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]

[HammerDown]

@HammerDown i can't manually remove thousands of posts using the "Remove url" tool in search console, that will take forever. Best option is using a 410 (gone) error code so Google will deindex them ASAP.

Are you sure that a 410 is a good idea if you're not actually deleting the posts? Again, if you're getting no traffic, they're a liability and a 410 might just a bandaid. If there's no good content, delete them all and get googlebot crawling ASAP to discover that the low-quality content is pruned.

[Halaspike]

They have been deleted & I'm already getting 410 error messages in search console so everything is going as planned. Looks like you don't really know what a 410 is, try doing some research on it.

[samwest]

These update are all multifaceted there is no single factor that any person can point to

That's for sure! but if you look very closely, there are effects operating in lockstep that may point to some factors...

We observe a large number of sites, both for internal projects and clients on diverse hosting and covering a wide range of topics. Funny thing tho, when these "updates" come through, ALL sites exhibit similar changes and most noticeable in user behavior, not B&B rankings. In most of my cases, it seems the cause is deltas in long tail positioning and the ubiquitous random ads that pop in and out of the SERPs. I'd suggest that those two variables alone are factors for a large percentage of the flux many here are experiencing.

One other observational consideration, VOLUME.
In observing and reporting a site that gets 100 hits per day vs. one that gets 1000+ per day, you find a lot more pain watching the low volume site. Obviously the high volume site changes become less significant when you achieve a significant volume of traffic.1000 uniques /per day is a good goal, but I see sites getting as low as 200-300 per day still being profitable..but barely.

On sites with 1000+ per day, you see much more stability. The reason they get so much traffic is either content volume + BLP, trending topic or good authority Site appearance means little, spelling and grammar seem to mean even less, but cleaning it up helps. Unneeded java script can be a killer. Speed is always a plus for users, but I see top rank sites with horrible page load times.

There also seems to be periodic web-wide connectivity issues; slow page load times out of nowhere and frozen pages all across the web, Even Google Analytics gets wacky during the same times we observe changes in our traffic and conversion numbers. Could be related to DDOS, ad spikes, router table updates...or injected by hackers or other agencies? Who knows...but what I do know is that site speed and bounce rates fluctuate on their own with no change on the site, which means it's outside of our control.

Sadly I still watch self-serve clients struggle on sites that get less than a dozen clicks per day...or less!. The bottom line is that they "got no game". When it gets that bad, it's time to change things up in our content structure or find a new niche.

[HammerDown]

They have been deleted & I'm already getting 410 error messages in search console so everything is going as planned. Looks like you don't really know what a 410 is, try doing some research on it.

I asked you if a 410 was a good idea if you were NOT deleting them. You only said you applied a 410, not that you deleted them.

[Milchan]

This is all so 2012.

We're talking the August 1 core update here and trying to figure out significant new changes. The experts are calling this the most significant core update EVAR. Ads-above-the-fold and page speed are a decade old.

the fact that the mobile page speed update rilled out in July [webmasters.googleblog.com ] and that there is currently a process to move everybody over to mobile first indexing means that the point I made about page speed is very much relevent for the here and now.

[aristotle]

What changes did they make to their core algorithm on August 1, 2018?

This is the most important thing we need to find out.

Isn't it rather obvious that their main change was to raise the standards for the trustworthiness of the information? In other words, google made it harder to fake expertise and trustworthiness. Most people aren't able to fake what a real expert would say well enough to trick the algorithm.

Undoubtedly the algorithm made some mistakes in its evaluations, but even so, at this point it's probably better at recognizing untrustworthy information than many humans are.

[HammerDown]

Isn't it rather obvious that their main change was to raise the standards for the trustworthiness of the information? In other words, google made it harder to fake expertise and trustworthiness.

I'm terribly afraid you're right, in which case there's no recovery for my main site. They're not giving back what they've taken if it's about trust.

[NickMNS]

@HammerDown

I'm not looking for a simple fix. What I am looking for is answers from the data. Compare the significant winners and losers and something will emerge. Not a simple fix but a pattern, just like this: [seroundtable.com...]

The article is pure snake oil, that is of the finest quality.

One of the first thing one learns about when conducting research is that if you test for many factors simultaneously one will certainly find strong correlation amongst a few and possibly many. This is specially true when your sample size is small. In this case your sample size is small, very small. Feel free to remove keywords from your title tags, I wish you luck

In other words, google made it harder to fake expertise and trustworthiness.

I'm terribly afraid you're right, in which case there's no recovery for my main site.

