Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2017

[goodroi]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4847200.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 10:37 am on Jun 1, 2017 (utc -5)

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Happy June! I'm seeing an increased correlation with technical SEO and improved rankings. Improving page speed and site crawl ability makes Google happier with the sites I am working on.

Most of the people that are coming to me for help are using outdated SEO tactics that Google has devalued. The good news is I've been able to recover many rankings for these sites using the old strategies just updating the tactics to 2017. The bad news is Google keeps taking away organic real estate in the serps so even top rankings are generating less traffic for me.


Please remember that off topic comments aka any comment that isn't focused on Google Updates and SERP changes will be split off to its own thread to make it easier for the community to follow the different Google SEO topics.

[Jez123]

One of my SERP's jumped onto page 1 yesterday and was there all day. It's reverted back to where it was again. I guess it's something to do with filters being lifted or put in place during an update. What does it mean though? And why just 1 KW (as far as I could see anyway). If my results were under some filter surely it would be more than one KW but all similar phrases connected to that one that shot up?

I'm just trying to gain some understanding of what it means, if anything. Can anyone shed any light? I'm intrigued to know what others experience during updates only to have it revert again one the dust settles.

[mosxu]

Jez123

most of us seem to have similar experience during an update filters are off and less zombie traffic comes through but that is all we know

[nomis5]

Seems to me a big update is in progress. It seems to affect mobile SERPS more than desktop SERPS.

Makes sense. The upcoming mobile index will be the centre of attention for the next year or so as far as G is concerned. It's going to be far more incremental than many believed rather than big bang. And they are starting it now, not next year.

[MayankParmar]

Someone help me please. Google is not indexing my site. I manually submit the link to console and I see the article indexed after several hours. What is happening? :(

[MayankParmar]

From Monday to Friday, we write a article and publish it between 22:00 to 22:10. The article is high in quality with over 400-600 words. We go to Console and submit it for indexation. The article gets indexed in less than 1 minute.

The time 22:00 to 23:00 is very important. We get over 3K views at this time on this article. This was the case till 26th June. Things are very bad now...

Since past two days (27th June and 28th June), they don't index the article. They just don't! Idk why, looks very strange to me.

So I did a TEST.

At around 22:30-50PM, we created a new article on exactly same topic and to rank for same keyword. The article title is almost same but changed a bit at end. Content is completely new, not rewritten. It has green lights on Yoast (unlike the previous article). Just a minute later, I submitted it to Google as usual and guess what? They indexed the article! And rank is 1-5 as usual.

Can someone tell me what is exactly happening? Because of this I'm losing 3-4K traffic. Would love to read expert comments here...

[Atomic]

I see a lot of pages missing from Google's index. Some of them are popular pages that have been online for years.

I first noticed this on my own site and was getting worried. Then I started checking competitor sites and noticed the same thing. So I tried a bunch of other sites and found more pages missing from the index but functioning normally on their sites.

I tried the site: operator and it showed the current count but you can't check pages past 200 results. I replicated this on many sites. Looks like the index currently in production is very incomplete. The question is whether this is on purpose or is Google broken?

[Atomic]

I just noticed that the mobile index has all the missing pages. It's the desktop index that's incomplete.

Verrrry interesting. Two indexes. Both quite different.

[aristotle]

I see a lot of pages missing from Google's index. Some of them are popular pages that have been online for years.

That could have a really bad effect on the usefulness of google's search results. Something must be wrong with the index and/or the algorithm

[Atomic]

Absolutely. And I checked some of the biggest, most popular sites in the world and this applies to them, too. They are missing many, if not nearly all of their pages. On the bright side, Bing appears to have a working index.

[aristotle]

P.S. I just did a test search for which one of my pages normally ranks no. 1, but it was gone from the results for at least the first five pages. Then I went back to the first page of the results and refreshed the screen and suddenly my page was no. 1 again. Weird

[Atomic]

I've seen some behavior like that, too. I bet you find more missing pages. Depending on the size of your site you could be missing thousands of pages.

[breeks]

Same here missing pages. Many of them have been at the top four years.
Sites that have copied, regurgitated or reproduced my content remain
The original content pages have gone from the index.

Pages are all https, responsive, not ad heavy, jumped through all the hoops and ...........

[breeks]

Update:

Looks like everything has returned back to"normal" if there is a normal.

We will see what tomorrow brings.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Everything I recovered since Fred update was destroyed two days ago after this update. I returned to results I had just after Fred... -15% on first website, -20% on second one...

Pretty cool. I just even don`t want to do anything more on my websites with such things going up...

[aristotle]

It looks like google's search results have become less stable these past few months than they used to be.

But it should be the opposite -- the results should gradually become more stable over time if the algorithm is getting better at its job.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Guys, propose to give a new name to update - "2,7 Billion". That will let Googlers always remember what their "quality" updates leads to.

[Atomic]

Whatever was going on with the missing pages is still happening. There could be two or more indexes which could explain why the missing pages pop in and out.

[MayankParmar]

I will be able to check the indexing problem in 3-4 hours. I'll update. Fingers crossed...

[MayankParmar]

Alright. Something is really strange. I submitted the article to Google and they indexed it in a minute. But the article is only visible on desktop. When I checked on Mobile, I don't see it. Later I checked on desktop, the article disappeared. Now again I checked on Mobile, article is at end of 1st page. Earlier it used to rank 1-3. It disappears, appears again with different ranks. Lol.

What the hell is happening?

