Is google rolling out a huge update this week?
-
I am seeing some huge shifts in SERPS at the moment, for some keywords such as web design. Nearly every single result on the homepage is a different company than 2 weeks ago. We are seeing some clients have huge jumps in ranks but also some are dropping.
Seems like we could have a big Panda/Penguin like update rolling out.
-
Something's going on but not determined what yet. I've seem a fair amount of movement in the SERPs for non-US territories (UK, IE, SE, IN, DE, FR, CH, +).
Assuming Google are denying a Pan-guin update of any sort there are a few theories about what it could be.
-
Crawl based link devaluation.
I'm inclined to think that this has something to do with linking but it would make sense that they include Penguin within the main algo if they can do it as they go. Specifically might have an effect on old links as well as spammy links. Alternatively might be ignoring anchor text on low PR sites. Maybe ignoring some directories specifically. -
Disavow data.
Doubt they've had time to sort through the amount of data they've been getting, but they'll have to look at it at some point. -
User metrics.
CTR, return to SERPs within same session, refined searches. I'm not leaning towards this one as most of what I've seen slip has been among the (if not 'the') best result. -
Social signal devaluation
If Facebook can figure out what likes are fake then Google can probably see which 'authors' are fake. They're definitely pushing for authorship, rolling out something to figure out who's legit could have an impact, but I'm not sure authorship rank is a big enough of a part of the algo currently to affect this kind of change. -
EMD update.
Not keen on this as a theory. Not seen anything to back it up and plenty of EMDs still up there. -
Google are telling lies!
Somebody's made a change and they're not letting on or haven't told the people communicating the changes.
Ultimately I'm shooting in the dark here. Although I'm seeing a lot of changes not all of my sites have been effected and I'm doing similar promotion for most.
If anybody wants to chime in maybe we can put our heads together. I'm seeing a bit more clustering again with the same domain showing up more often in the results (though not as bad as it was). Anybody else seeing any sort of pattern?
-
-
Definitely seen that. Some of the most competitive terms out there being hijacked by new domains practically. Seeing huge lifts and drops across many verticals on a number of sites I monitor daily. Changes every few hours when running AWR across a lot of terms yesterday in particular. Deeper pages seemed to be affected more than home pages.
-
Client was a design agency, and it was in the UK. We changed nothing in the 5 days for the result to come back. To be honest in that period we were doing research and did not want to rush things.
Only happened to one client.
-
Hi James,
Sorry was that UK or US or other results? Did you change anything in those five days? What niche was it in? Did it happen to any other client sites? Has it happened again since Monday?
Cheers
-
Hi James,
Sorry was that UK or US or other results? Did you change anything in those five days? What niche was it in? Did it happen to any other client sites? Has it happened again since Monday?
Cheers
-
US results. Very specific regulatory training keywords. I can understand why some HR sites would be ranked but they should be on page 3+. Only helpful to people working for that specific company or going to that university. Totally unusable results right now and these are ranking I've held consistently since 2009-2010. Other updates have never really affected me.
-
Have to agree big change looming seeing sites doing the dance big time.
-
A client of ours who has some really decent links, no directories articles etc. They dropped off for 5 days last week then just bounced right back. But the 5 days they were off the results for their keyword was horrendous. Absolute junk that was not useful to the consumer one bit.
It felt like we were back in 1999 having to search back a few pages to get what we wanted.
-
Hi Gundogs I feel your pain - so for exam related searches you site has declined. Is that in the UK SERPS?
-
My website which has been in the top three for years just slide to page two and the entire first page has been replaced by spammy sites or university HR pages??? Not good.Hopefully it doesn't last.
-
Hi!
My client's listing keywords are safe, but results for my domain name has let only the frontpage in good position, and other bad quality SEO pages, in which we have carried out online test (they generate a page with the name of everysite that do a test with them), has appear in the firsts google results.
If it is an update, why so many spam pages are coming up in good positions?
Update: Less than two hours later, the three sections of my site are ranking in the first three positions for my domain name. It changes a lot today.
-
Not sure myself but as you said they do seem to be changing a good few times a day. Some really poor results on page one that are useless for the user in my opinion.
I am pretty certain whatever change is coming in will be something we will be discussing for months to come like Penguin and Panda.
-
Does appear to be some major swings in the UK SERPS. Lots of rankings changing almost by the hour. Seem some EMD pop up in the top ten. Any ideas whats causing it? What metrics are key?
-
Well, those new sites or the spammy sites usually pop up in the top 10 when there's a bit of a refresh going. Could be a sign.
Unless we're talking about payday loans of course. That's just a shitstorm of spam.
-
Each day I see different results for some big keywords. I have seen sites that are less than 12 weeks old with terrible spam links ranking for highly competitive keywords.
They get in the top 5 but dont seem to last longer than 8 weeks in that position.
-
I can definitely feel a big update coming. Either targeting fake social signals or making a real crackdown on disguised paid links.
