If That Was A Google Update You Felt, Google’s Not Confirming It

Over the past few days, the Webmaster and SEO community have been discussing significant shifts, fluctuations and updates in both the Google rankings and traffic patterns they have seen from Google’s organic search.
I’ve asked Google if there was, indeed, an update, and Google would not confirm. Instead, they gave me the boilerplate response, “We have nothing to announce at this time.” They of course added, “We make over 500 changes to our algorithms a year, so there will always be fluctuations in our rankings in addition to normal crawling and indexing.” This is nothing new; Google often will use this response when discussing matters of algorithmic changes or updates to their index.

They have, however, been very transparent about some updates, such as the former Panda updates, Penguin updates, EMD updates, top heavy updates, as well as others. I should note that Google said they will unlikely provide confirmations of future Panda updates.

Was There A Google Update Or Not?

So, was there an update this week in the Google search results? It is hard to say for sure without Google confirming.

If you look at the various discussion forums, including some like WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help, there is definitely an uptick in discussion around ranking changes. If you look at the Google monitoring tools such as MozCast and SERPs.com, there are clear signs of more fluctuation in the search results this past week than in prior weeks.

If you look in the comments at two posts I made at the Search Engine Roundtable, one on May 9th and the other on May 7th, and totaling about 200 comments – you will see many people claiming either ranking declines or ranking improvements.

As you can see, I am convinced there was something that happened in Google’s search results which impacted many webmasters.

If There Was An Update, What Did Google Update?

If there was an update, what was it? Was it an algorithmic update? Was it Penguin? Was it a small Panda refresh? Was it a new algorithm? Maybe Google is testing an algorithm to a select subset of searchers, and that is why some webmasters are noticing it and some are not? Maybe Google made user interface changes to the search results, which results in click through rate changes or placement changes of the search results?

The bottom line: without Google confirming the update and telling us specifically what changed, it is impossible for me to tell you with certainty if there was an update and what the update was. All I can say is that there are many webmasters and SEOs talking as if there was some sort of Google update.

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away

In March, Google’s chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update — keep waiting. It’s still a few weeks off. Along the way, there’s some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin 2 or Penguin 4. It’ll be Penguin 4, in how we reckon things. Let’s dive in.
This Week Wasn’t Penguin

Publishers have already been wondering if a change in rankings that many have noticed this week was some type of Google update. Google won’t say what, if anything happened.

However, Cutts has ruled out that it was the significant Penguin Update he warned in March would be coming. He tweeted:

Counting The Pandas & Penguins

Note that Cutts refers “Penguin 2.0″ as the coming rollout. How can that be, when we’ve had three confirmed Penguin updates already, with Penguin 3 happening in October?

This all goes back to a different update, the Panda Update, which first launched in February 2011. That was Panda Update 1. Of course, we didn’t call it Panda 1 then, because as the first Panda Update, it was just called “The Panda Update.”

Two months later, Google made a huge change to Panda, so the next version was called Panda 2. But when the third release happened, and people started calling that Panda 3, Google said that because the changes to the filter weren’t so dramatic, it would better be called Panda 2.1.

That left it to Google to call the shots on whether a Panda Update was big enough to go through a full point change or not. And that became ridiculous when we got to something like Panda 3.92, last September. As we explained then, when the updates started going to two decimal places, we felt maybe just a straight Panda 1, 2, 3 and so on number order made sense, no decimals involved.

Renumbering The Pandas

When what would have been Panda Update 3.93 came around, we decided enough was enough. We renumbered all the Panda Updates that had happened, regardless of how big they were, believing that was a clearer way forward.

The number no longer reflects whether there’s been a major “generational” change or not. The number is just a common reference point for everyone to use, not some type of magnitude.

For the record, here’s where we are with Panda. The impact each update had on queries is shown, when provided by Google, after the number:

Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)

Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)

Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)

Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)

Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)

Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)

Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)

Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)

Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)

Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)

Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)

Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)

Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)

Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)

Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced

Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)

Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Panda 25 was the first time Google itself didn’t confirm whether a Panda Update had happened, part of its policy that it wasn’t likely to confirm these going forward, since they rollout over the course of days now. Instead, it was left to third-parties to decide if one had hit.

Did Panda 26 Just Happen?

This also means that the update that’s caused chatter this week might be Panda 26. It might be something else. We don’t feel confident enough to declare it Panda 26 ourselves, which is why our list stops at Panda 25. But with Penguin ruled out, it does suggest that maybe Panda 26 had happened this week.

