Google Penguin Refresh in the UK

Google Penguin Refresh in the UK

Blog Google Algo Update Google Penguin News SEO SERPS

Tonight at 22:30 we are seeing huge movement in the Google UK SERPS. As we predicted we thought the Google Penguin update might take another couple of weeks to feel the full affects of it in the UK as Google had announced approx 2 weeks ago the roll out had finished.

On October 10th 2016 we report that we were seeing some big changes in the organic results and previously Penguin affected sites were showing signs of improvement. But tonight we are seeing way more than even compared to the 10th October.

My guess is the data is finally hitting UK data centres and over the next week or so you should be seeing solid positions.

I hope you’re seeing more ups than downs, but remember guys even if you do get hit by the Penguin, never give up you can always recover.

Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.

What’s with all these SERP fluctuations in Google?

What’s with all these SERP fluctuations in Google?

Blog Google Algo Update SEO SERPS

With Penguin chatter still occurring daily on Twitter etc it seems a lot of webmasters and SEO’s are hanging their hopes on the next big Penguin refresh. We’ve even blogged several times when we’ve noticed significant movement or ranking fluctuations.

However I think something else is going on behind the scenes and Google HQ which may not be Google Penguin and something completely different which is why so many are reporting ranking fluctuations.

Lots of movement in Google SERPs

I’ve noticed over the last 2 months in particular that Google keeps showing incorrect results for UK searches in particular niches and also for certain locations.

Let me show you an example

For the search term ‘bi fold doors Perth‘ in Google.co.uk you can clearly see now 7 out of 10 positions are com.au sites

google showing incorrect country sites for co.uk

Does Google not understand GEO location any more?

Until recently Google has always been pretty spot on when it comes to understand your IP location and what you are searching for and presenting the most accurate results. So why now is Google getting confused with a location such as ‘Perth’ in Scotland and delivering Perth Australia?

Way back eons ago when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth (in 2103 really but it does feel a long time ago to me) Google released an update code named ‘Venice‘. The Venice also update was created to understand your GEO IP location and to tie this in with the results you required. This meant if you were in London and searched ‘Restaurants’ you would be served ‘Restaurants in London (UK)’. Perfect, Google is a magician, it can read my mind.

So how in 2016 when we have RankBrain and the most up to date search algorithms can Google get confused and serve up Australian websites in it’s UK search engine?

And it’s not just this occurrence either, I have found it in Cambridge, Basingstoke, Kingston (upon Thames) and others.

What does this have to do with a Google mystery update?

I’m not saying it’s directly related to this mystery update but it sure does fit in with the same time line that we started to see these glitches. The same with Google Places, we are seeing incorrect map data every week although the last 10-14 days has been a lot more stable than it has been in the past.

Here’s one idea why things are messed up

One idea is that RankBrain is learning and it will take it time to understand locations the way we humans do.

Dude you broke Google!

Another idea is that it’s just broken. Why not, Google breaks all the time. Really? Oh yeah! We reported earlier this year about Google reporting a catalogue of copyright entries after page 2 of the search results.

Another possible reason we are seeing rankings fluctuating

Google is texting out a new algorithm. I am seeing over the past 3 weeks a lot of sites using high numbers of inbound links via SAPE and PBN’s ranking a lot higher. This goes for ‘IT Support London’ if you look at this site which came from nowhere HTL.London and from March to the present has acquired over 13,000 back links in a very unnatural way.

example of PBN Sape Links

How are they ranking without getting a penalty?

Look at their anchor text ratio?

links anchor text ratio

You can see their anchor text is all over the place. No mention of ‘IT Support’ but have some very ‘interesting’ shall we say link anchors coming in to the site. So maybe by using this approach they are able to get better organic rankings without getting penalised for search terms they are targeting.

Has Google uprated the importance of inbound links as apposed to referring domains?

This is one thing I’m definitely seeing more of in the spam world. Sites with huge number of inbound links but far less of new referring domains outranking sites that have great relevant content and authoritative links.

It’s impossible to say for sure what the reasons are but I’m pretty sure it ain’t penguin as this goes against everything Penguin is about. My best guess is Google are testing something new out or it’s rank brain. It doesn’t seem to effect every niche and with rankings across the board fluctuating so much daily all signs point to testing. Or it’s dataset merging but I’m not sure its that either.

 

 

Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.

Google Penguin 4.0 Update is here!

Google Penguin 4.0 Update is here!

Blog Google Algo Update SEO SERPS

Hey guys as we suspected last week it seems that Google is rolling out it’s long awaiting Penguin 4.0 algorithm update. I was going to write a post last week that we suspected it was live as we were seeing lots of ranking shifts in the UK but it was Friday and Star Wars was calling so sorry I didn’t get chance.

Is Google Penguin 4.0 live?

Lots of twitter activity would say that Google has launched or is testing the latest incarnation of the Arctic eagle’s link attack algorithm.

Cognitive SEO said ‘Google Penguin 4.0 ( the real-time update) might have been started!’

What does Google Penguin 4.0 mean for webmasters & SEOs?

Finally if you’ve been waiting for a Penguin refresh to update all the hard work you’ve put in to remove poor quality links that attractive negative attention from the Penguin 3.0 update then you’re hopefully going to see your efforts paying off and any link based penalties being lifted.

If you’ve ignore what Google has been telling you for years about not spamming and continued to spam then get ready as you’re probably about to see shifts in your organic rankings.

Help my site was affected by Google Penguin 4.0 update

The good news is even if you have seen a downward ranking in the latest Google Penguin update then you should in theory be able to recover from this just as quickly as you got the penalty.

Google Penguin 4.0 will be real time

As confirmed by many official sources at Google the latest Penguin 4.0 update will be realtime. Barry Swartz at search engine land has a great post on it here.

Google Penguin changes good and bad SEO forever!

I am curious to see what will happen with sites that continue to abuse link building over the next year and use the churn em and burn em method to SEO. Will this mean as long as they don’t get a manual action then can simple disavow or remove spammy links and then recover? It’s an interesting thought however.

 

 

Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.

Anyone seeing ranking fluctuations? Is it Google Penguin finally?

Anyone seeing ranking fluctuations? Is it Google Penguin finally?

Blog Google Algo Update Google Penguin SEO SERPS

Happy New Year to everyone, we hope you’ve all had a wonderfully relaxing Christmas and ready for some exciting stuff to come in the world of search engine marketing in 2016.

Bit of a recap to tail off 2015 with Google’s mysterious algorithm updates in December.

There was a lot of chatter on twitter and the forums over December with a lot of people reporting ranking fluctuations. Mainly good from what we could see.

But no Penguin update before Christmas Google said

Google shakes things up in Jan 2016

If you’re even half as anally retentive as we are about SEO then you’ve probably seen lots of movement in search rankings this month already.

We are seeing previously penalised website hitting page 1 again, and we are talking from not in the first 10 pages to page 1.

If it’s not penguin rolling out something seems to be happening with the Algo.

Share your thoughts with us!

 

Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.