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]

[Halaspike]

@seo21 if you want to target only the UK, you should definitely change the domain to .co.uk

[Dimitri]

Additionally to Halaspike suggestion, you can set the target country in the GSC, this is "excessively" efficient. By excessively , I mean, that you'll improve your ranking at Google.co.uk (considering the content of your site is good and relevant, of course), but you'll loose nearly all your ranking at other countries.

[pritz]

Google does not caching some website, showing error 404.

For Example:

Site:habiledata.com

It shows 404. Does it effect the Ranking. How to deal with this?

[seo21]

@ Dimitri+ target country was set years ago :-(

[Dimitri]

Does it effect the Ranking.

No.

How to deal with this?

Nothing to do. Eventually, you can try a fetch like GoogleBot, and resubmit a page, to see if it helps, but I doubt.

@ Dimitri+ target country was set years ago :-(

Ok. Did you review your site, to be sure it sends all the "signals" telling Google that it targets the UK ? Like Lang en-gb , (but I don't think it has a huge importance).
Is your site hosted in the UK ? (UK IP)

[seo21]

@pritz+ No it doesn't affect rankings. It does this if you have moved over to mobile-first indexing too.

[cr1m]

How to deal with this?

Change HTTPS to HTTP in front of the website address (not in front of the webcache domain)

[seo21]

@Dimitri+ Yes its en-gb and UK IP etc. I think the issue is quality related as its been hit at host level not page level and thus Panda-like.

Odd how its No1 in google.com though! Ive also seen US sites appear in UK searches.

[Halaspike]

@seo21 you need to change from generic top-level domain (.com) to country-coded top-level domain (.uk) & you should be back on top, provided you have what the searcher is looking for & it's presented in a very user friendly way.

[pritz]

Change HTTPS to HTTP in front of the website address (not in front of the webcache domain)

Please explain more on this.

[cr1m]

Please explain more on this.

When you're trying to see Google's cache of your page, you get to a page like:
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:61HE9KcELUkJ:https://www.domain.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ee
which returns a 404 error.

if you change HTTPS to HTTP in front of www.domain.com, you get a working page with cache of given website

[yollo03]

My keywords that got hit by the update are slowly, slowly, slowly improving. One of my main keywords got knocked to position 150, its not at 100. Not a huge difference I know but at least its moving. Other keywords are also improving slowly. I hope this is the beginning of positive trend for me.

[mosxu]

@seo21

IP you host your site is the location plus your business location, it doesn’t have to be a co.uk

I would avoid redirects especially after this August update

[KaseyM]

Big ole drop today. Could just be because of the niche I'm in but worthy of note.

[Martin Ice Web]

Next big hit. This took away another 30%, so we are down from google organics traffic by 70%.
Ecom not medical related.
The good thing is, that all the buyers seem to be at amazon right now. We gained 150% amazon sales since this update.
It is time to cut of google spendings and put all our efforts into amazon MP.

Our niche is such a mess right now. Only brands with unreachable bad content and most of the pages are silly category pages. Sites with lots of 404s, 410s, without title but have a backlink from a brand or are driven by a brand rules.
One of the badest experience we ever saw with google.

[massimodefilippo]

Yes, I agree, we must move to Yandex, amazon and facebook.
I am very disappointed to google now, never happened something like this since 2009, when I created my website.

[BushyTop]

Anyone seeing a shake up?

[elguiri]

I see quite a lot of movement yesterday across 7-8 sites that I'm watching. Some up, some down. US market.

[Sumeet]

Hi

I am working on 4 websites and all four websites direct traffic drop huge anyone let me know, what happen to please.

[edited by: Sumeet at 10:17 am (utc) on Aug 24, 2018]

[BushyTop]

I'm seeing results change again on the hour.

[JesterMagic]

Seeing a lot of the current month and year add to info pages titles in our niche. This one site has sky rocked in our niche over the last few months, went to page 1 from out of no where for a lot of keywords . The layout is really well done and the content is good sometimes. They have all the SEO tricks in play. The problem is the content is never updated but they update the title and change the published date. I see this all the time from other competitors as well. Even for products or services that are either closed (and have been for over half a year) or discontinued. There is no intelligence behind Google AI.

