Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[fasttrak]

I think the answer to this might be simple. Although everyone is flipping out over content created for ads and PBN links being the issue (which in some cases they may), I think both are highly unlikely.

1) Google now ignores/devalues links it feels are low quality (not penalizes). Source

MY BIG THEORY
Given this post here, and from a small handful of websites that I've seen, I suspect this is an issue of the RATIO OF QUALITY VALUE-

I agree with a LOT of what you have said but I am not so sure your references add any weight. It is interesting to read in this thread of those recovering after taking certain actions and there is a lot of conflicting advice overall but I have personally learnt something from this update and improved my sites both in terms of content and removing duplication. Given that I actioned the changes 3-5 days ago, I am going to take it slow and wait for SERPs to reflect changes and tweak. No major surgery.

Again, overall, I agree with your view.

 

[bahus]

I think the answer to this might be simple. Although everyone is flipping out over content created for ads and PBN links being the issue (which in some cases they may), I think both are highly unlikely.

1) Google now ignores/devalues links it feels are low quality (not penalizes). Source

2) If this is the case, what good will disavowing anything do? Google is already ignoring your links that it thinks are shit. So why start to kill 100 links (admission of guilt) when Google may think 90 of them are still great?

3) If your content is written only based off high advertiser competition keywords (for the purpose of generating ad revenue), and you've written unique and high-quality content that users are engaging with, what makes you think that's a problem? You know if Google penalized sites that utilized AdSense (their own damn product) they'd be choking their biggest money maker off at the neck, right? How absurd. If the search query still exists, then someone must be ranking for it. You can't penalize everyone who targets specific keywords. Why would Google drop your site and raise 5 others for a query that makes money? What did they do right that you didn't? Makes no sense. If I were you guys, I would NOT go back and underoptimize my content and strip all ads. That's just nonsense.

MY BIG THEORY
Given this post here, and from a small handful of websites that I've seen, I suspect this is an issue of the RATIO OF QUALITY VALUE-ADDING PAGES TO TRASH PAGES, not optimized/monetized content. For example, if you have 1 blog posts and 20+ tags, then that single blog post can be found on 20+ useless pages. Therefore, your ratio of quality pages to shit pages is fucking shit. However, if you have 20 blog posts and 0 tags, Google will love you long time because all of your pages add value and doesn't rape their crawlers for resources when they have 1 billion+ websites to crawl. Google may actually consider excessive tag pages as "doorway pages" according to the quality guidelines (which were the target of the Fred update).

Something to think about before hacking your entire site apart... for us WordPress folk, removing tags/categories from your sitemap, noindex the pages and resubmitting sitemaps is a very quick and low-risk attempt at traffic recovery. Worth a try before ruining hard earned backlinks for life.

I absolutely agree with your post. Just to add to it I think that they have targeted quality/over optimization on multiple levels to confuse the SEO community and webmasters. And prevent them from gaming the SERP. After Penguin and Panda have become part of core algorithm they have repeatedly said that there will be no further comments regarding what is the target of their algo tweak. Even if the fluctuations are huge. In a way, I understand this approach. It's a billion $$ company protecting their bottom line and trying to prevent people from gaming the system. Just imagine what would have happened if they said: 'well, now we target over optimization.." thousands of SEO pros and webmasters would have enough info to take advantage of the system. And that's exactly what they don't want to happen. Going forward, I'd imagine there will be more of the 'multi-level updates and instead of looking for a universal solution, webmasters need to drill deep to figure out what caused their website to lose ranking.

 

[djs87]

I don't believe that over optimization of on-page content was the algo change. Google has had a handle on keyword stuffing for a decade now. Off page anchors? Maybe. On page content? IMO, unlikely.

Here's how you can tell.

