Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[ThopHayt]

SER seems to have "confirmed" an update: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fred-algorithm-quality-issues-23611.html

If this update was manually done by Google to change the results to their liking, or if it was done by the AI is unknown. If Google has been telling us the truth recently, then it was done by the AI... but I wouldn't put it past Google to release an update to skew the SERPS to help some of the bigger advertisers.

-ThopHayt

 

[areyou]

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?

I have the same problem on 2 different sites networks on different servers . Googlebot crawl my sites with 50-60 request per second. I got hit on 9.03.17 And I still lost 10-15% of traffic every day. And Googlebot ignore new sites that i've done in February till 31.02.17. Wtf is that?

 

[Katalyst45]

Search Engine Land reported / Sistrix just released data after analyzing 300 tracked websites. A primary finding was: "…advertisement, outdated, thin and scraped content, as well as incomprehensible articles made up of 300 word ‘SEO texts’ pumped to the brim with main keyword mentions and void of any useful information or a sense of readability."

I'll go further to say that word count doesn't matter too as others have said in this thread (quality does not equal 'x' amount of words). If your content is outdated, provides no value other than surface level, is simply copied from existing results on the first page but written to be unique, and is only there to generate ad-revenue then you're doing it wrong. Nothing new, focus on the user, be compelling, and you'll be rewarded.

 

[ricewest]

I track rankings with one of the many services out there. The one I use is serplab.co.uk, that way you can see trends over time for individual keywords or groups of keywords. It also shows search volumes, can track competition and send weekly/monthly email updates (if you get the $5.99 payed version).

have you tried semrush ?

 

[Josephinamazzoo]

My site has been fluctuating a lot as well and looks like i lost my page 1 rankings and would need an expert to take care of it. Already shortlisted a few from here and Might as well hire someone today
I hope i'll get back my lost rankings

 

[facebook fans]

i lost 80% of my keywords which were ranking in positions 1-3 thats around 200 keywords losing so much traffic at one go was just painful, Thats what happens though when you use poor links, just be ready to get hit hard maybe not today or tomorrow or the month after but one day you will get hit. The way around it is to build more links but this time clean and strong links since that has resolved 50% of the traffic i lost by getting @seoguy99 and his team to build me quality backlinks which work.

Oh and no these guys dont pay me shit its just an honest review about how powerful there links are.

 

[bahus]

'Fred' is either drunk, high or totally fa#$ed up. Not that I'm complaining but one of my inner pages is showing twice on 1st page of SERP. #1 and #7 There is absolutely no reason for the same page to be listed twice. And this is not the time since this update that I've seen a page listed twice on SERP.
If this is their AI than it pretty much sucks, and it sucks BIG time.
Another explanation for this animality is that the update is still running and different components of the algo aren't in sync yet.

 

[waltersweb]

Seems like things have settled a bit... Not much dancing for me anymore.
You guys? Anyone found some reliable infos?

 

[Signal512]

Search Engine Land reported / Sistrix just released data after analyzing 300 tracked websites. A primary finding was: "…advertisement, outdated, thin and scraped content, as well as incomprehensible articles made up of 300 word ‘SEO texts’ pumped to the brim with main keyword mentions and void of any useful information or a sense of readability."

I'll go further to say that word count doesn't matter too as others have said in this thread (quality does not equal 'x' amount of words). If your content is outdated, provides no value other than surface level, is simply copied from existing results on the first page but written to be unique, and is only there to generate ad-revenue then you're doing it wrong. Nothing new, focus on the user, be compelling, and you'll be rewarded.

I struggle with this a bit. if this is indeed the case, i need to take a long hard look at what exactly "quality is". My websites don't have ads, articles are not spun or scraped, not keyword stuffed, and are very comprehensive.

Many of the articles on one of my sites were hand written by me (maybe i'm just terrible) but they had a lot of engagement both socially and through non-spam comments. One of my websites had some nasty links - that one I get, but the other is a mystery to me. Practically zero links, no ads, media rich, lengthy articles, and some cited where it made sense.

Comparing my sites to what now litters the first page for my target keywords is absolutely night and day difference. Talk about out dated? Some of the sites on page one have not been updated in years.

