Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2018

[Martin Ice Web]

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System: The following 7 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4885490.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:35 pm on Mar 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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Biggest drop ever. Much bigger than every panda or penguin.
All the work does not pay off. The only winner in this game is google itself.

[Spiekerooger]

When I said rollback yesterday, I meant a rollback from changings happening earlier in the week.
In theory, this could relate to the idea of lifted penalties small and big being removed during update (as stated by Shaddows) and then reapplied later on. E.g. I saw big gains beginning of the week and small loses at end of the week. So overall it's going up.

In my niche and region I see a lot of older smaller projects surfacing again while several big brands loose big time.

[enotalone]

I am also seeing things improving for the last 2-3 days but by 15% or so.

[MayankParmar]

It's weekend again. Sigh.

[RedBar]

So far today my lowest-ever PVs across many sites including UK local.

In my 25th year of constructing sites I am really beginning to wonder whether there is any point in Google any more, for my widget sector it is no longer a business enquiry generator, traditional trade exhibitions easily rule.

[MayankParmar]

One of my article dropped to 27th position from 5th position :(

[reseller]

I think there is a rollback to the situation before March 9, 2018. I wouldn't expect all websites to be affected by the rollback. :)

[EditorialGuy]

Is anyone here watching average search positions in Google Search Console?

I noticed a big change on March 14-15 (more than the usual modest ups and downs on the 7-day and 28-day graphs).

[MayankParmar]

@Reseller Indeed. I'm not seeing anything weird ("unrewarded sites") on G anymore.

[TravisDGarrett]

The increase of traffic I reported the other day, seems solid, I wish the same to others.

[Shepherd]

Is anyone here watching average search positions in Google Search Console?

March 8-9, 10.4 -10.5
March 14-15, 9.1 - 8.9

[enotalone]

you know now that we have started talking about average position, I have a situation that I don't understand. My average position did not change much in the course of the last 12 months or so. but my impressions and clicks dropped, how is that possible? here is the screenshot from the search console [imgur.com...] .

[MayankParmar]

My average position has improved as well, but how come the traffic dropped?

@enotalone maybe because of Top Stories? Some type of Top Stories could push down the actual SERP. And in some cases, ads + top stories pushes our sites to the bottom of the page. Furthermore, some featured posts have 5-6 images, occupying the entire screen on mobile.

[Maximum44]

I have been noticing that a higher keyword position does not always equal more impressions. You also have to have the same amount of users searching for the keyword. Maybe it is seasonal, maybe the keyword phrase were broken up to more parts and now is more granular and you only get exposed to one version of it. The possibilities are infinate :D

[MayankParmar]

[gsqi.com...]

A good article by Gabe. According to his analysis, low quality sites with tons of ads are affected. I run a news site so it's obvious that I've low quality articles, and a lot of ads as well. What I'm doing is increasing/improving the number of words/quality in articles. All of the articles will have at least 300 words. Is that okay?

[TravisDGarrett]

I run a news site so it's obvious that I've low quality articles

Why is it "obvious" ? Are you just copying news from other sites?

All of the articles will have at least 300 words. Is that okay?

SEO Rule #1: More words = more quality (irony)

[Maximum44]

Thanks for the link MayankParmar. Though it does not help solve everyones situation it gives great insight in what could be wrong (or not). You just never know :D

[deriklogov]

@MayankParmar Its very hard to say , we can create a vote and check who got large number of ads on sites and got hit
From my own experience :
What:

- 2 Similar sites (very similar to each other): Both have same number (3) of adsense units , location of ads a bit different but not much different
One site got hit (March 8) about 1.4M pages in index , another survive about 96,000 pages in index.
Both of them not mobile friendly.
Domain authority according to AHREFS is the same. The biggest difference is the number of pages on sites (indexed pages) and link profile is different.
Opinion:
I dont think that ads made any difference in this case, more like number of low quality pages. I believe google still spread some domain power over indexed pages because otherwise
you can create millions of pages and some of them will get traffic for sure. So somewhere inside there is a formula PagePower=Domain Authority (divided by) Number of indexed pages.
==============================
- One site no ads at all, survive too (very light traffic increase). Low number of indexed pages.(about 96,000)
Opinion: So again, this one and the one above have in common is number of indexed pages.
==============================
- Another site got hit on March 14. Same number of ads (3) per page.Indexed pages:300,000 . Mobile friendly, well optimized. High number of indexed pages.
Opinion: And again, looks like number of pages in index is the factor.

Overall : Looks like survival sites are the sites with low number of pages in index.
Well, to find out I probably need to cut down number of pages on one of the sites to see if it helps.
Share your details and maybe we could come up something in common.

