How Should Marketers React When Google's Search Results Have Dramatic Changes?

Late last month, Google made an update to its search algorithm that caused our MozCast to spike to an all-time high of more than 113 degrees. Our work as web marketers can be frustrating when we're aiming for a continuously moving target. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers how we can keep our cool and learn from those changes when they happen.

For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard.

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, I want to talk a little bit about how marketers should be reacting when Google makes big, dramatic changes in their rankings and their algorithm. Now, this can be a challenging topic, right?

So we've seen, for example in the recent past, MozCast, which is Dr. Pete's project that monitors several thousand search results and sort of looks at changes in the top ten and what percent of them are churning in and out, and we saw one of the biggest spikes we've ever seen, bigger than Panda, bigger than Penguin, just hugely dramatic.

Dr. Pete represents those in MozCast with temperatures. So the average day temperature is 70 degrees. This one was 113 degrees. Very, very hot, meaning a dramatic amount of change. Lots of things in the first page of results on average moving out and being replaced by other things and lots of positions moving around too.

Now, the way I like to approach big algorithm updates is to look at, number one, what happened? What actually changed in the results? Because sometimes a dramatic variety of different things can be happening. So we see through MozCast and through monitoring lots of search results ourselves, for ourselves and for campaigns that we pay attention to, we can see that you've sort of got one, two, three, four ordering. That might shift over to be, oh wow, look. Almost everyone who is in the first page of results kind of fell down or fell out of those results, and now it's number 11, 19, 4, and 16 that are ranking in there. Wow, okay. That was a big algorithmic shakeup. Push a lot of people down, a lot of new people in.

Or it might just be a reordering. So, one, two, three, four went to four, two, six, eight. Well, okay. I mean, two and four are still in the top four. Six and eight are still in the top ten. But we've had some bouncing around. So this is a shift, but not nearly as dramatic as the prior one, and actually MozCast temperatures represent that because Dr. Pete looks at sort of where things are shifting to figure that out.

Or, and we also see a lot of this, Google has introduced new types of results. There's now a carousel at the top. There are now news results going in there. There are other things that are pushing results off of page one that are shaking things up, that are making things dramatically different, that are making essentially organic visibility quite different from how it used to be.

Those different types of results are of a vast variety, and Google rolls them out in tests all the time and then permanently when they like the results of those tests. Now, if you're observing these patterns in the change of types of results and observing the patterns in what's rising and falling, this can really help you get to the bottom of, "What should my strategy be? What tactics should I take?"

But the second question that I want to take you to before we get there is: What is Google saying about the update? Sometimes Google is very quiet and they don't say anything, and sometimes they'll give some information. Right?

So, for example, Google mentioned with regards to this big update that happened recently that there's a rolling update going on, meaning you can see spikes in values potentially over a period of time as they roll out the update, and it will be ending on or around July 4th.

Okay. That's potentially very interesting information. That might tell me, "You know what? Before I do a big, wholesale analysis of how this impacted me, I'm going to wait for this whole thing to roll out. Let me just give it a few more days, wait until the 4th of July and see what actually happens at the end of the shakeout." Gianluca Fiorelli asked Matt Cutts, he said, "Is this a global update or just U.S. or English results only?" Matt nicely replied, "Well, it's global."

So that is also helpful to observe and to know so that people can get this sense of, "Oh, wow. I'm targeting mostly Spanish language search results in Spain or in Mexico, or in South and Latin America. I guess I should be paying attention to whatever is going on with this update."

Third, I like to ask, "How has this update affected me?" Of course, because I'm a marketer who observes broad trends and runs a software company in the field, I like to see what those broad trends are and know about them. But I also really want to see how it affects me, and as a search marketer, that's certainly what you should be thinking about, too.

So being able to monitor this through data is really important, and there are three points of data that you can collect from your own analytics. Those are the number of pages that receive one or more visits from Google search, the number of keywords that send one or more visits from Google to your site, and the total amount of Google search traffic that you're receiving.

Then, if you want to get more granular, you can go down to the keyword level and look at what are individual keywords sending. Of course, remember that because of "not provided" a lot of that won't be trackable anymore, which is frustrating and challenging.

Then the last thing that you're going to need in order to see how this has impacted you is ranking position. So I like to collect rank position data in non-personalized, non-geographically biased results. This is not perfect. A lot of people are geographically biased, are searching on mobile phones or devices that are location-enabled, do have Google accounts that are biasing them personally. But this is the best that we're going to do, those non-personalized, non-geo biased results.