If you are faking expertise then this is update did its job, and no amount of fiddling with keywords in title tags and hrefs is going to change anything. If you would like your site to recover, you should maybe considering developing an expertise in your domain or changing your focus to a domain for which you have expertise.

[HammerDown]

If you are faking expertise then this is update did its job, and no amount of fiddling with keywords in title tags and hrefs is going to change anything. If you would like your site to recover, you should maybe considering developing an expertise in your domain or changing your focus to a domain for which you have expertise.

Not faking it. It's just not there. Giving health advice without any perceived E-A-T. As Marie Haynes said "recovery may be difficult" if this is the case. I think that was an understatement.

Dr. Axe is down about the same % I am and they appear rock solid in all respects.

[whoa182]

What is Dr Axe doing differently compared to Healthline?

I can't seem to find the "author" of any of the pages/posts on Dr Axe website. Whereas Healthline, the authors appear to be displayed on the top right with their credentials. Whether or not they actually write this content themselves or just sign them off to be published, who knows... but maybe that has something to do with it.

The algorithm may look for off-site signals pointing to your authority on the topic and also site-wide authorship. If that's the case, I really need to go back and sort out my terrible posts from 10 years ago because my grammar and posts were terrible lol.

[thinktwice]

We sell products for elderly people for ten years now. Apparently this is not enough E-A-T for Google. What to do? I can't believe this is only an E-A-T issue.

[HammerDown]

What is Dr Axe doing differently compared to Healthline?

Isn't MedicalNewsToday.com the biggest winner of all? I'm obviously missing something because it seems to me that someone with the know-how and tools should be able to look at the top winners and losers of the update and find a picture of what happened.

Why couldn't you find the five winners and losers with the most traffic and most significant change in traffic and compare all the top known ranking signals and have a pattern emerge?

Unless... as I fear... it's some sort of extremely complex, esoteric algorithm for determining trust. In which case, the game for most of us is over.

I can't seem to find the "author" of any of the pages/posts on Dr Axe website. Whereas Healthline, the authors appear to be displayed on the top right with their credentials.

That's one of the first things I checked. If you look at the source code of Dr. Axe you'll see the author info is actually in a "hidden" div tag. I'm checking them throughout the day for changes. They're dropping like panties after sundown so they must have top SEO recovery experts working on it.

[mosxu]

Wasn’t I who suggested months ago that whenever you feel sick and do a search AI tells you that you’ve got cancer...

There is so much content manipulation that almost made Google results look like Bing.

I loved the google bombing technique, the user interacted greatly with a site for what it does and not because of keywords, semantics and ongoing nonsense content creation.

I do not feel that I can learn much if I search with Google.

[NickMNS]

it's some sort of extremely complex, esoteric algorithm for determining trust

I don't think it is complex at all. MartiniBuster here (I think it was him?), had a thread or a few posts were here showed that Google had patents that showed that they were using links from "authoritative" sites as seeds in the link graph. Meaning that if a site in a given niche has a a direct link from the seed it will rank higher in that niche than a site that has many links from a bunch of links from sites that are not link to the seed. As such not all links have the same value and a links value is only of value relative to its niche. Now this is how I understood this. I will try and find a link to the thread.

Why couldn't you find the five winners and losers with the most traffic

The problem here is that your question seems logical and intuitive on the surface but when one really thinks of the problem one quickly realizes that due to the nature of search it is not clear. What is a winner? What is a loser? How is the "most" traffic defined. Each site is unique to some extent, in that not all sites compete for the same set of keywords. Granted one may compete for many of the same keywords as our competitors. But if one attempts to select of few sites that all compete on a representative set of keywords the number of sites will be very low, three or four. Sites can be both a winner and loser at the same time.

A site that has gained traffic relative to its pre-update traffic has gained the traffic across many keywords and competitors, and it most likely gave up some traffic to other sites and keywords, obviously to much lesser extent. So ultimately it becomes impossible to choose clear winners and losers.

[EditorialGuy]

What is a winner? What is a loser? How is the "most" traffic defined.

Exactly. "On what page(s)" matters, too. We've had a very modest overall decline--just a few percentage points--because some of our long-tail pages on tangential topics are have slipped in the rankings. But for our most consistently popular and profitable pages, which are about our core topics, rankings and traffic are largely up. That makes sense in the context of "E.A.T."

[rb77]

Well in our vertical one of the winners from this update is an old site that is the least mobile friendly website you could ever come across, it’s horrendous and incredibly hard to navigate through.

