On June 5th of 2012, at around 9:00am Central Daylight Time, I spotted what appeared to be a major Google algorithm update in the wild. Unfortunately, I was alone… and the photos all turned out blurry… ok, and I had had a few beers. Still, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. This is the true story of an update that I honestly believe we missed, and why we’re just not as good at spotting them as we like to think.
The First Sighting
Let’s cut to the chase – this is an artist’s representation of what I saw that fateful morning (not a very talented artist, granted):
Please note that the Y-axis has been scaled to enhance differences. This is a graph of ten days of “Delta10” – I can’t fully explain what that is right now (come to MozCon to hear more), but the short version is that it’s a measure of 24-hour rankings fluctuations across a sample of top 10 Google results. The higher the Delta10, the more rankings changed over that 24 hours.
Delta10 theoretically goes from 0-10, but the practical range is much smaller. For reference, the Delta10 on the morning of June 5th (which really indicates activity on June 4th) was 3.24. The 30-day average just prior to this was 2.29. Over 60 days, June 4th had the 2nd highest Delta10 on record – the record is currently held by the “Penguin” update (3.32).
I spot-checked my data and confirmed it from a second tracking station – this wasn’t a fluke. So, I told the Twitterverse what I had seen…
Replies ranged from “I didn’t see anything” to “Stop drinking, Dr. Pete!” to “Who are you?!” Clearly, the SEO community was unconvinced.
The Second Sighting
I was about to go back to the bottle, when a second sighting was confirmed by SERPmetrics:
While I don’t know the exact details of their tracking system (or how it compares to mine), it also measures ranking fluctuations. So, I asked the burning question: “How big was it?” and got back this:
If I was crazy, at least there were two of us. Was it an authentic Sasquatch, though, or just a hairy, naked dude taking a walk in the forest? It was time to go CSI on the data…
Clues in the SERPs
One of the plusses of my system is that it stores the top 10 URLs for the tracked keywords, so I can see how any given SERP changed. The tough part, as I’m learning, is that many SERPs change every day, so you have to learn to separate out “normal” volatility from unusual change. As I went through the SERPs that changed the most from 6/4 to 6/5, I came across one that seemed pretty quiet in the preceding week. This is the top 10 for “bjs menu” on the morning of 6/4:
- https://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/menu
- https://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/
- https://bjsrestaurants.com/restaurants_page/restaurant_menu.html
- https://byjoomla.com/joomla-extensions/list-menu
- https://www.bjsbbq.com/menu/default.asp
- https://www.bjs.com/deli-bakery.content.services_deli_bakery.A.services
- https://www.allmenus.com/nv/las-vegas/38881-bjs-restaurant--brewhouse/menu/
- https://www.bjclancys.com/
- https://dineries.com/ca/lagunabeach/bjs/280pacificcoasthwy
- https://pub.bjwillys.com/our-menus/
I’ve color-coded the domains – for reference, there are nine root domains in this SERP. Here’s where it gets interesting – look at the data for the morning of 6/5:
- https://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/menu
- https://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/
- https://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/about-us/faqs
- https://bjsrestaurants.com/restaurants_page/restaurant_menu.html
- https://www.bjsrestaurants.com/menus/desserts
- https://www.bjsrestaurants.com/locations/ca/bjs-grill-anaheim-hills
- https://www.bjsrestaurants.com/locations/fl/gainesville
- https://byjoomla.com/joomla-extensions/list-menu
- https://www.bjsbbq.com/menu/default.asp
- https://www.bjs.com/deli-bakery.content.services_deli_bakery.A.services
The number of root domains in the top 10 dropped from nine to only five – BJsBrewhouse.com grew from two to three listings, and BJSRestaurants.com expanded from one to four listings. By itself, this could mean anything, but I started to see the same pattern repeated as I dug into more and more individual SERPs.
Here’s another example – a search for “kohl store locator”. On 6/4, the top 10 included seven different domains:
- https://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/html/store_locator.htm
- https://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/siteadvantage/advantage.asp
- https://www.kohls.com/
- https://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/homepage.jsp
- https://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/womens.jsp
- https://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Dallas/Kohls
- https://www.weusecoupons.com/upload/kohls/268041-kohls-store-locator.html
- https://find.mapmuse.com/brand/kohls
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohl's
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kohls/id472014516?mt=8
On the morning of 6/5, only four domains were left standing:
- https://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/html/store_locator.htm
- https://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/siteadvantage/advantage.asp
- https://www.kohls.com/
- https://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/landingpages/lclaurenconrad.jsp
- https://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/ourbrands/jenniferlopez.jsp
- https://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Dallas/Kohls
- https://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/CA/Los-Angeles/Kohls
- https://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Houston/Kohls
- https://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/San-Antonio/Kohls
- https://find.mapmuse.com/brand/kohls
Although this is only one result, there are a couple of interesting things to note here. First, this wasn’t simply a change in exact-match domain handling or brand power. Kohl’s sites didn’t expand, and power domains like Wikipedia lost ranking – meanwhile, WhitePages.com jumped from one listing to four. It’s also interesting to note that two previous, broad Kohls.com pages were replaced with specific landing pages. Of course, it’s possible that was just a change on the Kohl’s site and not a Google tweak.
