Google “Mayday” Algorithm Update - Long Tail Traffic Impacted

Google has confirmed a May algorithm update which is said to have impacted the ranking of search results for long tail queries. First reported by users on Webmaster World, many site owners are complaining of a 10-50% drop in traffic from mostly long tail search queries.

Following the discussion on Webmaster World, Matt Cutts confirmed the update via a video on the Google webmaster YouTube channel. According to Matt, this is an "algorithmic change and it does impact long tail searches more than head searches".

This change started out as one of the daily tweaks to Google's search algorithm, but gained more coverage than usual because of the noticeable traffic impact to some websites. While we haven't seen any impact here at ineedhits, Matt suggests the update is more likely to impact sites that match off-topic long tail searches, rather than being an authority on the topic in question.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM


Some other points to note about the change:

• This change is not the result of Google manually selecting some sites to be flagged.
• The change is an algorithmic change only.
• It is a permanent change that has now been fully released.
• It is completely independent of the caffeine update

If your site has been impacted, Matt recommends improving the content on any "thin" pages which had been attracting a lot of long tail visitors.

Why did you put a youtube video in a codebox?

Interesting

M.A.D said:

It's a shoe-box diorama.
Come closer to the screen and you can see the whole thing.

Click to expand...

I LoL'd ..... but yeah, I don't remember how was it that I came across that video but my take is that google might not be too fond of people making fugly 1 page niche sites... or who knows... personally I haven't taken much of a hit but then again, I don't do 1 page sites

actually all but 1 of my sites saw a traffic increase lol

Personally even i felt my traffic going up for long tail keywords

I don't understand, the way the G Rep puts it, it sound like the bigger sites with credibility have more authority when it comes to long tail keywords, even if a similar sites posts similar content [in terms of relevancy and KW density]. However, you guys are saying that your longtail targeted pages are getting more traffic.

Are you getting better results in the SERPS, or is your overall natural [links built by visitors] exposure getting better [in which case, would be nothing new]. Check your backlinks and your ranking and see how they stack up against previous reports [that is if anyone is willing to share their results].

Personally, I have not felt a thing outside of the natural for my sites from 12-6 months old.

lol my sites that went up dont get natural links, they are too spammy and monetized for anyone to like em *snicker* so its purely that goog loves me more for no good reason other than the algo went backwards