Or maybe not. Isn’t reading Google tea leaves fun?

Penguin 2.0 Or Penguin 4?

That leads to Penguin. This is how those have gone, so far:

Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1% queries affected)

Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%)

Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%)

In our numbering system, regardless of how “big” the next Penguin Update is, we’ll still call it Penguin 4.

It will be big. We know that already from what Cutts has said in the past. In fact, it’s so big that internally, Matt said today that Google refers to it as Penguin 2.0.

From what Cutts tweeted to me:

Oh dear, but if this next one is the “true” Penguin 2, are we going to make a mistake calling it Penguin 4? I’ll argue not as big a mistake as if we called it Penguin 2.

Why We’ll Call It Penguin 4

See, let’s go back to Panda. In October 2011, we wrote that Panda 2.5 was live. Google hadn’t said it was a massive new change, so that seemed the right number. But the following month, Google said that Panda 2.5 would have been better described as Panda 3.0. We corrected that after the fact — but it would have been easier if Google had called it that way from the start.

We can’t depend on Google to consistently tell us how massive a particular update is, or even if an update happens at all. Because of this, linking magnitude to some decimal-based numbering system seems a mistake.

We have to use something that isn’t going to change months later on. The new numbering system has worked well with Panda, and we’ll stick with it for Penguin.

Ideally, I’d love to see Google itself simply list any significant change with the date it happens and some common reference name. I think that’s useful for publishers — not spammers, but any publisher — trying to understand if they’ve been impacted by something that they should correct. You can’t fix what’s wrong if you don’t have a good sense of what it was.

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Google New Update Very Soon 2013 : Google Update Brewing? May 2013

There are some very early signs of a possible Google update brewing as of early this morning. A WebmasterWorld thread has some renewed chatter around an update.

Note, most of the WebmasterWorld thread is about April 15th changes, which people say have to do with the Boston bombings and seasonal traffic changes. But last night, early this morning, two webmasters came in and said they saw major shifts in rankings and traffic.

A preferred WebmasterWorld member said he saw a 77% drop just yesterday. Others said "some thing big is underway," after noting drops in his keyword ranking.



SERPs.com reports pretty significant changes in he Google results on Monday. SERPMetrics.com shows very little change in the search results. MozCast has not yet updated with results from Monday but they showed changes on Sunday, which seem off.

It is very early and nothing is confirmed - but there may be signs of a possible Google update. What exactly, is still unknown and unconfirmed.

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You May Never Recover From Google's Penguin

Seriously. No recovery. Ever. There has been some discussion lately inside and outside the WebmasterWorld of the eventual possibility that no one will recover from Penguin. There will be no mass recovery and you will never get your rankings back from a year ago. Not to sound like the bearer of bad SEO news but after such a long demotion the reality of the situation is starting to set in for many people. There will be no recovery.

It's been one-year since the original Penguin update. To date there have only been a few questionable Penguin recoveries and most of those have been pointed to as brand favoritism by Google. Of the many webmasters affected many have gone to extreme lengths to fix the mountains of "possible" issues in an effort to recover. However most if not all of the fixes haven't done anything at all.

As many report in WebmasterWorld, the fixes have actually done more harm than good. An observable trend has taken place with those affected by Penguin. It has been the gradual decline of traffic that resembles a "flat-line" appearance in the analytics. You could throw 1000 of the best authoritative .edu links to your website and it might not even move the traffic needle a fraction.

So what does this mean if no one recovers? Has Google even created a way to recover from this algorithm? If not, then why? If there is not a way to recover and it's a sure-fire death sentence then what's next? Are their any factors creating movement in the SERP's even if you have been impacted by Penguin?

According to tedster in the WebmasterWorld he believes those sites that have invested in conversion optimization have fared the best post-Penguin.

However, there are a few hit sites that have recovered - definitely not many, and especially not e-commerce. The successful approaches I know about always seem to include a focus on conversion optimization rather than traditional SEO methods. Focusing on the user experience with a strong value-add for the visitor seems to make a big difference.

I would agree with him to a point. If you have no traffic to begin with how is improving conversion going to make much of a difference. As another user in the WebmasterWorld thread points out he has been improving conversion for a whole year and nothing has made much of a difference. So does conversion optimization make any difference? Is it possible to recover?

Note from Barry: Obviously, the only way to recover from any algorithmic update is to make changes that satisfy the algorithm and then wait for Google to re-run the algorithm. The issue here is it is hard to know exactly what changes to make since there have been so few algorithm updates with Penguin. The last one we had was on October 5th - so over a half a year ago. We are expecting a new update this year, a big one, but who knows when.