Clues in Domain Diversity
Of course, these single SERPs are anecdotal at best. I needed a larger-scale metric, so I decided to run some numbers on domain diversity across the entire data set (1,000 SERPs = 10,000 URLs). Put simply, across the 10K URLs, how many domains were in play? To simplify the data processing, I treated each sub-domain as unique. Here’s what I saw over the ten days from 5/28 to 6/6 (in this case, 6/5 is the critical day):
Again, I’m cheating a little on the Y-axis here – for the record, domain diversity decreased 2.6% on June 5th, from 5,802 domains on 6/4 to 5,654 on 6/5. I included 6/6 to show that the change seems to have stuck, at least temporarily. While 2.6% isn’t a huge change, the numbers appear to have been very steady prior to 6/5, and this data does match the pattern shown in the example queries.
It’s interesting to note that Google’s April Search Highlights included a change that was supposed to increase domain diversity in the SERPs:
“More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename "Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.”
So, I decided to run out the domain diversity calculation over the full data set (which goes back to 4/5). What I saw was the following…
Keep in mind that more sub-domains across the 10K URLs equal more diversity. Not only can I find no clear evidence of Google’s “Horde” update in April, but the data suggests that domain diversity has steadily declined over the past two months. There are, in fact, two steep drop-offs. The second drop-off is the one being discussed in this post and shown in the previous graph. The first drop-off is the Penguin update.
Of course, it’s important to note that this is a hand-selected sample of 1,000 keywords and only measures the top 10 rankings. While the domain diversity patterns across the data set are interesting, they don’t necessarily reflect the entire population of Google’s rankings.
Entity Detection Changes
After my initial Tweet on 6/4, SEO patent guru Bill Slawski turned me on to a Google patent published on 5/31 (although it was filed back in February). Interpreting patents, let alone if and when they enter the algorithm is a tricky business, and I’m not 5% as adept at it as Bill, but the patent essentially covers how Google matches queries to entities. In particular, note Claim 28, which describes how a term could be matched to “a plurality of domains”. Or, as Bill noted:
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This is highly speculative, and I don’t want to put words in Bill’s mouth or over-simplify a long conversation, but if this reflects a general change in capability on Google’s part, it does match the pattern somewhat. If Google could match an entity like Kohls to not only Kohls.com, but it’s listings on WhitePages.com, the algorithm could give more weight to those non-brand domains, in theory.
Could I Be Wrong?
NO!! KHAN!!!! *shakes fist at sky*
Ok, yes, I could. At this point, I think the fluctuation data is reliable – I’ve confirmed it wasn’t a bug, and the SERPmetrics numbers back me up. Of course, fluctuations in the rankings are just one way of looking at things, and the tougher question is: What was the impact? If you look at the sample queries, you can see that many of the changes happened in the bottom 5 of the top 10. For my metric (Delta10), a change from #6 to #7 is the same as a change from #2 to #3, or, for that matter, a change from #7 to #6. Maybe, fluctuations were high but occurred almost entirely in lower-impact positions.
There’s another possibility, though – maybe the fluctuations occurred in rankings that do matter (in the aggregate) but that most of us aren’t watching. How many of us take notice when a few long-tail keywords drop from #6 to #7? By themselves, they don’t mean much, but across hundreds of keywords, I suspect some sites experienced significant traffic changes.
Does Bigfoot Have a Brother?
Or possibly a sister – I’m not getting close enough to check. Just as I had almost finished this post, weekend monster sightings were off the charts. Although Google is officially confirming Panda 3.7 and an impact of <1% of queries, ranking fluctuations over the weekend were massive. Here’s an updated graph that includes June 4th:
The original “Bigfoot” (I owe Dave Snyder a hat tip for the name, even if he was kidding) was June 4th (Delta10 = 3.24), but that was followed up by an unusually active weekend, including a peak Saturday of Delta10 = 3.62. Keep in mind, Saturday topped not only the first Penguin update, but dwarfed Panda 3.5 and 3.6.
My gut reaction is that something bigger happened here than just a Panda data refresh, but I honestly can’t prove that. Keep in mind that weekends are also normally pretty quiet, so relative to a typical Saturday/Sunday, these numbers are even more unusual. It’s possible that Panda 3.7 impacted more sites than 3.5 or 3.6, or that Google had to make adjustments on the fly, or that Panda 3.7 rolled out in addition to other updates.