You can achieve that by going outside of your country code. So for example, if I'm in Google US, I'm going to go search "Google.co.uk/search?q=" whatever keyword I'm tracking, "&gl=US". That will bias me back to the U.S., but taking me to the U.K. and then saying U.S. will make it so that I'm not geo-personalized to just Seattle or just Washington, or just wherever I happen to be on the road where I'm searching.

Using "pws=0" will help remove personalization. This actually removes most of the personalization anyway. If you want, you can also log out or use a browser window that is non-personalized where you're not logged in. From this, you get the best picture we can really get as search marketers about what's going on and how the shift has impacted you, and you can see really different things.

I mean, if I see that my rankings haven't really changed, but the number of pages that are receiving one or more visits from Google has dropped dramatically and that's affecting my overall total traffic, I can presume, "Hey, you know what? This is probably an indexation problem for me."

Whatever update Google has been making, the way it's affected me is that I've lost pages that used to be in the search results. I'm no longer performing for them at all, and they weren't the ones that I was tracking. So probably it means my long tail is where this is impacted, and so that can inform my strategy and my tactics from there.

This is the last question that I like to visit whenever something like this has happened which is: Are there actions that I should be taking? Not just what actions, but are there actions? Sometimes I just kind of go, "Hey, it's cool. I'm going to let Google do what they're going to do, and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I'm not going to worry about them."

But sometimes there are tactical actions like, "Hey, you know what? I need to bolster some individual keywords. We lost rankings on some keywords that are really important. Let's see if maybe we should produce new pages of content. Maybe we should update the existing content. Maybe we should redirect the old ones to the new ones. Maybe we should be trying to earn some new links and social signals and shares to that stuff, whatever that might be."

Or there might be more strategic level SEO types of things like, "Man, Google just introduced this big carousel across all these different types of hotel and travel results. I'm not sure that keyword phrase of city name plus hotels or city name plus places to stay is really going to help me anymore. Maybe I should start to consider whether I need to go earlier on in the keyword search funnel."

Maybe I need to get in here where people aren't yet searching for hotels, but they're searching for destinations or places, or those kinds of things, rather than targeting down here where it looks like Google is kind of dominating the search results themselves. That's a big strategic kind of shift that you'll have to make with your content and your website and your keyword targeting strategy.

But being able to ask these questions, all of them, and then getting down to the tactical and strategic can really help make you more reactive in an intelligent, considerate way to the big changes that Google might be making.

All right, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Google Tests Bigger URLs, Cache Link Drop Down & Product Quantities In Search Results

This weekend, Google was caught testing at least three different user interface designs within the search results. They tried bigger URLs listed under the search snippet, they tested a new navigation path to the cache and similar links within each search result and they are testing showing the number or quantity of products display on a particular page within the search results.

Let me show you each test.

(1) Bigger URLs under the search snippet was discovered by @jsilton:

If this is legit, hard to say. It might be something wrong with the browser settings or it may be a real Google test.

(2) Cache & Similar links moved as a drop down option within the search results was discovered by VITEB on Google+:

Interesting that they would call out that feature so much with an arrow down option. Don't you think?

(3) Google showing the number of products listed on a page as a rich snippet like snippet add on was discovered by Matt Storm on Google+:

I am not sure if this is a PLA feature or if it is rich snippet related, I cannot reproduce it.

As you can see, Google is constantly testing new user interfaces within the search results.

Forum discussion at Twitter, Google+ and Google+ respectively.

Article source: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-serp-design-test-16307.html

CSV Or Written text Computer file Structure Needed For Disavow Weblink Tool

To many of us, posting a Disavow link file to Search engines for their concern should be done in CSV or text format. Most of us wouldn't consider using an succeed file or Term papers. But that is not always the situation.

A Search engines Website proprietor Help line has a website proprietor who posted a Ms Term papers in the file format .DOCX via the disavow device publish type. Then they reported that nothing occurred in the community. Google David Mueller described that the file format he used was not reinforced. David wrote:

After examining the scenario with your website, this indicates that the artificial hyperlinks to your website were not really disavowed.. Looking into information, the file you posted to the disavow device seems to be a "DOCX" file, and not a regular text or CSV file. Because of that, we don't have much that we can procedure there. To our techniques, these collections look mostly like gobbledygook, so while we try to use them for the device, they don't map to the URLs that you probably desired to send.

