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]

[Milchan]

I think a major issue is the "quality" is very subjective but i just cant seen how googles algorithm can be trusted to interpret the content of a site to ensure that it is better "quality" than others in so many situations. For example (and this is a massive problem in my niche travel) someone can write a well written , good looking piece of content and post it on a technically well setup blog (fast, responsive) supposedly giving great advice about X destination or tips on Y in Z country and to your average consumer it might look like it is good, useful content but then an actual real expert in that area can take one look at it and see a multitude of factual inaccuracies, bad advice that sometimes could be downright dangerous, - yet google will not know about the things that are wrong - how can it? it cant fact check everything via algorithm (at least not yet) so the content at the top ends up being bad - the opposite of what google says it is trying to achieve.
I actually think that there should be more weight give to sites from entities that can prove they have some legitmate proof of being knowledgeable in an area. Maybe using some kind of new EV SSL wereby a medical professional could have their credentials checked and authorized and issued an certificate in the "medical domain" , which google could then recognize as some form of authority to write content on that subject and be given a bit more trust.

[lostshootingstar]

I've found so many helpful articles on How To Geek over the last 10 years, it's hard to imagine anything else that is higher quality in that niche; I feel really bad for the owner.

I think this highlights another problem in that there's no way to know if you are affected by an algorithmic penalty, and if you are, how to fix it. It seems Google is shooting themselves in the foot here with How To Geek. They are surpressing one of the most useful and highest quality sites on the web. That alone should trigger a red flag that something is not working right and needs to be reviewed.

One thing How To Geek has going for them is that they are high profile enough, and people like them enough to maybe get some help from Google on this either publicly or behind the scenes.

Unfortunately we don't all have such a luxury and are left to make wild guesses and hope something sticks.

If you're reading this, Lowell, best of luck!

[Milchan]

i agree , whilst we all have been commenting and thinking there is something "wrong" I agree , this does highlight it a lot better because of the profile. Simply put , I would much rather be served an article from How to Geek at the top than a spammy page that has copied them or part of their content and im sure most people would which is some proof that the update is not achieving what they want it to do , at least not across the board and seemingly in various niches.

[givinguponlife]

< I actually think that there should be more weight give to sites from entities that can prove they have some legitmate proof of being knowledgeable in an area

this is actually explained a bit in google search guidelines and they do that, just seems not well enough

Thanks for the link,

[MayankParmar]

Every automated feature that Google has created should be legally removed. It's killing the internet. Businesses. People aren't taking it seriously.

"Similar question" after the featured snippet box pushes other sites below the fold on mobile. Who's going to click on them? The giant Google logo should be removed as well.

Nobody is safe.

[chrisv1963]

I'm seeing similarities between How to Geek and 2 of my own websites that got heavily hurt by this update. They have a lot of good content, but they are also running Adsense to finance the website and to make it all possible. They are running Adsense ads of similar sizes and on similar locations as on my websites. Just like me they are running the "Powered by Google" similar pages search app at the end of their pages.

I think that the quality of the Google quality raters is a huge problem for Google. They "help" Google to decide whether an algo is good or not. Quality raters might not like sites that need ads to stay alive. They don't care about the quality of the content, only the visual appearance of the website is important to them. Also, how can a quality rater decide about the quality of content on different subjects like cars, houses, parenting,dogs, ...? Are all of them walking encyclopedias? How can they detect stolen content?

You don't need to invest in "great content" to rank on Google. Just steal content (like for instance Quora) and put very little advertising on your pages. You will rank like hell on Google (but not on Bing, DuckDuckGo, ...). Your income per visitor will be low, but since you didn't invest in content this won't be a problem. I sometimes work an entire day on one article. By stealing content I could probably add up to 100 articles per day.

Another thing I've noticed, on mobile, is that a lot of AMP pages disappeared from the serps. Maybe quality raters don't like the look of AMP pages?

[arunpalsingh]

@Chrisv1963! I noticed that too. All the content regardless of its shallowness, which is placed at the top does not have pages with ads.
And Google seems to go berserk here. Its displaying .docs. pdfs, commercial pages with the product for an info keyword.

Just now, more baffled than yesterday, I saw a dissertation from a university with all its scientific language topping the SERPs for a YLYM query.

Google wants you to read the original research for the little info that you thought would quickly scan through.

Someone somewhere has pulled few wrong strings. What was intended to be a Waltz has turned into breakdance.

[BushyTop]

Post update or vertical is seeing more multiple listings from the same domain. This update is a mess. I'd like to hope they will have realised that.

[arunpalsingh]

Big mess. Quicksand rather.

