Welcome to WebmasterWorld KiffTay

Something just started in germany ( 10.30 am )

It's also happening for me, traffic is way, way down again ... I can't even be a$$ed to see what's happening, Google is so fubard nothing makes sense these days!

@keyplyr

I don't think this is local search listing. We do have a G+ page but it's not a local one. Besides, it is not in the same position as local search (in the right hand panel).

This is at the top of serps, above Pos1. It is not even an [Ad]

You can see an image of what I mean here:

[flatstats.co.uk...]

If I click the Feedback link I see these options:

===============================
= What do you think?
=
= This is helpful
= Something is missing
= Something is wrong
= This isn't useful
=
= Comments or suggestions?
=
= The data you provide helps improve Google Search. Learn more
= For a legal issue, make a legal removal request .
==============================

I have not seen this before. And I am concerned they are asking me for feedback on my own site.

@Frank_Rizzo - OK, IMO that is just a web preview for that site. Google has used various types of previews for several years, some contextual, some snapshots. They always seem to be experimenting.

Many webmasters are annoyed by this since Google is using our content to enhance Google's own pages. Sometimes the user will get what they need from the SERP and never need to go to the actual web page (e.g.definitions, dates, etc)

I've just signed in to tell you I'm seeing the same things here in France.since last september..(zombie trafic, no sales, no customer interaction, no phone, no mail, nothing at all, as if the 1200 daily visitors are only bots..) During christmas time, my sales dropped from 450 in december of previous years to less than 80 this year !
It's the 17th day I have no sale not even in summer I have ever seen this and my products are winter products ! Never seen this before, even the first year I launched the shop (in 2007)...
Rankings on 1st page have not changed (may be they are even a little better than a few weeks ago,)

I could be way off the mark here but I have noticed something that may indicate that Google delivers good or bad search results depending upon the time of day. Of course, my observation and your interpretation of what's good or bad may differ.

My site has been in the toilet since 2011. I rewrote the whole thing, added about another 200 pages of information (with photos) on the topic, and completely restructured the navigation. All questionable links have been disavowed. It is mobile friendly on all platforms and is very, very fast. In fact, it is the fastest site in my industry. The "new" site was launched in mid-August last year.

So far, all these efforts have made not one lick of difference to the search results on Google. The results for my important keyword phrases are dismal (to say the least) and so is business.

Twice, I have checked keyword results in the middle of the night. I didn't write down the time or date the first time, but the second time was last night at 2:00 in the morning.

Of my 10 most important keyword phrases (that contain a geographic reference), my site was ranked #2 for 8 of those searches, 3 for one and 4 for the last.

Of the 5 most important keyword phrases with the geographical prefix removed, (in other words worldwide results) my site ranked 5, 5, 6, 8 and 20.

Naturally, by the time I got up at 7:30 this morning, the results were back to the same dismal results I have seen day in and day out for the past 4 years.

Based on just two occasions, this observation is by no means conclusive, but I sure find it curious.

My observation is this:

My sales are mainly based in North America and I get "some" business from Europe. By the time North Americans and Europeans are awake and searching for what I sell, those "good" results are gone.

I can do nothing but conclude that at the age of 61, Google believes I need more challenges in my life and that I should embrace my impending bankruptcy. Perhaps Google feels I need to expand my mind and my heart by living among the homeless as I am clearly not intended to ever retire ... or own my own tiny cottage in Northern Ontario.

... Or is that God sending that message? I always seem to get the two confused. Sigh.

My Google Real-Time is following Google Analytics trend. Very confusing and a little crazy. Real-Time has minutes of pure inactivity, suddenly jumps to 40 or 50 users online accumulating visits pages above 50 per minute.

After clicks peak, back to inactivity reaching zero active users on the site.

This is happening since the end of February.

I seem to have no logic. It looks like a bad screw tight in the Google algorithm. ;)

Perhaps this has something to do with the search console issues they've been having lately?

This is really quite frustrating. There's been zero activity on my website (apart from direct traffic from my list), which is easily the most authoritative site in my industry -- spam built to my website continues to grow, costing me time and money to fix up, yet Google is refusing to send searchers that are trying to find resources like my website. Quite frankly, it is possible Google screwed up their algorithm somehow.

Rankbrain is perhaps not working like they expected, search console issues, still no sign of penguin. Something feels like it is afoot.

After 15 years, this latest "update" has knocked me out completely. Worst week ever, which oddly followed the BEST week this year.
Time to forget Google, shut down everything and move my interests to my new FBA endeavor.

