Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2018

[lostshootingstar]

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System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4913603.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 12:54 pm on Sep 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

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It's a holiday weekend in the USA, I don't think anyone should really worry about traffic volume until next week.

However, I did see some negative ranking shifts yesterday that are concerning and can't be explained by a holiday.

[justpassing]

In addition, it was mentioned that people who want to waste their time on youtube can go directly to youtube. There's no justification for featuring it in the general organic results.

+1

Sites like Amazon, Youtube, Wikipedia,... should be handled separately.

[Leosghost]

Well the obvious implication is that google treats youtube like a big brand

Youtube is a big brand..

people who want to waste their time on youtube

You obviously think youtube is for "wasting time" many would disagree with you..

General organic results..are "general"..they cover all possibilities..they include all possibilities..

Youtube results only include youtube..

Unless you read minds on a massive scale ? How do you know whether any searcher ( or searchers ) is / are specifically not interested in seeing youtube in the general results ?

Example ..recently I was in the market for a very expensive piece of machinery ( this type of machine is made by many companies ) , I searched for a comparison of the specs of many models..What I found in the "organic serps" were ads ( I ignored them as I wanted to buy locally , within a 100 kms radius ) , some primarily text sites giving "reviews" and youtube videos , the latter were also mainly review videos..I spent an evening watching them, and some other youtube videos..the youtube reviews showed and explained things that the mainly text sites would not have..in particular the difference in the noise levels when the various machines run, and the ease ( or not ) of use etc ..

I bought the next day from a dealer ( whose website I had not visited , as they were not on you tube, ) the model which I had seen was most suited to what I wanted to do with it on youtube ..The dealers own website hs images only , and badly written specs, and one review , written by someone who obviously does not understand the machiines in question , "trashing "the model , because he could not get it to work as he wished..To anyone who actually had seen the machine, they would have realised the guy was a moron, but had I not seen the youtube videos, I would have only had this person's "review" to go on..

The medium that we work in when we make websites used to be called "multi-media"..

Anyone who wants sites with only text, to figure in organic SERPs, is missing what people use search for, they ( the average searcher , nor in my case the specialist searcher ) do not use it in the tight straight jacketed way that many webmasters think that they should..

Make your sites for the user, not for yourself, nor for the search engines..

Can't make videos? Learn how to, or pay someone to make them for you..

@aristotle..You implied much that was not in the post by whoa182 that I replied to..

Leosghost -- The complaint is that extremely low-quality youtube garbage is ranking above high-quality informative articles.

Might I suggest that before you reprimand anyone about their replies to any post, that you actually read what the posts say, and not read into them what you think they say..

[aristotle]

Leosghost -- Nothing you've said in your posts about this matter is of any value to me, and I'm not going to spend any more of my time trying to discuss it with you.

Also, I haven't asked you for any advice from you about how to design my websites.

[Leosghost]

Nothing in your posts about what I have said r my reply to whoa182 has been true..thus..you might want to put down the spade and stop digging..
Any advice I was giving was for others, as I have said many times in these fora over the years, you can lead a horse to water, but...

I know there no point in giving any "advice" to someone who imagines or implies what the other posters in the thread have written, as opposed to what is there in the thread, in black and white..

[Leosghost]

To anyone else..SERPs include video thumbs, because searchers use search in a general ( non exclusive of video ) way..many SERPs include videos that are not from youtube..such as dailymotion ( which is nothing to do with youtube, it is in fact a competitor ) ..These video thubms re usfull to searchers and have perfect right to be there, rather than complain about

it's not as if we (people who write content) can compete in the youtube SERPs.

Make video part of what you offer..no one ( except yourself ) is stopping you..

Claiming it is somehow unfair is like saying that only those who can spell correctly should be in general SERPs, or only sites with no images ( photos or drawn or graphs etc ) should be in image serps, no one who make s audio should be in image serps..etc ..etc ..
Or saying that professional writers and journalists should be in a separate SERP because it is unfair to those who are not "pros" to have them in general organic SERPs..

The idea is to improve your skill set, not to bar those whose skill sets include things that you do not at this time know how to do..

