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)

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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]

[browndog]

How many here that have been hit with this update use a CMS IE wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc and those that are in ecommerce a hosted shopping cart software package; that is mass produced and basically a no brainer to build a website?

I use Wordpress and have seen an improvement since early August. I had a slight dip, but it's improving again. Interestingly, I removed ads from content because I'm earning so little now (1/4 of what I used to earn), Adsense no longer influences me.

But...I'm seeing some absolutely awful results, one post today listed glaucoma as an eye infection (I was so horrified by that) and another site, which is now in the knowlege box doesn't even know its vs it's. But Google have put them in position zero.

[dollarsound]

One of my sites experienced a 25% boost in traffic from 1st August until August 22. Since last week it's been decreasing in traffic until today that suddenly traffic levels are the same as before the Medic Update. Big drop today. Anyone else?

[Milchan]

I would have thought trump used Yandex!

I do think there have been some tweaks over the weekend though as there seems to be quite a few people reporting movement again.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm facing with another correction of traffic on one of my websites, seeing some boost again:

[i.imgur.com...]

[StarkReality]

The idea of a seed set of sites for EAT is certainly an educated guess. Remember pagerank? It required a set of seed sites as well, pretty much like the big bang to get the whole thing started. An AI (as we define it today) learns a lot faster than a human being, but it needs human input as a starting point, a human made ruleset. So, is the algorithm unbiased? Depends on if the humans feeding the AI with data (e.g. the quality raters, users clicking results, etc.) are 100% unbiased. I doubt it is, because humans are always biased in one way or another, that's what actually makes us human, we base opinions and decisions on more than just data.

Additionally, Google doesn't want to present the best results, they want to present the results most people prefer. If most searchers are happy, they use Google and click ads. That's why an article on Cosmopolitan or Men's Health easily outranks the National Library of Medicine for "lose weight". People want an article that's easy to read and comprehensible, they don't want to read an extensive study for hours, written in a style only few fully comprehend. Making people happy automatically means you have to be biased to some extend, again, because people are biased.

[londrum]

One thing I’ve noticed in my part of the travel serps is the extra weight given to national newspapers. Im regularly seeing five big newspapers in the top 15. These arent travel newspapers, just their one-page guides to a particular city - outranking big travel sites like tripadvisor and expedia.
Presumably they’ve upped the power of backlinks

[EditorialGuy]

Additionally, Google doesn't want to present the best results, they want to present the results most people prefer.

They want to present the best results for the individual searcher and the intent behind the query. That's why personalization was invented. And it makes sense, because what's "best" for one person may not be "best" for another. Also, let's face it: In many cases, there is no "best," there are a bunch of "bests." If I search Google for the definition of a common English word, a brownie recipe, the capital of North Dakota, or online sellers of Wi-Fi routers, any of a hundred (or a thousand) results may suit my needs just fine.

[koan]

How many here that have been hit with this update use a CMS IE wordpress, Joomla, Drupal

I have sites that have been (negatively) affected in March/ April and then this August. No CMS, no PHP frameworks, all custom built in vanilla PHP. No CSS frameworks like Bootstrap either, or commercial themes, all custom designed and coded in vanilla CSS/JS (with some Jquery).

[jmorgan]

I'm not a Google-hater. Google's been good to me (in general, over the years). But I've just tried out DuckDuckGo and the results are actually pretty good, although I'm not used to the fonts yet. I think I might stick with it for awhile.

[Martin Ice Web]

After a 2 days of good traffic and conversions, we got hit yesterday pretty heavy again.

What obviously changed is that big brands get variants of keywords.
for example:
Keyword: SUB-D cable
variants: serial, RS232

big brands will show up for all variants even if they are not mentioned on the page. Small sites are only show up for the keyword itself.
So searching for SUB-D will put amazon, conrad etc. on first page but allthough for serial and RS232 ,while small sites only show up for SUB-D.

And this is something the site operator can not influence.

[glakes]

let's face it: In many cases, there is no "best," there are a bunch of "bests." If I search Google for the definition of a common English word, a brownie recipe, the capital of North Dakota, or online sellers of Wi-Fi routers, any of a hundred (or a thousand) results may suit my needs just fine.

If you search for a definition, you will be served an answer box, so the other results really don't matter in this case. Searching for a product is a different story. The results Google presents for product searches are often superficial, relying simply on domain authority (ie. Amazon). Knowing that about half the sellers on Amazon reside in China, exporting their Chinese goods to Amazon warehouses for distribution in the USA, what makes such products rank so well in Google? Is it because many of the products are cheap one use wonders? Or is it because of the "Amazon's Choice" label, which is mostly given to Chinese sellers that sell their Chinese made goods via Prime?

[Milchan]

I'm not a Google-hater. Google's been good to me (in general, over the years). But I've just tried out DuckDuckGo and the results are actually pretty good, although I'm not used to the fonts yet. I think I might stick with it for awhile.

You can change the appearance including the font type, size etc in the settings section - actually has quite a few config options and is one of the things I like about it.

[Milchan]

@Martin Ice Web

After a 2 days of good traffic and conversions, we got hit yesterday pretty heavy again.

Yeah I think something might have changed again , or was tweaked at least - I saw a lot of up and down over the weekend. then Monday for me was seeing a good increase in traffic and a good amount of conversions , but then Tues and Wed conversions fell right down and today seems slow also. Could just be end of month of course but the traffic patterns seem a bit strange

[mosxu]

Blessed with lots of zombies at the moment,

AI likes to show my ads mainly to past visitors. Why? I do not bid on audiences

[lostshootingstar]

@Milchan, I have experienced exactly what you said this week as well. I could have written that myself.

