Did Google's algo change in April?

[FlashDriveDT]

Did something change with Googles ranking algorithm this month? To my shock, I just found out that several of my keywords have taken a dive, some got even dumped to page 2. Im totally perplexed and no, I'm not a newbie. I've never experienced such a drop across the board, so to me this is like a mild disaster. My sitemap, robot.txt and htaccess are sound, I have no more dupes floating around (took care of that a couple of months ago), and behaved strictly white hat in terms of SEO or backlinks (at least afaik). The entire last week I didn't even do any SEO, just adding some new content to my site.

Now I am thinking that maybe Google's site speed factor has kicked into full gear in April? Does anyone know? Cos thats where I've been lacking a bit, even though Im on a virtual private server. Luckily I just employed the W3-total-cache plugin which makes everything load in almost a second. So hopefully this will take care of the problem and I will regain my rankings. But I'm wondering if anyone has heard about this or any other changes - or has experienced something similar this month? Since I havent been on here for a while and you never know what new development will steamroll over you without you even knowing it, I figured it was time to check back in here....

[Spot the Ball]

I believe caffeine kicked in over the last week or so from what I have been reading.

[FlashDriveDT]

Oh really? Hmm, when caffeine was being tested back in November my sites were all performing well still. Of course its possible that they added some more revisions to the caffeine version but would it take them that long to implement it?

[giseo]

there was some big movement the last week but seems to have settled a bit.

[FlashDriveDT]

Ok, but did most here experienced a drop, bump or same ole same ole? I just found this:
Google PageRank update for April 2010 with Google Caffeine ?
Now that Ive read that I have to say my PR has dropped one rank for most of my pages as well. I can only imagine that the site speed might have been to blame for all this.

[Spot the Ball]

Originally Posted by FlashDriveDT

Ok, but did most here experienced a drop, bump or same ole same ole? I just found this:
Google PageRank update for April 2010 with Google Caffeine ?
Now that Ive read that I have to say my PR has dropped one rank for most of my pages as well. I can only imagine that the site speed might have been to blame for all this.

Very difficult to say for me, I dont have enough sites up yet.

My rankings went up BUT I also did some on page stuff and a few backlinks over the last week or so.

[FlashDriveDT]

Oh goody --->

Breaking: Google Caffeine Now Live, Renamed 'Kaffein'
Google To Purge Index, Introduce "Super Caffeine" - ITProPortal.com
Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2010

I guess there isnt much one can do, so I better sit back and relax for a while. If my rankings are still low in a few weeks then maybe I need to take some action. Im still curious though if anyone here has been experiencing similar fluctuations? Where do you guys think SEO efforts need to be focused on now? Looks like there's a lot of confusion out there. According to this article --> Google Caffeine update: Does Google Have a Sense of Humor , aside from site speed, Google Caffeine emphasizes:

- Accuracy: Returning SERP's (Search Engine Results pages) that match the exact information you're looking for.
- Relevancy: Ensuring that the SERP's return information that is up to date and useful.
- Efficiency: Faster search results and the ability to custom select your search options.
- Sufficiency: Offering a wider range of results to choose from by including different platforms like Social Media.

Also, see: 5 SEO Internet Marketing Tips Including Google Caffeine Updates

Apparently, "freshness" will play a huge role now. That will be kinda hard to keep up with. I'm sure there's a lot more. Does anyone have more information?

[Zeus66]

I'm tired of trying to figure Google out, when the target keeps moving. I understand and accept that they must evolve or someone will overtake their solid #1 position, but it's enough to make you start babbling and drooling in the corner if you let it.

I have a lot of sites, and I have seen them dancing all over the place in the last 2-3 weeks. If I let it, that would put me in the loony bin. SO I don't let it. I just try to ignore the short-term changes and keep adding good content and adding more sites and, of course, backlinks. It never ends if you rely to any degree on Google search traffic that you aren't paying for.

But MAN does it get OLD!!! I need a new drug.

[jasonmorgan]

Thanks for the articles.

I had several sites drop a couple of weeks ago and then bounce back yesterday but I attributed this to some aggressive backlinking I've been working on the past few weeks.

[innocent07]

I dont think it is worth trying to figure google out, as the algos keep changing in their own unpredictable way.