Unfortunately, the timing of this post made a full analysis of Panda 3.7 tricky and the pattern of change over the weekend isn’t clear, but I pulled a couple of numbers. First of all, the domain diversity drop I’ve documented leading up to June 4th has not reversed. June 8-10 was not simply a rollback of June 4, as far as I can tell. These were separate events. It is entirely likely that June 8-10 were related to each other (you can see a pretty clear ramp-up into the weekend).
It also appears that the weekend was not simply a matter of a big change that got reversed. Let’s say, for example, that every URL moved on Saturday and then moved back on Sunday to its original position. Each day would show high Delta10s, but the two-day change would be zero. Looking at Sunday vs. Friday, the two-day change here is 3.91 (compared to a 24-hour change of 3.44). Although multi-day changes can be very tough to interpret, the evidence suggests that the changes from this past week are here to stay, at least for a while.
What’s in a Name?
I’m almost sorry Panda 3.7 came along before this post went live, because it painfully illustrates a fundamental problem in SEO right now – we’re letting Google define what we pay attention to. By my numbers, Penguin 1.0 was big, and Panda 3.7 was bigger, but many recent Panda updates have been barely blips on the radar (just above average), and I’ve tracked a half-dozen events in the past 60 days that are as bigger or bigger than Panda 3.5 and 3.6.
Google has stated publicly (under oath, in fact) that they made 516 updates in 2010. The numbers for 2011 and 2012 appear to be on par with that. On average, that’s 1.4 updates every day. We’re chasing two runaway animals while an entire zoo is stampeding toward Grandma’s house, and we’re too often doing bad SEO along the way.
I’m not asking you to chase the algorithm – my obsession shouldn’t become yours. I’m asking you to pay attention and stop waiting for official confirmation that something changed. Think long-term, pay attention to your traffic, and watch the numbers that matter to you. The picture of rapid change I’m painting doesn’t even count localization, personalization, rich results, vertical results, etc. You have to know your own niche, and if you want to succeed, you’d better watch it like a hawk. Don’t rely on Google to tell you which changes are important.
Wow, shocking data indeed. I was one of the non-believers but what can I say. I have a client who was completely taken off the rankings... but Microsite Masters still shows same rank. Really we can sit here and complain about Google all day long but I've finally realized... I need more diversity in my business!
Google keeps changing things, and honestly it's becoming annoying & time consuming. I'm seriously looking into paid traffic options (not from Google) to help open up another stream. I am now also attempting to use 100% "white hat" techniques, although thus far the ranking power has yet to been seen (when dealing with Penguin recoveries, at least).
My main problem here is Google's thirst for "Brands" in the search results. Of course the brands will have different links... they have money, A LOT of it. Like it or not, they can buy links and make them look "donated"... it's all just another price tag. They can also get links from places that no small business owner can, a matter of reputation and age in business.
I realize the point is to not expect overnight success, but if the search engine worked properly, the best website would win even if a brand new site. Now it's becoming impossible to compete with brands in the results, all my Ecommerce stores took a hit, and let's not even start on Affiliate sites.
Sadly I can no longer recommend people get involved with website creation and promotion. John said it best ... @johnandrews "Google SEO is no longer worth the effort for those who are not writers, artists, speakers, trainers, or promoters. What happened to Search?'
Sad to see Google turned their backs on the people that helped build their index, and their brand for the past 10 years. Ah well, time to start looking for a replacement. Every empire throughout histroy has fallen, I think this will be no different.
Great Post ! Frankly, I have become so dizzy over the last 7 weeks watching all this, I am now ignoring everything and just focusing on content.
It's been a wild ride this year already but you seem to have the write focus. I think SEO today can be summed up by focusing on brand, content and social. Of course there are other elemtens like on-site and whatnot but the three biggest will get most people headed in the right direction.
Likewise!
You know what would be cool? A dedicated website that ran this analysis automatically and updated it daily. Of course, this would cause loads of extra work for you, and I don't see a possible way to monitize it. Please let us know when it is done.
I don't know who's competing with Dr. Pete's timeslot at MozCon, but I'm pretty sure I'll be wanting to learn more about Delta10...
I haven't even told you about Delta100, Delta 55, or DeltaX ;) I expect the audience to be simultaneously amazed and bored to tears. Is "amazebored" a word?
I'm not sure about amazebored, but other possibilities include:
Perplexed +Excited =Perplexited? Explited?
Oooh, I like Explited - it carries a hint of exploited to indicate the shame felt of being both perplexed and excited.
Nice trifecta Zeph.
Perplexed + Ecstatic = Perplecstatic also has a nice ring to it.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one...I am perplecstatic about having the chance to see Dr. Pete's MozCon talk.
Haha. Love it. We were discussing Panda with our dev team and one of the guys chirped: "OMG. This sounds so scary. Its like Pandageddon?"
Great work Dr Pete. I just can't get enough of your thorough research approach and your elegant presentation of your finds.
