Review Sites & Google's Maccabee/Fred 2.0 Update

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I know its only small traffic but as you can see, this domain was pulling around the 100-125 hits per day mark until the rollout on the 12th. From then on it was pulling around the 50-60 traffic per day. This is just a small adsense site I have had for years. Previously, it had 1000 word articles with 3 x adsense display ads and 3x adsense link units.

I don't remember exactly when I did it but I changed that and pulled all of the link units as well as one of the adsense display ads off each page leaving 2 x display ads and as you can see in the analytics above, it has now returned to pre 12th December rollout traffic levels.

I have two other sites that were effected too, I initially attempted to reduce ads on those but forgot about the header and sidebar ads on the site, I then removed them and today I discovered the AAWP plugin I use for my comparison tables and geo-redirecting inserts 3-5 links per product box/grid rather than the one I thought it did. This means that some of my product tables had 25 or more affiliate links in them when I thought they only had 5 with the whole row bing a single clickable box.

Its almost 1am here now but my plan for tomorrow is manually go over each page on my other two domains and strip them down to having a handful of affiliate links on them rather than the 30 or so most have right now and then see what happens.

Similar to the adsense site, I don't expect instant changes due to Google having to recache the site and such but I hope they recover to pre-rollout traffic levels and keep growing at the rate they were. Either way, I will report back in a month or so depending on what they do.

Edit - The above may just have happened by chance but I just wanted to share my observation.
 
@shaunm, I doubt affiliate links would be wrapped up in this "less ads" fiasco, if it's real. They don't impact user experience or affect load time.

When ideas like this come out into the field, I try to think about what Google would benefit from making the change. Would they benefit from de-ranking a page with 30+ display ads on it? Not necessarily. I saw a post today that was top quality, had over 50 ads on it, but the content was incredibly long, and they truly didn't affect the speed or my ability to read and enjoy the content.

But if I was Google I would obliterate that site based on the quality standards set about by all of the ad networks.

There are a lot of content based sites with no other solid means of monetization than display ads. Lots of news sites and forums fit the bill, as do viral sites which are extremely engaging and valuable to the viewer. Does it benefit Google to take prejudice against display ads in these cases? Not likely.

Can I see Google punishing sites for having 5 ad blocks spread out in the sidebar and in the content in long form content? No, it'd be really stupid of them. But if the exact same content had 30 ad blocks, I can see them smashing that simply to deincentivize people from trying it.

The cases of 5 or less ad blocks seems fine to me, especially if they're all asynchronous and don't impact loading time or rendering.
 
I saw a post today that was top quality, had over 50 ads on it, but the content was incredibly long, and they truly didn't affect the speed or my ability to read and enjoy the content.

Any chance you could link me to that post? I'm very interested in checking it out.

The cases of 5 or less ad blocks seems fine to me, especially if they're all asynchronous and don't impact loading time or rendering.

I have seen people on Reddit as mentioned in my initial post in this thread have success due to reducing ad count on their pages after being hit on the 12th too. The site above had 6 ad units per page before I reduced the ads to two. I have been manually ripping amazon links off my other two sites pages today, it takes a whole bunch of time but some of the pages ended up having over 100 links.

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The screenshot above is of the plugin I use, the boxes with the red outline are no follow links, as you can see, the image, review rating, product name, prime icon and buy button are all links where I as had previously thought the whole box was one.
 
@shaunm what plugin is that?

Also would you mind pointing me to that reddit thread where less ads = better rank? I am also hit by this and too many ads could be part of the equation.

Thanks!
 
@shaunm what plugin is that?

Also would you mind pointing me to that reddit thread where less ads = better rank? I am also hit by this and too many ads could be part of the equation.

Thanks!
Plugin is AAWP
 
@shaunm what plugin is that?

Also would you mind pointing me to that reddit thread where less ads = better rank? I am also hit by this and too many ads could be part of the equation.

Thanks!

Inboxed you a link to one of them as I can't post links on here, there was another one on either /r/seo or /r/bigseo but they get more traffic then /r/juststart and I never commented on them so it will be a pain to find.

And yea, the plugin is AAWP.
 
