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Google Caffeine Update in Full Swing?

Not sure if anyone else is noticing it, and I am sure someone will see otherwise – but it looks like the Google Caffeine Update is being rolled out to more data centers. On several well established and steady traffic sites – I have noticed significant changes in the visitors being referred from the Google search engine over the past 24-48 hours.

Late last year, Matt Cutts talked more about the Caffeine Update coming after the holidays… and truthfully, I thought they had already been made! I noticed changes in mid-January… some good, some… not so good.

This week however, the traffic being referred by Google is DRAMATICALLY different, some good and some not! One site that usually sees about 750 daily unique visitors has jumped to 3500+ daily visitors! (Literally overnight on the 17th- and ALL from google search ranking it higher) Another site that has traditionally done very well in the engines search results… well, it has gone the other way from +2000 daily visitors to less than 400. Just like the other site… Overnight, 17th!

Have you noticed any fluctuations in your own Google referred traffic?

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About the Author, Mark Hansen

has written 573 article(s) at the Niche Store Builder site.

I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing. 

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9 Comments »

  • Anand Srinivasan said:

    Hi Mark

    I have not noticed it from my end. Could you confirm if the overnight increase in traffic was an overall spread and not to any particular recently published article? I guess it could also be that a lot of people searched for a keyword in your recent article whch showed up in the ‘Recent Blog Results’ OneBox on Google SERPS..

    Reply – Quote
    # 18 February 2010 at 11:55 pm
  • Mark Hansen (author) said:

    @Anand Srinivasan – The changes are very noticable on some of my own sites, and I also see large amounts of bot activity a day or two in advance of the traffic swings.

    Not ALL sites for sure – but many… like 80% of my own across four separate servers.

    And – the changes happened during a time when I was out of town and didn’t post for several days, so no digg, stumble or out of the ordinary traffic for a new post.

    I cannot find any large difference in datacenter IP activity, so its hard to figure out EXACTLY why, yet. (No posted links or anything either)

    Odd for sure…

    Reply – Quote
    # 19 February 2010 at 12:12 pm
  • Bill G said:

    Haven’t noticed any traffic changes yet.

    Reply – Quote
    # 19 February 2010 at 1:16 pm
  • Sonia said:

    I have seen a drop in traffic ranging 20-50% from Google in quite a few of my sites between the 17th & 18th and a couple with increased traffic of 50% or more. Of course the sites with increased traffic are ones that I don’t care too much about. Whatever Google is doing, I don’t likey. I want a decaffeinated update.

    Reply – Quote
    # 19 February 2010 at 2:14 pm
  • Mark Hansen (author) said:

    @ All –

    Just to follow up on this more – it looks like HG is making some changes to their backend systems in cPanel as well. On my dedicated box, I logged in and found a completely different panel, then the same held true for several of the reseller sites on another account.

    I cannot account for the RISE in traffic across several sites – but the drop may in fact be a simple issue of sites being down?

    Again… not sure. Just chasing trails. (Actually done chasing and moving on now! LOL)

    Reply – Quote
    # 19 February 2010 at 6:08 pm
  • Vangelis said:

    Haven’t noticed any traffic changes. Wherever he may be (Google Caffeine) I didn’t see him coming.

    Reply – Quote
    # 20 February 2010 at 8:43 am
  • spiritus said:

    When you mention traffic dropping is this related to a fall in SERPS also ?

    One of my sites has tanked from #3 to # 279. On one day it fell over 100 spots.

    Reply – Quote
    # 26 February 2010 at 2:42 am
  • grannypro said:

    Yes, I noticed the same precipitious drop-off. One of my sites was getting over 700 hits a day and on the 17th it dropped to 40, then bounced slightly on the 18th to 159 and since the 19th I have been lucky to get 20 hits a day. Unfortunately, I have not seen any bounces the other way.

    Reply – Quote
    # 5 March 2010 at 3:57 pm
  • Neil Street said:

    Good post Mark, and I think you are absolutely on the money. Despite what Google has said recently, about it not being rolled out yet, I have noticed a major uptick in traffic on 3 sites that I manage. The sites are unrelated, and nothing was done on them that I can point to as an explanation, other than Caffeine. The amazing thing was that traffic started moving up on all 3 at the same time, on the weekend of January 2. I did a whole blog post on it, at http://smallbusinessonline.net/blog/2010/03/03/signs-of-google-caffeine-update-from-early-january/

    IMHO I don’t see how my traffic bump could be anything other than Caffeine. The pattern of increase across the 3 sites is almost identical, and it all happened at once. Also, all 3 sites are still doing equally well, now in March.

    Reply – Quote
    # 9 March 2010 at 1:51 pm