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]

[glakes]

I am seeing lot of SERP with very few organic sites on the first page, for not saying none.

Google leaves little doubt in where they want their users to click. Though you can rest assured if it's a Google Ventures or Google Capital backed company it will have a prominent position in both paid and organic search results.

[QuaterPan]

I don't remember the beginnings of Google, but I think that it was thanks to the community of web publishers, to "fight" against the evil Microsoft (even if they were not in search engine business yet), and Altavista, AOL, etc... so "we" (or our ancestors) pushed Google to the summit. So why not, today, pushing someone else, like DuckDuckGo ? With all privacy issues, and things like that, DDG seems to be in the good trend.

[Shaddows]

Pushing Google was an historic mistake. But to be fair, whichever SE won, it probably would have ended up an ethically dubious behemoth.

"Making the world a better place": the excuse people use when they are doing bad things.

Sadly, I think it is beyond the power of techies to influence the-person-on-the-street any more. Back then, we were the Gods of Geek, telling people how to use this newfangled internet- to break away from the "walled garden" portal approach of AOL, MSN and Yahoo.

Now, Joe Public have their own experiences and habits, and are more likely to think we have and agenda beyond helping them. Which would, in fact, be true.

[samwest]

Just food for thought; what if G and the "founders" actually consider "us" as an "asymmetrical threat"? This might explain the evolution of control. Do we now have a militarized major search engine and social networks but with a good guy commercial facade? That would seem to be pretty darn evil but in a world of crazies, pretty darn necessary. [zerohedge.com...]

Perhaps on these platforms, it's not just about content and algorithmic ranking. In the end, the choice to use other search engines is ours and ours alone...but Google is so sticky and does such a damn good job. ;) (Msg# yikes!)

[QuaterPan]

Now, (on desktop), I am seeing 5 ads, before organic results, ... in other words, all links above the fold on a FHD screen are ads.

[Butes]

I'm seeing a few full SERPs of paid results. A sample of the serp is laid out as follows:

(0 results; 1.89 seconds)
4 ad spots
triple map pack
3 ad spots
omitted 3 results

I'm leaning towards this being a bug, but a scary bug at that

[QuaterPan]

I'm seeing a few full SERPs of paid results. A sample of the serp is laid out as follows:

In all events, this is going to be like that more and more.

Since ads are matching search queries, they are as relevant as other sites. So, it's normal that sites paying get listed first. So more and more, you'll get paid inclusion completed by organic results.

So far , I feel lucky to have chosen a niche which is not commercial . This also means that ads showing on my site are earning less, but at least SERP for my niche are nearly ad free.

[Butes]

but with 0 organic results?

[samwest]

Since ads are matching search queries, they are as relevant as other sites.

On what planet are ads ever relevant? In my usually ad free niche today, there are four new ads. Each one was targeting a keyword TOTALLY unrelated to the target site. The only thing "relevant" is that G is getting paid. Ads TARGET queries as paid terms, whereas sites are found by queries matching actual content. Maybe I'm missing your intended meaning of "relevant".

From what I'm seeing, there is a new rash of well funded web spammers trying to get rich by targeting every keyword under the sun to totally unrelated targets.It's nothing new, but I'm see much more of this practice in recent weeks. All it does is make Google look like spamville...one more reason to switch to DDG.

[mosxu]

@samwest

I thought G was a successful business that started in a garage.

Now we need to know how much of our traffic is human and that is something I would like the members to take a gues on!

[EditorialGuy]

I thought G was a successful business that started in a garage.

I'm pretty sure Google started inside a Lego structure:
[gadg.com...]

[whoa182]

Friday is never a great day for my site, but since this evening, traffic has taken a nosedive.

[Pontificus Maximux]

All this talk of bots, zombies, and spikes of conversions followed by nothing indicating unnatural patterns can be explained fairly easily. Most people forget Google tests user intent.

Personally I believe that Google has its users labeled in at least 3 categories. "Doers", "Non-Doers", and maybe a "mixed" category. Those that have a history of purchasing online and "doing" e-commerce searches are in one category. Those that have a history of rarely to never purchasing online and only using search for informational queries are in another category. The rest may fall into a mixed category.

I am convinced that Google tests websites and pages to see how they perform with each type of searcher. It is like the testing they do with new medical treatments. You give the site real buyers and see the interaction. You give the site non-buyers and see the interaction. ect. In the end the statistics will show if your site/page will fulfill the query the best overall.

Google has said that their purpose is to serve the searcher the best result for their query. They are taking into account, what type of searcher they are.

I see this all the time on my newer sites and with newer pages. It is obvious that A/B testing is going on. Hourly spikes, daily conversion swings, daily user metric swings like in page views, time on site, and bounce rate. The site isn't changing, the searcher is.

[samwest]

@PM - We haven't forgotten anything and you are convinced absolutely right. Your explanation proves the point that natural flow is long gone and nanny control is in full force. Not to over simplify, but I really don't need Mother G telling me to eat my vegetables if I'm fat or eat cake if I'm skinny.

The end result of all this shotgunning of user intent does not always produce the intended result, and that's when traffic starts to look like Zombies. Their system is far from perfect and that again is why we see these oddball ON/OFF periods, when the UE control just gets it all wrong...in favor of the take.

In the past when natural flow indeed existed, there were the same number of "doers" and "non-doers" as today, in fact there should be many more of both, but we see so many less all around, even while sitting at position 1 and 2. All this "user experience" engineering should really be called "profitability" engineering. Again, another reason to move to DDG or the like.

@mos - yes, a dark garage and this is how many humans > [youtu.be...]

[glakes]

All this talk of bots, zombies, and spikes of conversions followed by nothing indicating unnatural patterns can be explained fairly easily.

