Did Google's Farmer Update Positively/Negatively Affect Your Search Traffic?
-
Oddly the handful of sites that I have which should have most probably been affected negatively actually saw boosts in traffic, CTR on ads and eCPM on ads. Not huge jumps.. but yeah.. I benefited which was odd. These domains are testbeds I set up a long time ago to find the upper limit of what you can "get away with" in google so I know where to draw the line.
Other interesting facts. I rand some tests over the weekend (may not be large enough to be statistically relevant yet) but it seems the farmer update has almost no impact on indexation of poor or duplicate content given enough raw link juice (no anchor, ip diversity or any other cool factors, just a flat link from a big ol' bucket of link juice) which I find disappointing. =/ I expected a bit of a challenge after all this hoopla. Even though I rock the greyhat Im still pretty anti dupe/crap content.
-
Awesome use of the new Q&A Rand!
One of my biggest content sites actually has seen an increase in traffic since the "farmer" update. The content on it is definitely a tick above content farmed crap, but it's also not 5-star.
For what it's worth, it's monetized with AdSense ads and there's really no branded traffic to speak of naturally.
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
-
Real-Life Negative SEO Study
This isn't so much of a question as an offer The Offer first, then the story. We are currently the target of a sustained negative SEO. This was only discovered in the last 3 or 4 days (Webmaster reports impressions down from 15,000 to 1,600!). I'm not asking for help, I believe we know what to do in order to combat it. My question is whether anyone at MOZ would like to use it as a real-life ongoing case study. We are not a new company and have never dabbled in black hat SEO. All current thinking suggests that this shouldn't have been possible given our age and reputation. A summary of our company/site below: 9 Year old domain $3m annual sales Previous Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Company 25,000 Facebook fans Hundreds of natural links including CNN.com, Washington Post, Inc.com I'm not the best writer and I'm not that technical. I would gladly give the right person full access to anaylics, webmaster tools, sales reports, interviews. Given that this is still ongoing (and there's always a chance we might not recover!) I suspect this would make a great case study for the community given the right author. gfbM8kV
Industry News | | experiencedays1 -
Direct is taking over my SEO traffic in Mobile iOS and Android Devices
WIth all the buzz of mobile has anyone taken a look to dig into the SEO traffic by device (desktop vs mobile). Well I did and surprising my desktop trend was not even close to mobile traffic. Surprising to know that due to the security updates in iSO and Android organic traffic (traffic with out tracking codes) is getting bucket into Direct. (Yes we all know Direct traffic is dirty dirty label traffic that analytics platforms can identify.)http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/estimating-google-organic-search-visits-hidden-by-ios-6/17122012/http://www.definemg.com/recover-your-android-4-and-ios-search-traffic/ Feels like SEO is receiving no love... didn't we have enough with Google encryption, we didn't get the keyword but at least got the referral! Have you notice in your traffic and what are you doing about it?
Industry News | | LNEseo0 -
Can't seem to submit my xml sitemap to Baidu, can someone help?
Hello Mozers and SEM's, I'm sure all of you know and understand the importance of uploading your sitemap to search engines. Once search engine in particular is Baidu. For some reason, i can't find a way to submit my link www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml. For Google, Bing, and Yandex it was easy, but Baidu is giving me problems. Don't tell me to "wait until they crawl your site", i have over 1000+ pages of unique content that those other 3 search engines found because of my sitemap; Baidu can't be that slow. Their robots only found 147 pages. 😞 If you take a look at the image attachment, you can see why I'm stuck, i can't read chinese! (and it's an image, so i couldn't translate it). Has anybody had any luck submitting their .xml link into Baidu? Can someone walk me through it? Let me know! Shawn xILP69w
Industry News | | Shawn1240 -
Help seems like google is punishing our site and I don't understand why
I would love some helpMy anme is Suzanne Diamond our web site is WWW.thefutonshop.com we have been on line for years, 10 brick and mortar stores, had a strong ecommerce web site but in the past 4 months we have been dropping like a leaf. Organic search has been dropping since November 2012 but now total traffic seems to be slowing We are working on our SEO but I feel it has to be something more direct that we are being punished by google Perhaps it s obvious but not to me Can anyone help me please or give me a direction. [email protected] thanks in advance for any direction
Industry News | | FUTONSHOP0 -
Is this still Google?
My niche, my concern.
Industry News | | webfeatus
http://www.google.com/search?q=jimbaran+villa
My site just dropped out of the rankings completely. But if you look at the Google search above you will notice 2 things:
1. First page: 75% of space above the fold is dedicated to Google making money
2. Subsequent pages: It is like you don't actually search "Google" If you flip through a few pages what you actually search is:
agoda.com
flipkey.com
tripadvisor.com
homeaway.com Do I have a point or am I simply having a cynical day?1 -
SEO Conferences - Which One(s) do you Attend ?
I have been in SEO since over 10 years now. And have been attending Pubcon since 2004 in Las Vegas. I think I have only missed 1. This year, I have been thinking of which conferences to attend and here are the options. I am looking for 1st hand experiences from people who have attended multiple conferences to kinda do a comparison. Here are the upcoming conferences by date. I am only listing the US Conferences. SES New York March 19-23* BlueGlass Los Angeles April 23-24* SMX Advanced Seattle Jun. 5-6* MozCon July 25 - July 27* SES San Francisco August 13-17* SMX New York | Oct. 2-4, 2012* Pubcon Las Vegas October 16 - 19* SES Chicago November 12-16* SMX Social Media Marketing Las Vegas | Dec. 5-6 Please let me know what conferences you have attended in the past and which ones of these people here are planning to attend ?
Industry News | | NakulGoyal1 -
How long after making changes will position on Google be altered?
I'm curious as to how long Google updates take these days? I'm just getting back into SEO after 9 years and I recall back in the day there was a monthly "dance" during which page results were updated. Is it more frequent now? Thanks
Industry News | | celife0