Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[danparks]

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 100.

Well congratulations for having figured everything out. You are the only one.

I've seen people posting that the issue is affiliate sites. I have no affiliate sites, yet some sites have dropped.

I've seen people posting that too many ads above the fold is the issue. I have sites with no ads that have dropped.

I've seen people posting that it's all about PBNs. I have a large PBN (over 250 sites), and some of the sites that use it have dropped, and many that use it haven't.

Sorry, brother, but NO ONE has this update figured out. Not even you. If you think you have, please do share your knowledge with us.

I'm doing SEO on dozens of sites with hundreds of keywords, and I've found nothing in common with the sites that have dropped.

So no, I'm not ruling out anything. You want to think that it's crazy to think articles of great length could be an issue, fine. I'm not ruling it out. I'm actually going to test it.

And yes, I have studied "what's ranking." In a couple of niche's I've seen nothing but short article pages ranking. I don't consider that absolute proof of anything, but I do consider it worth running a test. Doesn't that make sense? Or do you have something against testing things?

 

[bahus]

Well congratulations for having figured everything out. You are the only one.

I've seen people posting that the issue is affiliate sites. I have no affiliate sites, yet some sites have dropped.

I've seen people posting that too many ads above the fold is the issue. I have sites with no ads that have dropped.

I've seen people posting that it's all about PBNs. I have a large PBN (over 250 sites), and some of the sites that use it have dropped, and many that use it haven't.

Sorry, brother, but NO ONE has this update figured out. Not even you. If you think you have, please do share your knowledge with us.

I'm doing SEO on dozens of sites with hundreds of keywords, and I've found nothing in common with the sites that have dropped.

So no, I'm not ruling out anything. You want to think that it's crazy to think articles of great length could be an issue, fine. I'm not ruling it out. I'm actually going to test it.

And yes, I have studied "what's ranking." In a couple of niche's I've seen nothing but short article pages ranking. I don't consider that absolute proof of anything, but I do consider it worth running a test. Doesn't that make sense? Or do you have something against testing things?

I have a few unpublished posts that I'm working on. Originally I was planning to do a detailed post answering every question someone might have regarding a topic. But seeing that short is better, I'll go for the short cut and do a test. If it works, I'll be happy, but on the other hand, it would be a HUGE disservice to my visitors.

 

[djs87]

I have nothing against testing, I'm all for it. But when you start to give Google superhuman abilities, such as the ability to read minds, that's what you lose me.

I don't profess to have the update figured out by any means. But there are some things that I feel are absolutely not relevant, and content length for the sake of avoiding a penalty is one of them.

Especially if you've seen a sitewide drop. If just 1 or 2 of your articles drop, then maybe content length should be a consideration. But from what I've seen, everyone's websites as a whole have either remained stable or plummeted (not individual pages).

 

[bahus]

I have nothing against testing, I'm all for it. But when you start to give Google superhuman abilities, such as the ability to read minds, that's what you lose me.

I don't profess to have the update figured out by any means. But there are some things that I feel are absolutely not relevant, and content length for the sake of avoiding a penalty is one of them.

Especially if you've seen a sitewide drop. If just 1 or 2 of your articles drop, then maybe content length should be a consideration. But from what I've seen, everyone's websites as a whole have either remained stable or plummeted (not individual pages).

If it helps I'll give you some details, my site isn't one of those targeting one specific niche with 60+ posts, let's say 'hunting knives' It targets a broad niche and virtually every post targets different keywords but they are related. Maybe that's why only 2 of my posts were hit. If you've seen a sitewide drop maybe you should broaden your topics. I'm not saying that this is the case, I'm just sharing ideas. And I haven't figured out this update either

 

[danparks]

I have nothing against testing, I'm all for it. But when you start to give Google superhuman abilities, such as the ability to read minds, that's what you lose me.

I don't profess to have the update figured out by any means. But there are some things that I feel are absolutely not relevant, and content length for the sake of avoiding a penalty is one of them.

Especially if you've seen a sitewide drop. If just 1 or 2 of your articles drop, then maybe content length should be a consideration. But from what I've seen, everyone's websites as a whole have either remained stable or plummeted (not individual pages).

Nothing "superhuman" about it. My degree is software engineering, so I'm all about facts and data. I don't attribute any supernatural powers to Google.

