Feels like something big went through yesterday.

At 11.30 AM we reached the traffic we are normaly at 1PM. Then suddenly the traffic dried off. Only foreign traffic and -80% users.
It is a shame for such a big company that they donīt get it right or donīt want to get it right.

ecom, germany

Something has happened definitely. One (legit) website dropped off Google around the 27th November and has reappeared today back to the rankings it was before.

Exactly two weeks... Calculated or Coincidence?

As for now, -90% traffic compared to yesterday.
Something happened... something big happened and I don't like it, for now.

This may just be flux, but around 10pm ET last night, my site that had been hit hard by panda 21 made a full recovery.

I was hit on Nov. 8, three days after panda 21. There's an off-chance I was hit by something other than panda but I think it's unlikely.

info site in US

I also noticed 70 to 80 percent drop in traffic last night. Some really weird update happened last night. It might be Panda.

We have lost 80 % of traffic as well since yesterday. We have the best financial site in our country by far but google rather lists crap.. We have no idea what happend.

We have a incoming anchor link text under 6 % of every money word and the website is not overoptimized a bit with inlinks from extreme relevant sources. The strange thing is that we are still number one for several keywords but the most important keywords is far far down. Around 600 place. All subpages also lost ranking. Never seen this kund of update/behavior before.

Dropped a couple of spots for some secondary terms I monitor that historically have had virtually no deviation...which is very odd.

I'm also seeing an EMD shoot up the ranks for the primary money term I keep tabs on.

Definitely think something happened on the 10th.

UPDATE from my niche (SERPS):

- EMDs are dominating SERPS
- Thin content sites on first spots
- A lot of spammy pages on first spots
- Sites on top have 90% keyword rich backlinks (mostly from blogrolls)

From my side:

eheheheh... "0" visits since my last message!

also noticing a massive drop (90% or so) on the sub domain of our site. Looks like it started around 5-6pm on dec 10. PST.

I'll have to concur with Splugged...nothing but garbage out there. If I wanted to search on how to remove a car engine for example, I get two pages of "how to sites" thinly covering the topic or with such ridiculous instructions like "open hood, turn some nuts, remove engine". Domain crowding is still rampant.
Specific, comprehensive, full bodied information is nowhere to be found. In fact, it's BANNED!

It's as if Google isn't "currently" an expert on the topic, they'll send you to what they know about it...which is nothing. Looks like AI that's at a kindergarten level and having to go back & repeat the year.

I concur with those above who are reporting a change affecting some websites. One of the domains that I manage has relatively low traffic but a solid website that operates in the business management niche (run by an senior management consultant) that for reasons I do not understand dropped like 80% on Nov 27. Initially we thought that there was a software glitch or too many senior business executives taking time off for Thanksgiving weekend but it did not recover several days later and we wondered if there was an update. Looks like there was but more likely a Google algorithm bug because today I am noticing normal traffic.

For those recently reporting poor quality SERPs, is this a change for that query phrase - something new and therefore a potential sign that a recent update went wrong?

@tedster

What I see: same behaviour happened in 27th Nov, a little more pronounced. Looks like a on/off switching of algo parts (domain crowding prevention, EMD tweak etc...).

This is what I see.

[edited by: tedster at 7:56 pm (utc) on Dec 11, 2012]

Oh boy... dropped in June, returned late Oct, now down again. Should I make changes or just let it be?

@ splugged UPDATE from my niche (SERPS):

- EMDs are dominating SERPS
- Thin content sites on first spots
- A lot of spammy pages on first spots
- Sites on top have 90% keyword rich backlinks (mostly from blogrolls)

Ditto that, very thin - couple pages with revolving random fluff 'news' nonsense has moved to the top. Also spammers hitting blogs or pyramid linking still doing very well.

@Timetraveler

As I said, it seems (to my point of view) the same behavior occurred on Nov 27th: same sites on top for a competitive kw, same "types" of content.

To be clear: I'm not thinking absolutely nothing strange, I'm just reporting what I see. Maybe they're testing some tweaks but to be sure look forward to some time (hours) before other considerations.

For those recently reporting poor quality SERPs, is this a change for that query phrase - something new and therefore a potential sign that a recent update went wrong?

Not sure I understand your question tedster...do you mean that any change is assumed by some to be erroneous? I think it just means an update is passing by...

One thing is for sure, the common reports received through these threads definitely makes me feel a little better about this fluxed situation. At least we know it's happening across the board. Thanks for sharing.

A lot of people are reporting both ups and downs. I think if we currently put the ups in one basket and the downs in the other, the downs would be your well maintained, bread & butter sites. The ups are mostly trashy, thin, spammy or even unmaintained sites.