In one of my other projects, I've seen a lot of volatility in the top 10 for a keyword - with all the major dancers having a huge amount of paid blogroll and homepage links in their link profile.
If Google is cracking down on them, I'd seriously love them.
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
-
Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?
Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Silly Question still - Because I am paying high to google adwords is it possible google can't rank me high in organic?
Hello All, My ecommerce site gone in penalty more than 3 years before and within 3 months I got message from google penalty removed. Since then till date my organic ranking is very worst. In this 3 years I improved my site onpage very great. If I compare my site with all other competitors who are ranking in top 10 then my onpage that includes all schema, reviews, sitemap, header tags, meta's etc, social media, site structure, most imp speed, google page speed insight score, pingdom, w3c errors, alexa rank, global rank, UI, offers, design, content, code to text raito, engagement rate, page views, time on site etc all my sites always good compare to competitors. They also have few backlinks I do have few backlinks only. I am doing very high google adwords and my conversion rate is very very good. But do you think because I am paying since last 3 year high to google because of that google have some setting or strategy that those who perform well in adwords so not to bring up in organic? Is it possible I can talk with google on this? If yes then what will be the medium of conversation? Pls give some valuable inputs I am performing very much in paid so user end site is very very well. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pragnesh96390 -
Google serving wrong page...
Hi, When you Google: "Los Angeles divorce attorney", you will see this site on the 5th page of the SERPS: www.berenjifamilylaw.com/blog/. For some reason, Google is serving the BLOG page as opposed to the homepage. This has been going on now for several weeks. Any tips on how to fix this? Obviously, the Homepage is more relevant and has more links going to it, so not sure why it's happening. Would you just leave it alone? Would you use robots.txt to block Google from crawling the BLOG post page? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Penalty from Google due to spam that was not our doing
Hi, My company has enjoyed pretty good rankings for our main keywords in Google for the past 13+ years we have been in business. We have always been very white-hat about our SEO -- always erring on the side of not doing anything rather than risking a penalty. Well, last Thursday, we received the dreaded Google penalty due to a pattern of unnatural links. The hit is devastating - we are not even in the top 50 for our own company name anymore. Through research, we believe we have found the culprit -- and it has nothing to do with any of our own actions. We operate a discussion forum, and there was a link to one of the threads that was being used as the target for a lot of link spam -- Chinese blog comments, etc. We had nothing to do with this, but obviously someone had an agenda and was working on spamming to this page. Who knows - it may have even been the company that was being discussed negatively in the thread, attempting to have us blocked. We discovered it the same day we received the penalty notice, and issued a reconsideration request, detailing what we believe we found. So far, we haven't disavowed any of the links, but I am thinking we should. We have asked Google if they're able to just turn off any link juice for that one page, especially since we don't know who is doing this spamming, and whether they will continue. Has anyone experienced something similar? How does one prevent themselves from receiving a penalty that they had nothing to do with? What is there to keep any competitor from launching a spammy link-building campaign to get their competitor removed from Google? Is there anything we can do to resolve this? Thanks for any and all thoughts...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylie_rw0 -
Buying a Google News website, against Google Terms?
We are looking at buying a business that has a number of websites Is it against buying a business that has a Google News website and continue to use the site? Once the business is sold, would google remove the site from its News?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Does Google hate wordpress?
I have my categories pages set to noindex, follow. I deactivated the author and date based archives, and all the /page/2 /page/3 are noindex. Is this the right approach? I had thought about adding some text to the topic of each category page and then changing them to index. I'm using showing recent post excerpts on the homepage. Another other suggestions? I think two of my sites are in panda for no good reason. It seems like non-wordpress blogs in my industry do better than comparable wordpress sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateV0 -
Custom Attributes in Google Places
Hi Guys I'm looking for some clarity of what I can and can't add to the custom attribute fields in a Google Places listing. From my understanding, you can add additional information about your services, but not what those services are. The issue I'm trying to resolve is that a client of mine offers far more than the 5 services/ category options Places allow. They are a home services company, covering all sorts from plumbing, painting and decorating, through to extensions etc. They have about 25 different services. At the moment I'm restricted to just getting rankings for 5 services (correlated to the categories in Places), when I'd like to rank locally for them all. As Google is showing local results for most search queries related to their services whether those searches are geographically modified or not, I'm in a position where even if I am ranking top 5 organically for the terms, I'm still on bottom of page 1, or top of page 2. Would it be wise to add these additional services to the custom attributes section of the Places listing, or would this set off the potential for a listing suspension? Any ideas how to combat this problem would be very welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PerchDigital0 -
Google Places - How do we rank
So, google places showing up on search results is great feature . . . But how can we get our results to the top? I mean I can see some terrible websites appearing at the top of the google places with their places page having no activity whatsoever. Is there a trick to this at all? What can we do to increase our ranking on Google Places because our old GOOD rankings are now appearing BELOW the map results Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayweb0