Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2018

[yollo03]

System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4909313.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:47 am on Aug 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

-----

HERE WE GO! Get your sit belts on:

Google Search Algorithm August 1st Update Rolling Out Now; Might Be A Big One
Aug 1, 2018
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-26141.html [seroundtable.com]




[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:57 am (utc) on Aug 1, 2018]

[yollo03]

Semush is picking up algorithm change, I hope when this is done I will rank well again.

[givinguponlife]

All last 4 or 5 updates benefited my site, this one killed it, non spam niche, never bought a sidebar link or other non sense, my competitors are all buying links on sidebars and have 200-400k links each ...

All my articles are detailed while competitors are doing lets say top 10 PC tables and write 3 sentences about each... i am really confused and frustrated, spent at least 4-5 hours daily on site writing a single article

[edited by: givinguponlife at 11:55 am (utc) on Aug 1, 2018]

[yollo03]

Same here, the last update at the end of July boosted my site. This one is a real killer. It could be temporary so just need to see how it goes for the next 24 hours. My best guess is that this is some sort of a quality update.

[JesterMagic]

Not sure if I see much happening in my niche this morning beyond the normal small churn of rankings.

[JesterMagic]

@MayankParmar. Agree this looks pretty scary.

At Google Dance Singapore, Gary Illyes from Google revealed a new feature that is coming to the Google search results. The new feature would see specific content from a webpage, including FAQ, Q&A and how-to verticals being highlighted in the search results for those pages. And these rich results take up nearly the entire screen on mobile.

Mods should probably split this off into a separate thread.

Another rather large step by Google to keep people on their site. I wonder how many more websites this will kill?

[yollo03]

The update is still going, im still seeing huge shifts in my niche.

[givinguponlife]

I don't understand how google is doing stuff like this, googling on mobile products that we ranked for and now it is:

top 1-4 spots: mobile ads
top 3 spots: local reviews / google business pages
youtube carousel
articles carousel
SERPS

WTF, first 10 links are basically all google sites / links to their sites.

[mosxu]

When was the deadline for mobile first index?

[MayankParmar]

How hard is it for Google to update the console daily? It's so frustrating. Not seeing any drop in traffic. The last June 29 update trashed my site so I hoping that I'll recover with today's update

[yollo03]

It is not a speed penalty for sure because my site is fast. I am getting back links every day (not paid) so thats not it either. This has to be something related to quality content.

[pritz]

@yollo03,

All are talking about this, even we are also facing this situation from July-18. We have dedicated developer working only for page speed & light house. Moreover the graph of visibility is pretty high in SEMRush. But still struggling for consistent conversions.

[pritz]

@Webmasters,

Blocking spammy bots is this something that make sense? Is there any list of spammy bots, actually I have review my website's logfile and found many unwanted bots.

[Jez123]

I think this is link / Penguin related. I am seeing some sites that I am pretty sure were hit by Penguin coming back. Or maybe just a temporary lifting of filters which always seems to happen on updates.

[yollo03]

I agree I am also seeing sites that were hit resurfacing again but why at my expense? The next 24 - 48 hours will tell

[jmorgan]

I see no difference with my site.

[Jez123]

but why at my expense?

Collateral damage perhaps? If so, you should bounce back in a while, hopefully.

[givinguponlife]

I just want to die

[yollo03]

You'll have to wait a few days until the dust settles. Getting bumped from page 3 to page 9 hurts like hell. I am also noticing domain authority plays a big role in the ranking change.

[yollo03]

I already accepted it, I wont be back up again until the next algorithm update. Its going to take months until Im back on page 3.

[penitentman]

@yollo @givingup You should wait until the dust settles and evaluate all your metrics before going crazy. Also do you just rely on semrush or do you have searchconsole and GA?

[yollo03]

Im waiting for semrush to show my new ranking in a few hours. There are a few key words I test every day. Before I wasnt showing on mobile devices at all but now im on page 5 on mobile (I was on page 2 before the algo-mess). I dont know if this is the mobile index.

Its the biggest drop I had in less than 24 hours in more than a year. Im using semrush, I will know in a few hours just how bad it is really is.

[yollo03]

Because I test a few keywords every day I know my average ranking (page 2 and page 3 on desktops). I literally worked my ass off to get to page 1 and now I have to deal with this. Lets see how it rolls.

[yollo03]

For anyone that is interested the update is still rolling, Im still seeing big shifts so its not over yet.

[whoa182]

One of my older articles from 2017 which I ranked number 1 for several related terms has fallen to 6 in the SERP. I'm hoping it will bounce back since it is a high quality and high converting article with 3500 words. Right now there are big sites like health.com dominating it, and they aren't even targeting the specific search query.

I've never seen this article drop so far down though. So it's a bit worrying. It normally changes between position 1 and 2.

[yollo03]

Is your domain authority above 50?

[whoa182]

Mine? No.

For long tail keywords in my niche, I haven't really found that it matters what the competitor DA is as long as my article answers the question in a more specific way.

[samwest]

On the last day of July (yesterday) I had 5 sales between 6:30 am and 9:30 am. That's beyond what I've managed to do on any single day this year so far. Traffic was up only slightly, but conversions were crazy for that 3 hour window. I was behind my quota, so it really looked like another "catch up" session. I guess I should be thankful that they allow me that. The day ended +7, which was the best single day in a year. BTW - back in the "good old days", 10-15/day was the norm, every day. Haven't seen those levels in over 5 years.

