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]

[Cralamarre]

Once again yesterday, page views were down but AdSense was up. Maybe if I lose my traffic completely, I'll be rich!

[lostshootingstar]

Careful what you wish for, Cralamarre ;)

Just a friendly general reminder that it is Father's day here in the U.S. today. Depending on your vertical that can have a real impact on traffic volume and patterns.

[MayankParmar]

Traffic and AdSense both performed poorly today.

[riccarbi]

Backlink makes a difference, content doesn't.

I'd think that neither backlinks nor content make a difference. Just paying is making a real difference for Alphabet's stakeholders.
If so, what kind of service is Google currently providing to its users? Are those users aware that the first ten links they'are seeing in Google's SERP all all paid, and all but the most relevant / best ones?

There is something rotten in Mountain View....

[westcoast]

Massive drop last 2 days.

I should be concerned, except that this has been the pattern for every single update over the past 6 years. Drop, drop, drop. My content gets better, my users get happier, and google penalizes us more, year after year.

Whatever, at this point. Screw you Google.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Many of us write here on forum only when something terrible happens for their web properties, it looks like I can be among such webmasters. These messages look something like "Oh damn, my traffic’s gone!", "What a hell is going on?! ", "Be you cursed, Google!" and so on. Yeah, I often not happy with Google too and I can blame Google too saying how I hate them.

But the time passes, then I cool down and clearly understand that nothing extra bad and not within the business field happens. Another thing I realize is that the whole my family gets huge bonuses cooperating with Google and get its pretty important piece of a monthly income. So no, when I say "I hate you, Google! Burn in hell!" – I'm just angry, I don’t wish Google to disappear for real. I am pretty sure that in case the regulators force you to choose whether to be or not to be for Google because of some violations, monopoly or something else, you and almost everyone would choose to give life to Google – it's our money and great tools for humanity (it’s not important how buggy they are).

So the only thing we left is to keep working on our websites, trying to better understand the algo. And waiting for Google to make communication with webmasters in a more comfortable way, I’m pretty sure that can help both sides to make their life easier.

[mosxu]

What is the point doing it if only 3-4 companies are allowed to compete for all the genuine converting traffic?

I feel that I am competing for whatever is left, great content, fast site nothing seems to help.

Also getting all these zombies to make me think that I have a share of the market is a joke. I know how big the market is and how much I should be getting from my ad spend.

[Shaddows]

What is the point doing it if only 3-4 companies are allowed to compete for all the genuine converting traffic?

The point is to be one of those 3-4 companies.

I feel that I am competing for whatever is left, great content, fast site nothing seems to help.

Everyone has "great content" these days. And the advantage of a "fast site" is way overdone. Just don't be slow. What are you doing that is unique? Do more users prefer your version of uniqueness, or someone elses? How do you know; what research have you done?

I know how big the market is and how much I should be getting from my ad spend

That's not how advertising works. You don't trade cash for market share.

Incidentally, we just re-worked all our campaigns. We abandoned the last vestiges of stuff our staff learned on AdWord courses, and just went with our data-driven insights that we developed in-house (not my area of the business, so I have no specifics). Revenue has shot up. SEO courses are pure snake-oil, but I had not appreciated how much cow-related faecal matter was shared about Adwords campaigns.

It really makes me wonder when people describe their content, their sites, or their advertising as "great" - what criteria are they using? If it's something an "expert" said, or something in a course they did, or something from a blog they read, it's probably worse than useless.

Open question; how do you measure "greatness" in your own output?

[MayankParmar]

Press F to pay respect.

[robertoroland]

Open question; how do you measure "greatness" in your own output?

In my case:

My returning visitors are two time higher than the visitors from the search engines.
Most of the visitors interact with my content.
Bounce rate smaller than 22%.

That looks for me some good indicators.

[mosxu]

Seriously? Cash for market share what is that?
Did your adwords rep ever provided you with info on your website market share? Maybe you are not spending enough to get the attention.

[NickMNS]

@westcoast
I saw a 16% gain in traffic on Sunday compared to same day last week. Saturday was up just shy of 5%. This is my first up-tick since mid March, (excluding my TV bump). Hopefully this signals a bottom.

@RobertoRoland

Bounce rate smaller than 22%.

Bounce rate is not a good indicator of anything. There are a lot of factors that influence it, in fact one set an event to trigger on scroll and then have a near 0% bounce rate. Or one may have a site that answers a very basis question were user come get their answer and then leave. This will result in high bounce rate, but it does not indicate that anything is wrong with the site. One can use change in bounce rate as indicator. If one makes minor changes to the website, one can see if those changes cause a change in bounce rate.

how do you measure "greatness" in your own output?