[SpaceChimp]

"According to his analysis, low quality sites with tons of ads are affected."

@MayankParmar

My site that was effected has no ads at all and is fairly good quality with a lot of unique content for our niche, so I don't think it can be just that.

[RedBar]

FWIW I am now also seeing local UK sites with PVs down 50% the last few days and one of these is the premier hotel in the region yet rankings plus keyword searches still seem to be normal with 85.4% of traffic from the UK.

WTF is going on, it's just jumped off a cliff edge?

[sdksjdksjd]

A good article by Gabe.

What is good about it?
Usual SEO promo article, crying to hire the author.

"It’s a site that contacted me a while ago for help and we have stayed in touch ever since."
"The next increase I’ll cover is a long-term client of mine."
"I’ve been helping them over the past several months audit the site from a quality perspective"
"I uncovered a number of quality problems ranging from thin content, low-quality content"

Examples of negative impact are soooo obvious, that one can copy-paste them and use in the SEO articles after literally every update and this is exactly what these SEO people are doing.

It seems Google once again improved how it assesses quality

Google clearly stated, that it rewarded under-rewarded by this update, but sure SEO guys know better what is going and sure they will not use their knowledge to build their own super successful web property, but will write articles about their knowledge.
Nothing new.

[RedBar]

My site that was effected has no ads at all and is fairly good quality with a lot of unique content for our niche, so I don't think it can be just that.

I agree, I am seeing high quality corporate brochure sites losing traffic for an unknown reason and several of them carrying no ads whatsoever.

The only thing I can think is that there is lots of false/positive, positive/false stuff going on at Google resulting in them not having a clue what to do with a mess of their own creation.

Sure, I bet they have hit a load of "dubious" big sites however methinks loads of smaller quality sites have been caught in the crossfire as is their usual wont/tactic therefore we probably cannot do SFA about it because there is actually "no solution" for us until Google releases another major algorithm update when we cross our fingers and hoped to be allowed back again.

If one's site is full of garbage then you know what to do however if you're white hat, https, html5 responsive with quality exclusive articles and images, welcome to Google 2018 2.0 hell, quite simply they want you to PAY to play.

[samwest]

These days, traffic flux is more about traffic BEHAVIOR rather than POSITION. In my niche. the only correlation I find is that the behavior closely follows the GOOG stock price. Stock price down, conversions go down, stock price rises, conversions improve. Compare GOOG stock price [goo.gl...] to your conversion data. I'm sure it's just a strange coinkidink...

[RedBar]

coinkidink

Wow, I never knew that word existed:-)

[samwest]

yup : [yourdictionary.com...]
;)

[Cyril TechWebsites]

How big drop are you noticing, guys? One of my websites (super "white", super content, 2 years of growing etc.) was hit by big G since 15 march. My drop is about 10-12% and that's a pretty big drop for me. Last time I saw the same thing was the time when "fred" update was rolled out, in a few months I started noticing further drop to 20-30% until I started to cure the website, then things improved for me. But right now I don't understand how is the content that was really great and seriously updated after Fred can become "bad' now from the algo's point of view, I saw a great positive trend all 2017 year. Still hope that the things will be rolled back, but my experience tells me that this won't happen.

[mosxu]

It looks like initially the conversions go to 3-4 players who are happy to keep a high bid, rest of us only show in ads or rankings only if the 3-4 do not convert regardless of how high we bid or how fast the site is or how great our content is.

Personalised away from converting,

[sdksjdksjd]

But right now I don't understand how is the content that was really great and seriously updated after Fred can become "bad' now from the algo's point of view

Probably visitors engagement dropped for whatever reason.
Or, according to Google explanation, your content is not bad. They just rewarded under-rewarded.

Btw, should we consider Google as a reward dispenser from now on?

[RedBar]

Btw, should we consider Google as a reward dispenser from now on?

Gold, silver and bronze depending on just how close a neighbour one is to Mountain View?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Or, according to Google explanation, your content is not bad. They just rewarded under-rewarded.
....
Is there any contact form or email using which I can ask them to add me into the under-rewarded list that should to be rewarded?

P.S. I already sent an email on [e-mail], but no answer till now... Maybe someone can help?

[edited by: Cyril_TechWebsites at 6:05 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2018]

[RedBar]

can become "bad' now from the algo's point of view

Aha! The algo does not have a point of view, it only has people tweaking, pulling, pinching and generally a$$ing about with it ... these people do not live in the realworld, they think they know it all when, in reality, they know SFA, hence why we actually see a mess whereas they "think" they have created perfection.

The algo can only do what it is told to do, no more, no less, and if the monkeys are in control then bedlam occurs.