Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2018

[penitentman]

System: The following 22 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4904681.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:35 am on Jul 3, 2018 (PDT -8)

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On a year like this with the 4th of July mid week, many Americans will take their week summer vacation that week. I expect unusual traffic patterns for the next 8-9 days.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:40 pm (utc) on Jul 3, 2018]
[edit reason] Split off to new monthly thread... [/edit]

[pritz]

On 21st Mozcast was 114.

[MayankParmar]

As expected, new update is rolling out according to Semrush sensor.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Too early to say, but seems like one of my websites gained a pretty good boost in rankings since yesterday. The second one's traffic keeps falling down (but I know why, so there is no question on that). An update?

@MayankParmar:

How about your website? We are in similar niche, would be very interesting to know if you see some movements.

[MayankParmar]

seems stable so far. My traffic dropped on 29th June from desktop. I am hoping that the next update will fix it.

[Cralamarre]

My Google traffic was up 11% yesterday week over week, an increase of nearly 1000 visitors. But today is so far looking no better than last week, and even slightly down from last week, so yesterday is looking less like an update and more like a fluke.

[glakes]

But today is so far looking no better than last week, so maybe yesterday was a fluke.

It's getting to be back to school time, and I would expect some SERP changes as we see every year in Google.com to accommodate this.

[Cralamarre]

I WISH it was back to school time, since my traffic relies heavily on the school year. But for me, traffic doesn't pick up until September, so any sudden change during the summer is unusual.

[aristotle]

Don't pay any attention to short-term day-to-day fluctuations. They're usually meaningless. A monthly chart is a much better indicator of how a site is doing.

[MayankParmar]

Traffic dropped by 20% :(

[jmorgan]

No change here. Barely affected by the reported update.

[pritz]

Waiting for more data for analysis. SEMRush indicates the drop in position, but if I search manually in Google, it is fine.

[Robert Charlton]

SEMRush indicates the drop in position, but if I search manually in Google, it is fine.

Really?

Google and SEMrush disagree?!?

[mosxu]

@pritz

How are your conversions? Are new buyers hitting your site? Question is if your site still shows to everyone?

[pritz]

@Mosxu

No conversions for last Saturday. Also noticed that there are sudden spike on "not found pages" in GSC.

[pritz]

@Robert Charlton

In SEMRush, the position of my 15 keywords are 100+, but in Google they are in between 100.

[BushyTop]

There's been a huge amount of movement for us. The patterns seems to be that the big players have bubbled to the top where once spammy sites were dominating.

to me this update looks far more in line with what i would expect, in terms of how our competitors are ordered.

[mosxu]

@pritz

404s of pages that never existed on your site do get reported strangely in webmaster tools.

Maybe the message is “worry about your site problems and not the quality of the traffic”

[MayankParmar]

It looks like Semrush is not counting the video carousel as a position.

[pritz]

@mosxu,

I understand that 404 pages doesn't exist and doesn't harm website ranking.

[mosxu]

@pritz

Have you made those pages 404 or some website links to yoursite.com/ghjdkkd.html and appears as a 404 in webmaster tools?

404 should not hurt, all zombified sites have reported 404s like you.

[jmorgan]

Average rankings dropped again, but CTR remains steady for me.

[Milchan]

I got an increase in traffic yesterday by about 20 to 25%. Could have just been an anomaly of course but so far today similar level, Will see how it pans out before any conclusions though.
I did a couple of changes though yesterday that may or may not have helped. I saw that my AWS bandwidth charges where higher than I would have thought these last months so digging into that and watching the logs I decided to work on blocking bad bots with a conditional in nginx and sending a 444 response to any bots I dont want.I blocked a few by IP also to take the incoming load off that I could see on the server (mj12bot was especially aggressive with resources). This quickly reduce the bandwidth I using and hopefully as they learn the site "isnt there" they will visit less anyway. Then I worked on implementing Cloudfront CDN (been on my list for ages but had a issue with the gallery urls) and got that working. Overall result is that I have reduced bandwidth down to about 20% of previous levels, performance is probably better for people also (will be doing some speed tests today). The site did well in pagespeed tests anyway (and actually worse after the CDN turned on but I think needs time).
It is perfectly possible that has resulted in an increase in traffic and im wondering if google , as part of the speed update, is reacting in almost real time to performance of sites, maybe using the chrome metrics or something.

[Cralamarre]

After my sudden 11% increase in traffic on Sunday, everything has returned to normal. Other than the mysterious bump on Sunday, my traffic has been consistent all month, with no sign of any updates.

[samwest]

I can concur on the traffic increase, but conversion is spotty and at very odd times; nothing all day then a sale at 3:26am on one lone visit. Nothing an hour before or after, except bots. Page to page transition is suddenly looking more natural, but the question is: will it last? doubtful.

[Milchan]

yeah , conversions wise it is still odd, even with an increase in traffic, no correlating increase in conversions

[NYCTech]

@aristotle You're spot on with the suggestion to compare months. If I look day to day, especially recently, I see big spikes. I even see those spikes hour to hour. When I compare this month to last, we're up 2.6%. I'd like to say that's an improvement, but it could easily be seasonal and/or within the margin of error.

[jmorgan]

I would actually compare year to year e.g. compare July 2018 to July 2017.

[pritz]

July-18 is the worst month ever for conversion in last three years.

[MayankParmar]

Do you all have a ecommerce site or affiliate site? (referring to conversion drop posts).

[pritz]

@MayankParmar

My all websites are focused to B2B sector.