60 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Better, Barry!

[Randy]

It's not just sites which haven't been "hurt" that will see this actually Barry. I posted some preliminary results several days ago in another thread. After my month-end look those numbers are holding true across all sites to one degree or another.

Here are some specifics for one site that was hit particularly hard on its previous main keyphrase when compared to the average of the previous three months. Note that the previous #1 phrase is completely MIA on all Google-supplied SE's after the update, so the only traffic we get on that phrase now comes from the MSN's of the world:

Google Search Traffic - Up 42% for the month of November
Google supplied Yahoo! Traffic - Up 44% for the month of November
Google supplied AOL Traffic - Up 38% for the month of November

Now, yes this could be because of the holiday shopping season starting I suppose. However this particular site doesn't sell a product that is Christmas-friendly being in the B2B marketplace , so I normally wouldn't see that type of increase. Plus the non-Google MSN raw search numbers remained within 1% of the previous months, so that's not the explanation.

More general numbers...

Overall traffic from first time unique visitors is up a little bit, nothing as wildly inflated as the Google-supplied search traffic though. Mainly because the gross traffic numbers are affected by all of the other traffic generation sources I already had in place.

Page Views and the amount of time people are staying on the site after arriving are way up though. Both of those are up around 35%.

Sales (the most important element as far as I'm concerned) are up around 38% for the month also. As long as sales are up I'm happy, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have that previous #1 phrase back again.

Get this one... The previous #2 search term, which would typically get one-half the amount of traffic the main one does, surpassed the highest number the old #1 had seen by over 45%. That stat is confusing to me since this secondary phrase has the exact same ranking position now that it had before the update.

The vast majority of my more specific (not necessarily more keywords in the search, just more in tune with exactly what the site is about) or secondary terms saw a similar increase in traffic over the last half of November. They're all up considerably. In fact, even the previous #5 search phrase in terms of visits garnered more traffic in November than the previous #1 had in any recent month.

(Does this mean people are being more exacting in their search because they're not getting the results they've come to expect with a more general search? Who knows...it's the only logical explanation for a 300% increase on this one secondary search in my mind.)

Moral of the story? As Jill has always said, it is wise to optimize for a multitude of relevant phrases, even if some of the more specific ones bring in considerably less traffic. With this update that approach has really paid off well. On this one little site that was in fact "hurt" in the update, it not only made back the loss of the main phrase, but also meant 38% more money in the bank than I would have seen if there had been no update.

[dragonlady7]

I just wanted to share that I was Googling for totally unrelated things today-- I was looking for informational resources-- and the stemming was VERY much in evidence. I looked for "writing workshops" or something along those lines (no quotes) and results returned had "writer" and "write" bolded in the descriptions, and no instances of "writing" in them at all.
I'd seen a bunch of threads about google stemming, and I think it's very interesting. I find Randy's results encouraging as well. Perhaps it'll lay to rest all the primitive-sounding debates about optimizing for plurals and the like. On the one hand, I like that kind of thing-- when things just make sense. But on the other hand, sometimes when I'm searching for "writer" I DON'T want results about "writing"-- I generally get annoyed when machines think for me, if they think I want something I don't. However, I do know that I can use quotes to make sure it doesn't go broad-matching.

Anyway, it's very interesting.

[Peter]

Get this one... The previous #2 search term, which would typically get one-half the amount of traffic the main one does, surpassed the highest number the old #1 had seen by over 45%. That stat is confusing to me since this secondary phrase has the exact same ranking position now that it had before the update.

It´s not just the position that determines the click through rate. Does that previous #2 term go to another page? Perhaps it has a different title that just generates more clicks. Especially now that the SERP completely changed (your title has to compete with the other titles in the SERP) it can very well be that you get much higher click through rates.

Just something to think about!

Regards,

Peter

[projectphp]

Funny thing about all this is that the sites that probably went "writer course or writing course" and were forced to choose one, are now probably getting far better traffic, even if they rank worse, but they are probably crying like everyone else, because "for my primary keyword I dropped.." blah blah blah.

This is another reason this update is great, because the "rankings junkies" are proving, finally, what a stoopid obsession checking your rankings is. Traffic is the key, always has been and always will be. With stemming, a good rank on a variety of stemmed phrases, e.g. writer course and writing course, should lead to greater traffic, even with a tear inducing drop in ranking for "My primary keyword phrase".

[Scottie]

Traffic is the key, always has been and always will be.

Qualified traffic is the key, IMO.

[Bernard]

Traffic is the key, always has been and always will be. With stemming, a good rank on a variety of stemmed phrases, e.g. writer course and writing course, should lead to greater traffic, even with a tear inducing drop in ranking for "My primary keyword phrase".