What it has got in it’s favour is that it’s well known and has plenty of good reviews.

[not2easy]

@NickMNS - you may be referring to goodroi's late April "Google Updates PageRank Patent" thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

There are additional links to information and martinibuster adds more analysis further in that discussion.

[samwest]

I can't believe this is only an E-A-T issue.

It's always been about E-A-T.
If you are just writing about random brain fart topics, you likely won't win that game, unless you've found a virtual information vacuum to fill. If you are writing medical advice, I would hope the info is from a doctor or trained medical professional. [seoinc.com...]

[mosxu]

E-A-T by independent advisers? Easy to abuse any SEO agency would plant some seeds.

[NickMNS]

@not2easy
Thanks that appears to be the one.


Now that the dust is clearing on this update I'm starting to see some interesting trends in my stats. (This is specific to my site, but still of interest. I think?)
I was hit hard by the March update but I immediately began to trend up in terms of impressions growth. This was most likely due to the fact that I had fully updated my site in March. As Google indexed the new versions of the pages my impression and traffic grew. Over the month I made up a good part of the March drop. With the August update I lost about 15% to 20% of my traffic. But it appears (it is still early to know for sure) that the growth in impressions is continuing. There was a step-down during the week of August 1st but the growth continues at what appears to be the same rate from that point forward. The other step down, and where the pain is really felt, is in average rank. There, I dropped about 2 points, and that has not yet recovered.

[Halaspike]

Right now am ranking very well for about 3 keywords. Very soon big sites with more authority will come copy my stuffs & outrank me thanks to Google not being able to detect the origin of a post.

[EditorialGuy]

What it has got in it’s favour is that it’s well known and has plenty of good reviews.

I remember Google saying, when "mobile-friendly" became part of the algorithm, that a desktop-only site could continue to outrank a mobile-friendly site, if it provided a better result for a query. "Mobile-friendly" is just one piece of the ranking puzzle.

[whoa182]

I'm still seeing gains and drops all over the place for my keywords. I checked SEMRush and it shows a 21% drop in traffic.

This is the what search console shows for me: [imgur.com...]

Falling impressions, but an increase in average ranking since the update. Maybe I lost a lot of long tail keywords but not much difference for my main KW?

Right now I'm going through my whole site to improve grammar on my old posts, adding internal links, and improving thin content (I have many old posts with less than 300 words).

Is all this a waste of time? I guess if I am linking from a page within my site, and that content is "bad", then the link isn't as useful? I also had 1 soft 404 error and cleared that up. I also added a contact page and improved the about page.

This is probably going to take a week, and then I'll probably start adding content again to make up for the losses. Whether I fail to recover or not, I guess I'm going to learn something, so I might as well try.

My health site was not affected by the March update from what I remember, but I was only just getting started on published a lot of content at that time. Either way, things were ranking fast and well as I was targeting long tail. I'll check traffic some older pages to see if anything happened around that time...

[Subhnish]

I am also Fixing up my Old Posts, Adding Meta Descript. to all old posts, Increased the Keyword density a little bit, Removed all Nofollow Attribute and Disavowed all Spammy links. I added original info on About us page and Added my Address in Contact us page.
I decided all this fix by Analysing my Competitor who climbing the rankings. Let's see what will happen tomorrow.

[JesterMagic]

@Subhnish even if all those changes improve your ranking you will not see any changes tomorrow. It usually takes weeks or months for improvements to happen. That is one of the reasons why it so hard to reverse engineer the algorithm.

[Subhnish]

I always cared about User Experience, While my Competitors Used Filler Content and Placed Keyword at Pointless places to increase keyword density.

I still Believe in Rankbrain, so I am trying to improve user experience even more.
And I Was expecting result in a day, Cant think right now when traffic falls from cliff. Jeez

[HammerDown]

I'm still seeing gains and drops all over the place for my keywords. I checked SEMRush and it shows a 21% drop in traffic.

This is the what search console shows for me: [imgur.com...]

Falling impressions, but an increase in average ranking since the update. Maybe I lost a lot of long tail keywords but not much difference for my main KW?

Interestingly, mine is quite similar: [imgur.com...]

[MayankParmar]

I'm link spammed :(

[RedBar]

Let's see what will happen tomorrow.

As JesterMagic noted, no way will you see anything tomorrow UNLESS you happen to have someone on the inside who can manually adjust your rankings. It's quite possible that you may see your modified tags, title bars, etc within a few days, maybe even tomorrow, however insofar as your actual rankings are concerned, a ranking's improvement is most unlikely.

