Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[Jon Bon Johnny]

I had 1 responsive link unit ad, thats all. Got hit pretty hard.

Sounds like a bad assumption to me, BTW I removed the ad to test it.

 

[boleklolek]

Here is an update on seroundtable

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fred-update-ad-heavy-low-value-23538.html

damn that guy sucks, hes trying to get ahead (and get traffic on highly popular topic right now) and is throwing blatantly stupid assumptions without data to back it up Im amazed there is no "My GURU BOOK for only 49$" at the end of this bullshit post

Almost same as ahrefs KD promo blog post where it was supposed to be the best keyword difficulty checker lol yet fails so much

 

[lorentzo]

after how many times come back your key in serp?

5 days or so...not all keywords but it starts 1 by 1....until now 4 keywords from 9 are back

 

[pruntyoke]

Here is an update on seroundtable
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fred-update-ad-heavy-low-value-23538.html

Leaked meeting from Seroundtable:
" ... Hey Barry, shit a shitty bullshit about Fred to get some hype. ... There is some laxative pills for better work. ... Thanks. "

 

[Banditoseo]

My site doesn't have any ads. Each post has over 1000 words, over 20+ of them are 3000 words+, there is no 400 - 500 words article. That assumption is just BS.

1. The ads theory is bullshit. I've seen sites clobbered that have never had ads and would, under a manual review, never create the impression they're just selling ads.

2. Well, shit, one of my hypotheses involved content length, which matches what I'm seeing... but that's not at all consistent with what you're reporting.

So, starting with the assumption that your content is good and not scraped/spun/etc, can I ask: does your content link out to relevant sites?

 

[Johnny Blaze]

I'm also tracking keywords in other niches and I'm seeing a lot of new domains (less than year old with moderate content) occupying top ranks when the update rolled out last week. Now, they are slowly sliding down the rankings back to bottom of Page 1 - Page 2. The last thing you should do right now is panic and make drastic changes unless you are doing hardcore PBNs and throwing 1 million comments/ profile links all over the web.

As for my site, it came back stronger than before on Saturday after being dumped to -50.
I did not touch the site and even stop building links over the past week or so and just monitor rankings. I am pretty sure Google is just re-evaluating backlink profiles of every single sites (.gov, .edu included) last week and hopefully, things will be back to normal soon for you guys.

 

[MrshunE]

1. The ads theory is bullshit. I've seen sites clobbered that have never had ads and would, under a manual review, never create the impression they're just selling ads.

2. Well, shit, one of my hypotheses involved content length, which matches what I'm seeing... but that's not at all consistent with what you're reporting.

So, starting with the assumption that your content is good and not scraped/spun/etc, can I ask: does your content link out to relevant sites?

I only link to Authority sites in my niche as well as those trusted edu/gov sites.
I'm doing all white-hat seo (guest posting and blog commenting in same niche blogs) for the site with couple web 2.0s. No PBN.

 

[Banditoseo]

I only link to Authority sites in my niche as well as those trusted edu/gov sites.
I'm doing all white-hat seo (guest posting and blog commenting in same niche blogs) for the site with couple web 2.0s. No PBN.

Yikes. So, here's my advice:

1) Sit tight on links. Don't remove, don't add. Just sit tight. This might just be a dance. Re-evaluate in two weeks.

2) Add some relevant, non-promotional content. Don't need to go crazy. If you have a blog, blog about some related industry news. If you don't have a blog, maybe add some how-to content that is relevant.

 

[ThopHayt]

I actually believed Google when they said Penguin is now "granular" and "real-time." I don't think it has big huge "refreshes" like it used to.

That is exactly correct. What used to be manual refreshes is done on a near daily basis by a sophisticated AI, so the idea of this being an "update" seems ludicrous to me. Yes, the AI changed something that screwed a bunch of you guys... but just because you get hit doesn't mean it is an update. The only "updates" left really are core algo updates, and if this were THAT you would see much bigger ripples than a minority of blackhatters on BHW bitching... it would be very, very obvious and much more wide spread.

-ThopHayt

 

[Dia77777]

I had the exact same experience. Try not to watch the rankings too often, it doesn't reflect the real values. However, it looks like there is something scarier and more widespread happening, we can only wait and see!

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Leaked meeting from Seroundtable:
" ... Hey Barry, shit a shitty bullshit about Fred to get some hype. ... There is some laxative pills for better work. ... Thanks. "

That was hilarious. And accurate.

 

[MikeyMikey13]

That is exactly correct. What used to be manual refreshes is done on a near daily basis by a sophisticated AI, so the idea of this being an "update" seems ludicrous to me. Yes, the AI changed something that screwed a bunch of you guys... but just because you get hit doesn't mean it is an update. The only "updates" left really are core algo updates, and if this were THAT you would see much bigger ripples than a minority of blackhatters on BHW bitching... it would be very, very obvious and much more wide spread.

-ThopHayt

If something is changed to do with the algorithm, in this context, it is an update.

Regardless of whether Google did it, or the AI did it.

Something updated, effecting a lot of the SERPS. Not just blackhatters.

 

[tb303]

Will it/wont it come back LOL.

I see a lot of mentions of PBN's in this thread. So Ive been round all the PBN sites for that keyword and they are all still indexed. Nothing in GWMT for any on them. One is actually still rankling same as it always was. These are private sites built on very related expired domains. There is one 301 redirect from an old domain but the site did legitimately move years ago. Site is nearly 6 years old counting when it moved with a 301. Current domain is 4 years.