• Take 1 of your top money keywords that lost rankings. Copy/paste your page's article into this tool: https://wordcounttools.com/
• That's my favorite free SEO tool ever. It's the easiest way to find semantically related keywords.
• Then check keyword density of the top 5 results and compare it to yours. I do this before I post any article.
• If the top pages average between 1-3% keyword density and yours does too, then you're probably not over-optimized. If yours is 10%, fix it, you're over-optimized.
• Every niche has different recommendations for keyword density. It all depends on what Google feels is "normal" for the niche.

I know people think keyword density is dead, but it's not. See this patent.

Bottom line, you just need to know how to find target keyword density by looking at top 5 results. You might also see lots of other words being used that are relevant to the subject matter that you may not have seen before. Almost every article on your site should have a different keyword density.

 

[starki]

Just imagine what would have happened if they said: 'well, now we target over optimization.." thousands of SEO pros and webmasters would have enough info to take advantage of the system. And that's exactly what they don't want to happen. Going forward, I'd imagine there will be more of the 'multi-level updates and instead of looking for a universal solution, webmasters need to drill deep to figure out what caused their website to lose ranking.

Yep, it's a "shock and awe" game, removing the ability to fix problems in a targeted manner and regain rankings fast. Play by the rules or we hit you, but we don't tell you why we hit you.

 

[incomescout]

How old was everyone's sites who got hit? Would love to know. Thanks.

 

[TheGreene]

How old was everyone's sites who got hit? Would love to know. Thanks.

Five months old.

 

[incomescout]

Five months old.

Interesting. Mine was 7 months old when it got hit. Anyone else?

 

[AmigoFx]

All my sites that i've done in January till 31.01.17, googlebot now attacks with 1 million request per day per site, and this sites losed 30-50% traffic.
And all my sites that i've done since 1st February till now, googlebot send max 500 requests per day per site and this sites looks like banned by google.
Have someone the same problem?

 

[4Panda]

All my sites that i've done in January till 31.01.17, googlebot now attacks with 1 million request per day per site, and this sites losed 30-50% traffic.
And all my sites that i've done since 1st February till now, googlebot send max 500 requests per day per site and this sites looks like banned by google.
Have someone the same problem?

Are u sure it's googlebot or just a bot that named itself googlebot?
Are u running google product ads or something? I wonder if it's crawling your product images....

 

[AmigoFx]

Are u sure it's googlebot or just a bot that named itself googlebot?
Are u running google product ads or something? I wonder if it's crawling your product images....

Yes, im sure, i have my own server and i take this info from server logs. No i havent google products, all sites are adults)

PS: all ips looks like google
64.233.172.136
64.233.172.138
64.233.172.140
66.102.6.200
66.102.6.202
64.233.173.154
64.233.173.155
66.249.93.149

Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 10) - Full list - Last visit
54 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 8,029,423 113.74 GB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:47
Yandex Bot 119,806 1.62 GB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:43
Bingbot 14,033 209.72 MB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:46

 

[iBrazilian]

all sites are adults

Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 10) - Full list - Last visit
54 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 8,029,423 113.74 GB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:47
Yandex Bot 119,806 1.62 GB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:43
Bingbot 14,033 209.72 MB 28 Mar 2017 - 09:46

My take is that google, yandex and bing bots are horny freaks.

 

[ttmschine]

I think the answer to this might be simple. Although everyone is flipping out over content created for ads and PBN links being the issue (which in some cases they may), I think both are highly unlikely.

1) Google now ignores/devalues links it feels are low quality (not penalizes). Source

2) If this is the case, what good will disavowing anything do? Google is already ignoring your links that it thinks are shit. So why start to kill 100 links (admission of guilt) when Google may think 90 of them are still great?

3) If your content is written only based off high advertiser competition keywords (for the purpose of generating ad revenue), and you've written unique and high-quality content that users are engaging with, what makes you think that's a problem? You know if Google penalized sites that utilized AdSense (their own damn product) they'd be choking their biggest money maker off at the neck, right? How absurd. If the search query still exists, then someone must be ranking for it. You can't penalize everyone who targets specific keywords. Why would Google drop your site and raise 5 others for a query that makes money? What did they do right that you didn't? Makes no sense. If I were you guys, I would NOT go back and underoptimize my content and strip all ads. That's just nonsense.

