Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2018

[Shaddows]

System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4894234.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:34 am on May 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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We've seen a huge shift in traffic patterns today. Traffic and conversions are relatively stable, but destination pages are very different.

In terms of products sold, it is very similar to the pre-March profile (which is different to the various iterations over the last 6 weeks)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:51 pm (utc) on May 1, 2018]
[edit reason] Split to new thread. [/edit]

[reseller]

Dear Folks

Please...please keep this thread for posts related to Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2018
Thanks and God bless :)

[samwest]

If we are to discuss "Google Update and SERP Changes" then we need to examine things like AI and where this is all going and what's already here. Google has recently demonstrated super creepy AI technology that will make phone calls for you. It can also mimic and impersonate actual people. So if they can manipulate this stuff, what type of AI is manipulating traffic and SERPS and eventually maybe even mimicking entire websites? We know it's happening and began several years ago. Watch this video to learn about the creepy direction that Google is taking AI: [youtu.be...]

@shaddows & glakes - I'd love to see a new topic on how to effectively block Google from knowing what we do and where we go. The creepiness has finally arrived at the tipping point for me.

@reseller - Thanks and God bless you too!

[Cralamarre]

Maybe there could be a separate thread for more generalized Google discussions. Personally, I don't stay subscribed to these threads anymore because I wake up in the morning with 20 email notifications, but they're all just from two or three people having a personal chat. So maybe a separate "General Google Talk" thread is in order.

[BushyTop]

Update:- We're still seeing changes. I've noticed that the sensors and mozcast have come down back to normal numbers..... but changes are still happening every ~6 hours in my sector.

[mosxu]

AI take over is very much on topic I should say.

[samwest]

VERY big drop in SERP's for my test site this morning...coincidentally right after I called out G's new AI direction. Maybe it has a "tude" too. lol

[mosxu]

@samwest

GDPR will no longer allow AI to use the “brain computer interface” without your permission but you need to wait for the US version...

Sorry a bit off topic let me check analytics and get back

[Jhurwith]

Good SEOs should have been planning for that stuff last year.

[samwest]

If I get one more call from "online specialist Tiffany" about claiming my Google online listing, I'm gonna go berserk. Here they bashed us all for "web spam" and then turn around and created the perfect environment for "phone spam" proliferation. Nice job MV. Six calls yesterday alone.

[Travis]

"phone spam" proliferation. Nice job MV. Six calls yesterday alone.

And with google's AI powered caller bot, you'll be able to receive much more calls each day in the future...

[EditorialGuy]

If I get one more call from "online specialist Tiffany" about claiming my Google online listing, I'm gonna go berserk. Here they bashed us all for "web spam" and then turn around and created the perfect environment for "phone spam" proliferation.

IMO, the real culprit was Alexander Graham Bell. Or maybe Thomas Watson, who answered Bell's call.

[samwest]

^ yeah, right - exactly what G would say.

[glakes]

IMO, the real culprit was Alexander Graham Bell. Or maybe Thomas Watson, who answered Bell's call.

They are third parties trying to make a buck signing up customers to manage their Google listings. They use the same phone script, but change the name. Those calls are so annoying, especially for those of us that have multiple inbound numbers. Sometimes they call the second line immediately after the first, though at times they've called both numbers at the same time.

[mosxu]

Hello Thomas,

How much zombie traffic did you get yesterday?

I wished I’ve lived in Watson times, no bots, no AI, not so much worries like today.

[widgetized]

Sooo many spam e-mails and no user conversion / sales these days... what's happening?

I was just comparing this month with the same month 3 years ago: traffic went up, but everything else is getting worse (bounce rate, page views, session duration). Always feel that the wrong people (not saying zombies) are visiting my website. I wish Google could send relevant traffic again.

[samwest]

@ glakes - Excatly, and "third parties" who say "This is Tiffany, online specialist WITH Google" - but let's say it's the inventor of the phone instead.That's funny stuff - [youtu.be...]

@widgettized - welcome to the club of forgotten websites..

[mosxu]

@widgettized

Wrong people bounce fast,

One day of high spend and no coversion I want my money back

[EditorialGuy]

Excatly, and "third parties" who say "This is Tiffany, online specialist WITH Google"

"Rachel from Cardholder Services" calls me a lot more than Tiffany from Google does, but I don't blame Visa or MasterCard for Rachel's sins. I blame the criminals who make the scam calls. And I don't let Rachel distract me from looking at my Google Analytics stats, which are pretty normal this month. (Average rankings have been creeping up for desktop, mobile, and tablet, and the changes don't appear connected to Rachel's call schedule.)

