IS GOOGLE TRYING TO KILL AUTOMATED SERP TRACKING TOOLS WITH FREQUENT SERP UI CHANGES?

Most of you might be aware that Google has been frequently changing its user interface, often most noticeably on desktop and mobile search engine result pages aka SERPs.

Be it the recent Local Pack listings, Carousels in search results, Knowledge Graphs, Displaying of Google Shopping ads or Image and News listings, Google has done it all.

So, what influences these changes? Are these changes being motivated by profit (promoting Google AdWords), or is this a case of constantly improving the user experience (as claimed by Google), or perhaps an attempt to Kill Automated SERP Tracking Tools?

This blog post is about our own experience we had with Google rankings. Couple of weeks ago, we started noticing sudden turbulence in our ranking data. Since we monitor more than 200,000+ keywords across 3,000+ websites (local and national), we easily get to know what’s happening with our campaigns. This was roughly after Google announced roll out of the Panda 4.2 update. Obviously, we thought this fluctuation could be linked with the update.

However, we noticed that the rankings were still intact. In fact, the Panda update did not have any negative effect on our campaigns.

So, what caused the rankings to fluctuate?

Our developers ran some tests. It did not take long to conclude that a recent Google UI change has caused this. To clarify this, below is the before and after screenshots of the change in coding by Google.

Before:

After:

As you can see, Google changed the coding from an <li> to a <div> for each search result. How does this affect SERP Tracking tools? While previously because of <li> these tools could accurately calculate the ranking position of a website. But after the switch to <div> it’s difficult for SERP tracking tools to calculate actual website ranking on screen.

What’s next?

There is no doubt that Google will continue to make these changes and we have to cope with that. But as a SEO agency, we make sure that we are continuously on top of it and provide the best possible rankings to our clients. To add to this, we have the best SEO ranking tool in the industry with features such as:

• Track rankings on a weekly basis in Google and Bing with easy-to-understand interface
• Track local or global Rankings with support for multiple countries
• First software to track rankings in Google carousel
• Track YouTube videos, social profiles, local citations or any link you have built for your client
• Track Google Mobile rankings. We were the first in the industry to introduce this feature

So, if you want to benefit from these features and take your business to the next level get in touch with us. Call toll free on (888) 736-0541 OR Email us at sales@agencyplatform.com. And yes, do not forget to ask for a FREE Demo of our dashboard.