Pretty smart that we have an internal update alarm bell. It always rings when Google is shaking the SERPs with its updates. And on Saturday it was ringing like hell. And we don’t agree with others that this is not an update, our statistics show that this must be some kind update.
It is a little to early to show a detailed analysis, but we are already checking the winners and losers of the update. I wanted to give notice as fast as possible, the refreshed set of data will be available on friday in our Suite and Essentials, there you can also check if you have been affected or not (which you should already see in your traffic statistics). But we didnt want to wait, so here is a small preview. And with the refreshed data we will also see if it has addidtional impacts or if Google had to roll it back, which they did from time to time. The first data is based on our mini-keywordset containing 250.000 different keywords that we monitor internally in addition to our software to identify google updates.
In general it looks like pages out of different verticals are affected. And some pretty hard. For us it looks like a quality update also affecting longtail keyword set, and we just named it Pony update. In German we have a saying “Das Leben ist kein Pony Hof”, which means in English “Life is not a bowl of cherries”. That’s why “Pony” should fit. 😉
And to say it was just a small change is simply wrong. We talked to some on the loser side and they really lost a lot of traffic, so this must be a change.
Here is the list of some losers:
domain | difference in % |
foodnetwork.com | -28,88 |
foxnews.com | -24,48 |
usatoday.com | -20,61 |
dishonline.com | -69,12 |
toptenreviews.com | -22,82 |
ew.com | -26,28 |
filehippo.com | -35,21 |
mydish.com | -31,03 |
armorgames.com | -35,67 |
pogo.com | -25,48 |
verizon.com | -41,55 |
promoutfitters.com | -78,30 |
hopstop.com | -80,64 |
allurebridals.com | -73,88 |
wikia.com | -20,07 |
pbskids.org | -38,96 |
bcbsil.com | -89,44 |
shockwave.com | -35,70 |
randmcnally.com | -22,90 |
yellowpages.com | -31,77 |
babycenter.com | -26,22 |
directionsmag.com | -98,28 |
cheapoair.com | -20,93 |
epicurious.com | -26,71 |
nick.com | -27,83 |
mcafee.com | -26,51 |
Looking at the list of winners seems to proof that this must be an update. Like with the panda updates, where we already noticed the same, there are not big winners, but a lot of small winners that move a few positions up in the SERPs. So we wont show any winner list, this is something you can check soon in our Software for yourself.
So what do you think about this update, we are looking for your ideas and suggestions what this update is about. Let us know in the comments what you think, and dont forget to monitor, measure and analyse 😉
Yours Marcus
PS: The update was on November 17th, and that was my birthday.. It there a correlation..?