matt@payonperformance.com.au?
Thanks!
-
Yeah, the update did seem "Panda-like" but I've been such a "content-nut" here lately I can't believe I missed something so big as to crush us like it has. Obviously I must have missed something. I appreciate the offer, I sent you a quick email with my URL. Any insight you can give would be greatly appreciated.
-
The biggest changes we saw for the Feb 5 update was to ecomm sites with duplicate content across their own site (parameter issues) and other sites (dupe content.) It "felt" like a Panda+Ecomm update from the data we saw and the experiences for our own clients.
We didn't dig too deeply as many clients were not affected but if you'd like us to take a look post up a domain (or PM it) and we'll be happy to see if it fits our patterns.
-
I don't think the typo redirects are an issue. Even Google uses those: http://gooogle.com. What percentage of your visits is referrer traffic or direct? If you're at 90% from search any of these swings are going to hurt a lot more. Getting higher rates of referrer and direct would help buffer search, and they also indicate a much higher likelihood of not dropping from search due to brand strength. I work with some more niche ecommerce sites that saw no adverse effects, but also have balanced brand strengths so wherever possible work on strengthening those as well.
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
-
Hit by an unnamed Google update on November 30th - Still suffering
Hi, Moz Community. Just decided to sign up for a free trial because I'm absolutely at my wits end here. Here's my site: cheapgamesguru.com I run a small PC gaming blog monetized by affiliate marketing. I do all the writing, SEO, etc. myself. The content I write is, from what I can tell, fully complying with Google's guidelines, and in and of itself is pretty informative and high-quality. My site was started in December of 2015, and it was doing very well for a good 10 or 11 months - until late November of 2016. Then something happened. My traffic started plummeting - I went from getting nearly 300 organic users a day (Not sessions - actual unique users) to 80, then 40, and now I'm lucky to get over 15 a day. I do not do ANY black hat SEO whatsoever. I have not taken part in any shady link building schemes, nor do I try to trick Google in any way. I just write good content, do good keyword research (Targeting only low-hanging fruit and low-difficulty keywords using KWFinder), and do my best to provide a good user experience. I run no ads on my site. Glenn Gabe wrote about a potential Google update on November 29th, but the stuff he said in his article doesn't seem to affect me - my mobile site is perfectly fine, according to Google's own metrics and testing tools. Here's the article in question: http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/november-30-2016-google-algorithm-update/ At first, I thought it was possible that this was a result of my competitors simply doing far better than me - but that doesn't seem to be the case, as their rankings did not actually move - mine simply pummeted. And many of their sites are far worse than mine in terms of grammar, spelling, and site speed. I understand backlinks are important, by the way, but I really don't think that's why my site was hit. Many competitors of mine have little to no backlinks and are doing great, and it would also not make much sense for Google to hit an otherwise great site just because they have few backlinks. A friend of mine has reached out to Glenn Gabe himself to see if he can get his input on my site, but he's had a busy schedule and hasn't gotten a chance to take a look yet. I recently obtained a backlink from a highly relevant DA 65 site (About a month ago, same niche as my site), and it now shows up in Search Console and Ahrefs - but it hasn't affected rankings whatsoever. Important Note: I'm not only just ranking poorly for stuff, I'm ranking in position 100-150+ for many low-competition keywords. I have no idea why that is happening - is my site THAT bad, that my content deserves to be ranking on page 15 or lower? Sorry for the long question. I'm struggling here, and just wanted to give as much information as possible. I would really appreciate any input you guys can give me - if any SEO experts want to turn my site into a case study and work with me to improve things, I'd also be open to that 😉 I kid, of course - I know you guys are all busy. Thanks! P.S. I've attached a picture of my SEMRush graph, for reference, as well. mhgSw
Algorithm Updates | | polycountz0 -
Google Algo Updates
Hi I have noticed strange drops in our rankings, some last Monday 12th & some Sunday 18th - has anyone else experienced anything on these dates? I've seen talk of a possible algo update, but nothing concrete Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Yandex Algorithim Update?
I have 2 RU websites. One is my main site www.xxx.com saw big increases in rankings + visits last week. My geo-specific subsite, www.xxx.ru generally ranks better but did not change last week. Any insights about why this occurred?
Algorithm Updates | | theLotter0 -
Algorithm update last weekend?
Hi guys, Just a simple one really. Our in house company has seen a significant improvement in rankings and traffic over the weekend period for 4-5 classified niche sites. However, so far there seems to be little out there in the blogosphere. I did find this article by Barry Schwartz, and it seems some on WMW agree: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-possible-17065.html. Has anyone else seen signs of an algorithm update around the 14th July? Cheers. (UK)
Algorithm Updates | | Sayers0 -
15% Drop in Traffic. Anyone have theories about the most recent update?
Analyzing our traffic, looks like we were hit site wide, with some article pages that don't have great engagement seeing more damage than others. We've been talking to other sites, and sites that have never seen any penalties and do everything right have also seen about 15-20% drop in traffic. The sites we know that weren't affected are brands (sites you would recognize by name). The only conclusion I can draw from everything (looking at mozcast metrics 'big 10' is that branded websites saw a boost. Does anyone else have any theories about what this most recent update was about?
Algorithm Updates | | nicole.healthline0 -
Any PR Lose? Google Made a Update ! Heavy Traffic, Followed SEOmoz Tips - Dropped to PR4 ?
I followed the rules to minimize the links in the page. Getting Same Traffic to my blog and increased only. But my PR5 to PR4 ? why even 404 Error was reduced o 5 or 6 which i updated now ! not accepting any Text Link ads ! too past 6 months also !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
ECommerce site being "filtered" by last Panda update, ideas and discussion
Hello fellow internet go'ers! Just as a disclaimer, I have been following a number of discussions, articles, posts, etc. trying to find a solution to this problem, but have yet to get anything conclusive. So I am reaching out to the community for help. Before I get into the questions I would like to provide some background: I help a team manage and improve a number of med-large eCommerce websites. Traffic ranges anywhere from 2K - 12K+ (per day) depending on the site. Back in March one of our larger sites was "filtered" from Google's search results. I say "filtered" because we didn't receive any warnings and our domain was/is still listed in the first search position. About 2-3 weeks later another site was "filtered", and then 1-2 weeks after that, a third site. We have around ten niche sites (in total), about seven of them share an identical code base (about an 80% match). This isn't that uncommon, since we use a CMS platform to manage all of our sites that holds hundreds of thousands of category and product pages. Needless to say, April was definitely a frantic month for us. Many meetings later, we attributed the "filter" to duplicate content that stems from our product data base and written content (shared across all of our sites). We decided we would use rel="canonical" to address the problem. Exactly 30 days from being filtered our first site bounced back (like it was never "filtered"), however, the other two sites remain "under the thumb" of Google. Now for some questions: Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content? Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"? Why has only one site recovered?
Algorithm Updates | | WEB-IRS1 -
Another Panda update?
Our high quality (IMHO!) editorial technology site got hit by around ~20% of Google search referrals when Panda went live in the UK on the 12th. But the last couple of days it's returned to "normal". Is that the effects of our frantic scrabbling around trying things, or have Google tweaked the algorithm again, to remove the editorial sites which got caught accidentally?
Algorithm Updates | | StuartAnderton0