Crazy Google Dance In The Last 24 Hours

[Kelowna]

If your site is dancing it is because your ranking is based on new links. If not then you got troubles in the near future. Older sites that are established are not bouncing much. Just saying... New sites with new links need to wait and see. Old sites bouncing have troubles coming.

 

[bahus]

If your site is dancing it is because your ranking is based on new links. If not then you got troubles in the near future. Older sites that are established are not bouncing much. Just saying... New sites with new links need to wait and see. Old sites bouncing have troubles coming.

Please help me understand, maybe I'm missing something. Last links that I have created were to two inner pages in the middle of Feb. 25 each, naked URL. Page 1 has recovered nicely and is stable, and page 2 is dancing like crazy. If it was a pure link problem I'd imagine that both pages would have been affected somehow. Am I missing something?

P.S. Site is not new and posts are not new either.

 

[djs87]

Can you guys check bounce rates on your affected sites?

Had a client site whose bounce rate from march 9th - now is around 55% for organic search. Pretty solid.

Prior to that their bounce rate was around 75%. Huge difference.

Maybe Google doing a bounce rate experiment?

 

[bahus]

Can you guys check bounce rates on your affected sites?

Had a client site whose bounce rate from march 9th - now is around 55% for organic search. Pretty solid.

Prior to that their bounce rate was around 75%. Huge difference.

Maybe Google doing a bounce rate experiment?

I've thought about bounce rate but now I'm ruling it out. Some of my pages still rank on the 1st page of SERP that target specific keyword(s) From there, I don't expect them to click around my website but to click on an affiliate link. Based on that, I don't think that bounce rate has anything to do with it.

 

[djs87]

For every niche, no. For this niche, certainly seems that way. 15-20% bounce rate improvement with a 25% drop in overall traffic. Traffic seems more targeted. Interesting.

 

[seoaroundtheworld]

Show me the old ways Google—not everyone can have the same piece of the pie, as more gather around the table.

 

[bahus]

For every niche, no. For this niche, certainly seems that way. 15-20% bounce rate improvement with a 25% drop in overall traffic. Traffic seems more targeted. Interesting.

If it works for you, that's great. I just can't imagine why a person looking for a 'blue widget' and finds the info on the page they land on would need to click around on your other page(s). True, in some cases maybe they want to find out what a 'red widget' is all about. But I'm having a hard time to understand how it correlates to the original search intent and to SERP.

In fact, if I was the search engine and saw that someone who clicks on 'blue widgets' is clicking around your website, that would tell me that the page they landed on is not about what they were originally looking for. Draw your conclusions based on that.

Just to give you an example, if I search for 'Donald Trump' (sorry Donald) and click on Wikipedia link, will google demote that Wikipedia page just because I did not click on internal Wikipedia links to find out more? I don't think so.

Besides that, there are a number of 1 or 2-page websites out there that still rank very well for a specific keyword ...

P.S. Maybe Time on Page and Session Duration does matter, I don't know for sure. But not bounce rate.

 

[kyotobonsai]

For every niche, no. For this niche, certainly seems that way. 15-20% bounce rate improvement with a 25% drop in overall traffic. Traffic seems more targeted. Interesting.

I have had fewer clicks from G, but more conversions... So it's an interesting trade off.

 

[djs87]

I agree. There is definitely such thing as a positive high bounce rate. Meaning the answer was found quickly and everyone is happy.

I just found it strange to see those figures right when the update occurred.

 

[TheGreene]

I did a 301, coulnd't sit and wait

 

[HereIComes]

Did a 301 redirect on March 24th. Traffic was down from 4700 UV/day to 2000 UV/day by March 22. Currently, it has increased to 2600 UV and shows an upward trend overall. The redirection is not completed yet as the site is big. Will update if it proves to be much more effective. Removed Google Analytics, as my stats (bounce rate, time on site) were poor and I don't want Google to devalue my site because of my own action.

 

[waltersweb]

Did a 301 redirect on March 24th. Traffic was down from 4700 UV/day to 2000 UV/day by March 22. Currently, it has increased to 2600 UV and shows an upward trend overall. The redirection is not completed yet as the site is big. Will update if it proves to be much more effective. Removed Google Analytics, as my stats (bounce rate, time on site) were poor and I don't want Google to devalue my site because of my own action.

