Key Findings from May 4th Google Update

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dohologger

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Based on ACTUAL data sets from more than 80 websites. Hope this helps :)

It seems to be related more to content than links along with other micro factors. In general:

* Sites that had active link acquisition and low index bloat and had a tight index of performance pages saw an INCREASE in rankings and traffic.

* Sites that had no active link acquisition other than general background flux in random links / scrapers but had a large content pool where more than 50% of the index underperformed saw significant drops of 30% plus

* Sites that had active link acquisition with good domain metrics and a good portion of relevant links but large index bloat also saw drops of 20-30%+

* Sites that had no active link acquisition but had a good tight index of performing pages (less than 20% underperforming index) saw an INCREASE in rankings, as much as 25%

Factors where there was no real correlation:

*Any change in weight on site speed (think with google)
*Site age or establishment over time
*Brand trust/citation

Factors where there was SOME correlation:

Poor quality links
Negative Link Patterns i.e. Blogspot abuse
Massive skew between links at a root domain level and lower level pages
Anchor text profiles
 
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Thanks for this, gotta love pure data.

Just a question, what's a "tight index" and "large index bloat" in layman terms?

Also, "Massive skew between links at a root domain level and lower level pages" - Skewed which way?
 
Stackz said:
Thanks for this, gotta love pure data.

Just a question, what's a "tight index" and "large index bloat" in layman terms?

Also, "Massive skew between links at a root domain level and lower level pages" - Skewed which way?
Click to expand...
A large index bloat is when a website has lots of unnecessary pages in the search engine index. It's often in eCommerce sites; paginated pages, processing files, and duplicate pages.

But also, it relates to lots of thin content pages and under-performing content. If you have content on your site that is not generating traffic, has not resulted in any conversions, and does not have any backlinks, you may want to consider de-index to remove bloat. Tight index is just less bloat!

Skewed towards slightly towards pages (only slight correlation, so not really noteworthy yet).

I think overall, the focus now has to be on creating high-performing content. Actively build backlinks to under-performing content or simply remove from index!
 
dohologger said:
A large index bloat is when a website has lots of unnecessary pages in the search engine index. It's often in eCommerce sites; paginated pages, processing files, and duplicate pages.

But also, it relates to lots of thin content pages and under-performing content. If you have content on your site that is not generating traffic, has not resulted in any conversions, and does not have any backlinks, you may want to consider de-index to remove bloat. Tight index is just less bloat!

Skewed towards slightly towards pages (only slight correlation, so not really noteworthy yet).

I think overall, the focus now has to be on creating high-performing content. Actively build backlinks to under-performing content or simply remove from index!
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for the clarification, that makes sense.
 
Yes it makes sense. However, there is a situation like this. My niche is cryptocurrency. But many pointless sites that are not in my site's category were on the first pages of google. what do you say to that
 
tiago7 said:
Yes it makes sense. However, there is a situation like this. My niche is cryptocurrency. But many pointless sites that are not in my site's category were on the first pages of google. what do you say to that
Click to expand...

I can't give much away here as I actually work in your industry but I haven't really seen this at all... "But many pointless sites that are not in my site's category were on the first pages of google. what do you say to that."

What do you consider pointless sites?

All I can say on this niche is high authority, YMYL and EAT are winning. And that I would HATE to be starting a small blog in this niche right now, competition is INSANE. Huge budgets and ad spends to compete against...
 
Last edited:
Interesting post and very helpful thread... Thanks
 
So there is this viewpoint that your WHOLE domain is taken into consideration when determining authority or strength. Killing thin/low performing pages has been shown to do well for a website based on a few case studies.
 
Thanks for sharing the data, something I will certainly look into for a couple of websites.
 
Good content + high quality links. Google rarely goes beyond that.
 
Right, we should more focus on content rather than link building.
Make sure always, you should think for visitor of website.
 
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