Now, if you could go back to 1998 it was possible to see ranking improvements almost on the fly, I used to love playing around with G in those days adjusting a page and watch it go up and down, out, back in etc:-)

[HelenOfTroy]

Removed all Nofollow Attribute

@Subhnish - I understood that nofollow of affiliate/paid links was required by Google. According to Backlinko, 'Having a certain % of nofollow links may indicate a natural vs. unnatural link profile.' Only 'Excess PageRank Sculpting - by nofollowing all outbound links which may be a sign of gaming the system' is frowned on - or is that what you are referring to? Thanks.

[edited by: not2easy at 2:39 pm (utc) on Aug 13, 2018]
[edit reason] See Charter [/edit]

[yollo03]

This update has nothing to do with backlinks, ads, paid ads or whatever. Like others wrote here, there is absolutly nothing you can do unless someone in google adjusts your ranking. I saw a website that is ranked 13,000,000 in alexa but its above me in my main keywords. This has nothing to do with backlinks either. This is a manual intervention of google to filter low quality sites and it is here to stay unless they will lift it off. Therefore, anything you will try to do is a waste of time. My guess is that new content will not suffer from this manual intervention, only old content so thats why they are recommending on focusing on new content.

[Dimitri]

This is a manual intervention

Lots of hands then.

[yollo03]

I will tell you the good news though. There is always balance in life. Those that gains from this update will get hit once it gets updated. It could be today, tomorrow, in a few months or next year. But once they update the algorithm again it will restore some balance. I am 100% certain it will happen at some point.

[jmorgan]

Those that gains from this update will get hit once it gets updated. It could be today, tomorrow, in a few months or next year.

Well you may, or may not, be right. Best not to worry about it and just build the best website (for users, not Google!) that you can, and then whatever happens, happens.

[samwest]

But once they update the algorithm again it will restore some balance. I am 100% certain it will happen at some point.

Unless you do something to effect a positive change, your result will not change, positively.

[Cralamarre]

@yollo03 You wrote "This is a manual intervention of google to filter low quality sites", and then followed it with "Those that gains from this update will get hit once it gets updated... Once they update the algorithm again it will restore some balance."

Are you saying that Google needs to allow low quality sites in the SERPs to "balance" out the number of high quality sites?

[whoa182]

That's not exactly true.

I have another website that lost ranking in April, one of my posts was ranking number 1 for months and it suddenly dropped to page 2. After this update (I did nothing to the site) it went to 2nd position on Google.

Google did say they were rewarding sites that were under-rewarded in the past. However, that doesn't mean your page won't rise over time through positive signals. I mean, that's how it got there in the first place, right? When I write posts, some go straight to the top of Google, but some start on page 5 and then rank for the main keyword in position 1 a few weeks or months after writing it.

And I know that keywords have dropped before, only to go back to where they were after a period of time.

[Cralamarre]

Google did say they were rewarding sites that were under-rewarded in the past.

Problem is, everyone thinks their site is under-rewarded, everyone thinks their site is better than the competition, and everyone thinks their site deserves to be number 1. What people really need is an honest, unbiased opinion. Do your visitors agree that your site is the best? Or is it just you and your mom who think that?

I'm not suggesting that every site that gets hit by an update deserved it, but surely some of them did.

[RedBar]

I'm not suggesting that every site that gets hit by an update deserved it, but surely some of them did.

Yep, however the problem with Google, as always, is the "accidental" collateral damage it causes to perfectly valid and relevant sites leaving their owners wondering what have they done wrong, nothing, and what can they do to correct it, again nothing.

It's downright farcical!

[aristotle]

HelenOfTroy wrote:
'Having a certain % of nofollow links may indicate a natural vs. unnatural link profile.'

That statement refers to INCOMING links from other sites. So it doesn't apply to the issue in question, which concerns putting nofollow tags on OUTBOUND links from your site.

In general, you shouldn't put nofollow tags on any internal links within your site. As for outbound affiliate links, they should have a nofollow tag. But for non-affiliate outbound links, it's an individual decision for each one, but I think it's best to keep them as followed links in most cases.

[browndog]

I'm seeing a 20%+ increase in traffic since Friday. Health related (mostly) site. I did recently change web hosts (switched from shared to semi-dedicated), optimised the site and changed themes, so it could be related to that, or a current update. I don't get too excited these days, they can take it away just as fast as they give it, but it would be nice if it stuck.

[yollo03]

its not related to the hosting or the theme, I can tell you that for sure. i dont think there is a new update, you are probably getting ranked higher for the new keywords.