Might as well say that we should all go back to the days of usenet, because anyone who knows ( or took the time to learn , or paid someone to make sites for them ) php etc is being unfair..and that Google shouldn't include anyone who knows how to do what you don't know how to do..

Or burn all the TVs ( they have moving images ) and we'll all go back to radio and books ( with no illustrations and images, because not everyone can take photos or draw, or paint ) ..and no talking movies..in fact no movies at all ..only "flip books"..

[southernguy]

As far as youtube even what ranks is not useful. I spent 20 minutes this morning on Google search then youtube and could not find a simple query on how to replace a generator pulley on my 98 Civic. Found it on Bing right away. Having said that I don't know if it's just my particular niche or not but as of this week my search traffic is from Bing is higher.

I know I had mentioned sometime back on this thread I was trying to rank an expired domain. It was on page 2 I have reached position 5 page 1 and climbing. I'm using GSA and a few Web 2.0 I swear I think Google is moving backward.

Maybe I am just being speculative but I am wondering if those who have not lost their rankings are promoting low comp keywords. I have two small one page websites that are low competition and have had no movement since the updates. Then again I only make 4% commission on the products ($80.00 item) so it's not anything anyone wants to bother promoting.

[broccoli]

Re: mobile first. I switched my site to SSL at the end of June. Google “helpfully” sent me an email a couple of days later saying it was switching me to mobile first rankings. I naively thought nothing of it since Google said it shouldn’t affect rankings at this stage. I dropped from ranking 1-2 for my target longer tail keywords on all of my pages down to 5-7. I lost all my big generic high traffic keywords, I’m not even on the second page for most of them. I thought it was the switch to SSL but 13 weeks later and there’s still no improvement to my rankings. I made a huge number of quality updates and saw only a small increase in traffic. I started investigating ads and discovered I had a responsive ad unit on mobile that was misbehaving. It was supposed to be limited to mobile banner size but was periodically showing big squares right at the top of my pages, which would have pushed my site over the 30% mobile ads limit, as all my pages are short until users interact with them (I’m in a sort of games/tools niche and all of my content requires form clicks). I think I might have got hit by “Fred” as a result of getting switched to mobile first. I’m hoping and praying that removing the rogue ad unit will fix things. I don’t know what I’ll do if not as the switch to SSL has devastated my income. I’m in a really precarious situation due to health problems and now can’t even cover my food bill. So... don’t believe anything google says about SSL or mobile first not affecting rankings.

[yollo03]

There were many algorithm updates since June, the major one being in August. Looks at your webmaster report, if the drop started at the beginning of August it might be related to that and not to mobile index.

[broccoli]

The drop happened immediately when I switched to SSL and I didn’t recover from it. I checked my server configuration, my 301s, search console, etc repeatedly and nothing is wrong. My pages were all reindexed in a few days, but my rankings didn’t come back. Bing, Yahoo, and Ecosia all gave me my rankings back within a month. Bing really likes me. If only my typical audience used Bing!

I got a very slight boost from the august medic update. I also got a slight boost from adding an about page (my site was anonymous before that). Other than that, thirteen weeks of pure stress. I must be under some kind of hidden penalty because my content, backlinks, and now also EAT are far better than my competitors, but nothing is improving. I feel like I’m some sort of collateral damage in a war google is fighting with itself - search vs adsense.

From what I can deduce if it’s an ads penalty it should take about three weeks to lift. I’ll have to get a job if it hasn’t come back by November.

[Halaspike]

@broccoli mobile-first does affect rankings. Read the mobile-first indexing message that was sent to you, it is stated there. & google never stated that mobile-first will not affect rankings, John Mueller did, & i doubt John Mueller represents the whole of Google.

@yollo03 is the one that has caused all this confusion, he's always saying Google said this Google said that, when he's actually just quoting what John Mueller said. John Mueller isn't the one sending out the mobile-first indexing message to webmasters, Google is.

For those wondering if mobile-first affects ranking, yes it does & below is the message regarding it directly from Google.