To me it does look very much like what you'd get if you over optimise onsite. But Im currently too chicken to change anything and waiting so see what happens. Screaming frog shows internal linking is heavy on that keyword. Majestic is <1% for that keyword. Any opinions?

 

[Banditoseo]

That is exactly correct. What used to be manual refreshes is done on a near daily basis by a sophisticated AI, so the idea of this being an "update" seems ludicrous to me. Yes, the AI changed something that screwed a bunch of you guys... but just because you get hit doesn't mean it is an update. The only "updates" left really are core algo updates, and if this were THAT you would see much bigger ripples than a minority of blackhatters on BHW bitching... it would be very, very obvious and much more wide spread.

I think this does have much bigger ripples than a minority of blackhatters on BHW bitching. The SERPs I follow with the highest traffic (and, for the last few weeks, most stable rankings) look very different today than they did last week. Some sites built on spam took a bath, but I also saw big sites with white hat link-building get trashed. I know of a site built on solid white hat link-building with >500k hits a month that just lost half its traffic, and I can see SERPs where it went from #1 to the bottom of page 2. If I were them, I'd be losing my mind right now. Their site and link-building are so impressive I don't even know what I'd tell them to do. But I know what they are doing: they have never before used AdWords, but now they have a shitload of AdWords for the queries they've lost ranking on.

Conversely, my own rankings have shot up in several SERPs. There's a couple highly competitive SERPs where I've been struggling to get out of the bottom of the first page (or top of the second page) and all of a sudden I'm now #1, #2, or #3. Overnight. On one of my highest-volume searches, GSC says I was position #8 on March 8 -- which is my average for the past 90 days -- and suddenly on March 10 I'm in position #2, my highest ever, and I'm still there today.

Glenn Gabe pointed out a site that went from 125K daily sessions to 278K overnight: https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/840252084045938688

My gut sense is that this was more than the machine-learning doing its routine processing of the link graph. This was an actual change to the underlying algorithm. I of course can't prove this. I'm still struggling to figure out what's driving it; everything I've thought of so far has been disproven by counterexamples. But I know that the SERPs I'm looking at (which admittedly are in a particular niche) aren't just dancing. They are reorganized in a fundamental way.

 

[djs87]

I can say with confidence that this has nothing to do with content length.

I have a website with 15 blog posts, with the shortest one being 850 words. Article length goes up to 1800 words on my site. Each blog post is edited using Grammarly until there are no errors, and plagiarism checked with Grammarly AND Copyscape until 100% unique. This does not appear to be a content update.

One thing I did was edit external anchor text a few months back on my web 2.0s. You could probably safely say they were "over optimized."

My website is also 100% whitehat. Not a single PBN link to be found.

Now, this could be a multifaceted update. But in my scenario, this appears to be strictly an over optimization issue of external anchor text.

 

[aidenhera]

Since the positions in SERPs are changing every 5min, I assume they have launched some HEAVY code that would scan the sites and burn bad ones. It couldn't scan them all at once because its so heavy, so theres bouncing.

I think it makes sense. Why the change was not instant? Because the code is now so heavy that it takes time to scan billions of sites.

 

[jyciap11]

I can say with confidence that this has nothing to do with content length.

I have a website with 15 blog posts, with the shortest one being 850 words. Article length goes up to 1800 words on my site. Each blog post is edited using Grammarly until there are no errors, and plagiarism checked with Grammarly AND Copyscape until 100% unique. This does not appear to be a content update.

One thing I did was edit external anchor text a few months back on my web 2.0s. You could probably safely say they were "over optimized."

My website is also 100% whitehat. Not a single PBN link to be found.

Now, this could be a multifaceted update. But in my scenario, this appears to be strictly an over optimization issue of external anchor text.

You mean link from your site to external site? For example from mysite to wikipedia? I have many this link... but all link to trusted website.. but damn I will try to remove it

 

[Banditoseo]

I can say with confidence that this has nothing to do with content length.

Now, this could be a multifaceted update. But in my scenario, this appears to be strictly an over optimization issue of external anchor text.

Content length was the only commonality I saw among the sites hit in the SERPs I watched; all of them focused on content with <500 words. But I've since seen way too many counterexamples to believe that anymore.

At least from what I'm seeing, external anchor text isn't the factor, either. On some of the sites I've seen trashed, they're still fine in the SERPs where they have >10 domains linking with identical external anchors. Personally, I think this is nuts, and I can't possibly explain why of all things they'd be protected with obvious exact anchor text but, well, that's what I'm seeing in the data I have.

 

[MikeyMikey13]

Since the positions in SERPs are changing every 5min, I assume they have launched some HEAVY code that would scan the sites and burn bad ones. It couldn't scan them all at once because its so heavy, so theres bouncing.

I think it makes sense. Why the change was not instant? Because the code is now so heavy that it takes time to scan billions of sites.

Code? I heard they put the SERP SPELL on all us Blackhatters

 

[incomescout]

I had 1 responsive link unit ad, thats all. Got hit pretty hard.

Sounds like a bad assumption to me, BTW I removed the ad to test it.

I did the same thing- removed my AdSense ads to see if that made a difference. Hope it works for you.

Does anyone think that this can be related to either over-optimization of internal links OR with site age?

My site is only about 7 months old and does have slightly over-optimized internal link anchors (non-commercial, just a pure informational site).

Traffic drop of 50%.