Did you move your content to another domain? Did you change the content? Is that a new domain or an expired one?
Thanks

 

[Knasper]

Built a couple of links from articles on my PBN towards an inner page on my MS. It went up to #8 and stayed nicely there, only to drop to #35 where it was before at the end of last week, and it's been there since.

Does anyone think that this is traffic related and Google needs to see visits through links in order to deem them as good? These links went up, gave an initial boost and when Google noticed that no traffic came to the inner page, it tanked again.

I am experiencing both sides of the recent updates. We have 3-4 year old domains that are even stronger than before and rank for some of the most difficult keywords in our local countries. Nothing seems to be able to take them down. Our new domains, 1-2 years old and less, total disaster and it seems impossible to make them rank. There are clearly different rules for new and old sites, but what?

It's driving me nuts.

 

[Katalyst45]

If it works for you, that's great. I just can't imagine why a person looking for a 'blue widget' and finds the info on the page they land on would need to click around on your other page(s). True, in some cases maybe they want to find out what a 'red widget' is all about. But I'm having a hard time to understand how it correlates to the original search intent and to SERP.

In fact, if I was the search engine and saw that someone who clicks on 'blue widgets' is clicking around your website, that would tell me that the page they landed on is not about what they were originally looking for. Draw your conclusions based on that.

Just to give you an example, if I search for 'Donald Trump' (sorry Donald) and click on Wikipedia link, will google demote that Wikipedia page just because I did not click on internal Wikipedia links to find out more? I don't think so.

Besides that, there are a number of 1 or 2-page websites out there that still rank very well for a specific keyword ...

P.S. Maybe Time on Page and Session Duration does matter, I don't know for sure. But not bounce rate.

This is why I hate Bounce Rate and it's focused on way too heavily by people. Instead we should focus on dwell time and increasing time on page. You're right, if you never leave the page because you find the answer immediately, then that in my mind is the best possible score of content satisfying a searcher's intent. If you're still concerned with it, use interlinks, related posts, and other things to encourage deeper site explorations.

 

[classybabe]

They can figure it out

They make $ from this. They throttle traffic to sites. They re-rank sites all the time, 24x7. When you're in positions 40 to 80 you're in the turf mate, the waves there will shake you. If you want your site safely out of this region you need to improve your SEO and keep out of those lower positions.

You can oscillate from 80 to 200 and back, those back pages are basically a big void. I ignore anything over page 2, it's simply noise.

^This.

Please stop with the A.I nonsense. To believe that means we should all give up - think who wants us to believe that.

In the past it was the content nonsense - write great content and google will magically rank you higher. Now even they admitted it's bullshit (in some tweet, one of google's liar said you can rank low-medium competition with content only), now they're spreading this A.I bullshit.

The only A.I google has created is to help them jack off when they're horny. A.I my ass. Just analyze any of the big money making keywords and you will see blackhat kings dominate it.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

^This.

Please stop with the A.I nonsense. To believe that means we should all give up - think who wants us to believe that.

In the past it was the content nonsense - write great content and google will magically rank you higher. Now even they admitted it's bullshit (in some tweet, one of google's liar said you can rank low-medium competition with content only), now they're spreading this A.I bullshit.

The only A.I google has created is to help them jack off when they're horny. A.I my ass. Just analyze any of the big money making keywords and you will see blackhat kings dominate it.

I like this classy babe

 

[Kelowna]

Whenever Google does and update -> we get more backlinks, works every time.

When Google not updating -> we get more backlinks, works every time.

When Google talks about AI -> we get more backlinks, works every time.

...see the trend?

I have been at this since the mid 90's and ever since Google came along -> we get more backlinks, works every time.

Just to add, not shit links, not deep fried tasty spam, -> get good backlinks, works every time.

 

[bahus]

I did a 301, coulnd't sit and wait

I'm just curious, did it work for you?

 

[pinakinrb]

I moved to HTTPs and removed Chinese/Russian spammy links, traffic went up around 20%. I am going to try getting few links by guest posting now.

 

[moneyflower]

I moved to HTTPs and removed Chinese/Russian spammy links, traffic went up around 20%. I am going to try getting few links by guest posting now.

How long did it take to recover?