Really wishing Mozcon was a little closer to home (Cape Town). Sigh.
You'll drive yourself crazy (your clients too) if you spend you life trying to anticipate when an algorithm update is coming down the pipeline and what exactly it is designed to do. Chances are you'll be wrong anyway, so why not spend that time doing the best work you can with the information we have.
Yeah I actually tweeted about this on June 5th. Noticed some random (what seemed like) A/B stuff going on which could account for your "fluctuations" in the SERPs. I think it's safe to say that Google is always testing, tweaking and "upgrading". The more I monitor SERP action for a diverse set of industries the more frequently I see these anomolies. While G may be doing this more often than in the past I believe much of this can be attributed to the fact that our industry is digging deeper and becoming much better at monitoring these changes.
Dr Pete,
Good to see a confirmation of what Ive been seeing from my monitored results, also around June 4th, I saw the same thing with repeated domains, in my field that repeated domain goes
Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor
Taking 3/4 of the top 5 spots for several searches, and the content can often just be a photo from a guest. If you can hold onto page 1, I think people will just scroll, but if you fall onto page 2 this will seriously hurt... and does.
I think Google seriously need to quit it with repeated unindented domains occupying these spots. Yesterday I did a search for one property and the entire of page 2 was trip advisor, every single position.
Come on Google, sort it out.
Pete..
Nice. Lovely bit of sleuthing through data - kinda blown away actually. What tool are you using to fetch ranking, or is the home brew we talked about? :-)
I'll probably come back to this to re-read. About a million times!
Home-brewed hooch :) I'll be unveiling it at MozCon, along with a lot more data.
Darnit!! Why does my wife have to be due to have our 4th son at the first of August??!!! I don't drink but can I get some of that home-brew?
Thanks Pete for this research. Got some useful data.
1 question - What should be our next step.?
My clients are getting nervous day by day with dropped in Ranking. After following analytics I got the same feelings. There is a clear sign in drop of visitor.
With lot of updates within 1 month I am getting nervous too. :)
Ayup.
One vertical that is massively affected is automotive (in the UK at least). A search for, say, "used ford focus" yields a relatively diverse first page with most of the names you'd expect to see there. By the time you dig down onto the 2nd/3rd pages you're sometimes looking at a single domain accounting for the 5-6 places.
For something long-taily but quite specific like "used ford focus titanium" I've seen as few as 11 domains making up the top 30 places (and one of those is effectively one company using 3 different domains so the effect is probably more severe than even that suggests, from a commercial perspective).
Thanks for the post. Agree on problem with chasing the algo. I will give it two weeks then take a read of my sites. Frankly, I try not to take reads [check serps] too much because it does get you nuts. Just focus on KPIs that matter.
This has got to be a mistake, a bug of some sort. Surely the only time a searcher wants repetitive results - multiple pages from one site - is if they're doing a brand/company search or even a 'site:' search! It makes little sense when it comes to industry or 'money' keywords; so much for showing 10 results when there's only 3 or 4 different sites on show - what's the point?
I'm doing a search for something at the moment and I dismissed a site the first time I saw it. I'm on page 2 now and I've seen it another 5 times. Seeing it again and again doesn't persuade me to try it if I already know it's not the right page for what I'm looking for. It doesn't make for a good user experience at all.
I bet the people who were at the top already - who now occupy 2-4 results on page 1, instead of just 1 result - are rubbing their hands in glee at this. Everyone else? Well, they're waiting for Google to rectify this ASAP...
I suspect the domain diversity drops are secondary effects. For example, I don't think deliberately reducing domain diversity was built in to Penguin - I suspect that the quality changes Penguin made indirectly reduced domain diversity by knocking out a lot of smaller, weaker sites. So, Google (according to their updates) tried to do an adjustment, but the data suggests that the adjustment was barely a drop in the bucket. I suspect this is less about intent and more about just how complex the algorithm has become. Every time Google pulls a lever, there are unintended consequences.
I saw some big changes and i noticed they launch a new Google Webmaster video :
https://twitter.com/WissamDandan/status/212255469580984321
Imagine that !
I can't comPETE with this.
I vote for the bottle.
Dr Pete you sir are a legend!
Top Seo csi investigation skills there! Could you possibly share what you use to watch your ranking data like that on a daily basis? Is it a special tool or is it webmaster tools?
I feel I can sleep better at night knowing you are watching the google skies for us! I suggest we get a dr Pete bat signal!
This is a home-brewed crawler - I'm trying to keep it pretty tightly controlled (both so I trust what I get back and can modify it, if needed).
