Did Google rollback it's caffeine update? How fast are your rankings going up?

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Anatomize

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I'm just curious.. based on observation, I noticed last year when I would build links my clients would immediately jump up VERY quickly.. 1-2 weeks and my target keywords/anchors were moving up.

I've had several new clients in the past two months and I'm building links and there is barely any movement upwards, it doesn't matter what the anchors are or how good the quality of the links are, I'm not seeing quick movement at all. I have target anchors that I went after back in August and only now the client is showing up for the keyword, it seems a lot slower than before with factoring links into their system compared to last year, when caffeine was at it's height my rankings were flying as soon as I was building links.

I'm wondering how fast you guys are seeing a correlation between link building and your rankings moving?
 
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I see drop but not sure if its an update.
 
Yes, I think its slower than it used to be. Patience is required.
 
Caffeine update? I've never heard of this.

It's taken a long time for new links to have an impact for a while. Last year it was definitely taking more than a month for me.
 
Never heard of this update either. However, it has taken several weeks for quite some time. Tons of posts over the last year on this subject.
 
Caffeine was not a ranking update... it is/was a method for quickly indexing content.

What you’re likely referring to is the “Fred sandbox” which causes irrelevant / whatever links Google deems as “high likelihood to be unnatural” to be placed into a sandbox for a period of time before passing juice. Some never escape.

If you manage to get a super relevant link, you can see results literally within 24-48 hours. I managed to acquire such a link on one of my sites with an exact anchor text, in a very competitive market, and went from #22 -> #12 in 48 hours.

Granted, the site eventually went down to #15, where it is now, but still that was an incredibly fast impact.

There’s also a competitor in my niche who managed to rank top 5 exactly after the 3 month sandbox. He had super relevant / quality links from sources within the industry.

Are things slower now? Yes. But if you acquire links that bypass the Fred sandbox, being your site has some age, they can still have impact very quickly.
 
At the same time that 'caffeine' released, links were being indexed/factored far quicker - even if Google doesn't directly tell you it helps links... I don't take everything they release publicly at face value.

The time that I saw my clients rankings jump up across the board for dozens of clients correlated with the update, Google said it's overall for indexing faster, and I noticed an impact with how quickly my clients moved up right at the time it took place, I would build a link and within days/a week my clients moved up.

Today, it's taking 3-4 months regardless of who the client is, how aged their domain is, across the board it's been slowed down from that time period when people were discussing caffeine. This is why I brought up that particular update.

And the above is for many of the same clients who I had both during the height of the update and now.. so I'm able to see differences in how quickly they rank/move during link building phases.
 
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I am working on two competitive sites right now and I have noticed that the new links I am adding are taking a long time to take effect. On the other hand, I found the pages on our sites with the most backlinks and did some extensive on-page SEO and less then a week later we jumped 10 positions.
 
Anatomize said:
At the same time that 'caffeine' released, links were being indexed/factored far quicker - even if Google doesn't directly tell you it helps links... I don't take everything they release publicly at face value.

The time that I saw my clients rankings jump up across the board for dozens of clients correlated with the update, Google said it's overall for indexing faster, and I noticed an impact with how quickly my clients moved up right at the time it took place, I would build a link and within days/a week my clients moved up.

Today, it's taking 3-4 months regardless of who the client is, how aged their domain is, across the board it's been slowed down from that time period when people were discussing caffeine. This is why I brought up that particular update.

And the above is for many of the same clients who I had both during the height of the update and now.. so I'm able to see differences in how quickly they rank/move during link building phases.
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Yea... again, nothing to do with Caffeine. It’s that the links are most strictly analyzed now then they were in the past.

Back then, Google had no way of using AI/machine learning to analyze links. They relied on archaic methods of assessing link quality.

Now with Fred, which was released to stop spam on real time Penguin, they are able to “stop” links from passing juice until they determine they should be passing juice.

What exactly happens during this process is unknown, but I have more than enough evidence from analyzing the “long anchors” I build to know that it’s true.

Basically, in exchange for Penguin being real time, they had to slow down the link juice passing so people couldn’t spam... as with P4, you don’t have to wait for a “refresh” to recover your ranks.

This is an oversimplification of what’s happening, but nonetheless, it’s valid. Still even today if you get a super quality link that 100% passes Fred, you will be rewarded for that link almost instantly, within only 24-48 hours. But if you acquire links that Fred deems suspicious, they will not pass juice for a while... and some, will never pass juice.

In the end, while I agree things are slower now, it has nothing to do with Caffeine, and everything to do with the way Google is now assessing (or at least attempting to assess) links.
 
blinggam said:
Yea... again, nothing to do with Caffeine. It’s that the links are most strictly analyzed now then they were in the past.