On the flip side couple of my outstandingly spammy thin sites are doing just fine.

This leaves me to wonder...

 

[bournemarketer]

What about internal links on your site signal512?

 

[german seo]

But the other is a mystery to me. On the flip side couple of my outstandingly spammy thin sites are doing just fine.

I'd bet money if you checked your site with seobook keyword density, you'd see that some of your keywords have an outstanding key word density, most likely the one which got hit.

Do you know why some scraped content is doing fine under FRED ? Not 100 times the same word on the site, as it is scraped from different articles which keeps the density about 1%. I checked it with GSA Content Generator.

 

[Signal512]

I'd bet money if you checked your site with seobook keyword density, you'd see that some of your keywords have an outstanding key word density, most likely the one which got hit.

Do you know why some scraped content is doing fine under FRED ? Not 100 times the same word on the site, as it is scraped from different articles which keeps the density about 1%. I checked it with GSA Content Generator.

I will definitely give it a look and perhaps i will be surprised. Generally though my on-page KW density for my posts is less than 1%. So is my overall backlink profile (unless that of course has somehow changed)

 

[Signal512]

What about internal links on your site signal512?

that is definitely one of the things I need to take a look at for sure. i checked the anchor text as german seo (above) suggested. I checked 2 different articles on 2 different websites. The articles are somewhat lengthy at 3131 words and 3898.

Article one targets and near match LSI densities are: 0.35% and .12%
The second (longer article) target and near match LSI densities are: 1.07% and .10%

I could argue that the second case is much higher than the first so a good test would be to lower the density some. In either case the keywords are well below 1% with that one exception and both of them have been caught-up in the Fred purge.

I will definitely check internal linking, but for the second longer article there are no internal links for sure. Its just a blog post connecting to nothing. The article was ranking in the 20's, there are only 2 backlinks to the home page. BUT - I found that there are a bunch of forum signature links that are pointed to both articles. They don't mention the keywords though.

That said this might be a problem and is worth looking into.

I will post results based on any changes I make. I know I am not the only one who wants to know how things happened.

 

[bahus]

that is definitely one of the things I need to take a look at for sure. i checked the anchor text as german seo (above) suggested. I checked 2 different articles on 2 different websites. The articles are somewhat lengthy at 3131 words and 3898.

Article one targets and near match LSI densities are: 0.35% and .12%
The second (longer article) target and near match LSI densities are: 1.07% and .10%

I could argue that the second case is much higher than the first so a good test would be to lower the density some. In either case the keywords are well below 1% with that one exception and both of them have been caught-up in the Fred purge.

I will definitely check internal linking, but for the second longer article there are no internal links for sure. Its just a blog post connecting to nothing. The article was ranking in the 20's, there are only 2 backlinks to the home page. BUT - I found that there are a bunch of forum signature links that are pointed to both articles. They don't mention the keywords though.

That said this might be a problem and is worth looking into.

I will post results based on any changes I make. I know I am not the only one who wants to know how things happened.

I did something similar and too noticed that the websites that target same keywords that two of my posts lost ranking have very low keyword density. About 1% and lower. Even though my post is 6k words and one of the competing websites is around 1,200. I did lower my keyword density to 0.6%. Somehow recovered from low 50 to 20. And it seems to be frozen there. I'll keep it as is for a week without any changes to see if there it will rank higher.

Another thing that I start to consider is that google could have taken a different approach to 'uniqueness', what it means to them and a length of an article is no longer a factor. Based on the fact that a 1,200 words post didn't get hit and mine was. (and I'm not jealous, I just want to understand what happened) The difference between mine and theirs is that they have like a 300 words intro and their reviews are 200 words the most. Some even shorter. While mine goes into great details. So even though, mine is longer it got hit because the shorter article has more unique words overall. If this is the case, it pretty much sucks as when you write a comprehensive review about 'widgets' it is unavoidable to repeat some words when you talk which one has, and which one doesn't have certain features.