Great work detective Pete ;)
One of my friends had a massive drop for some of his keywords on the 5th afternoon ( Australia Time ) and asked me if it was Panda or Penguin. I wasn't sure but this could have something to do with it. I am off to nose dive in to his analytics .. more on it after I go through it. ( assuming he gives me access )
I insist the problem. These days I checked my GA and found big changes which made me nervous. My traffic declined to zero on 6/8 - 6/10. At the beginning, I really didn't know what happened and what was wrong. Meanwhile, I have no business these days. Today seems improved, we had a little business and I don't check today's GA. I'm nearly crazy about the fluctuation. Now you placed the post. Really thanks for your lead. I will check more about the fluctuation.
Try "Malmaison Aberdeen" for Google.co.uk.
Obv a branded search but there's not a look in here for anyone... oh well, better pay £1.00 + per click then.
(Incase you get a different result 9/10 brand + 1 tripadvisor)
That is bizarre. Quite unbelievable that this is truly Google's intent.
The same term at Google.com (searching from South Africa) shows a fairly "normal" blend of results in the SERPs - brand/tripadvisor/lateroom/twitter/booking[dot]com/etc.
What else would you expect to rank for this search? I think this is an improvement over 8 booking/review sites, the hotel's own site and a news article about the hotel.
*edited
Dr Pete is once again in his full action, you know one of the best thing about Dr Pete is his superb research and analytical skills, its always such a great moment to read Dr pete's posts.
I had noticed some SERP volotility late last week - nice to see some numbers and validation behind my hunch that Google was going nutters for a bit.
Thats a pretty good detailed analysis. I think SEO's need to take precautionary measures before Google comes with another blast.
Great post Dr.
Looking forward to your deep dive blogpost regarding your different messures.
Will the MozCon session be webcasted?
I noticed the update last week in the Netherlands, too. So it's seems like a worldwide update.
Regarding the name, however, illusive bigfoot may be, the write up is quite convincing. Google has to run out of animal names some day, until then we can only hope that we are able to keep up this fast pace of changes :D
Amazing data Pete, thanks for sharing.
Great post, really enjoyed it - so thanks. I think we do need some algo chasers out there so that we can see just how OTT Google is (especially in 2012) and we can have yet another reason to shake our heads and tut at the computer screen. I do feel, and am finding that scalability is starting to play a massive role in SERPs including with excessive multiple listings that are ruining 'natural' search for everyone. The only consistent that appears to be in place is the old ethos of 'content is king' which has been re-termed and re-branded many times to make it sound more elusive.
Im glad i found this article.
As of the last 3-4 days, my rank tracking program, started producing the same results.. Its set to check the top 100 as i have few test sites out there.
i started getting the same results as you demonstrated above, but only when i display 100 results/page.
https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+repair+debt+consolidation&num=100&btnG=Search&as_qdr=all#num=100&hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=credit+repair&oq=credit+repair&gs_l=serp.3..0l10.16556.18373.0.18842.13.6.0.1.1.1.1106.3058.2-1j1j3j7-1.6.0...0.0...1c.To6Y9xeoW_Q&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&fp=dbcda916d3edfa06&biw=1680&bih=786
Now when i go back to only checking the top 10 results.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rapid+credit+repair&num=10&btnG=Search&as_qdr=all#hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=credit+repair&oq=credit+repair&gs_l=serp.12..0l5j0i7j0j0i7l3.2770.3390.0.4097.6.4.0.0.0.2.288.947.2-4.4.0...0.0...1c.mKdUCulYIvo&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&fp=dbcda916d3edfa06&biw=1680&bih=786
you can see they filter out.
its like google is like only wanting to show the 100 results made up of pages from they top 10-20 domains etc that have relevant pages from those sites...
Any ideas?
Very strange - I am hearing that the problem gets worse as you dive into the Top 100, but I haven't seen the Top 10 change based on asking for 100 results. Your query URL has two queries in it (and could be pulling that as search history), but I tried it clean in an Incognito browser and I'm seeing the FTC bunch-up on the 100-result search, too.
Hi Pete..It's exiting to read your article. I have checked for query "custom steering wheel cover" on us server.
of google. It prompt me unbelievable result as on second and third page result are full with www.jcwhitney.com/steering-wheels-covers. sites. can anyone help to understand what's going wrong with google. Thanks in advance...
These changes are AWFUL. And I say this from the point of view of a consumer, not from SEO guy perspective.
Just searched for 'best price berkey filter,' because I wanted to buy one. First TWELVE results were all Amazon. Then about 6 sites were from small berkey water distributors, which is what I was actually looking for. Then the next TWELVE were from Facebook (?!?!?)
These results are TERRIBLE. Totally unhelpful. Google, what the hell are you doing? I switched back to Google from DDG about six months ago, setting my default search engine (in Chrome!) back to the Duck. Google Search is BROKEN.
Hi Dr. Pete! Another excellent post from you. I just love reading your articles because I learn a lot from it. Anyway, about the SERPs, I agree with you that many SERPs change every day, with this, we have to learn to separate out “normal” volatility from unusual change. I will be sharing this nice post of yours.