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The Top Five SEO Mistakes According To Google’s Matt Cutts

In a recently published Webmaster video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, listed off the top five SEO mistakes webmasters make.

Matt said these are not the most devastating mistakes, but rather, the most common mistakes.
(1) Not having a website or having a website that is not crawlable is the biggest mistake he sees.
(2) Not including the right words on the page. The example Matt gave is: don’t just write, “Mt. Everest Height” but write, “How high is Mt. Everest?” because that is how people search.
(3) Don’t think about link building, think about compelling content and marketing.


(4) Don’t forget to think about the title and description of your most important pages.

(5) Not using webmaster resources and learning about how Google works and what SEO is about.

So, those are Matt’s top five SEO mistakes.

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Google: We Removed Instant Previews Over Low Usage From Searchers

Yesterday we reported that Google changed how you access the cached, similar and share links within the search results by adding a new green down arrow next to the search snippet’s URL.

 We asked, where did the Instant Previews go that launched on November 9, 2010 with a huge amount of excitement from Google. Google even said that the instant previews resulted in searchers being “5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click.”

Well, that is now gone because searchers apparently did not use the feature.

A Google spokesperson told us a blanket statement, “we’re constantly making changes to the layout and features of the search results page.” Yes they are, but why did they remove Instant Previews? The real reason, as I discovered in a Google help thread, is because searchers did not use it.

Google’s Jessica from the forums said:

As we’ve streamlined the results page, we’ve had to remove certain features, such as Instant Previews.

Instant previews saw very low usage by our users, and we’ve decided to focus on streamlining the page to benefit more users.

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As News Publications Experiment With Sponsored Content, Google Says Keep It Out Of Google News

News publications having “sponsored content “deals are on the rise, and Google’s apparently concerned enough that it’s issued a warning today that publishers should keep such content out of Google News.

In a post today on the Google News blog, the company writes:

If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only.
Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.

Why such a warning now? Consider this:

See that article about how wireless is changing health care, from the Washington Post? It is from the Post. But it wasn’t written by the Post. It was written by the CTIA, a wireless trade group:

CTIA paid to have its content placed within the Washington Post as part of the Post’s new Brand Connect service, launched earlier this month. It goes from CTIA, into the Post and into Google News, as if it’s from the Washington Post. And, Google clearly doesn’t like that.

So take heed, publishers, as more of you consider sponsored content. Keep it out of Google News, or Google News may kick you out of the service.

Postscript (March 28): Ina Steiner from EcommerceBytes has been in touch via email, Twitter and in the comments to say this was all triggered by a story from that site written two days ago, looking at how news sites are using affiliate links more in their content and assuming this post from Google is aimed at curbing that activity.

Maybe. But I hadn’t seen that story, nor did it fit in with what I was already seeing in terms of sponsored content within news sites that the post did (and does) seem targeted at.

EcommerceBytes gives an example of this story out of Business Insider called “15 Of The Most Sarcastic Amazon Product Reviews Ever” as ecommerce being brought into news, and the story later quotes Google as saying:

“We take seriously our mission to provide the best possible experience for those seeking useful and timely news information and make clear that Google News is not a marketing service,” Brack wrote in an email, declining to comment further.
Maybe two days later, Google did decide this was an issue enough that it needed to do a reminder blog post. But if so, that’s odd. Google doesn’t have a problem with affiliate links, even if they are in a story about the 15 stupidest Amazon reviews or if they are using a service like VigLinks or Skimlinks, which can turn words into affiliate links.

The reason it doesn’t is because in most cases, it has already said it discounts those links: Google’s Matt Cutts On Affiliate Links: We Handle Majority Of Them.

It specifically gave the all clear to VigLink: VigLink: Fire & Forget Solution To Turn Outbound Links Into Affiliate Earners.

I sure wouldn’t expect Google to single out VigLink-rival SkimLinks as the “bad one,” given that Google Ventures backs VigLink. That would look pretty bad for Google, saying a competing product is bad when clearing one you’ve invested in.

Google’s chief concern with affiliate links has been whether they are used as a way to push paid links to build rankings, given links are effectively used as votes by Google, a way to figure out what should rank higher. That’s why it warned about advertorial content last month: After Penalizing Interflora & UK Newspapers, Google Warns Against Advertorials.

I don’t recall Google ever having before said that just having an affiliate link in an article might somehow reduce it to the degree it shouldn’t be in Google News. In contrast, look at the wording of yesterday’s post, it seems aimed at what I wrote about with sponsored content:

It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article….
If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party)….

