There was a lot of fluctuation in the SERP’s lately. Specially since December 13. Many even suspected whether or not there is an update going on. Like this one in our forum.
Either another update is incoming or this present one is a mess.
Huge amount of bot activity on many sites.
Traffic is also a bit up but for a thin margin.
Later, Google Search Liason confirmed that there is indeed an update. As soon as we started reading some comments and reactions. We quickly found that many are complaining about Google is not being fair. Many complained that they haven’t bought any links & are not part of any link exchange schemes. Since,this update unlike the previous Google update will use an AI (Spam Brain).
Here are some replies from Webmaster World.
Is that the 2398th or 2399th time Google has told us spam links will no longer work?
My take: If all the links on your pages, internal and external, are either navigational, directly supporting the topic of the page(a resource to learn more etc.) or a citation, you’re fine. I think they’ve said this 500 times, too.
What I really wanted to say: Spam Brain is such a perfect name. It tries to sound smart… but there’s still spam in there. It’s like saying “Spanish Blue Eyes”, is the blue Spanish, or are the blue eyes Spanish? Thanks for the Brain made of spam?
Translated: Google has a thing that’s doing a thing, and they won’t give us the instruction manual or tell us specifically how it works. Deja-vu.
A dedicated AI on link spam is likely to be more efficient than previous attempts.
What’ll be interesting to see is how deep or shallow the parameters are set. We should watch this space for casualties which will give us an indication.
Traffic is all over the place…skyrocketing the first half of the day, then dropping off a cliff suddenly. My home page and major landing pages all taking major hits in traffic, -80% some days, then reverting back to normal, then dropping again…on and off for almost two weeks already. Yesterday UK traffic suddenly turned off entirely and was -45% by day’s end…today USA traffic was down by 72% this morn. Meanwhile, visits to individual content pages are still fairly strong.
Visits to individual pages (“one hit wonders”) are almost always lower quality searches and traffic…they rarely result in sales / conversions. Home page and landing page traffic result from more important high volume searches, and that is what is clearly being siphoned off with these latest moves by Google
Some of the replies in BHW.
It’s just a rehash of what big G has been saying for at least a decade, but with the addition of ‘AI’ to scare people into thinking they’re suddenly all-knowing.
you know what I mean – – it’s not about making an emotional argument for/against Google, the SERPs are proof of Google’s competency. Rationally, after perusing search results across niches, does anyone here honestly feel that Google is doing a great job when it comes to relevance?
I’m not even hating on Google, perhaps if they just owned up and said “hey, we try to implement some stuff, but it’s 50-50, sometimes it works, sometimes we tank sites unintentionally.
Some of the replies in our forum.
Here in UK, the Wednesday started a bit usual. Nothing much to observe. Although I was seeing a decent amount of traffic which has higher bounce rate.
But after a couple hours later. Things tend to unfold. Traffic tanked or fell of a cliff. Then again hours later at night, to some point traffic did came back. And overall traffic was the same for whole day.
Also I would like to mention that didn’t Google recently said that they no longer consider link as main thing to evaluate any page ?! Now they are producing this link related update. What a load of bull cr*p.
The thing is G is trying desperately to take attention of the public from the real issue with these updates. The actual reason behind these updates is that. G don’t want us to talk about the Search Results which are filled with ads. And very low on actual organic results.
Indeed I am only seeing Chinese products now in the results specifically to say ads.
Many are also complaining that their pages are bombarded with Chinese traffic. This is also harming the overall conversion of any page.
For indexing issues it is advised that you submit your pages to different social channels and content sharing sites (social bookmarking sites, directory submission sites, blog submission sites). They shall help you.