[mara89]

i had more no of major keywords position dropped ( max top 1 & 2 Position into 4 & 5 - Not Medical related queries) in this Aug 1st Week Update. Can any help in that.

As per RankRanger ( [prntscr.com...] ) Last Few Days no of Ads based queries are increased. this means more no of site owners are moved into ad-words or More Users click & engage Top Text-based Ads. Can you any one Clarify that.

[penitentman]

i had more no of major keywords position dropped ( max top 1 & 2 Position into 4 & 5 - Not Medical related queries) in this Aug 1st Week Update. Can any help in that.

As per RankRanger ( [prntscr.com...] ) Last Few Days no of Ads based queries are increased. this means more no of site owners are moved into ad-words or More Users click & engage Top Text-based Ads. Can you any one Clarify that

I'm sorry, come again?

[yollo03]

Nothing special to report about, there is a minor improvement but nothing to go and tell the parents about. I hope google will revise this soon, I am sure they will at some point, the sooner the better.

[HammerDown]

I was asked not to post any links so Google <snip: tool-name google xyz update data> for what I consider to be exactly what I asked for in terms of analyzing before-and-after data on sites most impacted.

---
Mods Note: HammerDown - When we ask you not to post links in search forum, that assumes that you know that we know that there are other ways to identify a page. Because we like to keep our forum promotion-free, we ask new users to avoid posting specifics until we have a better sense of who you are, Additionally, we like to keep the substance of our discussions here, in our threads, and not have the forum become a list of links to seo promotion blogs.

Over the years, we've eased up on our posting restrictions... but, just so you know, this is how our guidelines used to read, and this is what's implied when we ask you not to post links....

1. Do not post links to a specific website (yours or any other) or suggest a search query, search words, or any search phrase. No hints. No clues. This means no links, domain names, screen shots, specific search terms, or drawing attention to your profile.

I've looked at the page you suggested, and decided to allow it, but with this caution to new members here that... it's not Google, and it may not in any way represent how Google looks at pages or backlinks. What I see appears to be a tool suite that can graph lots of correlations. It could be hi-tech snake oil, or it could be as well-thought out as Majestic. It could be the next semrush, or the next hrefs, or moz. YMMV.

That said, here's the link to the page. Please don't post any more of them.

[DATA] 100+ Sites Impacted By Google Medic Update Analyzed
[canirank.com...]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 2:47 am (utc) on Aug 25, 2018]

[Leosghost]

I suspect that English is not mara89's first language..But, I think I recognise the structure..so..I think what mara89 meant was..

I had more/ large numbers of major keywords positions which dropped ( normally top 1 & 2 Position dropped to positions 4 & 5 - these are not medical related queries) in this Aug 1st Week Update. Can anyone advise or shed any light on these drops.

As per RankRanger ( [prntscr.com...] *) In the last few days the amount of traffic via Ads has increased. This means more site owners are moved into ad-words or more users are now clicking the Text-based Ads at top of SERPs.is this what is happening ?

mara89..you need to put your location on your profile..what country are you in ? What language is your site in ?

I don't know Rank Ranger, but that ( at the print screen link ) looks like a graph showing the percentage of visitors acquired via ads as opposed to organic ?

ps mara89..don't worry about your English, most people here probably read , write or speak your language far less well than you read, write or speak English :)

HTH ( btw if that was not what you wanted to say..my apologies )

[HammerDown]

If you're in alternative health like me, < snip > the previously cited page suggests that in the Medic Update Google decided they couldn’t risk passionate alternative viewpoints overwhelming the search results on sensitive YMYL topics.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:41 am (utc) on Aug 25, 2018]
[edit reason] removed specifics intended to be search terms [/edit]

[samwest]

zombie traffic high, ending the worst week of the year so far. Looks like even the apparent quotas are gone now. Usually well into the seasonal upswing. SERPs stable, but traffic quality very poor.