Targeted traffic is the key. Stemmed results may or may not yield traffic as targeted as the "primary keyword phrase". They may also not make up for the shortfall in a drop on the "p.k.p." And.. not all keyword phrases lend themselves to stemmed results.

LOL.. Jinx Scottie!

[Scottie]

LOL! Great minds, and all that...

Bernard, do you have a new baby yet? You had a new one due in Nov, didn't you?

[Randy]

It´s not just the position that determines the click through rate. Does that previous #2 term go to another page? Perhaps it has a different title that just generates more clicks. Especially now that the SERP completely changed (your title has to compete with the other titles in the SERP) it can very well be that you get much higher click through rates.

Newp, that's the really odd part Peter, which leads me to believe (okay, it's a pure hunch) that searchers are being forced to be more specific in their searches. When they do they find my little site and it offers exactly what they need.

The same internal page as before comes up for that former #2 term before and after the update. A page which hasn't been touched in months. Absolutely everything is the same with the exception of the update having happened and the traffic (and conversions) for this term increasing so drastically.

Dunno what the explanation is, and frankly I don't care. LOL Maybe it's simply a nice anomaly. All I do know for sure is that this former #2 phrase is converting unique first time visitors into new customers at a rate of 1 for every 50 that finds the site using this new favorite search term of mine. That sort of conversion-to-sale rate works for me on every level. So lets hope Google never starts filtering it too.

[Bernard]

Scottie, yes. ... and I haven't got a decent night's since. I'll PM you with details if you like.

[Jill]

I think the forcing people to be more specific with their searches may very well be the answer.

In that bbc article and video we talked about in another thread, that's exactly what they recommended to people who were using Google and couldn't find what they want.

It's great to teach people to be more specific, but it's a BAD thing for Google. If there are other engines where one doesn't have to be more specific but get what they want the first time, I imagine people would prefer that. It's what made Google popular to begin with. At AltaVista, we had to be more specific...Google we didn't.

Is history repeating itself?

Jill

[Peter]

I don't believe it's a good idea (nor accurate) to call it a penalty if your site isn't found any more in the top for your particular keyword phrase.

A penalty is generally something placed on a specific domain or on all sites that do something specific. From what I understand, that's not what has happened with this update.

It's a shift in the way Google ranks sites, not a penalty.

Thank you.

If you would all just accept the US world domination and quit whining, it would be easier on you...

hmm

Well, I know who's tops in ice hockey.

There is only one true global sport,.. Soccer or football as they call in in england I believe,.. And the best team of course is the Dutch team,. (The Brazilians have a pretty good team as well,.. )
I always wondered why the US never cared much for it.



Peter

[Jill]

Thank you.

Peter is that what you've meant all this time when you keep saying it's not a "filter"? That it's not a penalty?

I don't think a filter is the same as a penalty, is it?

Jill

[Peter]

Peter is that what you've meant all this time when you keep saying it's not a "filter"? That it's not a penalty?

I don't think a filter is the same as a penalty, is it?

Jill,

Practically everybody thought it was a filter and in the same sentence they said they were penalized,... these 2 words were used as if they were the same. Then since this wasn't completely correct, (sites still ranked good on some phrases) the penalties became phrase specific and over-optimization was invented.

A filter generally is used to keep things that you don't want out of the results. ( you can love coffee, but you don't want to chew on the coffee powder).

I am sure that there are algorithms that filter certain sites out of the results. But this new algorithm is not a filter, but as you said: "It's a shift in the way Google ranks sites"

Perhaps I was a bit fanatic with not wanting to call it a filter, but I think I hit the nail right on its head when I said that it wasn't a filter. I wanted people to realize it is not a filter, because it would change their views on this new update and with that see that there is nothing wrong with their sites. It´s just a matter of having optimized for just Google, instead of for their visitors and search engines in general.

However, the painfull effects of this update may have clouded many people's thoughts and blaming it on Google was at first the easy way to justify their SEO efforts before the update. All I wanted to say is that most people didn't do anything wrong, they just focussed a bit too much on Google,.. that´s all.

Peter

[bwelford]

I've got to amend what I said previously. You may have read the following from the Google Help web page on Basic Search.

Word Variations (Stemming)
Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms.

Well it isn't quite true. What Google is doing is much more clever than stemming but it isn't stemming.

In what follows, I am assuming that the highlighting feature on the Google Toolbar correctly identifies how Google is treating the words in its Search Algorithm. If Google was really stemming then a search for Friesian Horses would highlight Friesian and Horses in the composite word FriesianHorses. If you have the Google toolbar, you can check it out in this search by clicking on the highlight button.

This shows that Google found the word Friesian in Friesian-Horses, in Friesian_Horses and even in Friesian+Horse. However it didn't find Friesian in the composite FriesianHorses.

So Google I still congratulate you on what you are doing but it isn't really stemming.