Today, it's right back to crickets...

When I see stuff like this, it really indicates that some kind of control mechanism is in place. Coincidentally, during that same time frame, my phone was ringing off the hook with Google Listing scam calls and solicitors. Way more than usual. Nine calls in the morning alone. Did the powers that be temporarily deactivate their master firewall?

[yollo03]

Google gave you a taste of what its like to be on top again. It happened to me as well a long time ago. I think DA has some role in ranking now, at least for my niche. Google did update their quality guidelines a few days ago, it wouldn't surprise me if today's update is related to it.

[samwest]

Yesterday I was seeing free flowing traffic patterns and great page to page transitions, a sure sign of human (vs. zombies), today it's right back to "drip traffic" and page sitters. (refer to post on prev page)

[NYCTech]

We're seeing a substantial increase in traffic today. Compared with a normal Wednesday, traffic is up about 15%. I'm hoping we benefited from this update, though it's possible the site hasn't yet been evaluated and we're just benefiting from other sites being penalized until the algorithm gets around to reprocessing ours.

If the improved traffic sticks, I'll be quite pleased with this update.

[rustybrick]

Google confirmed the update. :) [twitter.com...]

[yollo03]

Everyone knew it was an update but does anyone have a clue yet what was changed exactly?

[MayankParmar]

semrush is broken or what? It is showing wrong position. Sigh.

[yollo03]

Mine is showing the wrong position too, the update is still rolling so you wont get accurate figures at least until tomorrow.

[MayankParmar]

Rank dropped here :(

My DA is 62 on Ahrefs.

[yollo03]

Give it more time, the ranking is still unstable. The good news for me is that my affiliates are up on this update so far so I am getting more traffic from them but I also care for the organic traffic, we'll see tomorrow.

[Milchan]

yesterday and today have been very low conversions, today especially so far and traffic seems to have lots of "blank windows" with no visitors when I usually have at least someone on the site at any one time. NO i seem to be getting nothing for 5 to 10 mins then a bunch come in at once. Bounce rates are up and conversions are down.

Im just going to get on with all the things I planned on doing anyway as things be abnormal seems to be the new normal.

[yollo03]

Google now pushed me from page 5 to page 31. its insane. I was on page 3, went to page 9, then to page 5 and now page 31. It must be a monstrous update.

[yollo03]

This is what google said in past similar updates:

"As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.

There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages."

[MayankParmar]

The tweets aren't helpful anymore. They are not transparent about anything, not even AdSense clawbacks. They don't tell us how top story works, how do we rank there. It's just sad.

[Pontificus Maximux]

So far I am seeing a slight uptick in rankings during this update on my large affiliate site. This site saw a 57% increase in traffic in July over June. Mainly due to posting 125 articles targeting low competition keywords for low volume searches.

Initial correlation studies show that this update targeted the use of keywords in the meta description, Open graph metadata, and specifically twitter metadata. Take it for what it's worth. Correlation is not causation and whether or not your paradigm allows Google to say one thing and do another.

[whoa182]

I'm noticing big improvements in some posts, while others have slipped a few positions. Nothing major with regards to traffic, and conversions seem in line with what I've had for the past week.

Some of the articles which have lost their positions were quite lengthy (around 3000 words) and converted well. Hopefully, it'll be temporary... I can't figure out exactly what's the problem since I try to keep quality pretty consistent.

That being said, even with the drop in rankings for some of my main keywords, yesterday was another record traffic day for me. Like Pontificus, I mainly target low competition keywords / search volume.

[jmorgan]

Don't doubt there was an update. But my site pretty much just remained stable.

I suppose it's an improvement on getting hit with each update in the past.

[Halaspike]

None of the 10 posts I've posted in the last 24 hrs on my blog has gotten a single visitor from Google search. Many of my old posts are just dancing about on serps & posts that were ranking very well are no where to be found on serps again. Don't know if I'm hit because my traffic numbers is the same so this is more like Google just throttling my traffic.

[Robert Charlton]

I've posted a thread for discussing the nature of the update itself... about what's meant by a "broad core" update, and about what Google might be meaning by those two paragraphs it originally posted in March (which I'm seeing that yollo03 and I have noted and cited independently). Link to that thread here...

Google "broad core" algorithm update now confirmed
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4913754.htm [webmasterworld.com]

... Or continue in this "August Updates and SERP changes" thread for discussion about ongoing ranking changes and movement.

[jmorgan]

People sometimes have to wait months for their blog posts to rank. Unless your site is a solid authority on the subject, I'm not sure you can expect your posts to rank within 24 hours, particularly if you're churning out 10 of them per day which would suggest there wasn't much thought given the quality of the content being published.

[Halaspike]

@jmorgan don't conclude that there's no quality in the content of the posts published. Just because you can't come up with quality multiple posts daily doesn't mean other people can't, keep that negative energy to yourself. And my site is a solid authority site with new posts always ranking well as soon as they get indexed.

[MayankParmar]

@Halaspike How do you determine authority of the site? Ahrefs?

[jmorgan]

Ok fine @Halaspike. You know your site better than I do, so I'll take your word for it.