Mobile-first indexing means that Googlebot will now use the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking, to better help our (primarily mobile) users find what they're looking for. Google’s crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have historically used the desktop version of your site's content, which can cause issues for mobile searchers when the desktop version differs from the mobile version. Our analysis indicates that the mobile and desktop versions of your site are comparable.

[broccoli]

Yep. Comparable. My site is the same on desktop and mobile, the css just shifts things into slightly different shapes to fit. It performs very well on the mobile pagespeed tool. The only thing I can think of is I got caught out by the height of the ad units. Google is supposed to assess your page based on the height of the expanded content but I bet that doesn’t include content from form clicks.

[NickMNS]

What John Mueller said and what the email says is the same thing. If your site is responsive and the content shown to mobile and desktop users is similar then you should not be impacted by the change. Obviously if your site is different for desktop and mobile, once the switch is made, it will be the mobile version that will be used to determine your ranking. So there is a potential for a change in ranking. The final case if your site was desktop only, there again you may face a potential drop in ranking but it is less likely as that drop in ranking probably took place already in one of the many mobile updates like "mobilegedon" the non-event of 2016. (or maybe it was 2015, point is, it was forgettable).

@broccoli
I wouldn't put too much hope on the changes to your ad placements. It is possible that it helps but I think it is unlikely to have a major impact. The ad-density of 30% is a measure that is part of the IAB Better Ads Standards, the standard that Google Chrome was to use to determine whether it should block ads automatically or not. As far as I know this still hasn't taken effect in any meaningful way despite being implemented since since Chrome 67 (or was it 65?). My websites are still in "not reviewed" status. If it does take effect and you are impacted then you should receive notification of a warning and be given 30 days or so to fix the problem before the blocking starts. So make the changes it wont hurt, but if you need to find a job, I would start looking now before true desperation strikes.

[WebEnthusiast]

@Mobile Index
I do believe everyone tend to forget that you are not alone in WEB. Even although your website is same on Mobile & Desktop, for half of your competitors this might be different. So as much as your site ranked with the same values as before, others aren't. That is why your positions are changed.

[jmorgan]

If I'm not mistaken, yollo first started posting here when his web page dropped from 30+ to 80+ or something similar.

I mean, I don't mean to be mean (know what I mean?), but if your best ranking effort in Google was at position 30+, I'm not sure people should take what you say too seriously.

I wouldn't go so far as to say he "doesn't belong here", but I'd probably just recommend taking his opinions with a grain of salt.

[broccoli]

@NickMNS It has to be an algorithmic penalty of some kind. I’m currently ranking in third or fourth position for my own brand name on google. I’m getting domain crowded by an objectively terrible competitor who has taken most of my top rankings. There’s no way that should be happening unless there’s a penalty in play. I got my branded site links back last week, a day or two after removing the rogue ad unit. Could be a coincidence but positive signs like that have been few and far between.

[broccoli]

@WebEnthusiast Both of my main competitors’ sites are broken in annoying ways on mobile. One has ads that stretch off the screen, the other has a persistant cookie notice that needs clicking on every page. Both of these sites are currently domain crowding the serps in my niche.

It would be extremely unfair if google was holding me to mobile standards but assessing my competitors on desktop standards. Is there a way I can find out if other websites have been moved to mobile first indexing?

[Mark_A]

We also received the mobile first email. Our content is the same mobile and desktop.

If some are submitting mobile optimised sites and ranking better because of it that causes us an issue, because, 90%+ of our visitors (B2B Technical) are desktop users and it looks likely to remain that way.

[samwest]

We need a separate topic for "mobile first" questions and speculation.

[not2easy]

;) There's a thread for that: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Mark_A]

Indeed, I saw it - I will post mobile issues there.

On G organic. The last 30 days sessions are 20% down on the same period last year.

[JesterMagic]

@Leosghost I understand what you are saying but you have to admit the whole Video Carousel Google sticks on the first page is just for Google to push their own brand and make money on the ads it displays. It is not about what the user wants.

The Video carousel rarely shows any other video site except YouTube. Plus why does it need a carousel? If these videos are so much better and informative (which most are not, just like web pages) they should be ranked accordingly within the search results page.

