Disturbance in the force

[Mr Wonderful]

Since yesterday I've been seeing some major SERP movement happening over pretty much all of my properties. Mostly downwards with weak sites dropping up to 40 places and strong ones 3-5. I didn't interlink my properties and I'm even seeing this pattern with sites I haven't touched. Does anybody know what's going on here? An algorithm update maybe?

 

[yugejackpots]

Temporary drops or permanent (as in they didn't revert back)? Could be an algo update test.

 

[Xcepty]

Yup, confirmed for me, update test actually.

 

[Mr Wonderful]

Temporary drops or permanent (as in they didn't revert back)? Could be an algo update test.

Permanent so far.

 

[LeanLow]

Noticed some unusual changes also.

 

[HenryHavoc]

No hit on my sites from what I can see

 

[Mr Wonderful]

Now a big client of mine is starting to lose rank, even top rankings which have been very stable. All SEO done to this site was whitehat / PBN links. I've built 6 links to 6 inner pages with 6 unique anchors. I build my PBNs myself and for as far as I can tell none have been penalized...

 

[trichehacks]

Its too early to decide when you see a drop in rankings for a day or two. We should allow more time for whatever may be going on to settle down before starting to worry.

 

[Mr Wonderful]

Its too early to decide when you see a drop in rankings for a day or two. We should allow more time for whatever may be going on to settle down before starting to worry.

I started this thread almost a month ago when I first noticed some strange SERP movement. The drops have been mostly permanent or only partially recovered so far.

 

[Rachmaninoff]

I started this thread almost a month ago when I first noticed some strange SERP movement. The drops have been mostly permanent or only partially recovered so far.

You might get hit / penalty if it's been that long. Did you get any message from google? How's your content quality?

I did not find anything like that on my side since a month ago or so. My serp has been stable on some moneysites.

 

[Mr Wonderful]

You might get hit / penalty if it's been that long. Did you get any message from google? How's your content quality?

I did not find anything like that on my side since a month ago or so. My serp has been stable on some moneysites.

Nothing from Google SC. I'd say the content is fine. All handwritten, natural and unique although some pages have similarities. Also there's a lot of it. The domain is 12 years old and has built up some decent authority.

I'm not sure what's going on here. Some people are seeing strange fluctuations whereas others are stable. For me one site took a major hit about a month ago and now this one is losing ground. Like I said earlier, didn't do a whole lot of shady stuff. 6 spread out PBN links and some whitehat. I also made sure there's no overoptimization.

 

[xplosiv]

I'm seeing some pretty weird results with Google at the moment. Conversions are also significantly reduced... yet traffic and keyword ranking positions seem to have stayed the same. I think Google is playing with long tails and failing at it big time, because there are days when conversions just go through the roof across the board... but then these shitty days come and undo the profits. Anyone else seeing something similar?

 

[Rachmaninoff]

Nothing from Google SC. I'd say the content is fine. All handwritten, natural and unique although some pages have similarities. Also there's a lot of it. The domain is 12 years old and has built up some decent authority.

I'm not sure what's going on here. Some people are seeing strange fluctuations whereas others are stable. For me one site took a major hit about a month ago and now this one is losing ground. Like I said earlier, didn't do a whole lot of shady stuff. 6 spread out PBN links and some whitehat. I also made sure there's no overoptimization.

Well that's totally weird. Not sure what's going on either. Are you going to move on or waiting for any changing?

 

[Banditoseo]

Now a big client of mine is starting to lose rank, even top rankings which have been very stable. All SEO done to this site was whitehat / PBN links. I've built 6 links to 6 inner pages with 6 unique anchors. I build my PBNs myself and for as far as I can tell none have been penalized...

I wrote about something similar on another thread. In my niche, whitehat is getting pummeled lately. Established sites with genuine contextual links getting trashed by sites with tons of comment spam and brand-new domains. It's unreal.

Either Google is deliberately messing with the SERPs to keep everyone unbalanced (and fleeing to AdWords), or they've lost control of the algo and are fiddling with it constantly, causing huge spikes. I like conspiracy theories but I'm starting to lean towards the "lost control" theory, because the AdWords folks are up in arms about the volume of zombie traffic they've been getting lately.

 

[Mr Wonderful]

Well that's totally weird. Not sure what's going on either. Are you going to move on or waiting for any changing?

I'm not going to wait for rankings to come back. Take a look at the attached images, this isn't some sudden drop but slow and steady decrease in rank. I've seen the spikes and know that you can and most likely will recover from them quickly, but this looks very different. Destabilization seems like the right term to describe the changes I'm seeing.

Banditoseo's theory seems somewhat far fetched imo, but I get where it's coming from. Google is slowly pushing down organic results with ads and destabalizing the SERPs could be the next step to get businesses to invest in AdWords.

In the mean time I'll keep tweaking my methods. One of the things I'm doing now is diluting my SEO. Mixing up my external and internal anchors more and more, less on-page (longer permalinks, lower KW%), more outbound links etc. This way I'm hoping to stabilize the rankings.

 

[Banditoseo]

Banditoseo's theory seems somewhat far fetched imo, but I get where it's coming from. Google is slowly pushing down organic results with ads and destabalizing the SERPs could be the next step to get businesses to invest in AdWords.

In the mean time I'll keep tweaking my methods. One of the things I'm doing now is diluting my SEO. Mixing up my external and internal anchors more and more, less on-page (longer permalinks, lower KW%), more outbound links etc. This way I'm hoping to stabilize the rankings.

Admittedly far-fetched. I'm just trying to reason my way through what I'm seeing in my niche. I could rattle off a dozen white-hat sites that have SERP trackers that look just like yours.

Here's one purely white-hat site, DA > 40:



No penalty. No notices from Google. Didn't do anything unusual for it. Nonetheless, huge variation in SERPs and overall traffic. It apparently took a hit from the unconfirmed algo update in May/June (Moz detected one, Google hasn't confirmed), but now is recovering, again for no clear reason Only analysis I saw of that update was here https://www.searchenginejournal.com/data-suggests-google-algorithm-update-occurred-june-2016/167088/ and it really wouldn't apply to this site, which has thorough, original content.

I look at the site's competitors and I'm downright baffled. There are some competitor sites that have good reasons for beating this one, but those aren't the ones high in the SERPs. Most of what's high in the SERPs is either really new (and then it vanishes in less than a month) or is loaded with spammy backlinks.

Maybe indexing issues? Don't know about yours, but that could be an issue on this site, given the volume of content. As in, even the slightest problem with indexing will get you hit?

Either way, something is up, and I haven't seen any good explanations, nor can I infer many from examining competitor sites.