I'd suggest posting it again, in the appropriate format, so that it can be prepared and used for the reconsideration ask for. As I don't know for sure that your file would contain all of the appropriate artificial hyperlinks, a appropriate distribution would definitely help. A excellent way to double-check that we're able to choose up the material is to use the "download" link after posting, and to perspective it in Search engines Documents instead of installing it as a CSV file.

Watch Google He Cutts Get Shot Up

The movie above of Google He Cutts is unusual in that he often doesn't display this much feelings and sensation in his video clips.

He ranted about how so many individuals drop for "snake oil fraud SEO" and then drop for it again and again.

Here are some quotations from it clip, but this is a fun watch:
You're a website owner and you don't understand that these individuals have 10 sock puppets?

You go with the guy who has removed 10 sites, but he guarantees now is different?

That guy doesn't know how Search engines captured his sector [that was penalized], he has no concept the different methods or resources we are using.

At the end, He creates the connect to just go white-colored hat now instead of enjoying the experience.

Forum conversation at Google+ and Search engines Webmaster Help.

Look for engines Says There Was No Upgrade, We're Dreaming

Sometimes individuals desire up factors they really want to be actual - but is there ever some time where public of individuals have the same desire and they are informed that desire was not real? Okay, I am forcing it here...

On Saturday, we revealed fairly important and effective symptoms and symptoms of there being a Look for engines update on Dec Thirteenth. I e-mailed Look for engines to get verification for a publish on Look for Motor Area and Look for engines originally informed me it was not a Panda update and then lastly verified with me that there was no update at all.

No update! So the website owners and SEOs in the boards realizing large position and visitors changes were incorrect. That can be, it is a little choosing.

But what about the three significant computerized Look for engines update sites such as MozCast, SERPmetrics and SERPS.com? They all revealed large symptoms and symptoms of a Look for engines update and they monitor factors fairly logically.

Maybe there was a bug? Maybe something else is going on.

But Look for engines went on history with me - there was no Panda update, there was no other update as far as they are conscious of.

Believe it or not - there was no update.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google+.

Google+ Detailed Twice On One Look for engines Regional Listing

Typically if you search Look for engines for local outcomes, you may see a weblink to the company Google+ web page. But do you ever see two different hyperlinks to Google+ webpages under one listing? Generally not.

But in one situation, you do. Look for for [suit modifications london, uk parker street] and the outcome for a web page has two Google+ hyperlinks under the local outcomes.

What is exciting is that the Google+ web page is the same, the only distinction is that one hyperlinks to the content and the other hyperlinks to the about area, but the Google+ organization web page is the same.

Google's Jade massage beds Wang said she will look into it, she wrote:

Interesting... looking into it. Thanks for confirming.
If it was me, I'd probably remain silent and take the additional weblink.

It Works! The Search engines Disavow Device Eliminated A Penalty

In mid-October, Search engines released the disavow weblink oral appliance some have reported it doesn't perform but it seems like it does indeed perform. As an FYI, it seems 50/50 have used the tool (poll over here).

Dixon Jackson from Grand SEO, a individual I regard, believe in and know is very sincere, published in a Google+ line that he used it for a website and it assisted it get out of a guide weblink charge. Dixon wrote:
I have got a guide charge raised... which had a excellent impact from a really bad position. There is no query that the website in query has not came back to past stages from before the charge... but then again it had a guide charge for a reason!

When requested for more information, Dixon explained:
I proved helpful difficult to eliminate the bad hyperlinks - but was incapable to shift them all. So I recorded the initiatives in the disavow information file and then provided here we are at the disavow information file to take impact in the catalog. +Uri Lederman I was straight informed in the re-inclusion e-mail that I had a guide charge which was now raised. +Cody Cahill Now - many of the bad hyperlinks still are available - but are now presumably disavowed - so causation v connection seems powerful. Plus - still nothing tangible - but look at who did a +1 on my preliminary viewpoint ;)

Now, this should perform for a guide charge easily. Those who want it to perform for a Penguin weblink charge need to hang on for a new Penguin renew. There is a Webmaster World line just on the Penguin/Disavow subject itself.
But from this we can have a very excellent and sincere viewpoint that the tool does indeed perform and should perform with Penguin if used properly and when there is a information renew or upgrade.