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]

[RedBar]

I dont like it either but Im not going to have much choice at some point.

I'm seriously having to consider this as well. One of my primary product sites, keyword domain name, registered trademark of 40 years etc, has completely disappeared to be replaced by multiple entry generic directory sites.

Let me say that it's not only me, nearly ALL my fellow competitors have also disappeared, and just how can US companies rank above so many Indian companies in Google.co.in for this original Indian product is beyond me? If their sites were superior, fine, however they are not, they are plain, ordinary US-style, fairly thin sales pages, nothing more.

[yollo03]

Yeah, this is why they got ranked better. Fewer page = less problems. The more pages you have the more you are likely to struggle if some of those pages are not liked by google. They will just hit the entire website. I still believe they will revise this update I just hope it will be soon. I lost some major keywords and unlike you almost all my competitors are still ranked where they are. The common factor between them is that they have less pages than me. I have no idea what pages are problematic it will take months of work if they dont revise this update soon.

[RedBar]

Fewer page = less problems.

I'm seeing pages with only keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 in the titlebar plus 1 small image on the page with the three keywords and absolutely nothing else, it's almost like teaching someone how to make an image page from 20+ years ago!

it will take months of work if they dont revise this update soon.

Well, I certainly will not be changing anything since many companies depend upon the information I have uploaded over the years, the unfortunate thing is that anyone wanting to learn this information etc now will not be able to find it unless someone gives them the link.

And does Google like links these days or not?

Bizarre!

[jmorgan]

after this update my website ranked on 1st position on some weight loss related supplements keywords but today my website goes to 3rd page of google. Can any one guide me now how to do?

Something about reducing content because Google likes short articles now, or something like that.


... just kidding :)

[samwest]

You ever been driving down a highway. cruising along at 72, when some car pulls up on you at 74, so you step it up to match him and he steps it up to 76...pretty soon you're both tearing along at 90mph....that's called competition and it's how people actually win and lose in the serps and life. Never forget that someone is always waiting to eat your lunch.

[browndog]

I do think it's practically impossible these days to come up with an idea for a topic that has never been done before. And if you do come up with one, if it's really that original, chances are no one's searching for it.

Possibly, my biggest article hasn't been covered by my usual competitors. I can't 'beat' them on the common topics because they have more authority, and I would prefer to stick to topics which haven't been covered hundreds of times.

I covered a topic recently (because I wanted to know the answer for myself) and a friend in a different industry was blown away because he said not a day goes by that his customers don't come in and ask him 'what kind of magic sparkles are safe with unicorns'. Not a single one of my competitors have written about it apart from me. There's still plenty of topics out there.

My site is still doing well after this recent update but I am still waiting for the axe to fall.

[massimodefilippo]

Guys, I think there is only one thing to do.
We all together can tell google to get better, to solve this crazyness.
Google sholud go back to last algorithm and start back to try to improve it.
These new results is a non sense algorithm, they only tell: we put up some website who were under.

[Andrew78]

Hi Massimo,

you come from Italy like me, I knew about your sites, having found them from time to time: were they affected heavily by this last update? since your sites actually should have enough authorship given your profession.

[Leosghost]

I think that browndog ( and all the other people who gained from this algo change ) are unlikely to be joining in with anyone telling Google to go back to the last algo..

Plus..Google have never really been strong on doing things because some webmasters tell them they should..

[massimodefilippo]

Yes Andrew, my website had a super drop! :-(
If you check around, there are many people disapponted for this algorithm and no many people happy.
When a website has a drop, a website must gain, but in this case, 2 types of website gained:
1) Bad website, like spam, thin content (even empty page), non responsive, non https, ecc. (often abandoned websites)
2) Great organization (like colgate, ecc.).
Maybe Google don't listen the webmasters, but we are the customers and if we have to go to the third page of google to find the results we are searching for, I think the user experience is bad.
Until 1st of august, google told that content is king, the user experience is the most important thing, ecc.
Now it seems it contraddict himself.
Maybe it don't realize what is happening.

