Google Algorithm Update Feb 2014?

by 16 replies
20
Hey Guys

A SEO friend of mine pointed out that traffic and impressions have gone down signifigantly the past 4 days for ALL of his sites, both personal and for clients.

I checked myself and saw the same thing in Google Webmaster tools. My impressions and clicks have gone down by about 1/3rd - and i'm seeing the EXACT same pattern for all sites (both personal, clients, and even friends I dont work on) in my Webmaster tools accounts.

I wasn't able to find anything on google about this OR matt cutts twitter feed.

Anybody noticing the same thing, and if so - have you heard anything about it?

Thanks!

Jeff
#search engine optimization #2014 #algorithm #feb #google #update
  • Sorry to hear about that but i think google caught some thing wrong in all of these sites and kicked them down i am not sure but i didn't hear about this before.
  • Hello Jeff,

    Im seeing the same thing on all my sites, dont know whats happend, havent heard anything about any updates.

    The funny thing is my clicks and traffic is the same as usual.Weird..
    • [1] reply
    • There was a page layout algo update meant to hit sites with too much ads over the fold

      the layout algo is explained here (two years ago)

      Page layout algorithm improvement - Inside Search

      again the update to this was recent - announced on Cutts twitter page a few hours ago
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
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  • Banned
    Google contradicts itself on the above the fold subject.

    There's Google Labs browser tool, and there's Adsense above the fold, which I'm sure is also used for Adwords.

    My advice is don't worry about above the fold & just use common sense. Even when I ran Adsense on multiple sites I always loaded an ad at the very top of the page, still ranked pages in Google SERPs.

    The key is to narrow down your best converting ads & dump the rest. Those guys that say max out the number of ads per page are clowns, including Adsense emails recommending to max out ads. BTW, top/center of a web page is usually a hot spot for CTRs.

    Adsense sends out those emails recommending to max out ads, while Google SERPs says it's spammy, which a page loaded with ads is spammy.

    Do this, but don't do it. - Google
    • [1] reply
    • My company does this - and I don't think we are clowns.

      We have a special arrangement with Google which theoretically allows us to show an infinite number of Adsense units per page (with a minimum amount of vertical space in between them).

      We weren't hit by this update - it's pretty clear they are looking primarily at the number of ads at the top of the page which can interfere with the actual content a visitor sees upon landing.

      But you're point about being wary of advice given by Adsense is a good one - for a long time the Adsense staff were giving advice which was clearly contrary to the advice coming from their search quality and web trends staff.
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  • Thanks for the updates Mike & Yukon - guess i should space my text together into paragraphs more instead of making it easier to read by spacing it out a bit lol

    edit: Strange though,I'm seeing this on literally ALL websites in every webmaster tools account I've got access to - many are ecommerce sites that don't have a single ad, period.
  • That happened to me (started FEb 2nd) my site is 4 weeks old and was ranking well like p2 for very competit. SEO keywords in a city, and then all of them got like slapped back to like from to like #80 result. Not just slight fluctuation. Is it possible for a competitor to do this somehow? I'm new at SEO
    • [1] reply
    • REading responses I just want to add that I don't have ads on my site at all!
  • I got hit, my sites got hit and traffic has dropped significantly. But I didn't have any ads above the fold . . . it does not make sense to me

    If its all about ads, does it mean that if one got rid of adsense, then one would possibly rank again?
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