Suddenly, out of the blue, no engagement, no conversions. There is NO WAY this traffic is human. Google is a circus casino.

@samwest. confirmed. Today is even worse.

Today, in Brazil time: 13:46 pm - My traffic reports are unbelievable. I really do not know what's going on.

Probably another silent update that affects .00001% of results. Unfortunately I'm always part of that small fraction. As of May 2010, never up, always trending down, ever so slowly, but inevitably headed toward rock bottom.

Yes, we have the volatility increase in most of the SERP monitoring tools, so probably new core algo update happened today (especially in RankRanger, SerpMetrics and MozCast).

Also, the following SERP features were changed:
1) increased percentage of queries with answer box
2) increased percentage of queries with related questions

I really do not know what's going on.

Nothing's going on other than Google is strangling the lifeblood out of so many sites ... this could be update skunk!

March 8th - large crawl increase by Google (300% normal)
March 8th - Increase in traffic but no serp position improvements detected
March 9th - organic google traffic returned to normal
March 10th - organic google traffic resumed increase, reached 160% normal
March 11th - large increase in organic google traffic (now at 200% normal) and better serp positions across the board

My other sites remain unchanged however so this might be a recovery of some sort.

edit: those large crawl increases... you know you're along for the ride at that point, good or bad. May as well take a 3 day nap and avoid the stress of wondering if it's going to be a win or major pain.

So, i decided to register because i have read so much in this topic (and others) i think it's time to do some contribution.

You guys do know that there are services around the web like crowd search? I can only imagine that if there is a certain amount of traffic Dr. Google wants to assign to your website, that this can greatly decrease real visitors visiting your site as those are capped and will probably flow to your competitor who still has some room, or to Adwords. Actually it would be stupid of Dr. Google if they did not have this system in place since they have to earn money. If your competitor is not bothering you, you are all fine and you can make your living, but if your are bothered with crowdsearch'd traffic and send to the max, then you are screwed.

For me the puzzle is not so complicated at all. One knows that here (east from the UK) the results of a query differ by a radius of only 5 KM. I decided to do some testing when i travelled during the day. Almost every village the ranking results differ greatly ( +/- 6 positions ) This actually started me thinking why on heaven's earth Dr. Google decided that our products are not interesting for Village A (Position 6) , but are interesting in Village B (position one) only 5 KM further down the road and then it actually made sense.... My competitors, crowd searching to influence my traffic, probably don't have crowd searchers in Village B and do in Village A, and in a few weeks, if a few dozen people decide to clean their malware in Village A my rankings will go up again in Village A, because we all know the crowd search is automated and using malware PC's.

I actually think i have seen this happening twice when one of the main HUB's or whatever one calls it of this thing broke. In this case i could see 25% of the daily visits come from one IP address, every visit dropping it's cookies and showing normal user behavior (mouse movement etc and browsing one or multiple pages) .... it immediately came visible because i use Clicky for analytics ( so i can track IP address ) and every one of this visits got assigned a unique user id in analytics and Clicky, but coming from the same ip address. 100% sure it was non-human traffic as humans do not click 6 pages in one second....

I'm not even bothering to report to G... I'm not the smartest on the planet, so Dr. Google not knowing is to much for my ego. This day had to come where Dr. G was not able to keep up with their detection of bot's and yes, it will get worse down the road imho.

Sorry for the typo's ... English is not my native language.

One of my high-traffic news / entertainment sites dipped slightly on Sunday, then went up and down throughout the week. I still can't tell if what's happening this week is good or bad for me.

the results of a query differ by a radius of only 5 KM

Thanks Wijnand, and welcome to the forum!

Crowd Search might work, but it appears no way to register. While all this is great, I have to wonder how in the world user behavior can just shut down like this. The traffic I am seeing now is text book ZOMBIE. I hadn't reported for almost 2 months because traffic looked and behaved "normal". In fact, it was on the rise. Now it's nothing but fubar...again.

Analyzing all day, not counting the drops of active users (ZERO), via Google Real-Time, I clearly notice my zombie traffic is happening right now.

Already a few hours the minimum is 11 active users, does not fall below that, and no more than 25 active users. There hours are between 11-25 active users. It would be like a properly calibrated filter. The floor is insistently getting 11 active users.

The Real-Time graph looks like a branch full of thorns. Peaks and troughs of clicks, all punctual.

Very strange.

Still at zero conversions. Mostly mobile. Stagnant page sitters.