[David Chung]

From the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed.

...While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven't seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.

Source: Using site speed in web search ranking

[DogScout]

Google changes the algorithm at least 4 times a month. Caffiene is a larger one than usual, but just another adjustment in the long run. The big change will be when they program the search computers to randomly return the top 50 ranking sites to the 1st page.
Or when they decide to return results by the IP main users profile... even if not logged into a Google account and you try to rank for 37 'profiles' at the same time (some mutually exclusive). Right now across the street gets a different page 1 than I do with only 2 sites out of ten (average) the same when neither of us is logged in to a Google account using the same keywords. Same provider, only difference is 40 yards and a different IP and 'bounce' rate for 'types of sites'.
No matter what YOU see on your computer, is no guarantee every other user sees the same results.

[Doug D]

Ok, I was going to start a thread, but I figured I'd just post on this one instead.

I recently tried something new (off site seo wise), and as of the 12th-13th of April...I experienced dramatic across the board movement, the vast majority being very positive.

The movement was so dramatic...that I concluded that it was either from my action (which was the only one I was engaged in at the time), or G. made a large adjustment to their algo.

I was really hoping to find out if anyone else had experienced this...as it would help me to isolate the cause.

Just for the record...I'm not talking about some affiliate site that does a few hundee a month, and a couple of k.w.'s that I was watching.

I'm talking about one e-commerce site, a 350 k.w. list, and **** like a 2 million exact a mo. k.w. going from #15 of page 2...to #3 and 4 of page 1. And, a dozen or so k.w.'s at mid to bottom page 1 - going to #1 on page 1. Like I said...pretty dramatic ****. This is an established site that has just witnessed a 50% increase in traffic...overnight. I have not seen this before...even during or immediately following a large backlinking campaign.

And, of course...I have triple checked the numbers, hitting different data centers, blah blah blah.

If someone else has an established site with a large qty of k.w.'s that they monitor on a regular basis, and they have also experienced something dramatic - good or bad, I would love to hear about it.

Thanks much,

Doug

[FlashDriveDT]

Great to hear, Doug! As for my KWs, everything seems back to normal now. Well, almost. A few pages are ranking higher now whereas a couple are still bumped down to SERP 2. I think the latter has to do with duplicate/similar content, but that would mean Google's gotten even stricter on that now. I still see some odd behavior by Goggle, especially with caching, I hope its just a temporary hiccup.

[GeorgR.]

I notice EXTREME bouncing at the moment, its extremely dynamic (way, way more than i ever experienced)..some sites of mine literally jumping #1, #3, #2, #1 WITHIN HOURS.

[andrewsmth]

I'm facing the same problem this month! I'm working for some new site of mine which one day ranks 7th page, the day after is no longer on Google. It's kind of bugging, as I'm no longer sure of my SEO knowledge when this stuff happens. This job of mine really got me stressed this month, as it can be quite inhuman to do your job properly and still depend on something uncontrollable.

[Narc]

I say something fishy going on!

I had over 1000backlink shown in google for one of my page and now it dropped today to 500ish..

I checked my serp rankings and keywords which were #2-3 now at #170-#180...

And since talking about page speed, it didnt changed for last couple months and still shown same in webmaster tool.

Its like back to where i started IM for this website..Definetly annoying..

[Bellthorpe]

One of my sites (wazu.jp) has many images and is slow to load.

Its page rank did not change in April.

[Althaf Ahmed]

Guys, please...

This happens literally every 3 months. That is when pagerank update takes place. It is called Google dance. I used to panic during initial days, but I dont bother. This month too, I lost traffic for about a week. Everything came back to normal after that.

Nothing fishy going on. Please dont cook up rumors and scare the young webmasters here.

[AndyBlackSEO]

My rankings have jumped up a fair bit this last few days. Good news on your site Doug! I'll drop you an email sometime.

[Jesper C.]

On of my sites have been bouncing from from pos. 7-3, (5 yesterday, 7 today) in April. It has also gotten a boost from PR 0 to PR 2. Sometimes it seems like, that the Google Dance comes in waves.

[richieu]

I got one site that went 9..71..7..63..32..7 and now is at 5 again.

Maybe it was the volcano in Iceland?

ATB
Rich