Agreed. When you see Google return results for primary queries as Butes reported:

4 ad spots
triple map pack
3 ad spots
omitted 3 results

Google is sending the leftover scraps to non-advertisers. Scraps may include anything from info seekers to bots, with buyers filtered out for those of us in the ecommerce industry.

These types of results returned from Google is something I long thought would happen. Organic results to be used as filler material only when not enough advertisers are competing for the query. In return for being indexed in Google, they send crap traffic which is not much of a bargain but with bandwidth being cheap it's not a big deal. Anyway, I would expect to see more page 1 SERPS dominated by ads in the future. Google needs to return profits for shareholders, and as long as the paid ads are enough to satisfy Google's users then Google will eventually give them no other options than to either exit Google or click on a paid ad.

[mosxu]

@pontificus

For our product a human would only search with intention to buy, the non doers or mixed would not probably exist in such large numbers. I am not able to explain such a large number of non doers especially clicking on my ads.

They all are probably Amazon prime users who have changed their mind about their purchase and need to keep researching...

[EditorialGuy]

Google needs to return profits for shareholders, and as long as the paid ads are enough to satisfy Google's users then Google will eventually give them no other options than to either exit Google or click on a paid ad.

Google also needs to serve its end users (searchers), and for commercial searches, ads may be perfectly acceptable results. I was once at a meeting with the CEO of a major publisher (one specializing in trade and enthusiast publications) who said that, according to the company's research, many people read its magazines "for the ads." That may have been an exaggeration, but it contains an element of truth. And let's not forget that ads were a big drawing card for printed newspapers until the 21st Century. (I can remember looking at the Sunday newspaper travel section to check air fares and other deals in the ads.)

I'm not saying that ads should replace organic results, but for some queries, they do provide value for searchers.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Personally I believe that Google has its users labeled in at least 3 categories. "Doers", "Non-Doers", and maybe a "mixed" category

@Pontificus Maximux +

Thanks for your thoughts, it was pretty interesting to read!

Those that have a history of purchasing online....

It looks like the GDPR was created to fight against this? Since the GDPR, guys at Google won't be able to keep searchers history, analyze it and use the user's data when building own SERP (at least for EU visitors right now, but I think it can become a new trend for other world's parts and the real problem in future for all SE, not only Google).

[mosxu]

GDPR is not even considered, let alone applied, the algo would never comply with GDPR

[Martin Ice Web]

It looks like the GDPR was created to fight against this? Since the GDPR, guys at Google won't be able to keep searchers history, analyze it and use the user's data when building own SERP (at least for EU visitors right now, but I think it can become a new trend for other world's parts and the real problem in future for all SE, not only Google).

This was a good one. google doesn´t care about this.
And google still reads my emails when sending it to someone with gmail account without any permission.

[glakes]

I'm not saying that ads should replace organic results, but for some queries, they do provide value for searchers.

Agreed. However, it provides little value to businesses that get crap (zombie) traffic. Which brings us to the next point. How much effort should businesses expend in trying to obtain quality organic traffic from Google when they don't send buyers? There are a lot of those in the ecommerce industry chasing their tails, trying to fix what is not broke, etc. when ultimately Google is trying to maximize their revenue by suppressing ecommerce enabled websites in the organic results and by pushing Adwords. Is it wrong for Google to maximize the revenue from their traffic? Not entirely as we all pretty much do the same. Though Google's dominance in search creates regulatory problems for them. I'm just saying that for many, Google is no longer worth the wasted time/money. With only 15% of shoppers going to a search engine first, it's more important to be found in the major marketplaces. Being found in Google would be great, though trying to rank on the first page for buyer keywords is a futile effort when no organic listings are displayed at all. When Google does use the smaller ecommerce sites as filler material in the SERPS, and traffic is produced as a result, it may be good for branding but for direct sales the conversions just are not there to cover the cost of SEO. For us, Bing and Yahoo consistently outperform Google in conversions by a rate of 200-300%.

I pulled the plug on Google a couple years ago. The last two months our sales year over year have increased by 50%+. One of the primary reasons we are growing is because there is an exodus of shoppers on Google, and shoppers are finding us in the major marketplaces. Certainly Google holds its place for information, but for those shoppers that know what they want to buy they don't even bother with Google.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Editorial Guy - That's a good point about the utility of ads. People do look at ads in certain publications because they're looking for good deals on things that interest them. My local free weekly paper is loaded with ads and I look at them because they inform me of what's on sale or what's available. We actually do a favor for our visitors when showing them ads.

Another advantage to advertising, which we often forget, is that ads lend some credibility to the publication that is able to attract well-known brands. Revenue for my website is almost always better when ads for big companies appear. Go advertising!

[brabox]

Did anyone notice a big traffic drop yesterday? Smells like another major update....

[mosxu]

@martin

You are 100% correct, the big lords are not compliant with GDPR yet, they wait for Trump to get them an deal

[whoa182]

@brabox, yup, traffic is down for Friday and Saturday.

[MayankParmar]

Yes, dropped on Friday

[MayankParmar]

My article that was on second position just disappeared. I can see it on mobile, but it's missing on desktop.

It's really scary lol, and it should be fixed.

[EditorialGuy]

We have a ramping up from January through May every year, usually followed by a very slight dip in June and another, bigger peak in July or August. After that, it's downhill until early to mid-December. This has been true for two decades. So I'm expecting a bit of sluggishness this month if nothing happens at Google's end.

[analis]

in the last week I recovered the lost visitors in December 2017, before I was -50%


[accuranker.com...]

[MayankParmar]

People actually share Google's mood lol.

"Today, Google is furious".

Oh, well.