[MayankParmar]

Is it a good idea to disavow the sites that are copying my content?

[Dooku]

"@Subhnish even if all those changes improve your ranking you will not see any changes tomorrow. It usually takes weeks or months for improvements to happen. That is one of the reasons why it so hard to reverse engineer the algorithm."

its not related to the hosting or the theme, I can tell you that for sure. i dont think there is a new update, you are probably getting ranked higher for the new keywords.

The above two comments are NOT correct. I hear such arguments posted regularly everywhere but it simply is just not correct.
The google algo is a real time system it is NOT something that is done by tens of thousands of people in some buildings arraging rankings for websites.

Besides running my "normal" websites I keep several sites online to test things and have done this for years now. I have ny own statistics I keep as a referrence and from that I do testing. First, you all have heard about the 200+ ranking factors that the google algo uses, which is nonsens also. The algo probably contains many thousands of factors, some really important, some less and some not that important.

I know for about a dozen ranking factors that are really important and whenever I change one, or a few I can see the changes within a few weeks, sometimes within days! Not many weeks or months. Granted, it's not as fast as it used to be, but that is just because of a deliberate delay on the part of google.

Now, let's think about the statement google is putting out for the last year on websites like seroundtable, webmasterworld and searchengineleand, which goes something like this:
“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.”
"Google is telling us that there is nothing you can do to fix your site, so you should just focus on making a great experience, offer better content and a more useful website."

The above statements are not a coincedence and yet they are utter nonsense. Why is google telling everyone so prominently with every core update "there is nothing you can fix about your website and it will not help you rank better"?
The problem here is the sheer scale of the industry. If only 10 percent of all website owners started doing serious data analysis, and if only 10% of those would use tools like SEMRush or Hrefs, and if only 10% of them would start doing serious testing with all that data then you would end up with a serious number of website owners knowing how what to do and how to repair their website and rank better. And even though they might not know the complete picture they will still have a good idea of what works and what not and would have effectively reverse engineered the google algo at least in part. I know, because I have done it.

Again, the google algo works real time, if you know what to change, you WILL see results. In the beginning they might not be what you want but you will learn soon what will. This is google's nightmare.

[Milchan]

Yep, however the problem with Google, as always, is the "accidental" collateral damage it causes to perfectly valid and relevant sites leaving their owners wondering what have they done wrong, nothing, and what can they do to correct it, again nothing.

It's downright farcical!

thats the problem - we are all just guessing and the info we get from google is just cryptic hints that don't really help. Trying to please google sometimes feels like trying to please Yoda's menopausal sister.

[yollo03]

Well of this is an algorithmic penalty due to quality then really nothing can be done like they said until the next update.

[HammerDown]

Has anyone posted this yet?

THE AUGUST 2018 GOOGLE CORE UPDATE - SURVEYING THE AFTERMATH: [rankranger.com...]

[NickMNS]

@HammerDown
That is an interesting article. As with most of these articles, I have my doubts as to whether any of this is truly applicable or representative. It is largely based on anecdotal evidence drawn from a few sites.

My sites was impacted by the update, I'm down about 20%. None of what was described as key factors are present in any of my pages. The only thing that may be an issue was the self promoting ads. In my case they are cross promoting ads to another website I built that is unrelated to the topic of my main site. I show the ads as back-up ads with the ad-balancer.

I've got nothing to lose by switching those ads off. So we will see, but I have my doubts.

...shutting off ads now. I will report back soon...

[JesterMagic]

@Dooku

The algo probably contains many thousands of factors, some really important, some less and some not that important.

I agree

I can see the changes within a few weeks, sometimes within days!

Many weeks, few weeks = the same thing since I had also referred to months as well in the same sentence. (I was referring to a number weeks up to a month)

Again, the google algo works real time

Sure some parts of the algo are real time and are determined after Google has visited your page but most of the algo I bet takes different parts of the site or the site as a whole into context (other content, links, UI, etc..) and are analyzed sometime later on a different set of servers and not when the google bot visits the content.

Sure I can add content or update content and have it show up in the SERPS within a few hours but the algo probably used an analysis it has done previously on the page (or similar pages) in part to determine the rank.

[givinguponlife]

On unrelated note, this update is awful for health results, just googled hurts to breathe in upper stomach and first 5 results are useless same site links that lists 30+ diseases and does not help

same thing yesterday for few other medical queries, i can no longer find relevant results when using health symptoms, and i dont own health site, so could not care less from that point who ranks first.