Google MAYDAY update is affecting long tail keyword rankings.
“Mayday”, term known for those in need of help! This is also the name coined to the latest Google Caffeine update. If you’re a keen Search Engine Optimiser or webmaster you’ve surely seen some signs of major updates at Google’s. The Google Mayday update has been running for nearly a month now though many have just recently been aware of the reality of this major update. So what is this Google Mayday update, what does it bring, and what specificities does it have?
Why Mayday?
The Google Mayday term might be amusing but it is not really. Mayday has been chosen first because the update is taking place in May and second because it is hitting websites in terms of ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Now, are you spotting any difference in your rankings? If not, you should check if you’ve been ranking on “long tail keywords”. The Google Mayday update has been affecting long tail keywords rankings mostly as the algorithm seems to have been set to reorganise ranking on such keywords. I’ve seen major changes on some of my websites ranking on such keywords. Second, some websites are so affected by this update that it is a real “Mayday” call out that is being made.
Novice watch!
For those who are just finding out this term “long tail keywords”, here is a quick overview. When talking about keywords we usually refer to 1 word keywords being essential to a site such as website, seo, ranking, expert, etc. In many cases we cannot be competitive on such keywords because of the amount of “pollution” in the results pages. The solution is then to use “long tail keywords” especially in Mauritius as we’re targetting a Mauritian audience. We’ll then get long tail keywords like “search engine optimisation mauritius”. This has the disadvantage of not being well indexed on general keywords but do a great job sending highly-targetted traffic from those people searching exactly for these specific information online.
Good news or bad news?
Is Google Mayday update good or bad for your website? The answer is: it depends. Here is what has been noticed. If you’ve been ranking high on some long tail keywords for some time but have not really managed it, chances are that your page might be plummeting in the rankings. On the other side, you might be catching up with some competitors on other long tail keywords if you’ve been working on these. All in all, the Google Mayday update might be positive as well as negative for a same website. Nothing is definitive for the time being as the Google “Mayday” update is still running as of today.
Let’s talk about this…
Have you noticed a change in your rankings these past days? Did the Google Mayday Update affect your site(s)? What are your views on long tail keywords, do you use them a lot, especially in Mauritius?
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This change is pretty much a disaster to newbies since they may not know many of the things than experience bloggers and webmasters. I think Google has made many people to shout out “May day” “May day” because of their update this time
.-= Shiva | Web Magazine recently wrote: Social Page Evaluator – Check your Facebook FanPage’s Value =-.
I had a good laugh with your comment Shiva. Yes! The update has been a disaster. For one thing now, we are absolutely sure that Google does give some decent attention to long tail keywords now.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Smashing Magazine has changed, will the trend whores also change? =-.
I really noticed a drop in search engine traffic at the beginning of may and it was for long tailed keyword searches. I was getting around 100 hits a day from google and it dropped to around 5. It is slowly picking up again, but I did notice it. Thank you for letting us all know about this update.
Wow, that must have been hard to cope with Lucas. Well, good thing that it’s going up again. Have you done anything to invert this process, I mean have you had any action in terms of SEO when you noticed the drop?
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Smashing Magazine has changed, will the trend whores also change? =-.
Thanks for this update. I haven’t really done anything to optimize my main blog, but I use lots of seo on my niche sites. All of them are targeted to long tail keywords.
.-= Mike Roosa recently wrote: I’m Giving Away The Farm — Read This If You Like Free Stuff =-.
Thanks for your comment Mike. Do you have a specific long tail keyword strategy on your niche sites?
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: The secret of strong and em tags. =-.
What I don’t understand yet about the google May Day thing is this:
I read that they changed the longtail phrase search stuff due to spammers, yet the way they changed it seems to make it a lot harder for webmasters to write good content. We may now have to write weird, as I understand it.
For example, I read that you have to have the EXACT phrasing for a longtail search. If someone searches for “herbs body wraps” instead of “body wrap herbs” and my site only has the three words “body wrap herbs” strung together in one place, my site will not come up. This is different than before. Because I had keyword density for each of the three words: body, wraps and herbs, it used to come up no matter how the words were strung together.
Well, here’s the problem, how do you use the words “herbs body wraps” in a sensible sentence? It doesn’t make sense. So, if webmasters now have to plug in all these weird nonsensical phrases, what does that do to the readability of the content for those who visit the website, simply looking for good info on herbal body wraps?