This is a great question that deserves its own thread, so I wont continue on this tangent here.

[WebEnthusiast]

I think google broke something, we get 500% more traffic from USA on a website which is full in German. On the other hand German traffic is lower of 10-20%.

[Rlilly]

The fact is, if you small business you DONE on the Internet with a business model relying on Organic Traffic. Your future is bleak.. the Scales Of Economy work against you and you can never overcome them... Its OVER for SEO! You cannot and never compete with Brands. Especially those that are Public Traded getting tons of citations, reports quarterly, articles in top media outlets.

Best to find news ways to generate traffic and other ways to generate revenue streams. Any ideas?

[MayankParmar]

Imho, Push notification is better than newsletter for any website; ecommerce or information.

[MayankParmar]

Analytics delayed again lol

[Rlilly]

One competitor in our niche has been on a big time link buying spree.. Anchor text links all over the place embedded in blog posts... dozens of them and they are skyrocketing to the top of the SERPs.. Seems like Google fails to pick up obvious link manipulation or it will take them time to catch up. Also a clean responsive site with decent content..

What the feeling of filing a Link Spam Report? Does it even work?

[riccarbi]

I think google broke something, we get 500% more traffic from USA on a website which is full in German. On the other hand German traffic is lower of 10-20%.

Did you inspect from what source such US traffic is coming? Sure it is organic traffic from Google? I had a similar experience few months ago; almost half of my US traffic was coming from Boston, with visits all few seconds long and a bounce rate close to 100%, clearly bot or ghost traffic. Since I implemented my new GDPR-compliant cookie notice, which blocks all scripts if the user hasn't clicked the acceptance button, all that traffic magically disappered.

Bounce rate is not a good indicator of anything

I stopped worrying about bounce rate and pageviews long time ago, they tell you almost nothing about your users, and are too easily manipulable. Now my main reference metric is - number of sessions x session time in seconds -

[edited by: riccarbi at 4:10 pm (utc) on Jun 18, 2018]

[EditorialGuy]

No signs of an important update here. Traffic has been down a smidgen over the past few days, but that isn't abnormal: We usually have our first seasonal peak in June, and we may have passed that point now that we're in the latter half of the month. (Google Search Console isn't showing any surprises.)

[Cralamarre]

I'm not seeing any signs of an update here either. Just the usual, depressing summer traffic slump. Nothing I can do about it though except keep adding more content for when traffic picks up in September.

[Kash1111]

For us, the traffic slumps on friday and Saturday picks up on Sunday, then back to normal on weekdays. I have noticed traffic is a little lower, I get it more people are outside enjoying the warm weather, less internet usage.

I still panic when its Friday and the traffic slumps lol :)

[MayankParmar]

It's back to normal :)

The drop was because of the holidays (Eid, Father's day) plus FIFA.

[EditorialGuy]

For us, the traffic slumps on friday and Saturday picks up on Sunday, then back to normal on weekdays.

That's been the same pattern that I've seen since the mid-1990s.

The main difference between then and now is that traffic no longer drops during university holidays. (Back in the olden days, college kids often had access to unlimited high-speed Internet connections in their dorms, while folks at home were paying by the minute for sluggish dial-up. When the students went home for Christmas or Easter, traffic often slumped for the entire vacation period.)

[WebEnthusiast]

@riccarbi, you're right! The USA traffic did come from unknown source. Still, the German traffic dropped in about 10%.

[BushyTop]

@MayankParmar can you share any data?

[Cralamarre]

Yesterday's traffic was down for some reason, but everything seems to be back to normal today.

[MayankParmar]

@BushyTop There was a 30% drop, but it's back to normal.

Semrush says there was an update, but it looks like it didn't hit me. Thank god.

[MayankParmar]

Is Analytics broken? My real time dropped to just 10. I am panicking now :(

[Cralamarre]

Same here. Google traffic disappeared. All I see right now is Direct traffic.

[penitentman]

I saw a spike in traffic yesterday in my niche (Law/Government). Looks like a recovery from the May 22 update when I lost 55%. There's no sign of anything in SEMrush volatility index but what I've seen over the years are my recoveries aren't during updates. I only see no change or big hits during large updates never spikes. My theory is that Google has had time to analyze the user behavior from the May 22 Update and are now handing out one off recoveries. However, I have been conducting tests and implementing changes intensely since May 22, and that could be the cause of a traffic recovery. Anyone have any luck with a May 22 update recovery?