[MayankParmar]

@arunpalsingh Bhai, what is your niche?

[arunpalsingh]

@MayankParmar! Hi

Its Health and Medicine. <snip> to be precise.



Mod's note: We try not to get that precise regarding site niche. Please read Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:53 am (utc) on Aug 7, 2018]

[jmorgan]

So from what I gather, websites providing health-related information have been targeted heavily. Maybe someone in Google or one of their family members got some bad advice from a health website and decided to retaliate.

[MayankParmar]

Accurate.

[arunpalsingh]

Mixing business with personal matters is never good. :-)

[yollo03]

I am seeing another big shakeup in my niche, one of my competitors jumped from page 10 to page 4 and the other was shoved from page 2 to page 6. We might be in front of another huge shuffle but I still cannot tell if its limited to my niche.

UPDATE! Something is going on. My conclusion so far, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

[Milchan]

Post update or vertical is seeing more multiple listings from the same domain

and yes I noticed that AMP pages are getting a lot less higher page results than they used to in general but that is something I noticed a few months ago so I don't think it is a result of this update. the only exception it seems is news that still does well for amp.

Im seeing that a lot also in my niche - I in fact have places 1 and 2 for one target keyword (previously just had 1 spot) and the number 2 result certainly shouldn't be there in my opinion, it is related but there should be other results from other pages above it for sure.

I agree , this update really is a mess. thankfully im beginning to get better conversions these last few days and im less stressed about it but that doesnt change my opinion. Im just going to keep working on content

[Halaspike]

@yollo03 i think you are really wasting so much time, energy & resources on checking you & your competitors page positions everytime. My advice is that you start creating new contents, the earlier the better. Make sure your new contents are more than the number of times you use to check you & your competitors page positions.

[edited by: Halaspike at 1:55 pm (utc) on Aug 7, 2018]

[Jhurwith]

Luckily have not seen much of a change.

[BushyTop]

This update really is a mess. Seeing more and more multiple listings from one domain in the same search vertical... Some of our compeitors who are much bigger than us and who i have admiration for in terms of the SEO tactics have dropped by 20%. Others that have redirected unrelated lapsed domains (essentially inheriting their backlink profile) have flown to the top.

Its bizarre, disappointing and frustrating...

[yollo03]

I am not adding new content yet, I have to come up with a new strategy for content. This is no longer about providing quality content as we know. You need to adjust to these changes whether you like it or not.

[arunpalsingh]

I will rather wait for the update to settle and let a pattern emerge before making changes to the website.
Otherwise, I might end up breaking things.

@yollo03 I am not doubting your conclusions. But it needs more time period and a larger sample to study to deduce something.

I just wanted to suggest to wait and let the studies come out. All in all, it seems a bizarre update. There could be a readjustment of the matrix, you know.

But its still your call.

[cheegum]

Anyone interested in conducting an analysis of sites in a group jointly?

[yollo03]

I am going to make big changes once this is over, got nothing to lose after being tanked to page 11. The way this is at the moment, 'less is more.' Google wants short answers to queries. My only hope is that I was pushed down because the algo needs to re-evaluate my website before deciding where to rank me. I see loads of complains online about this update.

I will wait until the weekend. If nothing happens by then I am going to begin slashing content from my homepage.

[NickMNS]

I see loads of complains online about this update.

Be cautious about drawing conclusions from these observations. There is a big bias at play in situations like this, those that have benefited from the update are not complaining, and tend not to brag, so you are seeing many more complaints than positive observations.

[yollo03]

You are absolutely right, I am not telling anyone to slash content. I will do it because I have nothing to lose and I will tell you if it actually improved my rankings. I see posts with less than 300 words from other websites ranking way above my homepage and they are not the only one.

I managed to get myself to guest-post in a high authority website in my niche (DA over 70) but google has yet to acknowledge it.

[mosxu]

A sickening amount of zombies after this update both mobile and tablet. It used to be more the desktop the zombies were coming from.

Profiling a persona buying behaviour on mobile is probably at the heart of this update for ecommerce sites obviously

[cheegum]

There is seriously a flaw in this algorithm, sites mentioned as "Positive and High" ratings in the raters guidelines have dropped as well

[JesterMagic]

The How-To Geek post on the Google Webmaster Central help forum is an interesting read and shows just how broken certain parts of the Google algorithm are (which a lot of us already knew). Hopefully How-Too Geek and their popularity will shine a bigger light on the issue though I am sure Google already knows of the problem.

You would think by now Google would be able to determine copied content and who most likely owns it (ie whatever site Google found it on first).