[edited by: lostshootingstar at 7:50 pm (utc) on Aug 30, 2018]

[renatovieira]

Things are really not good today. Traffic decrease more than 80%.

Google again joking to be God!

Did anyone else notice anything today?

Tourism, USA

[Milchan]

same for me (tourism) , traffic right down , hardly any sales what so ever.

[yollo03]

Yep, traffic is down for me too. Google added those stupid quick Q&A in my niche but the algorithm is still having problems understanding the niche. It explains why the ranking is still a mess.

[whoa182]

It looks like they've made some changes. Traffic was really low today... just when I was seeing a good recovery from August 1st. :(

[heisje]

Or is it because of the "Amazon's Choice" label, which is mostly given to Chinese sellers that sell their Chinese made goods via Prime?

Some large greedy corporations, such as _ _ _ _ _ care only about bottom line figures, never heard any about corporate social responsibility, including gross tax avoidance.
Make America Great Again! Yeah, right . . . .
.

[glakes]

Some large greedy corporations, such as _ _ _ _ _ care only about bottom line figures, never heard any about corporate social responsibility, including gross tax avoidance.
Make America Great Again! Yeah, right . . . .

It's funny how Walmart got hammered in the media years back about forcing American companies to produce their products cheaper by outsourcing production to China. Then comes Amazon who simply cuts out American businesses and goes directly to businesses in China, which can be described as Walmart's business model on steroids.

Outside of Amazon's cut of 15%, warehouse storage and pick/pack fees, there's very little left that stays in the USA. The profit the business made selling on Amazon goes right to China, along with the manufacturing jobs required to replenish stock. On Amazon, USA based businesses are in the minority. That much is certain with half the sellers on Amazon living in China. Makes one wonder what really drives Google's love affair with Amazon when it comes to products. Neither company (Amazon or Google) appears to take too kindly to domestic businesses when they are both giving preference to offshore businesses and their products.

[Robert Charlton]

It looks like they've made some changes. Traffic was really low today... just when I was seeing a good recovery from August 1st.

Worth noting that this weekend (Sat thru Mon) is a major holiday weekend in the US... Labor Day... and for some this becomes a 4 or 5 day holiday.

Some people shop. Some people travel. Some get their kids ready for school.

[RedBar]

Labor Day... and for some this becomes a 4 or 5 day holiday.

Aha! That's possibly why my traffic is way down today however it doesn't explain my UK centric sites which are also well below normal traffic levels.

Is something broken somewhere? I'm not insinuating it's a Google problem because my traffic is well down across all sites.

[Milchan]

my customers base is world wide and traffic is down - seems slightly better today so far but still down. The US holiday stuff could effect me a little but not to the degree ive been seeing. The fact that it is end of the month can have a bit of an effect also, but again I think there has been some tweaks in the algo again but no idea what they are about

[renatovieira]

@Milchan

"...The US holiday stuff could effect me a little but not to the degree ive been seeing...."

Exactly! Beyond that, people use cell phone :) ... Rarely does anyone disconnect on vacation or weekend.

So this fact (vacation) was never something that would disrupt my conversions.

Anyway, I believe it was some new update from Tuesday to Wednesday.

[RedBar]

If the extremely low traffic continues then today will be one of my lowest-ever PVs and mine is supposedly global traffic.

I have to say that I am now seriously considering a US company base and US hosting to see what I can do about localisation of the SERPs etc. BUT saying that I have US widget trade colleagues who have also seen massive traffic falls and these are top 5,000 USA sites and USD 1+ Billion companies.

Everyone I am talking to is seeing traffic losses, not one has had any gains therefore where the heck has that traffic gone?

Are they no longer searching for "my trade products"?

Actual USA widget sales are up according to trade statistics and import/export data.

[WhoKnows111]

Worth noting that this weekend (Sat thru Mon) is a major holiday weekend in the US... Labor Day... and for some this becomes a 4 or 5 day holiday.

So another G update incoming?

They said no more big updates during holidays, but they forgot about it fairly quickly :-)

Nothing better than destroy people lives while celebrating with friends and families

[yollo03]

In the past 48 hours my traffic has shrank by 70% from google. I am still getting traffic from affiliates though. There is something really odd going on. My suggestion to anyone that got it is to check your trust flow and citation flow. If your trust flow or citation flow got hit please update us here.

This is how you check: [checkpagerank.net...]

[jmorgan]

Just waiting for Labor Day to fully end and settle before reading too much into my analytics.

[massimodefilippo]

I hope Trump will help people that suffer a 90% drop like me!
Google cannot destroy a business since one day to another without a reason.
No bad content or copy content, no keyword stuffing, https, fast, no flash, long time in the website and good bounce rate!

[jmorgan]

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that most of the people complaining about some kind of drop in rankings seem to be those who are visibly lacking (at least based on their posts in this forum) when it comes to fluency and grammar in the English language.

Maybe we should call this the ESL Update rather than the Medic Update.

[heisje]

@jmorgan

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed

It's definitely you. Friendly advice: have yourself checked.
ASAP.
.

[renatovieira]

It's terrible today. Traffic worse than the worst days.

Someone else?

Tourism, USA

[System]

The following 4 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4918232.htm [webmasterworld.com]
12:54 pm on Sep 1, 2018 (PDT -8)