Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[starki]

This is a bit of relief, in the sense that if these two monsters and leaders of the sector have experienced this, it's normal that I have to.

Strangest update I have ever seen, even .edu and .gov sites as well as huge brands everybody knows with significant drops for various high traffic terms. Seen sites jumping from #1-5 to #50-100+, back and forth. Crazy stuff. Really looking forward to some deeper analysis, hats off to someone who can find something that remotely resembles a pattern in this chaos.

 

[Banditoseo]

The GSC analytics look really funny - there's just no data for 9th March

Same here. No data for March 9 or March 10.

In my niche, "Fred" was all about legitimate authority. The sites that survived are 2+ years old and have plentiful links from genuine high-traffic, high-authority sites, and not like the things you can buy on HuffPo or the like with chosen anchor text. I mean real links that would unquestionably pass manual review. Some of these sites also have spam boosting them up, but they have a solid base of genuine authority links. Sites boosted up primarily on spam/paid/etc got nailed.

I have not looked if these changes are correlated with Trust Flow, Domain Authority, or any other metric. This is just my gut sense in my own niche from looking at who got trashed and who is still on top.

 

[beingink]

I know you guys hate to say this but maybe Rankbrain which rolled last month after live penguin changed the parameters and reduced the effectiveness of links. See they can't just target some PBN networks on BHW when so many people across so many niches, whitehat, greyhat or blackhat have lost or gained.

I remember last year so many were bragging how we still have 5-6 years before rank brain really takes over, but I think we have it now. It is the same seismic shift that happened in 2012.

If not that Google team has gone Cray cray without Cutts and are just throwing up shit. Somebody should tweet to Sunder Pichai(Google Ceo) about this.

 

[K114a]

I know you guys hate to say this but maybe Rankbrain which rolled last month after live penguin changed the parameters and reduced the effectiveness of links. See they can't just target some PBN networks on BHW when so many people across so many niches, whitehat, greyhat or blackhat have lost or gained.

I remember last year so many were bragging how we still have 5-6 years before rank brain really takes over, but I think we have it now. It is the same seismic shift that happened in 2012.

If not that Google team has gone Cray cray without Cutts and are just throwing up shit. Somebody should tweet to Sunder Pichai(Google Ceo) about this.

I don't think it's mainly based on RankBrain. As far as i observed, only sites with bad links got affected. The whitehat fellas rankings will return back in few days Google is completely based on backlinks, if they remove it from their main factors, the internet would collapse.

 

[beingink]

I don't think it's mainly based on RankBrain. As far as i observed, only sites with bad links got affected. The whitehat fellas rankings will return back in few days Google is completely based on backlinks, if they remove it from their main factors, the internet would collapse.

That was the case in like there 2012 video, they have advanced quite a bit you know? Backlinks will always be in top 10 but from my niche research I am seeing very variant results.

 

[K114a]

That was the case in like there 2012 video, they have advanced quite a bit you know? Backlinks will always be in top 10 but from my niche research I am seeing very variant results.

Hmm, let's wait and see. This update is confusing everyone!

 

[bhfangluo]

Pure whitehat backlink building. Traffic 50% dropped! God, tell me why??? Hope it will recover.

 

[unknownmehed]

I am just noticing my most of the keywords are going down and really most of the keywords don't have any backlinks!
What is going here I don't understanding! If it is really pbns backlink update then why my site is affected by this update?

Just thinking how helpless we are! Google can ruin anyone business within one minute even if we follow google guidelines!
Frustrating

 

[webmasterbd]

One of my new site that was launched around 2 months ago has some positive movements lately...

 

[K114a]

One of my new site that was launched around 2 months ago has some positive movements lately...

Used PBNs?

 

[webmasterbd]

Used PBNs?

no pbns! Used around 800 social signals dripping over 30 days,3 niche related editorial links,few basic links like social bookmarks,web 2.0 profile links etc(around 30 in total).

 

[lokko]

So worried about buying PBN's lately that I feel like I should wait this out, how about you guys?

 

[ThemeWave]

PBN's will still work, they just have to be really good quality. So much junk around these days it's hard to find a "good" service.
Good quality everything is the way to go..Just make really good sites...You'll make more money that way anyway.

So many factors that could be effecting peoples sites but I'm guessing the majority (not all) will be low quality content and low quality links. Bad structure, on page seo and even things like ctr via search console may also be a factor - speed as well.

In a way, this update or shift will be a good thing. It's going to get rid of a lot of competition by means of people will get the shitz and give up or move on to something else.
The ones that want to make it will continue adding value to their site, links, content and not give up.

 

[EdgeGF]

Has anyone spotted any kind of pattern penalized sites vs not?

Link wise I can't see much, some with bought links here survived some not. Pretty much bought same kind of links to different sites. One site is interesting. Some profiles and expired domains links, from a private network of mine. Site looks good. But penalized... Another one with the same links but just a bit fewer, no penalty what I can see.

 

[alvaroj]

Has anyone spotted any kind of pattern penalized sites vs not?

Link wise I can't see much, some with bought links here survived some not. Pretty much bought same kind of links to different sites. One site is interesting. Some profiles and expired domains links, from a private network of mine. Site looks good. But penalized... Another one with the same links but just a bit fewer, no penalty what I can see.

Still no pattern that we can think of. Spammy, great, new, old, high quality and low quality sites have been hit.

That's the worst thing of all... Not knowing how to react. With Panda and Penguin we knew why we could have been hit. This time... nothing at all.

For now... I'm creating clone sites (but quality sites) and I'm gonna do different types of SEO to all of them. Hope in future updates not all of them get hit.

 

[Deleted member 36594]

Right now we're facing waves of tsunamis from Google algorithm changes.

A ship's particular position at a sea will get sweep off, if not, catch the wave which propels it deeper into different position the captain wants to - it can be towards the shore, or deeper into the sea - favourable or unfavourable direction.

Since last month, there have been rough waves but some ships don't feel it. But these past 4 days, the waves are of tremendous impact that every ship got affected by it. I won't be surprise if these waves last for another few more days.

Right now, it is pointless to try to pin-point your location as the waves aren't finish yet. Let the tide/waves calm down first, only then you start to figure out what happened and what position you're at.

Like someone mentioned previously: it could be Google's algorithm re-analysing every website's value, thus your site will definitely be jumping all over the place.

So just have a cup of tea and let it ride it off. No point panicking and trying to figure it out. Just take a break and come back when the 'weather' and 'sea' calms.

P.S: I'm learning Russian and reading a good book on Emotional Intelligence. So yeah, you guys should take a break for now... perhaps a week or so. Don't stress about it.

 

[SeoWrecker]

Update: Noticing a rise in rankings after the massive drop. I hope it settles back

 

[seo-sem]

Update: Noticing a rise in rankings after the massive drop. I hope it settles back

Did you do anything like disavowing links or removing pbn or any other action?

 

[Unreliable Witness]

It might not relate to where your links are from, but how they link to you.

Few people on this thread mention what their anchor text ratios were. A small change could put these out.

For example, if my site has 10 brand anchors from comments and 3 exact match keyword anchors from a PBN, if Google decides to ignore comment links, then my site effectively just has exact match keywords pointing to it. This could then trigger a Penguin over-optimisation penalty.

I don't think it is as simple as saying comments (or any other type of content) is no longer recognised. What I am saying is that Google only needs to change how it looks at a particular ranking factor and it can unbalance sites that then get Penguin (or Panda) related penalties. When I say penalties, I mean algorithmic filters, not manual spam penalties shown in GSC/WMT.

 

[rdpvpshosting]

I guess the rankings will be back to normal in a week's time