I've got one site that has kept its #2 ranking for two keywords, yet dropped huge for a half dozen other keywords. In other words, of the bad stuff I've experienced, all of it has not been sitewide.

The data I've seen is that possibly article length could be an issue. I readily admit that my data source is limited, and I in no way am stating that this is a definite issue. But I think it might be. Because no one in all of BHW has provided any solid answer regarding this latest update, I'm going to investigate everything, and I am not going to rule out anything.

If any BHW member tosses out some good solid evidence regarding this update which has massively effected many sites, I'm all ears. I'd love to hear it. I haven't. Have you?

Rather than discouraging people from testing, perhaps you might want to sit back and let people do their tests, and if those people aren't bashed about it, they might then report their findings. Good or bad. We're all on the outside of Google. We all know almost nothing. Isn't it better to try to collect as much data (through testing) as possible, so we can all collectively try to make sense of things?

 

[djs87]

Nothing "superhuman" about it. My degree is software engineering, so I'm all about facts and data. I don't attribute any supernatural powers to Google.

I've got one site that has kept its #2 ranking for two keywords, yet dropped huge for a half dozen other keywords. In other words, of the bad stuff I've experienced, all of it has not been sitewide.

The data I've seen is that possibly article length could be an issue. I readily admit that my data source is limited, and I in no way am stating that this is a definite issue. But I think it might be. Because no one in all of BHW has provided any solid answer regarding this latest update, I'm going to investigate everything, and I am not going to rule out anything.

If any BHW member tosses out some good solid evidence regarding this update which has massively effected many sites, I'm all ears. I'd love to hear it. I haven't. Have you?

Rather than discouraging people from testing, perhaps you might want to sit back and let people do their tests, and if those people aren't bashed about it, they might then report their findings. Good or bad. We're all on the outside of Google. We all know almost nothing. Isn't it better to try to collect as much data (through testing) as possible, so we can all collectively try to make sense of things?

No bashing, just an opinion I feel confident about.

What % of your overall traffic did you lose?

All posts or just some?

Pm me your domain if you feel comfortable. Would like to see if it fits the patterns I've seen so far.

 

[incomescout]

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.

Glad to know that people's questions are making you laugh?

Be a leader and stop trying to bash people, bro.

It doesn't make you look cool

 

[gabilaza]

My problem is, OK my websites has shitty backlinks bought from "good guys" on BHW Market and rankings dropped terrible but what i really don't understand is why my fb pages that are 3-4 years old and 70-80K organic likes with no backlinks or any other black hat seo whose rankings was only on page 1 dropped also, WHY?

 

[Kikerinka]

I'm doing SEO on dozens of sites with hundreds of keywords, and I've found nothing in common with the sites that have dropped.

Regretfully, I have to second this claim.
I have done an extensive analysis of 20+ factors (content length, links, readability, on-page factors (bounce rate, P/V, etc.), internal and external anchors, advertising, latest update, PBN use or not, keyword density, content originality, etc.) on more than 40 sites. Please note that I have an admin level Analytics access to all of these sites. Some dropped a few positions, some gained a few positions, a couple of them dropped big, most reported no changes at all.
But there's absolutely NO correlation of analyzed factors among the sites that dropped, or those that has risen....

So far it's really tough to figure this update out.

 

[AmigoFx]

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?

Hey, can we discuss this problem in pm or skype? I think we can help each other.

 

[djs87]

I have another suspicion that this might be link/authority related.

I've seen some sites that were killing it, but then all of their money keywords dropped, while all the low advertiser/informational keywords remained the same. This seemed to happen on websites with weak backlink profiles.

Maybe Google has implemented an authority barrier that you need to break through before you become "worthy" of ranking well for high CPC keywords. Hmm...

 

[german seo]

I have another suspicion that this might be link/authority related.

No, I have two high CPC keywords (1,53 and 1,78) on the same page of the same site. They were ranking 1 and 2 in G and the only difference was their density on the site. One had 2 % ranking Nr.1 and the other 0,83 % Nr. 2. What happened with FRED is, that Nr. 1 went to Nr. 3, while the Nr.2 keyword didn't move an inch.

For me it is 2 word phrase. The problem was, let's say "blue widget" and "blue reddit". That I used the word widget to often while reddit was fine. After I fixed that and did some structurural cleaning "tags, pages, categories" all went fine again.