It also shows that Google AI is not really an AI that truly understands content but just a bunch of if statements looking for certain signals. Some signals make sense to base the algorithm on like speed of page or number of ads on a page but when you use signals to determine the quality and relevancy of content their will always be problems for some sites since there is no true understanding of what the content is about. Until that happens their will always be sites unfairly pushed down in the serps.

I think it also shows Google needs to offer more information about what they see as problems with a site. I can't see how this is a bad thing as it would only help the internet as a whole. They already tell us of html issues like buttons too close together or font is too small... why can't they expand this for more signals like too many ads, duplicate content and other broad signals they use.

[RedBar]

I will rather wait for the update to settle and let a pattern emerge before making changes to the website.

Absolutely, do not change anything ... and if, perchance, you do understand what craziness Google has introduced, ensure you make back-ups of everything should you decide to make any changes just in case you need to reverese it.

Me? I'm not changing a darned thing since my professional and trade users value the information and images I post, I honestly do not care if Google does not, it simply demonstrates how really poor their algo is of understanding quality websites.

For newbies, I do not operate ecommerce sites, purely corporate brochureware with accurate product data and images much of it of exclusive production.

[Halaspike]

Very good to not make any changes to good contents already published prior a Google update.

Thing is, do not let a Google update stop you from creating new contents & doing other good things to your site.

[Isa_Al]

This update I guess it killed many site, and even Google is considering some traffic from some countries as spam like different dimensions for the valid visitors in Adsense, after this update, my revenue is down 80% ( Adsense is constantly deducting clicks and revenue every few minutes)

anyone is suffering from the same thing?

[yollo03]

I dont use adsense but it did kill many websites, some will eventually buckle under the pressure. About adsense, google said they are aware of it but claim its not related to the core update [searchenginejournal.com...]

[RedBar]

About adsense, google said they are aware of it but claim its not related to the core update

Rubbish!

If a site loses 20-50% of its traffic and then loses 20-50% of its AdSense income it is directly related, it's a symbiotic relationship going up and down with each other.

Granted that the update may not have anything to do with AdSense per se however the relationship for those using it is extremely close therefore those losing traffic will inevitably lose AdSense earnings.

This is as true now as it was in 2003!

[Isa_Al]

@redbar It's not only about the traffic, but Google is deducting revenue and clicks every few minutes, and also of the traffic from certain countries.

This update is really affecting Adsense in terms of traffic as you said, and other ways as well.

[RedBar]

but Google is deducting revenue and clicks every few minutes,

I am going to presume that these are realtime deductions by Google for invalid clicks and traffic. I am not experiencing any increase in deductions however I don't get many clicks anyway.

From which country do you get the majority of your clicks?

Is it a relatively "new" AdSense market as a matter of interest?

[Isa_Al]

@redbar I am using Adsense for years and never faced such issue, I get around 60k-70k visitors a day and I used to make on average around 80$/day. Now barely making 20$ if I work so hard, only since last Friday.

Most of my traffic ( around 75%) is from Africa, mostly Kenya and Nigeria, but since last Friday most of the revenue from these countries is being deducted within hours or minutes.

BTW, I am not the only one suffering from this issue, I know a couple of other people who have sites like mine and suffering from the same issue, since last Friday as well.

[NYCTech]

We initially saw an uptick in traffic as this update began rolling out. A couple of days later, traffic decreased, somewhat substantially. When I drilled into the data, impressions were up and position was pretty stable.

I can't be sure, but, in our case, I suspect competitors began buying ads to offset traffic loss. An ad doesn't move the "position" as reported by Google, but it does move it from the user's perspective, and I've noticed this happening after previous updates. Most of the ads being purchased violate Google's TOS in some way, so these bursts usually drop.

Based on that, it's entirely possible to not be penalized at all and still lose traffic due to an increase in ad spend by other sites. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Google does this on purpose, from time to time, to get companies to spend a bit extra when their traffic declines. At any rate, it's worth digging into the data if you've seen a drop. It's always better to make decisions based on empirical data.

[mosxu]

@NYCTech

Same here update started well than all trash. You are right about the fake traffic for a period of time will make the webmaster think competition put bid up which no one can find out.

You are probably already in the zombie land there is traffic but probably not conversions and especially in a mobile zombieland after this update.

[Halaspike]

In Search Console, thousands of links to my site vanished & i did not submit a disavow file.

Does this mean that a competitor tried bringing me down by spamming my backlink profile with thousands of bad links but google is now able to ignore bad links & not use them as a ranking factor?

[whoa182]

Even if you did submit a disavow file, the links would still show up in search console.