After google finally confirmed that there was an update, someone asked Gary Illyes on twitter if they are after affiliate website. He said no and twitted an example of an affiliate website that has in his opinion has awesome content. thepointsguy dot com

 

[danparks]

that is definitely one of the things I need to take a look at for sure. i checked the anchor text as german seo (above) suggested. I checked 2 different articles on 2 different websites. The articles are somewhat lengthy at 3131 words and 3898.

I did something similar and too noticed that the websites that target same keywords that two of my posts lost ranking have very low keyword density. About 1% and lower. Even though my post is 6k words...

You both talk about very long articles that have very reasonable low keyword density. And their rankings dropped.

A few of the many websites I'm doing SEO on have long home page articles - in the 5,000 to 7,000 word range. Their keyword density is very reasonable. Their rankings dropped greatly.

I know everyone has said forever that "longer is better," and that short articles can be considered "thin content." So I know most people will probably come down hard on me when I say, what if there can be too much content on a page?

Even if the text isn't spun garbage, but instead unique, meaningful content. Maybe part of the (I think many) algorithm changes involve assuming that big content might be an attempt by a website to avoid a thin content penalty? What if Google is thinking that aside from very technical topics, there is almost never a need for there to be many thousands of words in an article? Are many web searchers looking for very lengthy answers to their questions? Maybe a very long article *isn't* what searchers want, so it shouldn't rank (in Google's opinion).

With a very long article, even if your keyword density is low, the appearance of the keyword can still be high. I have a 6,000 word article that has a keyword density of about 1%. That's not very high. But the keyword appears about 60 times in the article (1% of 6,000). Even though the keyword density might be fine, perhaps the sheer volume of the keyword is now considered bad.

No idea if this is the case. But I am just now testing things. Greatly reducing the length of a few of these very long articles.

Then nothing to do but wait and see if it makes a difference.

 

[incomescout]

I know everyone has said forever that "longer is better," and that short articles can be considered "thin content." So I know most people will probably come down hard on me when I say, what if there can be too much content on a page?

Longer isn't always better.

Think about when you read an article on a mobile device: long articles SUCK!

Imagine having to scroll down through 3,000+ words of content. It's pretty annoying actually (especially when you're just looking for a quick answer).

I bet that on mobile devices, having a piece that's too long might not be as beneficial.

Just my two cents.

 

[danparks]

@incomescout I completely agree. Whether or not Google agrees, and has built some negative factor for articles that are too lengthy into the algorithm, who knows. But I don't think it's crazy to think it could be an issue.

 

[bahus]

Longer isn't always better.

Think about when you read an article on a mobile device: long articles SUCK!

Imagine having to scroll down through 3,000+ words of content. It's pretty annoying actually (especially when you're just looking for a quick answer).

I bet that on mobile devices, having a piece that's too long might not be as beneficial.

Just my two cents.

It could be true from the new google perspective, not end user. When I write, I try to put myself in the potential buyer shoes and try to answer all questions they might have regarding a product. So they can make an informed decision and know what to expect should they buy it. And when I write, I never focus on keyword optimization, I just write as it flows and use the keywords naturally when they fit. Never had any issues with previous google updates, until now were 2 of my posts got hit. Mind you my other posts written in a similar way, with more or less same amount of affiliate links are doing just fine.

 

[bahus]

After google finally confirmed that there was an update, someone asked Gary Illyes on twitter if they are after affiliate website. He said no and twitted an example of an affiliate website that has in his opinion has awesome content. thepointsguy dot com

Just to add to my previous post, I took a look at that website and personally don't see anything awesome on the 'thepointsguy dot com' website. The posts are short and most of them have plenty of links to external websites. And he has an ad above the fold and in the side bar... Maybe short and to the point is the new standard .... who the F knows ...

 

[djs87]

Google is so far in everyone's head right now I can't stop laughing.

Google demoting a page that has long content because it thinks you're trying to avoid a thin content penalty... Like what? Do you guys even read what you're typing before submitting anymore? Google can't read minds folks. An algorithm won't punish a page for length if the content isn't the same sentence reworded 100x.

Look at the top results for your keyword. Simple as that. What's ranking? Are they long articles or short articles? If they're short my guess is Google had collected enough data to know that a specific query demands short content.

Just study what's ranking. Makes it easier than guess and check on your own website.