Update: Keeping in mind that PBNs still work, they currently have a history of being targeted by Google and likely are not the safest option. This is why we now focus on creating businesses that don’t solely rely on SEO traffic.
Quick post, that hopefully helps to shed some light on the question of whether or not there was a Google update sometime around 25th or 26th August 2014.
I’ve been busy being busy, so haven’t visited any forums in quite a while but come across this post just now on www.seroundtable.com talking about a potential Penguin 3.0 update.
I have absolutely no idea if the issue has been broadly discussed on any other forums or if I am simply re-hashing news that is already out there?
Anyway, we are in a very fortunate position to have around 150 money sites now of various ages, sizes and across tons of niches so a quick glance at our rank tracker gives us reliable information we can count on. That’s a powerful asset to have access to and I am a big believer in this saying:
“With great power comes great responsibility”
Alas, as here I sit on a Saturday afternoon typing away whilst the rest of the guys here trim their mustaches and eat tacos, I have a sense of responsibility to provide a brief outline what I have seen from 5 of our sites (probably more, I haven’t looked at them all) since whatever the heck happened by way of an update or refresh on, or around 25th August 2014.
Site 1:
Amazon affiliate site. Dropped out of position 3 for a bunch of keywords around 18th August. Jumped back up on August 25th and 26th for all terms. Below are screenshots from two keywords (combined monthly search volume of around 3500).
Site 2:
Also an amazon affiliate site. This site has a bit of a bumpy past in Google having had, and bounced back, from a previous penalty of some sort. It bounced back on 25th August for the main two keywords (combined monthly search volume of around 8,000).
Site 3:
Also an amazon affiliate site. This site dropped out of high positions in serps quite a few months back now and has been ranking around page 5-6 for the main keywords since, though the ranking pages have been random catrgory pages and sometimes even images. Weird shit.
It also bounced back on 25th August for the main keywords (two featured below have a combined monthly search volume of around 10,000 but are targeted on different pages).
Site 4:
Adsense site. This one has a very unique past that goes something like this:
- Started in July of 2013 on a different domain.
- We lost that domain in a dispute (long story) in February 2014.
- We recreated the site on a fresh domain in February and updated around 50 PBN links to point to the new domain.
- In April it was starting to get back to it’s former ranking glory, but got hit in June.
- Side note, we lost about 20 links in April as we lost a chunk of our PBN (that’s another long story) and so dropped a ton of links fast. We suspected the drop in June was just a delayed response to the lost links in April.
- But now it’s bounced back for a ton of keywords across about a dozen pages. Go figure.
Site 5:
And another amazon site (if it wasn’t for site 4 above, I’d lean towards thinking this update/refresh was something affiliate site related). Anyway, this site was ticking along just nice until mid July when it got dumped and was ranking around page 10 (random pages on the site ranking instead of the main review article). Key pages jumped back up on 25th and 26th August.
So there you go, 5 sites all with a penalty of some sort (not manual – no messages in webmaster tools) and all bounced back on 25th/26th August.
Side note – All sites had been link-build with a PBN. The PBN is in good shape with no mass de-indexes having occurred. But I can’t help but think it was something link related, perhaps a turn down of the dial on penguin.
Has anyone else seen similar instances of sites either bouncing back, or even dropping, on 25th/26th August? Let us know below if so.
Kapil says:
Yeah Greg, I have been seeing the same results in a couple of niches I am monitoring. The sites which went back and had no signs of showing up in the search engines (and it was not because of penguin) are suddenly now showing up on the first and second pages. No idea why this is happening but Algoroo is also showing some movement happening in the Google’s algo on the 27th and 28th.
GregNunan says:
Thanks Kapil.
Matt S says:
Apparently yesterday was a big day for my PTC sites, I popped onto the first or second page for most of my main terms. But for now those sweet sweet rankings are gone and I’m back out of the SERPs. Whatever they were doing yesterday they should go ahead an implement long term!
I’m thinking either they were un-sandboxed, it was part of the possible algo refresh/update, or a combination of both.
Either that or just a glitch in the tracking software! Probably not though, I don’t see what a glitch would have carried across all my domains.
Matt S says:
So turns out it was just a glitch in the software – ignore my comment!
Mike says:
Yes!
My Amazon niche site had a page ranking #2 for two straight months, and it was bouncing from #3 to #5 for the month before that. Then, on Monday the 25th, it suddenly dropped to #6, where it still stands.
This KW has 4,400 LMS. I also have 2 separate pages on the same site, targeting 2 different KWs (5,000+ LMS for each), and those currently sit at the #6 and #8 spots. But they didn’t really move, maybe down 1 spot each, but they had been bouncing around anyway.
