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]

[samwest]

@mos - +1 I'd love to see more third party professional validation for the theories and assumptions we as webmasters throw out there. While we are great at assembling bits and bytes, we do not have adequate data to make precise evaluations of what's inside the AI mind of Google.
90% of what is posted here is confusion and speculation based on cause and effect, and since we are all very different in our endeavors and niche, our results and conclusions vary too wildly for any true scientific comparison.
At least when Matt Cutt's was around, we had some sort of guidance and validation, but the lack of transparency with Google has created a whole lot of cynical webmasters. Meanwhile, AI manipulation and trickery makes meaningful analysis nearly impossible.

In the end, what we get is a lot of "hey look, a squirrel!" reports. As far as my own observation of the week, traffic down, conversions down, totally zombie page sitter behavior reigns with very occasional human traffic and conversions. Drip traffic prevails.

[glakes]

“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.

@mosxu

In my industry, all roads lead to Amazon with search suggestions mostly producing the same set of Amazon crowded results. Though Amazon pulling their product ads may provide a rare opportunity for some non fortune 10 ecommerce sites to be seen in Google. Amazon's move may also provide evidence that we are not alone in seeing zombies or that for everyday product queries Google offers a poor ROI. But if I had the first 2, 3, 4+ organic listings in a Google query like Amazon so often has, not being seen in product ads probably would not matter that much.

Regardless of my comments, your post highlights just how much power Google has. Search suggestions, domain crowding, etc. all help to shape a users reality. And when that reality is shaped by a publicly traded company intent on ever increasing profits, what's good for the general public is secondary. Restricting choice in the search results, created by domain crowding, I believe to be evidence of that.

[mosxu]

@sam

Problem we have if we do not find the cause of why the converting traffic is driven away from us. Nobody will. It is wrong to think that AI will turn arround and say let’s start treat samwest, glakes, mosxu and many more like us fairly.

Maybe we are subject to experiments or maybe it is happening at a larger scale. ISPs should be able to see what is put in front of people eyes to a certain extent.

[aristotle]

Bots do enter our site/contact form from Google

Most bots will find your site anyway. They don't need google to do it.

As for the contact form, the commonsense solution is to put a noindex tag on that page to keep it out of the search results.

[aristotle]

glakes -- Also, haven't you said that your site gets traffic from amazon. I would bet that's how most of these harvestor bots are finding it -- by following links from amazon.

[Steven29]

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.

Have you never followed the backlinks log a huge corporation? Ive seen 2.5 million google plus in 12 hours for a test page

[NickMNS]

The increased traffic I reported yesterday evening is continuing this morning. Not quite as strong but it is still early.

[Cralamarre]

No such luck here. Everything is looking pretty much the same as usual.

[samwest]

No luck here either. Feeling like route 66 today...you know, the places they bypassed with the ISH. Funny how you can be #1 on page one on a planet of 7 billion and still get only one visitor at a time.

[thepointer]

Many of us on the JustStart Sub Reddit think it has to do with Yoast creating thin content with our images. We noticed a huge spike (2.5x to 8x) increase indexed pages when we look in the Google search console. For some reason, Yoast is giving every image on a site its own post and Google is indexing these posts. Since these posts are just images and no words on it this could be triggering a type of thin content ranking factor.

[glakes]

As for the contact form, the commonsense solution is to put a noindex tag on that page to keep it out of the search results.

Being a business we want people to easily find our contact page where they can use the form, locate our email address (its a non-clickable static image) or make use of our phone number. Our contact page is in our sitelinks and real people do make use of that link.

I would bet that's how most of these harvestor bots are finding it -- by following links from amazon.

Amazon prohibits external links. Amazon shoppers do find our site though they're most likely searching for a SKU or business name in a search engine. With a couple dozen clean proxies, GSA SER can harvest Google's results at a slow pace. Those results can be imported into ones favorite contact form spamming software. Out of the box I don't think xRumer does it, but there was a paid add-on available at one point that did it. But there are lots of low end contact form submitters out there for little money - they just don't have the harvesting capabilities. Regardless, some spam submissions can be traced from a Google search result landing on our contact form page where the spam is submitted (does have CAPTCHA). Possibly some software with integrated CAPTCHA solving capabilities or ported out to a solving service. Don't know, cause I'm not a spammer. :)

[Cralamarre]

@thepointer Between March 4 and March 11, Google Search Console shows my total indexed pages suddenly increasing by nearly 300%, and I did notice that some of my images at that time were appearing in the regular SERP listings, as if the images were articles. I use Yoast with my WordPress site. However, I haven't seen any of my images listed recently, and it doesn't seem to have affected my article rankings, at least not in any negative way. Definitely odd, though.