I didn't understand about bigfoot update. is it new algo or something else?
[Link removed by editor.]
From my view it was like, a website gets ranked page 1 for particular niche meant there's high chance there more pages will be ranked in top 30 but isn't it better that Google picks different 30 websites on that niche to be shown on first 3 pages as after Hummingbird we see more possibilities for synonyms and "search intention" results are being shown for "search queries"
Rezoan Hadier
I think you got the name of this update mixed up, it was supposed to be the Google "Wants to screw up positions yet again to force some more businesses into spending on PPC" update.
Once again, this flutter in the search results is organised by Google to keep people in the wonder about what is going on, remember, it's Google's business model, one step people come closer to finding out a piece of the algorithm, the one step further Google gets ahead.
Most people in the community spend their lives chasing a tail that they'll never catch, why not go back to cold hard facts, links rule, content only has limited value, why? Google cannot read content and understand it like a human, the only human verification is when somebody manually reviews what's written.
So, Google cannot understand content, and links are still the most important thing for SEO, using content to attract links is painstakingly slow unless you really hit the nail on the head. I am not trying to advocate spam, I am just highlighting the truth.
Most people will write a good content piece, put it on their website and share it on facebook, twitter etc. and nothing will happen, their rankings wont magically shoot up, nor will their traffic, nor will their link profile. Realistic businesses cannot do the things needed to dominate for keywords, and sadly, big brands are the majority winners.
Google has to generate revenue from PPC, and it has to keep ahead algorithmically to prevent people decyphering the algorithm and dominating results with spam.
No matter what analysis you do, no matter what charts you run, or shifts you see, it's a standard part of Google's model, how you do will depend on how good you are at building links, simple!
Posts like these are why Moz is what it is today. Kudos to Dr. Pete for consistently writing posts like these and for Moz for building an audience/platform around a blog full of these types of high quality posts.
I noticed some major flux on June 5th as well. One site I had recently started working on had a very serious Duplicate Content problem. The domain had about 100,000 pages indexed, when it should have been ~1000.
So after implementing tags, I was watching to see how quickly the change would be made. For a couple of days it would drop 100-200 pages from the index, until the 5th of June. Overnight Google had reduced the # of pages indexed for the site to 1000. I was excited, because I'd thought it would take much longer to take full effect.
However, my excitement was short lived, as the next day it had returned to it's previous bloated number. So not sure if the changes they made were rolled back, or if it was just some kind of glitch that was specific to my site.
But I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one who noticed some weirdness that day!
If you're checking with the site: operator, it can be really erratic day-to-day (not just this week, but always). Check every day (it sounds like that's what you're doing) and look at the trend over time - you'll almost always see a few bizarre numbers, but generally ignore those. The more you can segment it (site: + inurl:, for example) the better.
Great post!
However, I am eluding anything regarding domain diversity. It has been discussed for a long time and maybe I am unlucky but I see no progress in that department. There is still an authority site crushing us with its related page and two highly unrelated pages ranking for a certain keyword. It doesn't matter what they place on the page. It could be a giant picture of a Turkey and it would still win with domain authority.
And Dr Pete's chart clearly shows what's going on with domain-diversity. No hope left :)
Ok, got my ranking report from last week and out of 193 keywords track we are averaging 15 up and 15 down but this last week we saw 2x that amount of movement.
One thing I've bee watching over the last few weeks is how our homepage (ecommerce site) has moved down the rankings from erronious keywords and our subpages (products and categories) have moved up or stayed the same on the top of the SERP's.
It looks as if my subpages are getting more value instead of just helping our homepage rank for something the site archetecture supports.
Makes sense?
<3s. I agree so much with the last statement.
Good eye Pete, thanks for sharing on this critical issue. One thing I've seen is that this 'Bigfoot' change has really pummeled the SMB's. Big companies with hefty budgets are overpowering the SMB's in particular. Matt Cutts video https://www.seroundtable.com/google-same-result-same-page-15287.html.
I have a feeling Google will be correcting this soon, note how Matt says 'continuing to evolve' towards the end of the video. Let's hope sooner rather than later.
P.S. our Organic traffic is down over 20% across the board, SERP's are down even more for non-brand terms.
I haven't read the comments, but we are also detecting a change on June 4. We have had the #1 and #2 listings on the first page for many of our keywords. 5 of our keywords went from 1 & 2 to only 1. 2 of our keywords went from 1, 2 and 3, to only 1 and 2.
This is seemingly contrary to the results you are seeing with less domain diversity on the homepage. However, I am noticing many of our keywords have 4 positions or more on page 2 or 3. In fact for one keyword, we have the first 7 positions on page 3. This of course does support the results you are reporting.
Lastly, I checked our main keyword in Google Webmaster Tools. GWT reports that the keyword had 150 impressions in position 1 and 150 impressions in position 2 from May 15 to June 3. From June 5 to June 13, the keyword had 70 impression in position 1 and <10 impressions in position 2.
