@WF - based on being shell shocked from every other algo update.

I'll have to keep an eye on my competitor's sites. All are employing multiple domains cross linked and re-hash of their main site. Figured that technique died out years ago...but they still rank.

Anyone noticed the even bigger knowledge graph for general queries. The one for "ghostwriter" has images and the only organic result I can see is the first result provided by Wikipedia. Google is devouring more and more real estate and at a scare pace.

Anyone noticed the even bigger knowledge graph for general queries.

Yes, I've seen that. Also, the little inserts of prices and price ranges from rich snippets are gone. We are in the last 2 weeks of a quarter. Maybe there's a big dial if revenues are short of expectation :)

10% constant drop starting Monday 6am West-Coast Time (compared to a week earlier).

This is for Traffic in US, Western Europe & Latin America.

Anyone else noticing an update?

Well, Google has actually announced it self the panda will be updated from it's extension 3.0 to more but the point here is what changes has bee made by Google and I am damn sure that nothing is interesting there just the language based updated within some two or three countries before it was updated in the UK CA AU. The same thing happened in over country and the updates will be held as the need arises so, the point is they are also not sure with what exactly need to be updated...

Anyone else noticing an update?

For me traffic is way, way down this morning at about 20% of normal. Some of my widget keyword searches seem unchanged whereas others are an absolute mess. Tis not very pretty at the moment.

I'm seeing much movement for different keywords. My main site saw a slight rankingboost for a couple of hours, but is now back where it started.

Also the indexed pages of this site rose by nearly 50 percent (!), altough I no-indexed a couple of thousand (mostly user generated) pages 2 weeks ago and submitted those pages via sitemaps and direct links in WMT.

I guess Panda ran (without completely rebuilding the index). Algoroo and Motcast are showing changes too.

Anyone noticed the even bigger knowledge graph for general queries. The one for "ghostwriter" has images and the only organic result I can see is the first result provided by Wikipedia. Google is devouring more and more real estate and at a scare pace.

This is true. But when will this reach the Point where Google canīt scrap new Information, because site owners will not update their site in lack of getting visitors? Wikipedia has lost about 20% traffic since KG was introduced and i doubt that poeple will put on new Information their while wiki goes the way all sites go that depend on free traffic. I for myself stopped updating any Information. I just focus on customer loyalty. That is something that Google can not affect with their serps. Every customer that is coming back directly is bad for google. So the real thing to do is, making it better than google. google is just a middle man, cut it out. Donīt see google as a Business Partner, see them as a competitor. Get all free services like WMT and use them for our advantage but donīt give them any Information.

Donīt see google as a Business Partner, see them as a competitor

Very true. I can't think of one algorithm update in the last three years that was good for small businesses. If anything, Google is slowly tightening the noose and those that can't adapt fast enough, don't already have diversified traffic sources or already possess a loyal customer base are suffocating. With less real estate given to organic search results, the pay to play environment that Google created will only get more competitive and costly - driving more businesses to fail unless they can afford to share some of their profit margins with Google or another platform.

The good news is that more webmasters are now realizing how Google has alienated them and are focusing on other important areas of their businesses, much as you have MIW with customer loyalty. As acquisition costs for new customers rise, largely because of Google's pay to play environment, it is more important than ever to build relationships with customers that will bypass Google entirely. With a solid base of satisfied customers, they could care less if you are ranked #1 in Google or #1000 because they will visit your site directly, pick up the phone, email or fax over their orders.

Much as you feel MIW, I see Google as a competitor trying to take as much of the pie as they can. Steadily declining organic traffic originating from Google means many will have to allocate more funds to their marketing budgets. This, I feel, is by design and not a coincidence. Surely Google will benefit from reduced organic visibility in the short-term with increased Adwords spending, but the customer acquisition costs in Google search offer many a negative ROI. With many advertising opportunities outside of Google offering a much better ROI, I think many small business owners will take flight (if they have not already) to better platforms that produce results for less money. Because it should be clear to all by now that if Google can make a search query display only paid results above the fold, organics will be retired where able.

Wikipedia has lost about 20% traffic since KG was introduced

I could point to an established information site whose Google organic traffic has increased by more than 300 percent since the Knowledge Graph was introduced. YMMV.

It's also worth noting that, for the informational queries that I watch, Wikipedia and other big-name generalist sites are often outranked by smaller specialist sites these days. So, if Wikipedia has lost traffic, it may be a consequence of lower overall rankings, not the Knowledge Graph.

With many advertising opportunities outside of Google offering a much better ROI, I think many small business owners will take flight (if they have not already) to better platforms that produce results for less money.

this has already happened in my service oriented market.

I see Google as a competitor trying to take as much of the pie as they can.

They are certainly not in any sense a competitor in my sector, nor in many others.

Their principal business is advertising, which is a normal cost to any business. Google organics is not "free" advertising: it ican be compared with a "free" newspaper, in which the content (in Google's case, the organics) induces people to read it, and the size of readership (jn Google's case, searchers) induce advertisers to buy advertising space.

They have to maintain a balance that maintains their user-base without allowing too many people that are "good at SEO" to sidestep their revenue stream. Their competitors are every other product or service (including things like 118) the public might use to find products or services, and in that market they have been successful to the extent that "Google" is now a verb meaning "seek online".

It is still possible to be #1 for the most hotly contested terms - someone always will be - but having a moral objection to Google's business model probably isn't the best way to achieve it.

