Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2018

[Martin Ice Web]

System: The following 9 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4899136.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 6:07 pm on Jun 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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Next very big hit. Yesterday 11.30pm . This hit is even more drastic than all the other hits before.
Very big winner in our niche is amazon. amazon has now 2-4 entries in a row where they were not present before.
Most of the amazon pages have spammy title, h1 tags.
Even big brands are now replaced by amazon ( ebay, conrad, mercator ... )

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 2:12 am (utc) on Jun 2, 2018]
[edit reason] Split off to new monthly thread... [/edit]

[Shaddows]

I don't get on with DDG either. I quite like Bing, but Google is generally the best, no matter how regrettable that may be.

We have been conducting a review of the series of updates since Mid-March, and especially since Easter. We did this because the changes seemed more purposeful than usual, and some of our erstwhile competitors disappearing from SERPs shared some similarities with each other.

Our analysis will not surprise anyone here, but it seems to have been a concerted series of tweaks with the deliberate intent of promoting Brands. Amazon had a temporary boost, before being wiped out (in a move I personally cannot believe took so long- Google, Amazon and Facebook being mortal enemies, locked into a zero-sum battle to establish monopolistic control over the datasphere). We have particularly benefited from the suppression of Amazon.

Small shops with limited ability to serve a diverse customer base have lost out. (Not to be confused with true specialists, who are doing well).

"Price Play" shops also seem to have got a kicking- we are mostly seeing "value add" shops competing against us. This is very new.

Geographic filters are also stronger in my niche- we see much less US and even EU competitors. This is not across-the-board though- I can still get EU and US shops in certain searches.

[Rlilly]

@kaseyM - all well in America if you own For Profit Jails and Private Deportation Centers because we a thriving incarcerated society... not so much if you in SEO

[riccarbi]

I don't get on with DDG either. I quite like Bing, but Google is generally the best, no matter how regrettable that may be.

I don't agree with you, sorry.
For almost all single-word searches, either Bing or DDG (and even Lilo) give better (i.e. more accurate, relevant and useful) results than Google, furthermore with much less cluttered interfaces. Google is still marginally better for complex queries (if you are able to tell real results from paid ones, of course). Yet, most people is still using Google more than any other SE for two main reasons: because they are used to; and because of the many other services Google provides together with its SE (Maps, reviews, weather forecast, translations, and so on). But, if we "isolate" the SE from that stuff, the reults from Google are really, really bad, on average.

Yet, the problem is that neither Bing nor DDG are really good search engines, but Google is so much worse than before than even them are now better than it. I hope that, at Alphabet, someone will start caring again about users, and not just about how many millions stakeholders will earn next month.

[Shaddows]

Interesting. I rarely do one-word queries. And a sizeable amount of my searches require maps (I appreciate this is not normal usage)

SE prefs are surely a matter personal taste, so I see no need to seek a consensus view on it. Someone mentioned DDG took time to learn to use, and I suppose that's plausible.

As EG eluded to, stripping out the non-[text-organic] results might give a purer view, but the all the other bells and whistles are a major feature of a Search Portal- most users don't want a rollback to 10 text results on a pristine white page.

[EditorialGuy]

One thing I've noticed recently is more volatility in Search Console's average search rankings for the two sites that we track. This has been going on for a few weeks. We'll often bounce up or down half a position (sometimes a bit more) from day to day. The zigzag GSC graph isn't reflected in our Google traffic, though: It's pretty stable overall.

[samwest]

Analytics is having problems almost every week. As if it's hosted on a shared hosting plan.

Maybe they are beginning a(nother) phase-out, after all, with all the content they've scraped, eventually Google won't need webmasters, just a few big brands and our leftovers. Seems like that already. I'm sure they'll have a means to sling ads without our help soon enough. I've always wondered why they would want to help us to begin with ...perhaps simply to earn our temporary trust during the collective. One thing is for sure, they haven't fostered that trust of late.

Google's first brag (2000)- search a stack of papers 70 miles high in one second.
Google's next brag (2020?) - host every bit of information from every website that ever existed, exclusively on our servers.

[Atomic]

host every bit of information from every website that ever existed, exclusively on our servers.

Ever notice cached pages? News flash, they've been hosting this stuff for years.

[riccarbi]

Once Steve Jobs said: “sales and marketing people end up running the companies, and the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums and the companies forget what it means to make great products. (…) product sensibility and the product genius (…) get rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product, they have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product and they have really no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers”".

I very, very sadly bet my two cents that's exactly what's happening with Google....
Their focus in no longer on making good products (or services), it's just on making as much money as they can, on quarterly revenue reports, and the like...
Once upon a time, that was meaning that a company was apparently alive and kicking, but actually doomed. Today it's different, since monopolies and abuse of a dominant position are no longer things someone is giving a damn about....

[Leosghost]

host every bit of information from every website that ever existed, exclusively on our servers.

Ever notice cached pages? News flash, they've been hosting this stuff for years.

Not if one blocked them from caching from the very first moment that one's website(s) went live..and did likewise with the internet archive..( other scrapers are / may be available, to be blocked with extreme prejudice )..However, blocking certain scrapers, especially certain ones that Google smiles upon and promotes, can result in not appearing in Google's index at all..If such is the price that one must pay, it is a small price and paid willingly, they are not the only search engine, not are they the only source of useful traffic.