[whoa182]

The problem is the content is never updated but they update the title and change the published date. I see this all the time from other competitors as well.

It's deceitful SEO tactic to get a higher CTR. I'm surprised that Google hasn't dealt with it already.

[Leosghost]

BBC do it all the time..irritating when you see the same article using different titles on different days, sometimes even during the same day.

[samwest]

The problem is the content is never updated but they update the title and change the published date.

I've seen the same, but also recycling the same worn out ad filled aggregation over three domains....about, thebalace thebalanceeveryday
pathetic. In this case, moving the same content to a different domain never produced any gains....so far.

[mosxu]

You are not going to believe this:

One company with about five sites and all same products and each site ranking with 2-3 urls each taking over first page and results and half of the second.

The funny part is that there is one meta description for the same product across all five sites...

All 5 sites cross link each other

Just in case you are thinking of creating a farm you know how is done

[lostshootingstar]

I operate an in a service based industry where nearly all our keywords are geo targeted. For example, "Cheapest widgets in Chicago". Most of the major players in the industry have a single brand and domain name, and then have individual pages for each city in the US that is serviced, e.g. "cheapestwidgets.com/illinois/chicago". It's been this way longer than I can remember, nearly 15 years. Some of the sites in our little corner of the world are better than others, where some have unique content on each page and others have the same content on each page with just the city/state replaced. In fact, I am just wrapping up an 18 month long project on my site to make sure ALL of our city location pages are unique, high quality, and value adding.

In the March update, and then again in August, all of a sudden Google started ranking one competitor who took a different approach. Rather than one website they have over 100 individual domains there were all registered around 2013. e.g. "cheapwidgetschicago.com". I had never really seen them rank anywhere before march. All of a sudden nearly all 100 domains are ranking in the top 3 for their target keywords, it's absolutely insane! The domains have nearly zero links pointing to them and the content on each one is just copy pasted with the city and state changed. I am nearly sure the only reason the domains rank at all is because they are aged, they certainly are not high quality. It also seems that having your target keyword "Cheap Widgets Chicago" on the home page is an extremely powerful ranking signal to Google now, where it may not have been before.

The worst part is it's basically a checkmate for many of us because you can't just go registered 100 domains, throw up some content, and expect them to rank well. All indications seem to suggest they would need to age for many years before even Google even considered them.

This has been the most frustrating part of the March and August updates for us. So here's a tip: Forget what Google's webmaster guidelines say about "doorway pages" (They clearly don't enforce this) and go registered an exact match domain for your keyword, some halfassed content, and let it sit for 5 years. You don't even need to worry about link building!

The bonus is that each domain name has a fake Google My Business listing attached to it that are filled with fabricated reviews. They are using addresses for vacant land, run down apartment buildings, and residential homes (they don't have any real physical locations). Google loves those too as they show up in almost all of the local packs at the top of SERPs.

[bwnbwn]

lostshootingstar this has been going on since March?

[lostshootingstar]

Yes, it started happening with the March update, and was then ramped up a bit in August. In fact, the last week or so this competitor has skyrocketed even more. I've been doing this a long time and never seen one organization able to infiltrate SERPs like this so quickly. It's mind boggling how much Google seems to love these small 3-4 page (homepage, about, contact) doorway page sites with little to no useful content on them, simply because the keyword is on the homepage.

[Atomic]

@lostshootingstar I know of these websites and think it's just shameful that they can rank the way they do. They are of very low quality with some of the worst usability and design ever. This is so big an operation that surely Google should be able to detect and end it.

[lostshootingstar]

Yes, I can find all 100+ of their domains by simply googling (with quotes) one sentence off their homepage that is copied across all their sites. Surely Google has more sophisticated tools at their disposal.

[samwest]

This current zombie run is like "drip" or "turnstile" traffic, 1 to 2 visitors on site all day, never more...not sure how they manage to whittle down good volume key phrases and page one results to this slow walk. "Visitors" hit a page, sit there for 5 min, go nowhere else and leave. zero conversions. What's so maddening is that it can be working great one day, then totally off the next.