And another thing…..is anybody testing out longtail phrase searches? I’m not happy with my own search results on google now. The longtail searches I do myself do not pinpoint information I myself am looking for, as well as they did before google May Day.
I also read that the May Day update isn’t over but is constantly being tweaked so I’m hopeful that google will keep tweaking away at this until it becomes more stable again.
I understand your stand point and your frustration as well Neva, as it is also the case for this blog. Mayday’s algorithm seems to be favouring long tail keywords as “exact match” which rather goes against what has always been asked before, i.e. user oriented content. If such keywords find their way through we’ll be going backwards in SEO as most marketeers and SEOers will have to build nonsensical phrases.
Coming back to monitoring long tail phrases, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the SERPs these last days and on some searches this blog has rather well done as it has gained about 2 places on the first page on some specific searches. On others it is real crash and burn.
Now, as you said Mayday is still not over, we’ll have to wait and see how it ends up. I just think that we have to be patient, that’s all.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Smashing Magazine has changed, will the trend whores also change? =-.
Web Design Mauritius: Thanks for the feedback. What’s so bizarre about this particular update is how it is fluxing so wildly, at least in my experience. Right after I posted this comment, I went back and searched for body wrap herbs as well as herbs body wraps and now…..my site is showing back up for both. It looks totally different than it did even yesterday.
I hope, when the dust settles, it will settle on the side of webmasters who write good content and not on the side of people who write sentences that make no sense, just to get exact match phrases.
It actually good to put away spammers. I yet trying to learn about this update on several webmaster blog but the summary is you must have exact combination of long tail search term on top of your page if you want to rank high. However, it do effect my traffic but now I’m regaining my traffic well. This new change just help me to compete with some well established site.
.-= Arafat Hossain Piyada recently wrote: Link Different: Help you to share only relevant link on twitter =-.
Great point Arafat. We were discussing about the fact that long tail keywords are becoming nonsensical. On the other side it is true that with this new algorithm it seems to be easier to compete with established competitors. This makes it more exciting now!
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Google MAYDAY update is affecting long tail keyword rankings. =-.
Thanks Sachin – I had noticed just yesterday that my site had fallen off of the first page where I had it positioned since it’s second week. It was not even on the second page. I have just checked now and it’s back on the first page and has risen a few ranks also. Google always scares me with these things but I guess it keeps us on our toes.
Hi Eddy,
thanks for your comment. Rankings have been going up and down for the past weeks and it seems that the Google robot is modifying and updating its index on the fly. It might become clear if the real time indexation rumour is proved real.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
I found that the longtail rankings had gotten more specific, trying to match longtail searches with articles or pages that are the closest to the search term.
I found that the people that were most affected are those whose main priority was not the optimization of those longtail keywords, I may be wrong since it’s just a quick observation.
Definitely a problem for the newbies, this is Google’s game and we have to play by their rules. Basically they do whatever the hell they like even if it leaves half the seo world in a frenzy.
Thank you for inputting your observations Justin. For sure, not everybody works directly on long tail keywords. They might find themselves inadvertly (but positively) indexed on such keywords. It was a token of confidence from Google to those who generated user-centered content and the way this is affecting SEO is now a bit weird.
This trend, if confirmed, will mean more SEO rather than genuine quality content.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
So it looks like this update has gone after long tail. What can we do about it though especially for car dealerships that have the majority of their pages on the website just with a car listing info, or a listing of inventory?
Frankly speaking Christine, there’s not much to be done. Everybody is testing various possibilities but the update is still going on. Some rumours say that the whole things is “real time update”. This algorithm being new we are all waiting for the dust to settle to start analysing the results.
Thanks for stopping by.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
i have a site and i lost all my traffic is this will be permenant or temporary ??
and there is any solution to solve long tail keywords problem ??
thnx 4 ur post
Hi Bestway,
thanks for your comment. Well, I can’t tell you that the Mayday update loss of traffic is permanent or temporary but it has been confirmed that what has been seen over the past weeks is the new Google algorithm: Caffeine. These effect will now be permanent.
There are however, a lot of sites giving advice on how you should be reworking on your pages, especially the long tail keywords oriented ones.