Back then, Google had no way of using AI/machine learning to analyze links. They relied on archaic methods of assessing link quality.

Now with Fred, which was released to stop spam on real time Penguin, they are able to “stop” links from passing juice until they determine they should be passing juice.

What exactly happens during this process is unknown, but I have more than enough evidence from analyzing the “long anchors” I build to know that it’s true.

Basically, in exchange for Penguin being real time, they had to slow down the link juice passing so people couldn’t spam... as with P4, you don’t have to wait for a “refresh” to recover your ranks.

This is an oversimplification of what’s happening, but nonetheless, it’s valid. Still even today if you get a super quality link that 100% passes Fred, you will be rewarded for that link almost instantly, within only 24-48 hours. But if you acquire links that Fred deems suspicious, they will not pass juice for a while... and some, will never pass juice.

In the end, while I agree things are slower now, it has nothing to do with Caffeine, and everything to do with the way Google is now assessing (or at least attempting to assess) links.
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That's interesting.. because I do notice my much higher DA and TF links are the ones giving credence immediately.. I'm not seeing the same thing from 10-30 DA.. there is almost no impact on the lower scale quality links.

Based on observation, the latter penguin refreshes before the October update (throughout 2017 and in the first half of 2018), I was able to chase more targeted anchors than ever before. The entire Penguin update was to punish more exact match anchors, but it feels like the past three years prior to this October update I was willy nilly able to chase exact match; of course I wouldn't over do it, I would still provide proper anchor density spread out.. but I remember in around '12 - '14 people were going wild trying to break down the exact science of percentages spread out across the types of anchors (branded/naked/exact/generic, etc.).. and I started testing out in the past two-three years and I noticed that I didn't have to do it so strict by percentages, I could still get a few solid exact matches and variations of it and I wasn't being punished at all..

Moreover Google supposedly punished exact match domain names a long time ago but I think there's been a rollback since then, I see SO many exact match domain names still dominating search results. In fact, all of my clients who have exact match domain names kill it for their target keywords, I just think Google can't differentiate between what is the relation of the business name to the keyword, and therefore they think your exact match is exactly what people are looking for.. because again I've seen so many examples of websites with EMD killing it in various industries..
 
Anatomize said:
That's interesting.. because I do notice my much higher DA and TF links are the ones giving credence immediately.. I'm not seeing the same thing from 10-30 DA.. there is almost no impact on the lower scale quality links.

Based on observation, the latter penguin refreshes before the October update (throughout 2017 and in the first half of 2018), I was able to chase more targeted anchors than ever before. The entire Penguin update was to punish more exact match anchors, but it feels like the past three years prior to this October update I was willy nilly able to chase exact match; of course I wouldn't over do it, I would still provide proper anchor density spread out.. but I remember in around '12 - '14 people were going wild trying to break down the exact science of percentages spread out across the types of anchors (branded/naked/exact/generic, etc.).. and I started testing out in the past two-three years and I noticed that I didn't have to do it so strict by percentages, I could still get a few solid exact matches and variations of it and I wasn't being punished at all..

Moreover Google supposedly punished exact match domain names a long time ago but I think there's been a rollback since then, I see SO many exact match domain names still dominating search results. In fact, all of my clients who have exact match domain names kill it for their target keywords, I just think Google can't differentiate between what is the relation of the business name to the keyword, and therefore they think your exact match is exactly what people are looking for.. because again I've seen so many examples of websites with EMD killing it in various industries..
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Definitely true, I’m positive that one of the updates in November/December 2018 was a Penguin/Fred update that targeted exact anchor text.

People have to understand that Penguin/Fred “work together” in a sense. (Based on my observations.)

So let’s say a P/F update rolls out and Fred now deems some of your links “suspicious,” it could cut off the juice to them retroactively and drop your site.

That said, with exacts it seems to be not as simple as cutting off the juice, otherwise people would just spam exacts and some would pass. It seems that Fred actually “tells” Penguin to penalize sites that have too many exacts from Fred-caught sources (sources that it deems to be unnatural).

I’ve had recoveries from Penguin/Fred by removing exacts from domains I thought were the most suspect. But how can you really know which domains/links are caught? It’s hard to say.

Either way, it seems like now we have to be a lot more careful with where we place exact anchors.
 
I've seen little improvement lately after removing tons of outbound links.
 
hippo123 said:
Caffeine update? When was this?
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There wasn't such a thing. It's just a name someone made up.

Google doesn't have old dances for like 10+ years. Everything we see changing is just filters and new data being applied.

WWW competition is doing more to change your SERPs than Google is. A lot of SERP changes observed are due to your competitors' actions, not Google.

These Google update threads end up becoming a big mix of speculation, unrelated causation correlations and overall it just gets people confused in the end.
 
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