This site was built in January, mostly with PBN links.
Any tips on trying to get that ranking back to #2?
Cheers,
Mike
Mike says:
Just an update, today it has moved down to #8. WTF.
GregNunan says:
lol. rank tracking can drive you nuts.
james says:
had a parasite page drop then return on the same dates you mentioned.
Mark says:
I’ve seen some drops, 2 of my sites both went 2 places down (from 3 to 5 and from 11 to 13) on 26 august. They don’t have a good link profile, most of it are public article sites.
Chris says:
On the 26th, my site emerged from some kind of penalty.
Joel says:
Had an Australian site drop from 2 to 12 on 26th with only a handful of pbn backlinks. One of the pbn sites was pumping out links from 300 different pages within the site, otherwise I dont have an explanation.
Has not since recovered.
GregNunan says:
Thanks Joel, keep us updated on how that site recovers.
Joel says:
Greg, do you have any Australian sites? Do you think .com.au backlinks are being given alot more power than they previously were & that .com backlinks do not carry much weight anymore?
GregNunan says:
Nope, we’re ranking both .aus and gTDs in Australia. Maybe a slight lean towards .aus ranking easier, but not much.
Rob says:
Seeing the same here guys!
Quick non-related question : what’s the name of that rank tracker that you’re showing screenshots from?
Thanks!
GregNunan says:
That one there is serpbook which I still keep for historical data from older sites (came in handy for this post!), but we use http://www.ranktracker.io for all our sites now. That’s Han and Hayden’s product.
Enda says:
I had one site that was getting 300 visitors a day until 26th June which then dropped to a mere 30. On the 26th August this came back up to around 250 a day for around 4-5 keywords. Amazon affiliate site with a .co.uk domain name. Links coming from Rank Hero and a few blog comments.
GregNunan says:
Thanks Enda.
Chris says:
I have one Amazon site that mysteriously tanked on July 17 and bounced back on August 25 to its former level of traffic. I was busy with other stuff and did nothing to the site or linking, it just miraculously resurrected.
GregNunan says:
That’s the pattern. No work done to fix and they came back.
Scott says:
My thinking regarding algo updates is that it actually take days/weeks for the changes to be applied to the entire Google index. While everything is in the process of being reindexed, we see a scattering of results as sites move up and down in relation to ours.
And once the update has been applied completely, things tend to settle back down.
I’m probably wrong, but the shoe fits!
Jeff says:
Hey guys –
I am seeing the opposite problem. I had an inner page of a secondary KW that has been holding steady at #1 for months take a dip last tuesday – total site traffic went down almost 50% but has rebounded a bit. I think it’s because I lost #1 rankings on both secondary KW terms, but the main domain jumped up a bit, then settled back down into slot 5 where it has been stuck for a few months.
All pbn links built here. Wondering if its an algo, but I Have the link data (all sites/anchors, etc) and i’m going to look at the numbers. I have a feeling I have too many partial match KWs linking to this inner page.
Gary Kirwan says:
I had a big site improve for the main keyword from #17 to #11 on Aug 29/30 so few days out of range. I have been nailed badly and skyrocketed to #1 by Panda updates in the past so my sites I think are less prone to Penguin updates at this stage.
Shay says:
While most of you report on an increase in rankings, I experienced a big drop.
My site was ranking #2-4 steadily for months and then on August 26th it took a hit sitewide. All of the pages got hit, including pages I haven’t built links to.
The only page that is still ranked #1 is the homepage when looking for the site name.
But for my main terms I was dropped to page 6-7.
I had a silo six levels deep that was targeting different longtails of my seed keyword.
Still showing no signs of recovery…
GregNunan says:
How were you link building Shay? Anything you can put your finger on that may have caused the issue?
Shay says:
Hey Greg,
My link profile is very diversified.
I used a lot of PBN links (about 30) to rank and pillowed with mostly press releases.
But I added some other type of links such as yahoo answers, web 2.0s, social bookmarks, blog comments, forum links, social media profiles (facebook, twitter, g+ channels) etc…
Everything in moderation of course and no spam.
In terms of anchor text I kept EM to only 3% and partial match to 8%.
I discovered that a lot of the press releases I’ve built got deindexed but there’s still much of them left so it really doesn’t justify why I went from #2 to page 6 overnight.
I still haven’t figured out with what penalty am I dealing with so any help would be appreciated.
Greg if you can contact me personally I’d be happy to show you the site.
I’m available at shay (dot) giner [at] gmail (dot) com