Google Slower to Trust New Pages than One Year Ago?

[EGOL]

It seems to me that Google is slower to trust (and rank) new pages today than in the past.

I used to be able to put up a new page and it would go right to the top of a competitive SERP.

For about the past year when I launch a new page it starts deep in the SERPs, sits there for a few weeks, then starts slowly moving up.    These pages still eventually rank on the first page of Google - often at #1 or #2 after wikipedia or another strong site - but it can take a few months to get there, several months in a competitive SERP.

These are not "hot news" topics where freshness is an important factor.  Instead they are product pages or general information articles.

Anybody else seeing this?

[ Just stabbing in the dark here... I am wondering if Google is relying more on visitor behavior these days and the delay is while they collect data?... Just stabbing in the dark.]

[jesse-landry]

ABSOLUTELY!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Lately I've re-launched a few penguined pages with new URLs so the 404 would rid the black-hat action. The keywords have slowly regenerated whereas in the past you'd see them have a big jump quickly and then start to fade back down (if your SEM campaign didn't keep up of course.)

Anyway I definitely have been seeing this lately. Good topic. Makes me feel better.

[Czubmeister]

I launched a dental website a couple of months ago and within a month, we had incredible keyword rankings ahead of many of the competitors in the same town. We had a brand new url, brand new content and everything. So in this case, we seemed to rank well in a short amount of time. Our content was nothing special, but unique of course. I am still scratching my head to figure this one out!

[OverflowSEO]

Social media plays a big part in getting noticed, crawled and indexed faster by Google, Bing and Yahoo. When launching a new website, try registering the main social networking channels (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn) and complete user profiles, including the URL of your new website. If you regularly update each social media channel, connect with other users, and post relevant content, you may find that your new site gets indexed faster.

[jesse-landry]

Good chance either some or all of these things happened:

a.) your competitors had built links through black-hat seo firms

b.) you are a victim/beneficiary of the Google Honeymoon (keep building links/content and don't be sad if you disappear in a few days back down the SERPs. You can gain it back quickly!)

c.) your content was stronger and your keyword/on-site SEO work was done proper

[PhilGraham-SlateInboundMarketi]

It must depend on the keyword because in the past few weeks, I've had a couple of brand new domains hit the first page of Google very quickly. It's not for ultra competitive keywords, but it isn't for bad keywords that people aren't searching for either.

I've got well over 1,000 website that I do testing with, I'll add another 50+ this week to do some testing on.

Any particular keywords you guys want me to test? Give me something that is middle or the road, nothing too hard or easy, that way we should get some pretty quick results.

[KarlBantleman]

I'd agree. I think the reason is because there are so many boxes to tick nowadays if you want to have good rankings in the SERPs. Google is looking deeper into every website now (after Penguin 2.0) and this is clearly having an affect on how quickly websites are ranking for keywords on deeper pages.

On the flip side, whereas rankings would jump around quite a lot in the past, as Google as delved deeper into a website, hopefully once a new website has its rankings, there shouldn't be too much fluctuation which is great as you can put some budgets, strategies and plans in place.

[jesse-landry]

So I just 404'd an old page and changed it's URL and re-launched it last Tuesday. Today it has been indexed and is on page 3 for a fairly competitive keyword. That was much quicker than I expected.

Granted, I built a few links for this one last week and didn't let it just go without but I still find this relevant.

Also, I still feel like a few months back this would have happened by Thursday/Friday of last week.

Anyway that's my latest findings.

[EGOL]

...in the past you'd see them have a big jump quickly and then start to fade back down...

Right... in the past a good page on a strong site would bust right to the top and Google would play "whack a mole".   Now the good pages on a strong site will start deep in the SERPs and without promotion, they will climb slowly to the spot that you would have initially expected them to rank.

Instead of "whack a mole" google is saying... "prove the you deserve it".   At least, that's what it looks like to me.

[EGOL]

Nice work on getting those quick rankings.

These types of results are becoming hard to get.

[jesse-landry]

Is it weird that I like this way better? It's making me work harder, but I think it's much more "fair."

[EGOL]

The keywords that the articles target have a Moz KW Difficulty of about 50%.   All of this is being done without any linkbuilding or other promotion.  Just the ranking power of unique, substantive content on an authority domain.

A year ago these pages would have gone to the first page of Google within 24 hours.  Now they still go to the first page but it might take 24 weeks.

[EGOL]

Thanks for the analysis.   Your description makes a lot of sense.  Maybe that is what Google is doing.  Assessing to see if all of the boxes are checked.

[EGOL]

Thanks for the report, Jesse.