MY BIG THEORY
Given this post here, and from a small handful of websites that I've seen, I suspect this is an issue of the RATIO OF QUALITY VALUE-ADDING PAGES TO TRASH PAGES, not optimized/monetized content. For example, if you have 1 blog posts and 20+ tags, then that single blog post can be found on 20+ useless pages. Therefore, your ratio of quality pages to shit pages is fucking shit. However, if you have 20 blog posts and 0 tags, Google will love you long time because all of your pages add value and doesn't rape their crawlers for resources when they have 1 billion+ websites to crawl. Google may actually consider excessive tag pages as "doorway pages" according to the quality guidelines (which were the target of the Fred update).

Something to think about before hacking your entire site apart... for us WordPress folk, removing tags/categories from your sitemap, noindex the pages and resubmitting sitemaps is a very quick and low-risk attempt at traffic recovery. Worth a try before ruining hard earned backlinks for life.

I think you could be onto something there, and maybe the reason my site/s haven't been hit (touch wood) is that for a long time now I've created WP sites using pages only.

I don't create any content with posts at all, apart from a news/blog page - I've never liked the way that posts can ripple out all over your site depending on settings, so all major content is added using pages instead.

You can still create structure by having pages and sub pages, which is the same as categories and posts.

 

[4Panda]

I think you could be onto something there, and maybe the reason my site/s haven't been hit (touch wood) is that for a long time now I've created WP sites using pages only.

I don't create any content with posts at all, apart from a news/blog page - I've never liked the way that posts can ripple out all over your site depending on settings, so all major content is added using pages instead.

You can still create structure by having pages and sub pages, which is the same as categories and posts.

He pointed out it's the tags that might be the issue, they are duplicated pages and I have never used them. I don't think we should go as far as only use pages for building WP sites, unless you are doing silo-ing for mini niche sites.

If interlinking inner pages is what you meant by rippling out all over... well, I think it's more of a boon then bane. It's good for improving visitor time on site.

 

[bournemarketer]

I have a network of about 1000 related sites and about 20% or so got hit with the penalty. Most of the sites which had #1-10 spots did not get hit but some of them did. Most of the sites that got hit were ranked not so great so my income didn't take a hit. I have done some ABC link trades and interlinked some sites but have not done too much. All written content is 100% unique but not all images are. They are mostly 2-10 years. Once I'm done making a list of which sites got hit with the penalty (easy to spot because they all dropped on March 9/10th) I will do some different tests on each site and wait.

 

[bournemarketer]

Does anyone think it's possible that they are going off of how the content is placed on the sites and not the quality/amount of content? I noticed that a few of the sites that have older/crappier designs seemed to have a common theme of dropping and other ones where the content placement isn't as good also dropped more so than sites with good placement. These are all responsive designs but some are newer/better as I haven't replaced the older ones yet.

 

[joncmac]

I looked at most of the sites SEOroundtable identified. About 1/2 used google link ads...which are rarely used on sites. Coincidence?
Also maybe a 1/4 had ads back to back in the main content, or they had those text link ads right next to the nav bar.
See page 32+ of the google quality guidelines. Those types of sites may now be low quality....Also see page 34 of the quality guidelines, and the examples of low quality sites. One had ads right next to nav bar.
Question for people impacted...who used some form of link ads? Also did people have ads right next to nav bars and/or multiple ads abutting each other?

 

[nickchernets]

If keep going by your version, so everyone have the same problem, so you won't loose anything, just wait and crawl your site another time

 

[bournemarketer]

I have no ads on any of my sites and several got penalized.

 

[arabturkey]

My site has a different IP address, different name and different comments added with a special program. Comments may be withdrawn from social media

You should delete comments?

 

[lineager]

I have no ads on any of my sites and several got penalized.

Perhaps competitors flagging your site with bots or something?