I have my own barometers to measure the passing waves of serps. One old standby is a poorly, wait NEVER maintained EMD, 1 page affiliate site I built years ago. It is currently seeing the full seasonal upswing and is actually producing great affiliate conversions. On the other hand, my bread & butter mainstay site is again getting clobbered, perhaps a little more with each passing serp wave.

So, what does that tell you?
Sumpthin's busted or rolling out, take your pick.

backdraft7

I would be interested to know if page views per visitor has changed, +/- %. Thanks.

@ Tedster - A bit confused as well but I do believe this is an update gone wrong as you say. Simply because it's instantly obvious spam and not just a shift of SERP's among normal sites.

@Splugged - Yup, just reporting what I see in my market as well.

@AK - No idea what you are referring to by linking to Larry's interview.

Some really weird update happened last night.

I have seen several people mention something happening on Dec 10, in the evening hours. Our site that was affected by the "April 24th" update (commonly called Penguin, but we have doubts) saw a 2-3 hour window of pre-penguin traffic from Google last night as well. Around 1 AM, it turned right back off, to where it still sits.

MH

Looks like a massive screw up to me. EMD's are dominating the top results in the areas I traverse. I would have never spotted unless I was reading this thread because I switched to Bing 8 months ago. If Panda is supposedly an evolvement and the various updates were in place what do you call something this? The Alta Vista of old.

Our site that was affected by the "April 24th" update (commonly called Penguin, but we have doubts) saw a 2-3 hour window of pre-penguin traffic from Google last night as well. Around 1 AM, it turned right back off, to where it still sits.

Once again, Mhansen, I'm seeing something like this on my Penguin site, too.

I was always under the impression that we were not allowed to link to SERP results or even mention the keywords, unless WebmasterWorld has changed their rules.

You're exactly right, and the rules have not changed.

Collecting data.

Definitively something happened starting from Dec 8th.

My quick story:

-I had a decline in traffic on Dec 8th, about from 22:00 PM to 04:00 AM (Dec 9th) local time, Europe.

-I had some "hourly rushes" on whole Dec 9th (around 01:00 PM I had a classic pre-penguin traffic, 80-100 hits).

-I had another progressive decline from Dec 9th (around 07:00 PM) until today (-90% compared to yesterday). As for now, I had another "rush" about one hour ago (11:00 PM, Local Time, Europe).

Below there is the graph of impressions from GWT updated on Dec 9th.
Screenshot just taken: [i49.tinypic.com ]

Interesting.

Very interesting, Splugged. Can you see any particular pattern to the search traffic during those "rush" periods? Particularly, does the keyword proportion change? If so, that would seem to indicate some kind of SERP change.

From observations shared here recently, it sounds as though some updates phase in gradually. That "phasing in" involves shifts that include very weak SERPs on some keywords that used to have a stronger set of results... and then the SERPs eventually settle down again on a stronger set. Somewhere in the middle of the process, it seems to mess with things for a period, as well as making for surges in search traffic.

Have I represented the observations accurately?

I saw some similar things, Splugged. Overall, from Friday - Sunday, I had some really abnormally low hours and some really abnormally high hours. At the end of each day, aggregate traffic was average. But the pattern was absolutely bizarre.

Yesterday (the 10th), I had three hours (9AM - 11AM EST) that were about quadruple normal (best I can tell, I was showing up for all kinds of things I've never showed up for before). All other hours throughout the day were normal.

Today, traffic has returned to its regular predictable hourly patterns. If there's a gain or a loss, it's small at this point. I will be interested to see if this is finished, or if the testing they seem to be doing the last few days will result in a larger long-term shift.

Since last night my tags, categories, and even upload files are getting banged by searches by Google. That would show that no content, minimal content, and no backlinks somehow got promoted. Thus also the rise of no content sites.

I experienced what @Sand is discussing last week on Tuesday/Wednesday. This weekend/Monday things were back to normal. On Monday, however, I did notice a change in keywords that carried over into today.

What I mentioned here [webmasterworld.com...] was on Friday the 7th. It wasn't until the afternoon hours that we saw 50-100% spikes in certain keyword traffic. Things don't feel back to normal yet, as someone mentioned it usually takes a week for algo updates to finalize and we're waiting a few more days to breath again.

In all, there hasn't been a overall shift in the daily traffic %; we lost some long tail searches in favor of shorter terms with higher traffic.

Back to very low levels of distargeted traffic.

What I figured out is, that personisation has tightend a lot more. Sites that I visited show up in search but have nothing to do with the query.
I think 90% of the poeple will not clear their cache so they will see more sites theiy visited before.

On phones i even donīt know if cache could be cleared, also g$$gle will know the user by phone number.

I donīt like it, because I do no have the feeling to have all choices out there, this is kind of manipulation that we only know from china.