This seems to also suggest that something with that keyword changed on June 4, that resulted in it no longer being displayed in both positions as it has had every week for about 2 years now.
I had noticed a 5% fall in traffic on June 4, with most changes in long tail (down 8-10%). Major phrases rankings didnt change but oddly traffic for those reduced as well. I am monitoring your tweets more closely from now on.
what are the keys to mathcing a query to an entity
Saw a similar thing over the weekend too (UK) - a few search results, if containing a brand name, had added at least two extra results from the main brand's website - thus pushing every other result down two positions. Certainly a big change if the majority of your traffic comes from branded searches, then you'll have just lost a ton of search visibility.
However it doesn't seem across the board. Many branded searches remain just the same as before, but only if the main brand's search result is being displayed with Sitelinks. Just a simple observation.
Here in the UK I noticed big changes over this past weekend 9th June-11th June that shook up some SERPs and saw clustering of results by domain in others. Sadly since it happened over the weekend I can't be more specific, but it was notable for a number of different verticals.
Just a note to say, from a major bookselling site (in the UK), we haven't received any major changes in traffic around the 4th and our site rankings haven't changed.
Pete, I think the best effort would be to compare Google.com with Google.co.uk or even Google.com.au as a benchmark? Perhaps it hasn't been rolled out worldwide yet?
I'm seeing the same in the UK. Have noticed it more over the last few days.
It is very frustrating, as one client site has been pushed down a whole page because two of their competitors and a .gov.uk site now have 4-5 slots on the top two pages each.
I am hoping this is a temporary issue and soon gets reversed, as it certainly isn't good from a searchers perspective.
Google tweets, FYI Panda data refresh started rolling out on Friday. Less than 1% of queries noticeably affected in the U.S. & 1% worldwide
https://twitter.com/google/status/212205487037493249
Nice catch, Pete! I guess it pays to hit the sauce early, while staring out the window toward the woods!
Bigfoot has a nice ring to it! Much more appropriate name than cute little black and white critters. And not quite as ominous as Orca.
Can't wait to hear more from you on this.
Where to draw the line?
Some of the changes G make are of minimal impact - focusing on tiny little things.
Others are little more than "fixes" - G attempting to patch things up so they reduce the colateral impact they created, thus aren't likely to affect many sites at all.
As for being the only one to spot it - you have my sympathy.I tried to point out it was more than just Panda and Penguin at the end of April ... and many ignored it.
The chances are that G are making some hefty changes at present.The laugh is - so many SEOs will leap and point the finger at P-and-P ... when it likely isn't, and more a threshold/re-evaluation.
Still - when you get a clear photo of the wee beastie - post it so we can all gawk at it :D
After reading this post I have checked my GA. There is definitely something. I have got 30-40% increase in traffic for 4 days 6/4 to 6/7. From friday went back to original. Then weekend effect not much traffic. There is one more hike is on 5/15, which is big hike in context to other around day's traffic.
Just checked the analytics of about 10 sites. Some small biz, some national sites.
About 6 had a jump (~30-60%) in organic search traffic on June 4, and since then have scaled back to slightly above where they were before. Pretty anectdotal, but that's all I have noticed.
I just checked my analytics data and I think I am on the other side of the table because I didn’t see any great flux in traffic but as far as domain diversity is concern YES! I am noticing this change in few of my key phrases…
But as a while I like the idea by Dr. Pete that tracking and analyzing the data and traffic on daily basis and act accordingly instead of waiting for the BIG G’s official announcements.
Crazy Post Dr. Pete J
I second that for our major site - June 4 was a monday and we had about 33% more traffic that the monday before and the monday after.
Hey Dr Pete,
It's so good to know you're on the case and sniffing out those Sasquatch when I miss them passing by...
Two things I have to say:
Sha
P.S. I have a client who sells covert trail cameras - let me know if you're in the market! :)
Thanks Pete for this.
I've also notice that there are significant ranking fluctuations for certains query the latest days and that the domain diversity has declined. And it seems too me that this stuff that's going on for now, are for the worse.
Wow, very interesting. I wonder what will be the next move, but as long as you do quality work it doesnt REALLY matter. Otherwise we'd all be in Straitjackets thanks to the big G ;)
I'll be sure to check what happened at my end.. Thanks.
I noticed the update last week in the Netherlands, too. So it's seems like a worldwide update.
Do you happen to have more data on the number of words in the search query? One-word queries seem to be more stable, but (product-related) searches with 2 or more words in the search query seem to have a lot of the same domains in the top 10, but sometimes even more in the top 20 or 30.
I don't analyze by word-length, because the sample sizes end up being wildly different (there's not an equal number of X-length queries in the set). I do split the keywords across 5 volume "bins", where 1 = highest volume and 5 = lowest volume. The "Bigfoot" Delta10s by volume look like this:
So, the lowest-volume bin fluctuated the most, whereas the top and middle bins fluctuated the least. I'd take that with a grain of salt, but I've seen a similar pattern other days.