[NickMNS]

Well the dust seems to have settled on my end. The extreme spike I had yesterday evening was relatively short lived. But traffic remained strong throughout the day today, putting my level back where I was in January. That is well above the drop experienced after the mid March update. I am hoping that this will be sustained over the long run.

Besides the increase in traffic all my other metrics have been impacted massively, bounce rate drop by close to 25%, average session duration up 130%, pages per session up 35% average time on page up more than 30%, AdSense click through rate nearly doubled. Values are compared to same day last week, which was a pretty typical day over the past month. I have seen traffic swings in the past, but I have never seen anything like this. I did not make any significant changes to the site, that could explain this.

[mosxu]

@nick

I do not believe a thing you reported on your traffic, looking a few messages back you supposed to have lost half of your traffic and now everything is back?

Amazing

[Shaddows]

On a thread where it is typical for someone to post they lost 90% of traffic at least once a month, over several years... the issue you have is someone had a traffic glitch that came back?

Er, ok.

[NickMNS]

@mosxu I have trouble believing it myself. I'll post a screen shot a little later when I have some more time.

[Cralamarre]

Go back to bed, Nick. You're dreaming. :)

[BushyTop]

We must be the only site to come out of this update hugely positively.... I genuinely feel for you all. Its frustrating enough seeing turbulence when you've grown, let alone when you've dropped.

[imgur.com...]

[NickMNS]

The proof is in the pudding:
[imgur.com...]

I reached a peak on March 17 and then a sustained dropped. The peak to the low point is a 50% drop, but the peak was short lived. Yesterday's recovery did not reach the peak level and is less than the pre-peak levels, by about 10%.

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop, My site saw big improvements in March and in April, so you're not the only site to benefit. I just haven't seen any sign of a new update within the past couple of days to explain what NickMNS is reporting.

[samwest]

Traffic flux and the constant decline is due to a lot of factors, but can be explained in simple terms by the rat cage analogy; Many us were first adopters of the web. We were the only rat in the cage so to speak. For years we ate like kings. Eventually a few rats noticed how fat we were becoming and climbed into our cages. More rats eventually came along and then a fat guinea pig called Google who wanted a piece of our collective pie. About that same time a few baby pot bellied pigs named Amazon and Facebook joined in. At this point the pigs eat like kings and there is very little food left for the original rat...you.

A big rat just joined my test niche this morning using one of the guinea pig's ads to top the results with a freebee offer of what I sell. No more food for this rat. I best find a new cage...or die.

[Cralamarre]

@samwest Just before you posted your rat analogy, I was actually thinking that with no evidence of a recent Google update, maybe what happened with NickMNS is that a main competitor suddenly disappeared, leaving him with the traffic. Or to use the analogy, a big rat died and left him with more food. But I don't know, I'm just guessing. Still no sign of any new updates on my end.

[NickMNS]

There was a post at SER here:
[seroundtable.com...]

It uses my initial post and Bushy Top's as evidence, but it also shows chatter on blackhatworld and some in the comments. But basically this suggests that if there was an update it was was very limited in scope.

[Cralamarre]

Has anyone else noticed that the size of snippets in the SERPs has gone back to what it was before being increased to 320 characters in December? Good thing I spent all that time writing longer descriptions to take advantage of it. :(

[samwest]

@ Cralamarre - precisely. The rare upswing seems to occur when the pigs stop eating for a moment. This could be due to an update to the AI, a sorting operation or pure FM. The problem is, those pigs keep getting fatter as we slowly dwindle away. The pigs may soon learn a lesson in sustainability.

[alexkevin]

Google gives surprises to website owners by updates, sometimes gives shock , i am hoping for the best !

[samwest]

^ Good luck - but remember, you're depending on Google's algo model: [en.wikipedia.org...]

[aristotle]

The proof is in the pudding

a big rat died

Maybe the rat got sick from eating some of the proof in the pudding

[samwest]

Just as evidence of the whole "whack a mole" nature of the SERPs, the big brand sponsored ad that was appearing this very early this morning (6am) is now gone from the top of the page. All remaining ads are now at the bottom of the results. Maybe the multi million dollar ad budget ran out for the day already. Traffic has returned somewhat. Beware, lotsa critter flux out there.
BTW - sorry for all the small furry animal references today: [youtu.be...]

Time to go do something productive, like lawn work. out.

[NetTox]

I have been lurking the past few months and figured I would chime in with my experience.

I lost about 40% of my traffic in March. Then I lost even more over Easter weekend. The traffic kept trending downward.

Starting late Thursday everything returned. Traffic and conversions are back to pre-March levels and seem to be trending upward.