My own view is that the Golden Days when Google Organics were a massive low-cost traffic driver have been over for some time now, and each new initiative will make the position of those still clinging to that submerging raft a little more precarious.

Hedge your losses and buy some Google stock :D

it ican be compared with a "free" newspaper

No. It canīt be compared to a free newspaper. Simply a newspaper does not trick when it comes to a reader. The newspaper does not know who you are. Google does and will for sure route you that way, where it can make most money with you. if google is not one thing, than itīs honesty.
I canīt think of another business that steals content in such a arrant way like google does.
They way google treats webmasters and says donīt put ads over the fold and itself puts only ads over the fold, does not make me think that it plays a fair game though.

@MIW

My comparison was a general one, but in answer to your specific point, the "free" newspapers where I live are distributed by postcode, so they have at least an overall view of who the target recipients are (and use this information to target prospective advertisers).

Content-theft is another issue. Certainly Google image results use my bandwidth to display my copyrighted images (and they are guilty of other intellectual property infringements), and certainly get away with a great deal because thier immediate rection to anyone who starts a court action over it - e.g. European Newspapers - is to say OK, we'll not display or link to anything of yours.

I did a search Tuesday to buy some protein. The 1st page was compare sites and a couple organic and a load of adword ads. I had to go 4 pages deep to find a decent listing and purchased. 4 frigging pages. This is a competitive term so there were a lot of adword ads. I think after the 3rd page I clicked a couple of the ads that looked like it was what I was looking for. Notice I said looked like. After landing on the page it was a waste of my time.
Heck I might have gone 5 pages It was some bad serps.

Seeing lots of upward movement in the SERPS for my US/ecom sites. We have been working on adding improved product descriptions, common q&a, etc. It doesn't match up 100%, but most of the upward movement seems tied to pages we've improved over the last couple of months.

Despite the upward movement, no notable traffic or conversion changes. Conversion, especially, has suffered over the last few months.

According to tracking tools like Mozcast there's been a lot of upheaval in the SERPS going on the past two days, like you would expect with a major update. Yet, I've yet to see any evidence of it myself.

So far easily my worst day of the year across all sites...shake-up or shake-out?

Despite the upward movement, no notable traffic or conversion changes. Conversion, especially, has suffered over the last few months.

Have you broken your traffic by country?. I'm seeing an upswing today and it's all from India. For the first time it looks like my Indian traffic will surpass the US. This traffic is almost as good as useless.

Have you broken your traffic by country?

That doesn't happen to be our issue. Our issue if the often spoke of "zombie traffic". Users that look feel, feel real, but don't buy :) And other odd things too.

Like days where 90-100% of all (google organic driven) sales happen within a fixed 2 hour window, which never happened in years past...ever.

Seeing very bad unrelated traffic with big drops. bing still is sending qualified traffic.
It feels like a new Panda algo has been released.
We get traffic from all over the world again. Mostly Zombie traffic. "users" that only look at one site and then leave.
Germany serps are full of russia sites. It is getting worse every day.
Besides this, Google adwords now tells me i should upgrade my max cost per day because i miss x clicks/day. Where x clicks/days goes up day by day. What makes me think that ad traffic grows while organic traffic shrinks.


ecom, germany

Impressions dropped by 30% since the 16th, clicks by 19%. Some is due to seasonal events ending and thus general search volume dropping. On the flipside though mobile exploded with 120% bigger av. time spent and 12% traffic increase.

Looking at the weather Google start shaking things up since Wed and I can see it on my top 100 keywords. Up and down waves every few hours.

Something is cooking up in organic. (global organic B2B service, with Western Europe and Middle East being targeted more heavily)

Anyone else seeing big movements in organic?

It feels like a new Panda algo has been released.

Could be, but we see it in very specific sub-directories, which means it is not site-wide and therefore not Panda (unless G changed that). Interestingly it is in all GEOs and all languages, but just for specific directories.

Maybe some testing with the Doorway Page Algo?

Maybe some testing with the Doorway Page Algo?

If it is, the signs reported here are Not Encouraging.

Is there anything about the directories that have dropped that suggest (by any of the criteria in the Google Doorway Pages guidelines) that their contents might be seen/treated as doorway pages?

*I see the last couple of days have been Warmer according to Mozcast than for some time recently.

Disastrous Thursday, obviously unique quality content on responsive html5 sites is not what Google wants!

If this continues for more than a few days I'm going to have to seriously consider walking away from my sites after 20 years since many of my widget results I am seeing are simply pathetic, just like Google.

It's been a very quiet time here (UK) this week. I don't know if seasonal or something to do with the budget but it's been the quietest week for a LONG time. Hopefully just due to mid month, budget related stuff and not Google tinkering.

It's been a very quiet time here (UK) this week.

Well, it isn't just you, and I too think it is probably down to some other factor(s), as I can't see anything significant in my sector's SERPS to account for it.

@Wilburforce

these are general reference pages that have similar structure like "Industrial use of Iron", "Industrial use of Copper", etc...
changing just the metal. Each page is unique and not thin. However, they all have a refine search button ("search by Industry") that leads to a dynamic jsp page with more specific results (fetched from DB and not indexed).

I don't think it is doorway, although most user behavior resembles a doorway page, because of the funneling.

No me neither Wilburforce. Traffic seems OK. Everything looks a bit gloomy (red) in WMT though. Only very small drops 0. something but worrying all the same