Great, thanks for your update on this one. Probably is about search volumes and not number of words in the search query, but those two are practically married to each other ;)
Hi Pete,
great post that I was waiting to read since you started tweeting about your observations on Twitter and chatted about them with Bill and Branko Rithman (@neyne).
You're not alone, the Bigfoot apparently was seen also here in Spain, and acted the way you descibe: shortening the domain diversity in the SERPs. Actually, I've an SEO friend here who saw how for certain results some brands/entities were prized with more links in the SERPs for certain keywords, actually reducing the diversity of the results.
Finally... you are right: we tend to focus only on what Google is telling us to look at. Objectively it is hard not doing so, when those things hit you, but to maintain a wider vision of Search is surely the best way to go in order to really understand what's affecting our sites.
Great post. I've been waiting to see what you were tweeting about.
Around the same time I noticed some queries that stopped showing local packs, then started showing them again, then stopped again. This data changed based on location setting and geo-qualified query vs. non geo qualified. I doubt that explains any of what you noticed though.
This data set is specifically delocalized and really just focuses on organic results. It's entirely likely there are also local changes going on, but unfortunately I can't measure those yet with this data.
Great to see the final analysis Dr. Pete. Funny how we focus on the publicized events, but rarely notice some of these other updates that you appear to have discovered. Great job and adding additional layers of transparency & awareness for all SEOs!
Dr. Pete-
Your conclusion is spot on. We can spend all of our jobs chasing the algo. But we could also spend our time creating something worthwhile, where it doesn't matter what happens to the algo.
I hate to go all Matt Cutts: but just create good content.
Of course - you must keep in mind the ranking factors! SEOmoz helps us with that :)
I actually noticed this as well on June 6th. Sorry, I should have paid attention more to you. All the people in SEO I talked to did not notice and I felt isolated as well. Good to know it wasn't just me.
Dr. Pete - thank you! This data would make a great tool for PRO members (hint hint). I'd finally have real data to point to when my bosses ask why our Google traffic changed yesterday.
Definitely looking forward to your pres at Mozcon.
I drop in traffic on Friday June 8th and even more of a drop on Saturday June 9th but did not see a change in ranking for my top keywords until Sat. June 9th. Sunday my rankings stayed the same but traffic seemed to improve. However, just an hour ago I checked my rankings and it seems that they have returned to normal. Haven't done any recent link building to cause this change. Guess I'm going to have to dig deeper in my Analytics to get to the bottom. Thanks for the insight!
Now I understand why there were result pages with 8 repeated URL's just a couple days ago!!! I mean, two sites ruled 10 spots, and one of them had 8 results in top 10. Ouch...
Just to add my data to the pile, I have also been seeing some fluctuations in my rankings for the last week. No noticable spike on my sites on June 4th though other than the typical Monday traffic spike coming off the weekend (got to love how most people shop at work).Thanks for the data and we will keep watching.
Interesting that one of my client's sites went from #1 to #4 on June 5, however, the three results above it were all from different root domains. I don't know how that ties in but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Hi Pete,
I've noticed an increase in the number of results per domain too. I've even seen eight of ten results of a hole domain in page 3 of SERPS (by facebook) (searching for frases lindas in google.com.mx) or 7 of 10 by another one different from facebook (searching for chistes cortos in google.com.mx)
I've noticed this change by friday/saturday of last week.
Cheers,
Dani
I've seen a 9/10 and 10/10 - that's a bit much. What's more interesting, historically, is where three different domains all get 3-4 listings. That seems pretty new to me. There have always been SERPs with brand dominance, but to see a 3rd domain get the 7-10 spots is odd.
Hi Pete,
thanks for this update.
Am in South Africa (.co.za) and am seeing exactly the results you are talking about here too. Major competitor is now ranking multiple pages on the same domain for the same keyword search in the SERPS. Very frustrating and resulting in less diversity of domains in the search results.
Guess time will tell if this situation continues.
I've seen a lot of fluctuations in Australia over the past week, a lot of the top rankings have remained but some keywords in the lower positions (ie. Second page have dropped significantly). I also seen some big clustering of domains, I have just optimised a website, there is fairly low competition but I have scored positions 1-4 in addition to Google Places. I have also seen some results where a keywords has secured position 3 and 6, not clustered, just two results?!?! What!
There is definitely something going on. I don't measure my successes by rankings but I like to keep an eye on them.
I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry... and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here.
Here i see pages of results with only 1 ( yes ONE ) résult per page !!!
this is ridiculous, google search is completely broken.
They just wants to sell ads, not results anymore. their shareholders just want to cash out quickly so they have to push the adwords sales by serving poor results.