Has anyone seen any rankings or traffic changes with the Google Penguin 4.0 update?

[ulterios]

I never take any of the Google updates too seriously because they have never really had any kind of highly notable changes for my sites when they happened.

Now that Google has rolled out the Penguin 4.0 (Real-Time Updating) I have started to see a big burst in traffic to all of my websites, especially ones that were on a bit of a downhill slide.

So, for me this update has actually helped my sites. Have you seen any increase in traffic or rankings with any of your websites?

Do you have any thoughts on this?

If so I would love to hear them and see if anyone else is benefiting from this latest Google algorithm update.

 

[ProfMike]

Ulterios,

I have actually seen an increase in site traffic also on a few sites. I have also seen a substantial increased in the Alexa ratings for my site and a few customer sites. After doing some investigation into the reasons, it appears that the proper use of page structure and HTML elements may have had that impact. Still looking into it but on a high level look, that appears to be the reason.

I had read through the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), that the changes in HTML and CSS would begin to impact SEO over the course of the next few years, I read these reports about a year ago, they may have begun looking for that site structure when they crawl the sites.

That works for me as I have always tried my best to follow the structural recommendations. Maybe it will begin to pay off for some of us.

We will have to see how long it holds.

 

[ulterios]

Ulterios,

I have actually seen an increase in site traffic also on a few sites. I have also seen a substantial increased in the Alexa ratings for my site and a few customer sites. After doing some investigation into the reasons, it appears that the proper use of page structure and HTML elements may have had that impact. Still looking into it but on a high level look, that appears to be the reason.

I had read through the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), that the changes in HTML and CSS would begin to impact SEO over the course of the next few years, I read these reports about a year ago, they may have begun looking for that site structure when they crawl the sites.

That works for me as I have always tried my best to follow the structural recommendations. Maybe it will begin to pay off for some of us.

We will have to see how long it holds.

I hadn't thought about it from that point Mike, thanks for pointing it out. Maybe this new update is taking proper page structure and HTML more into consideration in it's algorithm. Maybe Google is doing this to try to force people to use the best practices in their web page/site design and build.

Google does like to take things that it thinks are important and make them a ranking factor which in turn makes people start thinking more about certain aspects of their sites. That's basically what they did with the HTTPS protocol in the past.

I think that you might be on to something with this. Sites that aren't doing things properly might be getting hit because of this. I have heard a number of people that are complaining of this latest update and when looking at some of the sites I think this might be a common thing that many or all have in common which could be a culprit in why they are getting hit and losing rankings and traffic.

Nice Point!

 

[ProfMike]

I had read that they were going to begin using the site structure as a factor in SEO, that was the reason for all the new structural elements in HTML5. If you think about it it makes it much easier to crawl a site when everything is properly marked out for the web crawlers.

This will be a boom for web developers as more and more people will either call in expertise to restructure their sites or they will have to take the time to properly learn how to structure pages.

This could be a real deficit for the big CMS systems, as they have never really followed "Best Practices" and looking through some of their page structures is like looking at a bowl of spaghetti. It will be interesting to see how long the search engines take to implement the full specification.

But I know for certain that certain elements, if not properly attributed are already showing penalties on many of the search engines. I wrote a pretty detailed explanation about it on WMS. You can find it under this title.

How can website design affect SEO?

We will need to stay on our toes as these changes take effect.

 

[TCoder]

I'm seeing some pretty big swings in certain SERP keywords, both good and bad. It really makes no sense at all. Nothing being de-indexed, just certain keywords that ranked well not ranking at all. Not sure if it's just dancing or not, but other keywords that ranked for the same page still ranking well.

 

[vishwa]

Yes, After this Penguin i also realize increase n my search traffic. My website ranks well in most of the keywords. I think it will hurt sites with Poor and low quality backlinks. However anyone can recover from it by removing these links or simply disavow them.

 

[ulterios]

I had read that they were going to begin using the site structure as a factor in SEO, that was the reason for all the new structural elements in HTML5. If you think about it it makes it much easier to crawl a site when everything is properly marked out for the web crawlers.

This will be a boom for web developers as more and more people will either call in expertise to restructure their sites or they will have to take the time to properly learn how to structure pages.

This could be a real deficit for the big CMS systems, as they have never really followed "Best Practices" and looking through some of their page structures is like looking at a bowl of spaghetti. It will be interesting to see how long the search engines take to implement the full specification.

But I know for certain that certain elements, if not properly attributed are already showing penalties on many of the search engines. I wrote a pretty detailed explanation about it on WMS. You can find it under this title.

How can website design affect SEO?

We will need to stay on our toes as these changes take effect.

Yeah, Google likes sites that are easier for them to crawl and index properly (for them) so it makes sense to use these as a factor.

I can also see that developers will probably see a nice boost in business to help site owners fix or otherwise address their issues because of this. Should probably be a boost in people needing to further their education in their development skills. So they can learn how o do things properly.

I'm seeing some pretty big swings in certain SERP keywords, both good and bad. It really makes no sense at all. Nothing being de-indexed, just certain keywords that ranked well not ranking at all. Not sure if it's just dancing or not, but other keywords that ranked for the same page still ranking well.

Yeah, I am curious about how much dancing around the sites are going to do before they settle. I am hoping I can get some of mine to dance a little higher to towards the top.

Yes, After this Penguin i also realize increase n my search traffic. My website ranks well in most of the keywords. I think it will hurt sites with Poor and low quality backlinks. However anyone can recover from it by removing these links or simply disavow them.

I think that there will be a lot of people using the disavow feature in Google a lot more because of this, at least for a while after the updated happened.

 

[Dean]

I have come across information around the net the last couple of days where people are saying that they have seen big changes in their rankings either for the good or for worse.

I personally have not seen big changes like this. I mean that I have seen some good changes and increases in rankings and website traffic but nothing that is Earth shaking. It would have been nice to see some really big positive changes but I am happy that at least I didn't get hit in a negative way as others have seen.

Cheers, Dean.