Why should it even show a thumbnail image? The thumbnail is about as useful as showing a thumbnail of a webpage in the serps. The reason for the thumbnail is it draws the eye to it so users click on it and then Google can then display an ad and earn money. If everything had thumb nails then a lot less clicks would happen on youtube videos in the serps.

[renatovieira]

A very bad day. Weak traffic. Somebody else?

[Leosghost]

Where I am the "video carousel" does not exist..( or I've never seen it, and I search a lot, mainly qwant, but about 30% of the time on Google ) .merely thumbnails ( usually 4 ) in the organics, usually somewhere between position 4 and position 9..

The reason for the thumbnail is it draws the eye to it so users click on it

Yes we evolved to react to images, moving images even more so, we did not evolve to react to text..

and then Google can then display an ad and earn money.

They display an ad ( actually loads of ads in SERPS ).., But again it apparently depends on where you are as to what inteface you see.

If everything had thumb nails then a lot less clicks would happen on youtube videos in the serps.

actually I really doubt that, take a screen shot of a text page, or a text page with an image, say your index page..now crop it so that only the part that is in view on a veiwport when you land on that page..now reduce it to the size that Google show a youtube thumbnail ..

Looks like crap huh ;) when it is that small..very unappealing, never get a click through on that, can't make out anything..

A thumbnail of a video, would still get the lions share of the clicks, I'd say by about 95%..

Again where I am, the ratio of Youtube to daily motion thumbs shown is about 70/30..that may be because daily motion is French majority owned..

Not saying at all that G doesn't show youtube for their benefit..but, for the under 30s youtube is where many of them spend much of their time on line, certainly for "entertainment"..my son ( 25 ) is an example..Where you really would have to worry about getting little to no clicks on text "snippets" in organic SERPs, is if Google started showing thumbnails of instagram ..( isn't going to happen, because no one would click on the ads, and facebook own instagram ) but something like that might happen, the number of thumbs in SERPs may well increase..a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture is worth ten thousand still images on the same subject..

The thumbnail says to the user "here lies something far more interesting than the dry and dusty text sites"..use that to your advantage..make videos, put them on the video platforms ( youtube daily motion etc ) use them to drive traffic, if you also have videos on your site use them to hold traffic when you have got it..However, if your site is adsense ( requires that having got the visitor they then click on an ad and leave as soon as possible ) then you are best not having self hosted videos, just use the platforms to drive the traffic..

These kind of strategies also mean that you are not going to be so "vulnerable" to SERP "updates"..whereas your competitors might be..

[jmorgan]

@renatovieira Yup seems noticeably lower today. Not sure why.

[NYCTech]

I'm seeing others posting that traffic is lower today. We're having the opposite issue - traffic seems to have bumped noticeably today. It's only part of a day, so it could just be an anomaly; are others seeing large changes? I'm cautiously optimistic this trend will hold.

[lostshootingstar]

I am seeing a very minimal bump today week over week, but September has been a horrible month for us so we're still way down from August.

[awong316]

It's important to remember that a lot of people on the East Coast of the US are still recovering from the hurricane. Try and segment by location and see if the dropoffs are everywhere or in just in the affected areas.

[renatovieira]

I see many oscillations without much coherence. Some moments of constant traffic and soon after an abyss. One or another click per minute. You can clearly notice that they are settings/updates in G.

September is an unpredictable month. Highs and lows. The strangest thing is that at certain times of the day, high traffic from Europe, but my site is niche in the US.

[Halaspike]

Yesterday was bad, today is also bad, I'm still #1 to #3 for my high traffic keywords, only traffic from the US is down tho.

[whoa182]

With regards to youtube videos ranking, I was also referring to the fact that some of them are also terrible. For one of my keywords, there is a carousel of 3 videos, all from the same channel, and all text to speech. And the keywords are repeated twice in the title. And all of the videos are the same, just different music.

The keyword is 1000 searches per month for the US and they're taking up the top spot.

Just one example of many bad results.

They all have a very pretty woman on the thumbnail though, so I guess that helps CTR.

The algorithm. [youtu.be...]