[samwest]

@EG - When you mass collect business data, then display it in an non-opt-in manner, you create the environment for Google AND third party scammers posing as Google to robo-call you to death to verify those listings. That's my point, which you are not grasping or deflecting. A better approach would be for business owners to simply list their businesses only if they want them listed. (That's called OPT-IN) While Google's intention is nice, the resulting harassment for many may not be so nice. This is the typical carrot & stick approach, they give you a free ad listing from their massive collective then harass you to get $350 to verify the listing or lose traffic.

As an example, I visited a very non tech savvy auto body client site yesterday and he was also at his wits end, getting robo called to death (same format "this is (Name) online specialist WITH Google") and he had no idea that his site had even been listed. We checked and yes it was, complete with the street view photo, phone number and the "claim this site" link. So, once again, Google created the environment. Bell created the communicate device. Got that? As you always say, YMMV.

BTW - I'm sure "Racheal from card services" calls you more because you already jumped through the verify-your-Google-listing hoop....now in phase II the goal is to get you seventy five credit cards so you can proceed to phase III and BUY MORE ADS! - and soon (June) API usage.

[EditorialGuy]

BTW - I'm sure "Racheal from card services" calls you more because you already jumped through the verify-your-Google-listing hoop....

Nope. "Rachel from Cardholder Services" is one of the most common robocall scams, and it has nothing to do with Google. (Just as Tiffany, whoever she is, has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.)

[glakes]

Just as Tiffany, whoever she is, has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

LOL, quite accurate. Though the issue of spam makes me wonder why Google does not want to or have the capability to stop scrapers/spam bots from hitting our contact form page. In the age of AI and heavily personalized search results, why does Google still allow these bots through? Don't spam bots get a personalized ban? I recall reading an article regarding Google's bot identification being so good that it required no user input (entering CAPTCHA, etc.). Yet it does not appear to be used in their search engine.

[samwest]

Let's see...posting traffic and conversion trends related to Google changes and SERP updates - off topic.
Discussing the Google robo caller attempt to shape the accuracy of local business listings, even though it's targeted non opt-in at every type of site, informational, news, non tangible, etc ,a clear Google trend that affects SERPs - off topic.
Welcome to shill-ville.

BTW - in case it was missed, Google's new caller AI has been trending on every news outlet on the planet this week. My only hope is that they read this and think twice about deploying it in any "claim your listing" campaign. You know it's coming.

Continue reporting happy travel site traffic patterns, reverse engineering the algo and gaming the system.

[aristotle]

Though the issue of spam makes me wonder why Google does not want to or have the capability to stop scrapers/spam bots from hitting our contact form page

I'm not sure what you're referring to. If the contact form is part of your site, then google doesn't have any way to prevent bots from accessing it. You can try to block bots yourself using an htaccess file, but it would be a never-ending job trying to keep up with all the new ones.

btw -- If you put email addresses and phone numbers on images, then it's much harder for bots to get them.

[glakes]

Bots do enter our site/contact form from Google. With a couple dozen clean proxies, and the right software, anyone can pull contact form pages from Google 24/7. Though the bot crawl speed must be slow. Google has the ability to prevent this, but CAPTCHA is only triggered with aggressive harvesting. One would think Google would be employing existing technology to prevent this, but they are not. It should not be hard for them to identify/block repeated searches for {keyword} "contact us" LOL

Recaptcha v3 is still Beta and maybe things will change for bots crawling the SERPS in the future. Though I think Google already can identify such bots and uses the bot traffic as filler. See [xda-developers.com...] for more info

[samwest]

@aristotle - perhaps the easiest way to block bots (and bad guys) is using a CDN like Cloudflare - the free version firewall sets a challenge page, the Pro version simply blocks all traffic from a particular country IP range. Not sure what technical or Google implications may arise (don't really care), but for my purposes, it does the job keeping out visitors and bots from bad actor countries and places where I just don't do business. Easy Peasy.

[NickMNS]

I don't know what is going on but I had 1/4 of my average daily traffic in the last hour. The traffic is all coming from Google to a diversity of pages (as is expected in my case). Is this just me?

[Cralamarre]

No change here. Traffic dropped a little during the past few hours, which I chalked up to Mother's Day, but it seems to have recovered and is now back to normal.

[mosxu]

Recaptcha 3.0 [xda-developers.com...] will not detect zombies sadely as they have enough interaction.

Blocking bots? But who is fighting who?

[BushyTop]

Anyone else noticing a different filter on the SERPs this morning. In our sector, some of those competitors that got banged are returning. Although, it looks like we're about the same....

[mosxu]

Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist working at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California and former editor of Psychology Today says:

“We have determined, through our research, that the search suggestion effect can turn a 50/50 split among undecided [voters] into a 90/10 split just by manipulating search suggestions.”

If we replace [voters] with [shoppers] it may explain why converting traffic is disappearing but we need to find out what are these misterious zombies replacing the shoppers.