 

[RayChand]

So google seem to have got over with the craziness hangover

 

[german seo]

So google seem to have got over with the craziness hangover

No, not really. See problem is this. They are cutting on onpage/offsite optimization that heavy, thats it's getting really hard, coming up with new stuff. I am usually hitting, quite easy niches, with great onsite optimization and little quality links. This worked fine and my sites were honestly speaking really better.

But, if it's getting to hard to rank in easy niches, where most sites are ranking by age, the competition disappears, as they will hit on Yt, Pinterest, IG instead. So they fuck themself over in the long run. An the changes in Image Search or G+ to a more Pinterest style reflects that.

 

[roman375]

All Google has to do is shuffle the SERPs around a little bit and many 'SEOs' will run around in panic, messing up their sites and drawing all kinds of outlandish conclusions regarding previously proven practices/methods such as, for example, PBNs being dead or long content pages being targeted (seriously?). They don't even need a mouthpiece like Matt Cutts to conduct their psychological warfare against the SEO industry. We are pretty much doing the damage for them ourselves.

 

[bahus]

Google: There Were Other Updates Around The Release Of Fred

Gary Illyes confirmed here that if you were hit on March 7th or 8th, it could be Fred or it could be other issues that algorithms addressed

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fred-and-family-23646.html

 

[roman375]

Google: There Were Other Updates Around The Release Of Fred

Gary Illyes confirmed here that if you were hit on March 7th or 8th, it could be Fred or it could be other issues that algorithms addressed

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fred-and-family-23646.html

This is getting beyond ridiculous. I hope people understand that Barry Schwartz is extrapolating a lot of nonsense from Gary Illyes' tweets. There never was a single official 'Fred' update. If you read Gary's original tweet a few weeks ago, when pressed for information regarding the huge changes in the SERPs in March, he originally said he was not aware of any specific update, followed by the statement in jest that he will refer to every future update as Fred.

The humour was obviously lost on our village idiot Barry and he somehow took it to mean that there was a single update called Fred. Now we have everyone referring to this update as Fred, when the recent tweets by Gary do nothing but confirm that there were multiple updates during this period (as there are nearly every month) and none of them have official titles. He is basically saying they will not be announcing updates a la Penguin/Panda as they have in the past. Fred is just a tongue-in-cheek placeholder name for all future tweaks/updates to the algorithm.

 

[areyou]

Hey, can we discuss this problem in pm or skype? I think we can help each other.

of course, pm me. it's still going on.

 

[bahus]

Here is some interesting info about on-page SEO. It was published in 2016 but maybe it's still valid. I'll be testing some of the points that he makes in the video. Just keep in mind that the first 5 min or so are boring.

Or you can read the 'meat' here:

http://www.dorifriend.com/the-most-important-seo-on-page-factors/

Here are more on-page SEO tips from this guy:

On Page Factors:

• 1300 Words is the Sweet Spot for On Page Content Length.
The Title is the most important place for your keyword placement
followed by URL and H1 tag. (and it is ok to put the keyword twice in the
title) then followed by H3, Body Text, H2, H1 & then H4

• When placing your keyword in the Title, place it in the middle or near
the end. Test Results have busted the myth that in front wins.
Do NOT use a lot of Upper Case CAPS as it will hurt your rankings.
Exact Match domains still rock and work like crazy.
Home to Home links (with your keyword in it) will give you a boost.
Use Schema! All things being equal, this will help boost your site.
Stock Images do better then original images (for now lol)
We have no indication that Meta Description helps with the ranking algorithm
however we recommend you use it to help click through.

• We have busted multiple MOZ White Board Friday myths including,
it is better to write title tags for keywords and not clicks, (but if you are
ranking, then do your due diligence and write it so you DO get clicks as
CTR does matter), paid links still work and so does exact match domains!
H1 text is better then Alt tag in H1 image.
Using Open Graph WILL give your site a boost.

• You need keywords on your page, JUST LSI won't do it.

• in E-commerce packages the silo structure that adds a random category or
folder hinders your rankings, (see May test #10)
Image and Youtube video embeds: Just putting an image or embedding
a Youtube video on a page does NOT, in of themselves, provide a
rankings boost

 

[500views]

Looks like the Google Dance is more active then ever. I literally would refresh the page and see my url fluctuate positions like I've never seen.