[kylojoe]

Digital Marketing world is now more hybrid, dynamic, and influential than ever before. Google updates their algorithm to more focused and competitive as well. It updates to achieved high search engine ranking and to maintain exact search terms.

Google Broad Core Update
Google Hummingbird Update
Google Panda Update
Google Penguin Update
Google Pigeon Update

[mosxu]

Personalisation is coming back after this update. It was off for a about a week.

Basically if you visited a certain site that site keeps following you in organic showing higher for a period.

Imagine if you are the website owner what sort of results you see compared to some user first time searching.

But not all sites are subject to personalisation for some reason.

[MayankParmar]

I have nothing to add.... same old cries :) My traffic dropped and hasn't recovered yet.

[massimodefilippo]

I dont know in US, but in Italy, the winner are huge website like newspaper online or little website, spam website, non responsive and not HTTPS.
This is the medical content, I don't know nothing about the other matters.

[Cralamarre]

I think that browndog ( and all the other people who gained from this algo change ) are unlikely to be joining in with anyone telling Google to go back to the last algo..

Add me to that list. It always amazes me, the number of people on here who seem to think that the whole world needs to change to benefit them.

[samwest]

+1 ^
I can report that things have not changed much with this update, My test site has ridden out 20 years of algo updates and still sits at #1 and #2 positions.

The only thing I still notice is odd quota patterns. No one day of the week is a standout anymore whereas these patterns used to be clear week after week, month after month, season after season. It's more like shooting craps these days with traffic quality and conversions.

The big affectors for me look to be paid ad cycles, software update cycles and some hereto unknown connectivity and site speed issues possibly related to bot activity.

If you are dropping more than +/- 1 positions, you likely have bigger content issues to address. Even +/- 1 is a warning signal that something is not quite right with your site.

[heisje]

My observation is that long-tail results start looking more like Bing. Seems to me they have considerably reduced the number of long-tail indexed pages, they no longer possess the bulk of information they used to have to draw from and now return poor results for specialized queries, if any - not unlike the totally useless Bing.

Indexing & maintaining trillions of long-tail pages costs money while scarcely ever pulls in any profit. In the absence of any meaningful competition, maintaining a costly huge long-tail index obviously is not the thing to go on doing.

.

[aristotle]

Google Broad Core Update
Google Hummingbird Update
Google Panda Update
Google Penguin Update
Google Pigeon Update

Where did this list come from? Does anyone know?

Most likely "Broad Core" refers to the recent update (starting Aug 1). But I don't think the others are listed in correct historical order, are they? My memory is a bit fuzzy.

[samwest]

On the bight side, they have also managed to pare down the scrapers who ranked above us, especially in the image index. I like to amuse myself with the thought that they actually listened to us on this issue. It's not perfect, but better. For those who are seeing flux, it might also mean that you have too many competitors in your vertical working towards the same goal, as my second to last post describes.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

We all together can tell google to get better, to solve this crazyness.

Guys, where to put my sign? :)

And without jokes: I'm pretty sure that "old" guys from this forum know that this won't work and Google doesn't really care on what we are thinking about this update.

Imagine, if some stranger that is walking the street in front of you will suddenly stop you and say: "I'm sorry, Mr., but I know that you are the webmaster of website.com - I have to rebuke you, you are doing everything wrong! You should....".

The best thing that will happen - you will say him "OK, thanks for the info!" and will continue your walk. In negative scenario you could even want to kick his ass hard. It's your business - so why the hell he must comment it or give you any suggestions?

The same situation with Google - why should the G team listening to our comments? :) They are seeing the picture from other side, they are NOT on our side. They are using webmasters to make their revenue, we are using Google to make ours. The problems of both sides are their own problems I think.

[Halaspike]

In my niche I'm the only site with very good exceptional contents & a very good design, the rest of the sites in my niche just copy & paste each others contents.

Problem is, I'm the youngest in the niche, my site is just 3yrs old while others are about 10 - 18yrs old.

For all keywords i always make it to page one but google pushes my site below all the sites older than mine so i end up in the #6 to #9 positions.

This has left me with the conclusion that content isn't king................Backlinks & domain age is 95% of what google uses to rank a site.