Yes, affiliate content is mentioned — but “affiliate materials” not affiliate links. The “selling or monetizing links” part is perhaps more relevant to the affilate situation, but since Google had previously said it was catching the majority of affiliate links automatially, it seems more relevant to the issue of paid links, links purchased mainly for a ranking boost.

I am checking with Google to see if they can shed more light.

Postscript 2: Google told me that the post it did yesterday was a “reminder post” similar to what it posted in February, warning against advertorial content.

From this, I don’t think publishers need to worry if they have affiliate links from major, recognized programs in their news stories, or if they use programs like VigLink or SkimLinks that create such links. That, alone, doesn’t seem like it would get you banned.

I do think that if someone creates content lacking any real news value, affiliate links or not, that will be an issue for Google News.

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Google: We’re Unlikely To Confirm Current Or Future Panda Updates

Google: We’re Unlikely To Confirm Current Or Future Panda Updates

What’s that, a Panda Update you just felt? Some believe so. But Google says it is unlikely to confirm that or any future Panda Update, as it has done in the past, because of the new “gradual” rollout infrastructure it is using for Panda Update changes.

Earlier this week at SMX West, Google’s Matt Cutts said a new Panda Update might hit this week, then later said that the update — and future updates — would no longer be apparent as an abrupt change. Rather, Panda changes would roll out over a series of days.

Because of this, Google now says it’s unlikely it will confirm officially if a Panda Update has hit. We were told from a Google spokesperson.

“I don’t expect us to tweet about or confirm current or future Panda updates because they’ll be incorporated into our indexing process and thus be more gradual.”
Until now, Google has confirmed all 24 Panda Updates that have happened, which were:

Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Going forward, we’ll have to make our own call if a Panda update has hit. We’re doing that with the last on the list, Panda Update 25, which we believe has hit.

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Google Sends BBC News A Manual Link Penalty Notification

Google Sends BBC News A Manual Link Penalty Notification

Google has sent the world’s largest broadcast news organization, BBC News, an unnatural link notification last Saturday.
The Search Engine Roundtable reports Nick, a BBC News representative, posted in the Google Help Forums about the notification. Nick was seeking advice from Google or SEOs on how he may find those unnatural links so the BBC can remove them and submit a reconsideration request.


Nick wrote:

I am a representative of the BBC site and on Saturday we got a ‘notice of detected unnatural links’.
Given the BBC site is so huge, with so many independently run sub sections, with literally thousands or agents and authors, can you give us a little clue as to where we might look for these ‘unnatural links’.

An unnatural link notification is nothing new, it is sent out by Google representatives after manually review sites with link issues. Receiving one of these notifications are not uncommon, they account for about 1-2% of all webmaster tools notifications, or about 7,400 notifications sent to webmasters in September 2012.

David Naylor believes the reason the BBC received this notification was due to how RSS scrapers abuse the BBC.

It is quiet surprising that a news site as authoritative as the BBC would receive such a notification. It is of course possible that someone within the BBC sold links on some section of the web site. But we have no easy way of telling that. Google did recently penalize dozens of UK news sites after Interlora was penalized for advertorial links.

We do not know if the BBC link notification led to a downgrade in their rankings or traffic from Google.

We’ve asked Google for a comment and will post if we receive one.

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Google’s Matt Cutts On Upcoming Penguin, Panda & Link Networks Updates

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced new updates with Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms and new link network targets in 2013. Matt announced this during the SMX West panel, The Search Police.

Significant Penguin Update

Matt said that there will be a large Penguin update in 2013 that he thinks will be one of the more talked about Google algorithm updates this year. Google’s search quality team is working on a major update to the Penguin algorithm, which Cutts called very significant.

The last Penguin update we have on record was Penguin 3 in October 2012. Before that, we had Penguin 2 in May 2012 and the initial release in April.

So, expect a major Penguin release that may send ripples through the SEO industry this year.

A Panda Update Coming This Friday Or Monday

Matt also announced there will be a Panda algorithm update this coming Friday (March 15th) or Monday (March 18th). The last Panda update was version 24 on January 22nd, which is one of the longer spans of time between Panda refreshes we’ve seen in a long time.

Another Link Network Targeted

Matt Cutts confirmed that Google targeted a link network a couple weeks ago, and said Google will go after more in 2013. In fact, Matt said that they will release another update in the next week or two that specifically targets another large link network.

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