[vphoner]

I love the way DuckDuckGo.com has their search engine. Very few ads, open source, and no tracking of you on the internet. So much easier to see content. Google has so many ads jammed at the top, its hard to find any organic listings. I really feel its time for an outsider to start to take market share from google. DuckDuckgo just needs some press. I just found it recently because I got some organics from it. Would love to see 60 minutes do a story on this relatively new player in search engines. Nothing is is forever, not even google. I rank very well on DuckDuckGo...so I wish them the best.

Still have not recovered from the May algorithm change. I just went mobile friendly two weeks ago, all pages have been re-indexed, and no more traffic! Maybe it takes longer than 2 weeks to get the mobile boost, but with google its been all downhill for the last 2-3 years. Depressing.....

[EditorialGuy]

The problem with DuckDuckGo is that it's more of an aggregator than a search engine. IMO, it can never be better than its third-party sources:

[duck.co...]

[Leosghost]

There is also qwant.com ..the name is only slightly less silly than duckduckgo, but ( no tracking..no profiling, no personalised ads etc ) similar results to DDG..but it is not an aggregator..uses some Bing input for some results for the moment, while it's own crawlers ramp up ( the web is big, and qwant came late to the party )
[about.qwant.com...]

– No third party cookies
– No trackers
– No behavioral targeting
– No campaigns mixing legit and promotional content (native advertising)

[Leosghost]

A very clean lightweight version of qwant, that will run with scripts blocked ( for those of us who use "noscript" amongst other "blockers" ) can be found here.
[lite.qwant.com...]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Facing with a traffic drop on one of the websites since today's morning (-5-7%)

[mosxu]

No orders today,

All these Amazon prime users must be on my site, probably not happy with their purchase and keep researching. After they will cancel their Amazon order will come back clicking about 5 times on my ads and may buy in the end...

Never know,

[vphoner]

Any clue as to how to recover from the last couple of algorithm changes? I have lost 50% of my google organic traffic. Not really sure what has to improve, or if there is anything you can do without being a giant authority site like Amazon to rank. If you have to be a giant site to rank, then nobody will ever rank, as you will never have the chance to become bigger with google's new attitude toward smaller sites. Just in case this was a mobile friendly issue, I finally have all my pages pass the mobile friendly test. But two weeks later, no increase in clicks. Really a confusing time.

[MayankParmar]

@vphoner Maybe try building links.

[Atomic]

@vphoner I outrank some of the biggest brands in the USA. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it is absolutely possible.

[whoa182]

I have found it quite easy to outrank big brands, but for long tail keywords. Sometimes they just rank for stuff but aren't intentionally targeting the keywords (title, URL etc). There's plenty of keyword modifiers that they tend to not go after.

The problem I'm seeing lately is that even big sites with DA's over 90 are going after these long tail keywords lol. Just feels like it's going to end up being a few massive sites dominating big areas because of their resources.

Although I guess as a site tends to go broader, it loses some relevance or authority in certain areas. So as long as you niche down really well, anything is possible.

[JesterMagic]

Our niche is now flooded with broader sites that cover many niches since the shakeup in March. The sites that cover just one niche specifically have much better information and less intrusive advertising but most of them (including ours) have been pushed off the first page.

[riccarbi]

There is also qwant.com ..

Not bad, actually; results are rather good. Yet, (as for Bing) the interface is too cluttered. I am not interested in "news" they (wrongly) suppose I am interested about. IMHO DDG and Lilo have a cleaner interface.

[KaseyM]

Massive drop in traffic (15-20%) since Thursday.

[MayankParmar]

The weekends are actually very bad after the FIFA and summer holidays. Never mind. Cricket World Cup will not result in a traffic drop from the US.

@Kasey Same here dude. Mine dropped on Thursday, and it's still bad.

[MayankParmar]

My site is in HSTS preload list now, and everything is fine. Everyone should do it.

[mosxu]

A lot of Amazon prime users doing research on my web site clicking on a lot of my ads before obviously.

Very impressed,

[Kash1111]

I did a search query, I could not find one decent result on the first page, all the articles are related but do not answer my query, I think Google needs to go back a step clearly their new changes are not working lol, I found what I was looking for on pages 4 and 5.

The new algorithm does not understand our niche, I don't blame it because it would take a person quite a lot to understand it let alone a machine or ai.

[Dimitri]

I think Google needs to go back a step clearly their new changes are not working lol, I found what I was looking for on pages 4 and 5.

I bet that people appearing on these first pages, are thinking the opposite :)

That being said and more seriously, for not having used Google for a whole year, I can say that I am getting lost. I can't find anything anymore "easily", as I used to. Medias (images/videos) seem to be dominating the first page, even if they are barely related or useful. It's only starting on the second page that I am seeing interesting things. So now, I skip directly to the second page :)

[Kash1111]

Sure Dimitri, we like the second page of Google because it reminds us of the old google without the nonsense ;)

Now that youtube videos appear on search, doing a search query I found our article on position 1 and on position 0 a big ass youtube video, which you can play directly, whats odd is the video is our article ripped into a video, word for word from a verified youtube channel, seems my day just gets worse each day lol.

[whoa182]

After a few consecutive days of record traffic levels, visitors numbers have fallen off a cliff in the last 4 hours. Has there been yet another big update? Monday is normally my best day.

[BushyTop]

Seeing alot of changes today across all the competitive organic verticals i monitor... Looks like a bounceback for those who saw drops two weeks ago.