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Another one of my sites, this was one of them that was using the AAWP plugin for amazon, some of its pages ended up having over 100 affiliate links when manually checked. Each of its pages are now in the 5-25 links range and its traffic has seemed to bounce back. I migrated hosts on the 12th so there is a slight dip in traffic then but it has three days of being back to its pre 12th December rollout levels of around 150 per day.

My third site that was hit by the rollout is having a total nightmare with the migration and it seems to have only came back online correctly today after being offline for around four days so its SERPs and analytics are all over the place. If it climbs back to its pre-rollout levels then I will make another post. The initial site I posted about has also been offline a few days but seems to be hovering around the 100 hits already so hoping that it holds or gains on traffic.

If anyone was hit by the rollout on the 12th and their sites are not getting traffic anymore then it maybe an idea to try to reduce/remove ads or affiliate links to see what happens.
 
@shaunm, What are the backlink profiles like for these sites? You may be onto something but halving and then re-doubling traffic doesn't mean much when we're talking about 100-200 sessions per day. The reason I ask about the backlinks is because a lack of them would lend itself to volatility anyways. The change of 100 sessions a day could be accounted for by a handful of long tails.
 
@Samwise89 two are PBNs/BNs and Web 2's one is a whole bunch of different things.

Were any of your sites hit? I would be interested in seeing what happens if you reduced your ads/affiliate links to see if they bounced back or not.
 
@shaunm said something interesting in his BHW journey thread about sites that rank not even having the keyword in their page title... and I took a lot at my niches and I see something strange! I see the keywords in the title, but not mentioned once in the article. However, I do see many related keywords used throughout the content (4000+ words per page and 3 or 4 similar keywords). For example:

Keyword is: best dog bed... not written in content anywhere apart from title tag.

Similar keywords found in content: best home dog bed, best canine bedding etc.

Is this Google over-optimization also at work? Do we need to de-optimize our content?
 
Is this Google over-optimization also at work? Do we need to de-optimize our content?

It's a testament to the fact that Google is beyond keyword optimization but still has to return results based on keywords. Google is dealing on the topical optimization level, which is what you're describing. The page is optimized for the topic, likely includes a ton of LSI terms about dogs and beds in general, but put the keyword they wanted to rank for in the most important spot of all, the title tag. I bet the slug has it too.

This is how the game is played now. I doubt you're over-optimized. It might have something to do with their general authority for the topic and their domain authority based on links.

But really all you want to do is tell Google what terms you want to rank for, which should be a parent term like "best dog beds" and then use child terms in the other places you'd optimize with, like the H2's, H3's, alt tags, etc. Like "best canine bedding" and "best home dog bed."

What happens is you don't over-optimize for a single keyword while you optimize for an entire basket of related keywords all situated as children beneath the main parent keyword. Like a mom dog feeding all of her pups on the teet while they're all comfy on their best dog bed.

I don't deal with keyword density any more. My density is like 0.1%. A tenth of a percent. But if you were to check my density by adding all of the related phrases together, I'd probably be around 2%. It's all about the topic now, not the keyword, but you want to use the parent keyword in the right places and then use the child keywords in the rest of the right places. That's how you end up ranking for all of them instead of just one.
 
Same here.

I noticed the same thing in a new niche i was researching last week. The site ranking #1 mentioned the main keyword (best xxx) JUST TWICE is an article no less than 3k words ; But he used LOTS of related terms and keywords.

Infact its safe to say he mentioned the main keyword just ONCE because the other mention was part of the auto generated "Quick Navigation Links".

Looks like this is the way going forward.
 
I took a lot at my niches and I see something strange! I see the keywords in the title, but not mentioned once in the article.

Just out of curiosity, is it all of the hits on the front page that have the keyword in their title or like 1-3 of them?
 
Q1: Should I worry about how many links I have to Amazon on a best/review page?

I see so many pages that still rank which have "in a hurry, here is the best pick" AND a comparison table with 10 items and 2 or 3 links per item etc.

Q2: What is the best method for interlinking on a multi-niche site with reviews in different niches (one broad niche like hats, but a review of top hats and review of baseball caps etc)? Creating a "how to put on a top hat" post and linking to the best top hats page just seems kind of spammy. How many pages do I need for topical relevance when I am targeting 100 different niches under 1 broad niche (best top hats page -> hats nice with 10 different hat reviews -> broader fashion niche site)?
 
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