I have a few sites that don't have the zombie traffic many are experiencing, so I could easily go to one of the crowdsearch service providers and throw some fake traffic at them to test Wijnand's theory. If google isn't skewing their results based on the traffic sites get I would simply expect higher traffic numbers but equal sales numbers, and if google IS skewing by the traffic sites get I would expect somewhat similar traffic numbers, maybe slightly higher, and sales would go down.
Problem is that, if crowdsearch does really hurt real traffic, the test would cost me quite a bit of money, hence I'm not too eager to test this. Anyone else maybe?

Actually, since the results are really local ( radius +/- 5 KM ) i think that is impossible... Most crowdsearch providers i have found only do geo per country and not per city

Edit* after giving this some thought indeed this might work if the traffic cap is per country and not local per city...

That crowdsearch site has no registration. I don;t think it's a good idea, just another trick that G will have to address down the road. Not a fan of trickery.

Today the down trend continues. Still very little site interaction. Signup page is repellent. Mostly non buying mobile traffic. Not much hope left. Anyone interested in taking a look, pm me. This just is NOT natural behavior. Big Surprise.

Seeing a big crawl too, but it's not helping the site.

It's the 17th day I have no sale not even in summer I have ever seen this and my products are winter products ! Never seen this before, even the first year I launched the shop (in 2007)...
Rankings on 1st page have not changed (may be they are even a little better than a few weeks ago,)

I'm guessing you're site is e-commerce. You're not alone.

Most of e-commerce is suffering the same experience.

I believe it is not only e-commerce niche. My site is tourism guide and is suffering the same consequences.

Are you sure that this is because amazon rules ion google serps or is it because google serps are as bad as they could be and poeple canīt find anything and go directly to amazon?

IMO, my Amazon sales are doing good because of a combination of the two points you noted. My Amazon listed products are not always appearing at the top of Google's organic serps. Sometimes when I have checked they are towards the bottom of the page. But there is so much crap on Google's first search result page that it would not surprise me if people are scrolling to the bottom and clicking through to Amazon. Unfortunately Amazon does not give us stats to tell where visitors are coming from. However, instead of pissing away money in Adwords I do spend in Amazon's sponsored products. The spend on that advertising suggests it plays a very, very small roll in my total Amazon sales.

Keep in mind that Amazon is a big Adwords spender. Even though Amazon has paid ads appearing for many of my search terms, the ad leads to an unrelated category page where the product people are searching for does not appear. IMO, Amazon is exempt from quality score guidelines in Adwords because of what I see. Those unrelated ads are without doubt diverting relevant traffic away, but if Amazon ever fixes this to point to the correct subcategory URL atleast, or Google begins holding Amazon to the same quality score guidelines as the rest of us, my sales will grow even further.

It is important to note that the real producers and retailers of what I sell begin appearing on page 2+ of Google's organic serps. From what I see, very few people are clicking through to page 2+. This, IMO, is designed by Google as a big push to drive people into Adwords. It drove me into Amazon, which offers a far better ROI then Adwords. And if zombies do not buy, I'm not subsidizing Google's profit targets by selling in Amazon. I still believe dumping Adwords and selling on Amazon was a great business decision - increased profits, less time analyzing Google zombie budget busting traffic which leaves more time to focus on other marketing sources, product development and follow-up customer care.

I suggest people start looking into keywords they are ranking for (long tail), and start creating SEO campaigns to rank them higher. I think this will probably be the only way to counter what's happening... there are tools out there that can help you discover them, since Google also stopped telling us that too not so long ago. It would be quite tedious, but this is what it's come down to if this is now standard for Google.

@samwest, i am not saying anyone should use crowdsearch, you shouldn't because it's a trick and If google catches up on you then you have a big problem.

What i say is that your competitors are probably sending you crowdsearch traffic to your site to game the system. If for example google allows you to have 500 query's on a keyword then those 500 are occupied by that crowdsearch traffic and there is no human traffic left....

What is also say is that there is no way to detect for google, since its very easy to have a bunch of low payed workers in a third world country to surf your site through crowdsearch Malwared proxy's .... So everything looks real .. The bevahiour , the mouseclicks .. Everything except there is no sale.

If you wonder why traffic looks stale suddenly i can hint you to the frustraded malware proxy pc owners, probably doing a reboot for obvious reasons.

What i say is that your competitors are probably sending you crowdsearch traffic to your site to game the system. If for example google allows you to have 500 query's on a keyword then those 500 are occupied by that crowdsearch traffic and there is no human traffic left....

Hmmm... That's an interesting idea.

I really don't think crowd search manipulation could happen on this large of a scale, over many different parts of the online world all at the same time.