My site has gained over 300 high quality backlinks while the older guys have backlinks in thousands due to the age of their sites.

Looks like i will never be able to outrank this older lame sites. SMH

Only thing that's been helping me get a decent amount of organic traffic is that the information in my contents are sometimes used as featured snippets in serps.

[HammerDown]

Me?

I'm walking away from this for the rest of the month,

Probably very wise. I've now wasted about ten days looking for answers and have gotten zip, zilch, nada.

Fortunately, I have now six straight days of better numbers across all acquisition numbers compared to the previous six days but still down 60%.

[jmorgan]

I do think it's practically impossible these days to come up with an idea for a topic that has never been done before.

I used to think that way, until I realized that people probably MySpace had the social media space cornered before Facebook came around. Same with Yahoo/Altavista and Google, etc.

It's not easy, of course. But I'm pretty sure there are opportunities still waiting to be discovered.

[Atomic]

Google Broad Core Update 
Google Hummingbird Update 
Google Panda Update 
Google Penguin Update 
Google Pigeon Update

There have been so many broad core updates over the years that seeing it on a list like this as if it was a one time event is sort of hilarious.

[egyfitness]

In my niche I'm the only site with very good exceptional contents & a very good design, the rest of the sites in my niche just copy & paste each others contents.

Problem is, I'm the youngest in the niche, my site is just 3yrs old while others are about 10 - 18yrs old.

For all keywords i always make it to page one but google pushes my site below all the sites older than mine so i end up in the #6 to #9 positions.

This has left me with the conclusion that content isn't king................Backlinks & domain age is 95% of what google uses to rank a site.

My site has gained over 300 high quality backlinks while the older guys have backlinks in thousands due to the age of their sites.

Looks like i will never be able to outrank this older lame sites. SMH

Only thing that's been helping me get a decent amount of organic traffic is that the information in my contents are sometimes used as featured snippets in serps.

Wait until these guys re-write your articles :)

[JesterMagic]

Our site lost 30% of traffic with the March update and April update and a greater percentage in revenue since a number of our good keywords slipped to page 2. With the August update we gained maybe 10% back in traffic. Some keywords went up a bit but most stayed the same. It looks like with some pages either the keywords are getting more impressions so it appears Google may have open the throttle a bit on these or maybe long-tail keywords increased for these pages....

In our niche the big shakeup happened in March and not really for the better giving big brands/news outlets more positions with thin content. With the April and August update some changes happened but not a major reshuffle. August update went in the right direction for us but not enough as thin content prevails. (we are NOT in the health or financial industry)

[Halaspike]

Wait until these guys re-write your articles :)

They've already been copying my articles, they don't even re-write it, they only change the images & google still puts them above me.

When i found out they've been copying my articles it was already too late because they had already copied over a thousand articles on my site.

What I've done to prevent them from copying my new articles is to hide it from all archives & from the home page, it has really helped a lot.

[EditorialGuy]

I do think it's practically impossible these days to come up with an idea for a topic that has never been done before.

The important thing, IMO, is to do it better, or do it in a way that's better for a specific audience.

Let's say that you want to create a travel site about Widgetland. There may be plenty of general travel sites about Widgetland, but how many are there that cater specifically to Millennials, Baby Boomers, skiers, disabled people, naturists, art and history buffs, or train travelers? For every popular topic, there may well be subtopics that have yet to be exploited.

[samwest]

^ EG is right, and that's the beauty of the web as it continues to evolve. It's an endless realm of products, information and ideas with many open opportunities remaining for the creative minded webmeister. I have a mile long backlog of ideas myself.

BUT, the main road is full of potholes. Again, with top 1 and 2 positions as well as 1 and 2 on all the "suggested" searches at the bottom of the page, traffic has gone back to a trickle. In my test case, it's about wild traffic fluctuation on stable serps that puzzles me. Lots of foreign and I use CF to block many bad actor countries, yet GA is showing traffic from those locations. wth? spoofed traffic making it through GA? No wonder stats are wacky.

[yollo03]

Can anyone confirm whether your trust flow was affected as a result of this update?