I've had links disappear from there before (a lot of them) after an update, only for most of them to return later on.

[MayankParmar]

My traffic dropped 70% today. Its all over.

[MayankParmar]

@Halaspike Google ignores spammy link tho. Always use Semrush and Ahrefs to monitor backlink spikes. Semrush's audit is a great way to keep things fine.

Some people say disavow is dead but it's really not. It still works.

[jmorgan]

I do not agree that "less is more". Where are people suddenly getting this idea?

Google any query where you need a reasonably in-depth answer and chances are you'll get a long-ass, but very helpful, blog post or something from one of the question/answer sites (Quora, Stackexchange, etc).

That said, writing a long article just for the sake of writing a long article is probably not going to cut it either. At the end of the day, you have to answer the user's query, not just ramble on with useless information just to make up your 1,500 or 2,000 words you're targeting.

[RedBar]

@Isa_Al

Very strange for an established account I would have thought and for others to be experiencing the same is very worrying. Are they targeting the same countries?

Bearing in mind that Google were sending out payment confirmations dated June/July 2016 yesterday, nothing would surprise me as to what they have fubard now!

[Erdogan]

Hi, turkey news sites also came to the meeting by making all spam. We live in great loss, we are Turkish webmasters.

[HelenOfTroy]

So seems like health and medicine are the main targets. [seroundtable.com...]

[whoa182]

I'm still able to compete with big health sites due to my queries being more relevant, but I guess it's only a matter of time before the big sites take those keywords too.

Is there any point in competing in the health space anymore?

E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, Trust.

So, what is the solution to recover? Do we need to get a 4-year degree from a university which gives us the credentials to tell people to eat some broccoli or take a supplement for x y z?

If we run a site that falls under YLYM. I would expect that for giving advice on serious diseases like cancer, you would need to tick all the boxes. And that's fair, I can understand that. But what if you are just giving advice on acne? Surely it doesn't require the same degree of authority and expertise.

What is an expert? Do you need formal education? Or can you have years of experience in the area and show your expertise by writing good content.

Can we simply build authority and trustworthiness by getting relevant links from places and making sure we don't go into trying to promote 'unproven' treatments? Citing credible sources and satisfying users by giving them what they need.

If the criteria are getting so high, it's obvious what's going to happen. All the little bloggers, their experiences, will get completely drowned out by these huge health websites. They have certified nutritionists, doctors etc on their advisory boards, but many don't even write the articles themselves, they just hire writers and sign the articles off after reading them (or do they bother?)

I'm starting to wonder if it's worth carrying on putting all my effort into my site now. Those of us in the health niche, maybe we should start planning to move on. I don't want to be all doom and gloom, but it seems like it's going to be a losing battle.

Here are a couple articles you should check out:

[mariehaynes.com...]

[semrush.com...]

[jmorgan]

If you actually have a trusted authority health website, wouldn't your rankings go up with all the other websites going down?

Anyway, back to my point on subtle nuances in the English language that non-native speakers exhibit that WILL get picked up by a native-English speaker. Here are some examples from the home page of a health website which recently got penalized:

"Advice from best doctors and top medical experts from India, US, UK, Australia"

"Get diagnosis and treatment plan from doctor on chat, phone or video call and make better and informed decision"

"Connect one on one with online doctors to get answers and opinion on reports anonymously"

See the grammatical errors? I do. They are not glaring, but they are definitely there.

How do you expect someone to trust a website for health advice that either doesn't proof-read their copy, or cannot formulate a sentence using correct grammatical structures?

That would be like me creating a French health website and writing, "Le counseil de les meilleurs docteurs qui viennent d'India, Londre et Australie." I might be proud of my French, but a native Frenchie would probably cringe.

[aristotle]

As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of spam and quackery in the healthcare sector. Google wants to purge it from their search results. But some of it may be so cleverly presented that it's hard for an algorithm to identify.

[Milchan]

so after a few days whereby traffic and conversions recovered a bit for me , yesterday and today it has fallen off a cliff again. Looking at the serps and google has kindly cemented most top results wiith multiple entries from the same big brands tripadvisor and viator (and often with ads by both of them above the top 3 to 5 serp entries they also have). Their pages are all just lists of tour with essentially no content what so ever.
It is clear that branding is vastly more important than content now after this update and for the small guy you simply cannot compete. Unless there is a another change / recovery then fairly soon then I will likely have no choice but to close the business.Ive no idea what I will do but it wont be an internet based business as im tired of working 15 hour days and destroying my health/life for this. Having a bad day and its just the morning