[mosxu]

@sam

This update was not friendly towards those who cannot co-exist with robots

[bwnbwn]

lostshootingstar all I can say is WOW Google has lost it. You know once this gets out this has stuck for 5 months every spammer in the world will be doing it. Google serps will be done. I use to see this type of activity all the time after an update and within a week or so the sites were gone. Past updates brought up the trash for team members to study and tweak the algo. I guess since ole Al has come along this is no longer the case.

[samrazzy]

I think today there is a new algorithm update. My traffic dropped for last 4 days and again today dropped. I checked semrush, and it shows 6.4 high range signaling a possible algorithm update.

[MayankParmar]

The mess that the Yoast SEO plugin update created is now showing up on Console. 3000+ blank pages are now 410.

[samwest]

I just completed checking a dozen dissimilar websites under my management. Every one of them is showing a large drop starting August 1st. In some cases, traffic was previously robust is now non existent. Bread & butter key phrase positions on all sites seems unchanged, so until I dig further, I can only imaging that long tail has taken yet another hit across the board. That or the AI has found a new and highly efficient way to redirect nearly all traffic. No buyers in three days which is a new record low point. I predict Alphabet gain will now exceed 30% for the quarter. All that traffic had to go somewhere, and that somewhere is likely in their back pocket.

My real question is: if my B&B phrases are still on page 1, why zero traffic?

[Halaspike]

The mess that the Yoast SEO plugin update created is now showing up on Console. 3000+ blank pages are now 410.

@MayankParmar were your rankings affected by the yoast bug? If yes, has your rankings recovered?

I'm currently watching a site that was affected by the yoast bug, in May the site's organic traffic dropped by 70% & till now it hasn't recovered even though the yoast search index purge plugin was installed on the site since May.

[mosxu]

Why zero traffic?

Because what you see as a result is not what all the searchers see.

I see less zombies after this update but also rankings dropped

[RedBar]

My real question is: if my B&B phrases are still on page 1, why zero traffic?

I'll not go into localisation, we know that is having an enormous effect, however what also needs to be recognised is mobile and depending whose figures one uses we can conclude the following:

1. Mobile traffic is more than 50% of traffic plus 60+% of searches are being done on mobile, it's probably higher.

2. Android is 85+% of the OS on mobile, it's probably higher, and what does every Android have as its browser? Chrome, 66+% of tablets are Android and what browser does it have? Chrome.

So, what's my point? Take an Android smartphone and make any search you like however try a popular product for the best example. It is an horrendous experience even on a 6" smartphone, there are ads, images and links everywhere, in fact at times Google tries to compact the page length of the results and there are actually zero organic results until the second page at the earliest.

Interestingly I use a 6" Windows phone and G's SERPs are far better on that using the MS Edge browser, doing the same search I see one ad at the top of the page and three ads at the bottom of the page, the results also look clean and usable.

Is it Android plus Chrome browser using the Google SERPs which is raising so many questions?

Why do my Windows Google SERPs look so much better that my Android Google SERPs?

Oh, and I'm not even go into Joe Public never clearing cache, history or even re-booting their devices.

[Leosghost]

RedBar..what we have both been saying for along time now :)..and said again a few days ago here
[webmasterworld.com...]

If people looked at other threads ( not just the adsense ones and the update ones ) around here..they'd see a lot more information..
and "wonder" a lot less..

[MayankParmar]

That is because Windows Phone's Edge browser is still getting the old classic Google. For example, Top Stories is still "in the news" on Windows Phones. Old Google look was plain, simple.

[MayankParmar]

@Halaspike Not a very drastic drop but the traffic decreased over time. Google is slow when it comes to deindexing the pages.

It's quite obvious if a site has thousands of thin blank pages, the traffic will drop.

[Dimitri]

It's quite obvious if a site has thousands of thin blank pages, the traffic will drop.

Then the question is, why does a site has thousands of thin blank pages.