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.
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
-
Keywords in Paragraphs: How much do they matter at Google?
Hi all, Generally we care a lot about keywords at headings, title tags, URL, etc. always. But I wonder how much impact they have being in paragraphs. How much do they matter at paragraphs? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
Image Thumbnail in Google Mobile Search results
HI all, We can see that Google is now showing thumbnails of products in the search results on mobile.
Algorithm Updates | | RetailClicks
Very nice, but... What are specs of our snippets to show? Cause i see it at other search results of websites, but not ours?
Please help us out. Thanks!
Jeroen http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-search-results-now-showing-images-snippets-2589190 -
Google domain search
Hello all, I'm a newbie to SEO, so you'll have to bear with me. I just started a website LangleyHomeSaerch.com a few months ago and am having trouble ranking with google. When I search "Langley Home Search" with Yahoo or Bing, it comes up on the first page. However when I search it with google it doesn't seem to rank even in the first few hundred pages. The only way I can get a match from google is if I search "Langley HomeSearch" or "LangleyHomeSearch". I know due to google's newer algorithms that there is less importance put on domain name matches, but is this normal, or is there anything I can do to improve it? Thx, Colby Langley, BC
Algorithm Updates | | colbygedak0 -
Yahoo & Bing algorithm changes?
We have noticed that several of our clients have been falling fairly significantly in the rankings in both Yahoo and Bing in recent weeks. Do you know if they have made any algorithm changes lately, and if so, do you have any indication of what changes may have been made?
Algorithm Updates | | GregWalt0 -
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 -
New Algorithm changes
the real time news feed style in which we all use the internet these days. How do you think this new change is going to effect things ? “This is the result of them saying we need to find a way to more effectively get fresh content up,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land and an industry expert. “It does help with the issue of people thinking, ‘Wow, if I need to find out about something breaking, I’ll go to Facebook or Twitter for that.’ ” Is google reacting to a massive loss of traffic volume from Facebook and Twitter ? I also ask the question would Facebook benifit from some form of built in search engine or would this never happen ??
Algorithm Updates | | onlinemediadirect0 -
How To Rank High In Google Places?
Hello SEOmoz, This question has been hounding me for a long time and I've never seen a single reliable information from the web that answers it. Anyway here's my question; Supposing that there are three Google places for three different websites having the same categories and almost same keywords and same district/city/IP how does Google rank one high from the other? Or simply put if you own one of those websites and you would want to rank higher over your competitors in Google places Search results how does one do it? A number of theories were brought up by some of my colleagues: 1. The age of the listing 2. The number of links pointing to the listing (supposing that one can build links to ones listing) 3. The name/url of the listing, tags, description, etc. 4. The address of the listing. 5. Authority of the domain (linked website) You see some listings have either no description, and only one category and yet they rank number one for a specific term/keyword whereas others have complete categories, descriptions etc. If you could please give me a definite answer I will surely appreciate it. Thank you very much and more power!
Algorithm Updates | | LeeAnn300