[masterjoe]

This update seems to have improved rankings somewhat for me. However, today has been a zombie day except for a few hours -- if I don't see any more action within the next few hours I'll assume that their zombie traffic filters are back on and the update has finished rolling. Like I mentioned earlier, the surest sign there is an update for me is when conversions go back to my usual 4% average (usually this is through newsletter sign ups, at which point I know I am getting converting traffic). On zombie days, this is usually more like .1- .4% which is what it looks like for now.

[reseller]

WebmasterWorld member @rustybrick (Barry Schwartz of Search Engine RoundTable) is asking "If anyone has examples of sites hit by this (current algorithm Update of June 24-25) , please share the URL and the analytics chart showing the drop, either publicly or privately with me. Maybe I can find a pattern..." .

You can email your feedback to Barry at email : barry AT rusty brick DOT com

Just wish to mention that Barry has been very generous in sharing with webmasters and SEOs communities his findings about previous algorithm updates and matters related to search engines and SEOs.

[edited by: reseller at 5:43 pm (utc) on Jun 29, 2017]

[Mark_A]

If you are concerned about the stuffing of the results with G owned properties and the reduction in opportunities for third parties to get effective rankings and traffic, perhaps you will be interested in the latest EU findings, including their 2.7bn Euro fine.

[virtualreality]

I do see very strange Google results today too. The funny thing is that even their own pages are missing. I usually login to my analytics account by searching "analytics" on Google which always used to come first obviously. Today it is nowhere to be found.

[mhansen]

We saw a drop in G referrals today on our homepage.

Checked Google "site:www.domain.tld" - All pages listed, as expected. Switched to one of the Google partner engines (Startpage) - ran a search for "www.domain.tld", which usually shows all URLs similar to the site command, (does not work on startpage) and the homepage was the only url missing from the index.

I've used Startpage as a data point in the past when checking site health, and found that many times, the index is completely different. Sites with little to no traffic that appear healthy in Google.com index, are often not found in these Google partner search engines.

Supplemental? Sandbox? Non-personalized? Index Update? Who knows...

[Atomic]

Checked Google "site:www.domain.tld" - All pages listed, as expected.

Did you go through each page of listings to make sure they were all there instead of checking the total number? I've also noticed that the completeness of the site:domain.com search depends on which datacenter you're accessing at that moment.

When I check we go from everything present to missing entire categories. And this holds true for pretty much any domain I care to check. Not just my own sites.

[mhansen]

Did you go through each page of listings to make sure they were all there instead of checking the total number? I've also noticed that the completeness of the site:domain.com search depends on which datacenter you're accessing at that moment.

Yes. In this case, the 3 different sites I checked are not very large sites, less than 20 pages each. On 2 of those I checked, the homepage ONLY was missing in Startpage index, but fine in Google. On the third site, all pages including homepage were listed in both indexes, and the third site has not suffered any drop in referrals.

[gduffield]

Something definitely seems to be happening. In the last week, I've had at least 20 of my top keywords drop by anywhere from 20 to 95 positions. Some of the primary keywords that my site is built around...not in a spammy way...but just naturally...are completely out of the index. Not even in the top 100. After dealing with all this madness for 15+ years I'm about to call it quits and just focus on my local business that does more revenue and has no reliance on Google at all.

[ChrisZoom]

OK i looked over many keywords. Google is for sure throttling results. Either a test for new serps they want to place in permanently or they want to show different results for different people. Maybe they want to throttle results for different users that search up certain keywords often?

Its almost like some keyword results have at least 2 or 3 different indexes. I see many homepages disappearing out of the index then reappearing again later. Even some of my sites are acting wacky but traffic seems to be almost the same? Some of these sites have not had any links built to them just ranked naturally, but many of them are partial emd's.

It seems EMD (Exact Match Domains) sites with some keyword traffic or sites with keywords in the domain are getting hit hard by this index change as far as I can see, but like I said the results could be different for you if keywords are throttling. Almost like Google might be sending a message to stop ranking the main page for keywords or let's make different results at different times for everyone. Its really wacky.

Let's keep this going. Anyone else noticing this.

EDIT: Seems results went back to original index for now. Maybe it was just a test. Those results looked horrible lol, glad they switched it back for now.

[chrisv1963]

This update is crap ...

For a keyword I'm following i'm getting the following on page one of the SERPS on desktop.

First of all a: 3 rows with in total 17 pictures
1. Website A
2. Pinterest
3. Pinterest
4. Website A
5. Website A
6. Pinterest
7. Pinterest
8. uk.pinterest
9. Website A
10. uk.pinterest
11. Website A
12. Website B
13. Website B
14. Website B
15. Website C
16. Pinterest
17. Website B

FYI: Website A is a scraper, mainly using photos taken from Instagram + modified texts (clearly re-written in India) copied from other websites.

The listings:
1 = Website A (again the same scraper with stolen Instagram photos)
2 = Website D
3 = Website B
4 + 5 + 6 + 7 (!) = Pinterest (the cloaker that forces users to register and login before they can view the content)

I this good user experience? It's almost like Google lost control. They are not able to detect scrapers, list the same websites over and over, take the easy route and list Pinterest again and again, ...

One of my main competitors who has an extremely good website with top content dropped and is now on page 3. My own website dropped to page 2.

[MayankParmar]

chrisv1963 + Yes, the update is crap. The new article which only have the keywords (stuffing is done) ranks better than me. Earlier I was first but now those crap sites are enjoying! :/