Flux in Bing/Yahoo search rankings?
-
Has anyone else noticed any flux in Bing/Yahoo desktop search rankings in the start of March?
Our weekly MSN search traffic was steady and then starting dropping off around March 3 or 4. Weekly desktop traffic now down about 20%
Anyone see anything similar or have any resources for learning more about this?
-
I have likewise noticed this on several sites - that do very well in Google. Some sites were near or at the top of Yahoo page one have fallen suddenly & drastically!
Specifically, two smaller (what I call) "magnet sites" or "satellite sites", tuned to narrow band topics, and linked to the main site which also contained those topics. They were both number one, page one - and beat the main, large site on their topic.
The net result is the two magnet sites fell back but Yahoo made the "mother-ship" number one in both categories. They "givith and taketh away".
I too noticed a large increase in ad-space real estate. Since there's so much less room for organic results, they are obviously quashing multiple SERPS from the same outfits. I have noticed a similar result in Google years back - a satellite site will virtually disappear, but the main site goes to number one.
-
Yes, just desktop. And the change happened across multiple browsers, not just Firefox.
I hadn't used Bing in a while but when I tested it out after the drop seems like there's way more ads that I remember there being before. (Of course, that's not the most scientific of observations.)
-
If all of the traffic is one keyword, then a minor interface change could cause a big traffic change. Any new ad units or stuff like that showing up that wasn't there before in the SERP?
There's been flux lately from the Firefox partnership, but seems unlikely for you to notice that trickle down.
I assume you saw no change on mobile or tablet, just desktop?
-
I looked in Bing Webmaster Tools and it definitely looked like something funky was going on.
We still use http on our site, but Bing was picking up a flawed https version of the home page. I had the tech team redirect https to http using a 301. When I fetched with Bingbot, it initially returned an error. After a couple of re-tries, though, it worked fine. Very strange. I submitted the URL for bing to re-crawl.
I imagine this has something to do with it, although I can't say exactly how.
Another funky thing: Almost all of our Bing/Yahoo traffic is from one keyword. According to Bing Webmaster tools, we rank the same for that keyword after the drop in traffic as we did before. Maybe there has been a change to Bing/Yahoo SERPs?
-
That's all interesting. Didn't mean to suggest you needed to look at BWT (sounds like you have quite a bit already), I meant to reiterate that Benjamin should look there. I rarely spend any time in BWT so I can't say much about its response times and error rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has delays or takes awhile to sort out big site changes.
Hope it trends well for you and please report back if you see any developments. I'm curious what Benjamin sees on the backend of BWT as well.
-
Hi, Kane. I went through every setting and data page on Bing Webmasters. The only thing odd is that the sitemap has been sitting there "pending" for a couple of weeks. Hopefully the URL submits with jostle something good loose. Bing may be very confused because my clients had a website they had tried to do themselves and there were http and https pages mixed together and orphan pages and template placeholder posts like "hello world". So some radical surgery was performed to resolve the SEO issues...along with content changes. So Bing could just be in a bit of a shock. I have seen lesser changes make rankings suffer for a while before. So I am not sure either if this is due to a systemic Bing change or due to our actions taken on the site. Thanks for responding!
-
I just scanned through 20-30 sites of various traffic/content models and I don't see anything major on any of them, but that doesn't mean you're not seeing something specific happening.
If I were you I would check into Bing Webmaster Tools data and see what they can tell you about recent changes to crawling or visibility to see if there's a signal there that you can look into further.
-
Yes, Ben, I have seen this and it was very pronounced on one of the websites I support. Rankings for Google remained, shifting a little bit due to some technical and content SEO changes. The shifting in Google was desired. However Bing/Yahoo dropped all keyword rankings that we are following. From many to zero in one week. And, the sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools has been pending for 2 weeks now. Although concerned, I figured this was a response to the elimination of duplicate content from technical SEO changes, onpage optimization changes (from none or accidental to well-optimiized), and a change of address on a Bing listing that did not go through completely on Bing Local the first time. So, yes, the Bing/Yahoo drop in early March happened on a a few sites I monitor, and were very pronounced on one site that was undergoing many changes. After waiting 2-3 weeks for things to index/deindex naturally with all search engines, this week, I submitted URLs to Bing Webmasters Tools looking for some ranking relief. Next step is to do some deep page linking to try to influence having more pages crawled by Bing. I would be interested to hear others' experiences.
-
I haven't seen this Ben. And you're still doing fine in Google? Have you checked Google Trends in relation to your content? Did your robots.txt file change? Is your site in Bing Webmaster Sites? https://www.bing.com/webmaster/ Just a few of the things to check on. Cheers!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google loves me. Yahoo and Bing not so much...
My site is ranked very high for my keywords on Google and Google Maps. But we come in 4 or 6 places lower on the other two search engines. Does any one have any pointers on the different types of algorithms they use? Many thanks in advance:)
Algorithm Updates | | MissThumann0 -
Responsive websites rank better?
In the upcoming months, or even now, do you think responsive websites will rank higher?
Algorithm Updates | | CFSSEO0 -
Importance of Links for Local Search
**According to an article about the "no no's for local SEO" links are not very important. Here is an excerpt: "**Local SEO is very different when compared to traditional SEO. The importance of backlinks in local SEO isn’t as important. In other words, links simply don’t matter as much when it comes to local SEO. Googles’ local search algorithm treats links completely differently than its standard algorithm." How accurate is this statement? Wouldn't more links help your local pages rank better in non-local organic results such as the results outside of the new carousel?
Algorithm Updates | | pbhatt0 -
Why is site dropping in rank after we update it?
One of our sites - supereyes.com - appears to drop in rank after we update it. The client notified us of this today and I've verified that it did indeed drop in Google -- four spots since last week. He says this happens every time we make changes to the site, but then a week later it will go back up and is usually higher than where it was before. I have not verified this, but I'm very worried it may not rise again In the past week, we've posted a new blog entry to their site and we've changed some of the content -- specifically, added their locations to the header, added a contact page and put two testimonials in their sidebar. We've also had someone submitting their site to directories and local business sites like Angie's List and so forth. There are about 16 new backlinks established in the past 2-3 weeks. Also, I should note, traffic is higher than it's ever been, but the client doesn't look at traffic. They only look at their Google results. Can anyone offer any insight into what's going on here and if I need to be worried the site won't rise again in the rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | aloley0 -
Google Places/Points of Interest Rankings?
Does anyone have an idea on how Google ranks or determines the 'Points of Interests' that come up when searching about places/cities?
Algorithm Updates | | CarlLarson0 -
Google Rankings Jumping Around
Hi, Since January, the Google rankings for one of our sites has been jumping around. Sometimes it's on page 1, then it disappears and comes back around 1 month later. It's strange because it's only a small section of the site that it's happening to. Every other section of the site is doing really well. Just wondered if anyone else is having this problem, or has had it and can suggest any fixes. There are no technical issues, no changes have been made to the site, all I can think is it's Google messing around with their algorithm? Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Karen
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0 -
How often do people use Google Product Search
I was was reading Tom Critchlow's excellent blog on how to rank well for Google Product Search. I'm trying to find out if there are stats on how often people use this feature in Google (since it is not listed on Google's main navigation). I'm working with a customer who has b-2-b products and am trying to determine the value of adjusting his ecommerce pages to appear on Google Product Search.
Algorithm Updates | | EricVallee340