Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2018

[lostshootingstar]

---

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)

---

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.

[westcoast]

Wow... for the first time in 7 (?) years my site appears to be getting a boost from this most recent update. Seriously... update after update it has been pounded lower and lower in both SERPs and traffic... year after year....

Last couple of days though results are improving domain-wide, as if some invisible penalty they have been applying increasingly and more severely with every passing day is being reduced.... at least for now.... fingers crossed.......

[Shaddows]

I'm pretty sure this was a partial rollback of "medic" - the early August update.

Either that, or Medic is a non-core module which they turned off while they made tweaks to the core, then switched back on again.

Returning to the topic of strange things, our traffic profile looks like it has shifted to East Coast time. I'm in the UK.

I get a big uptick in traffic at 13:00 BST (08:00 EDT), which lasts until 21:00 BST (16:00 EDT). Since we're B2B, those EDT times are our prime business hours, if they were in local time. Sadly, it's 5 hours out.

[Cralamarre]

@Shaddows My traffic increased after the Medic update and continues to increase this week. So I would disagree that any update this week was a rollback of Medic.

[Shaddows]

@Cralamarre
Interesting. I did really well with Medic, but took a big hit last week. NickNMS and many others hit around Medic have recovered to some degree.

My traffic recovered late on Monday, and revenue would be back to normal too, except for the time shift.

My timeline was
2018-08-01 (Medic) - Big increase
2018-09-05 - Big hit (marginally worse than pre-Medic)
2018-09-10, afternoon - time-shifted traffic recovery

[Cralamarre]

@Shaddows I don't think it's possible anymore to find common ground on what was, and was not, targeted in an update. The algorithm is now too complex. Even the name "Medic" for the August update is misleading, since it was not only health sites that were affected. We should just create a series called "I Don't Know" followed by the date. So August would be the "I Don't Know - Aug 2018" update. This week is "I Don't Know - Sep 2018". :)

[givinguponlife]

< I genuinely believe that this approach works best.

works best until it doesn't

[Leosghost]

We should just create a series called "I Don't Know" followed by the date. So August would be the "I Don't Know - Aug 2018" update. This week is "I Don't Know - Sep 2018". :)

S s s s s h h h h h !..away with you man..
There's a whole SEO industry pretending that they do know, so as to sell you "the poor befuddled webmaster" their "expert services"..

[RedBar]

Updates, updates? What updates :-)

[Soupmaster]

Doubt it was a rollback from medic. Saw a decrease from Medic, then slowly recovered, now a decrease again starting late Sunday night.

[KaseyM]

Seen a fairly significant decrease this week but can likely account some of it for the hurricane approaching East Coast.

[RedBar]

but can likely account some of it for the hurricane approaching East Coast.

Ahhh ... Of course, nothing ever happens anywhere else in the world!.!.!

[yollo03]

This wasnt a rollback, at least not a full one. I actually got my lost keywords back for 24 hours and thats it, absolute BS. I saw a huge spike in crawled pages several days ago. I believe I was unaffected much by the recent update, I;ll give it another week.

<snip>

[edited by: goodroi at 9:21 pm (utc) on Sep 13, 2018]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to stay on topic [/edit]

[bwnbwn]

Googles direction not only in the serps but in the political arena is going to be their downfall. I just can't use it anymore even on my android I have moved from Google to Bing. many say Bing is way out of wack but from the 30+ pages (last 2 months) here seems it just might not be that bad. I quit looking at organic results ( ALL SE's) a long time ago. I do what I do and could care less what the serps produce, and the funny thing is last month best month in 10 years on sales. Ecommerce and crowded. Sales came from all over the place Bing, Google, Word of Mouth, we adwords, bing ads etc.

I did the look at were I was for so many years and just one day I said F it I am done losing my hair over it. Best move I ver made. I just started looking at my pages and thought what would I as a customer want to see to make the decision to buy my product.

Traffic is about the same from all the SE's nothing from Google to say I got a big boost in the serps fact is I don't even know were I am in any of them. I think it comes from a combined effort of page speed, page images, page text and good navigation to find what the user needs. None of this adsense crowed BS, but I can understand if that is your income then that is what you have to do. Ecommerce is a different animal and you either adapt or die. Period,

[edited by: bwnbwn at 4:01 am (utc) on Sep 13, 2018]

[glakes]

I just can't use it anymore even on my android I have moved from Google to Bing.

I also prefer Bing as I can get a more diverse set of results without having to do all the clicking that is required on Google to get beyond all their domain crowding.

[mosxu]

Looking closely at shopping terms lots of information questions are being suggested at the bottom of the search page.

There is no intend to buy. Amazon search would never suggest that

[jmorgan]

Actually, I just compared Bing with Google, and Bing actually seems to be a bit more on point with their results (based on the extremely limited set of keywords I tested with). Or maybe it's just because my site ranks a bit higher on Bing ... heh heh.

I might actually do a bit more testing with Bing and DuckDuckGo over the next few days to compare results with a more diverse range of keywords. The problem with DuckDuckGo at the moment is they have no services data (like maps, businesses, etc.) so it's not convenient to, say, just quickly get a phone number or opening hours of a business you're looking up.

I get the feeling the vast majority of people just use Google by default and assume they have the most relevant results for a query even if that may not be the case. No other search engine has their brand as a verb. Ever heard someone say, "Let me Bing/DuckDuckGo that?"

As I've said before, I'm not a Google hater. I cannot be ungrateful for all that Google's done for me. I'm just wondering if it's gotten to a stage where their monopoly of the search market may not be fully warranted.

[MayankParmar]

My site was having connectivity issues and I'm now unsure if the traffic has dropped due to the server issues or Google update. Terrible luck :(

[BushyTop]

we saw an quite a bit hit after the 1st Aug update, since this update we've started to recover. Interestingly, not all terms have recovered and those SERPs seem to have domain crowding issues.

[Martin Ice Web]

@westcoast

Last couple of days though results are improving domain-wide, as if some invisible penalty they have been applying increasingly and more severely with every passing day is being reduced.... at least for now.... fingers crossed.......

we saw the same and this night we got hit again. More severe than before..... this one took away about 50% away from what was left.
It seems that there are two sets of results
#1 is very worse: traffic is very low with 100% bounce, no conversions
#2 is much better, bounce at about 50% + conversions

Unfortunatelly google switches to the worse for a longer time right now.

[mosxu]

Is the update over?

Zombies on steroids only. Still fighting.

[KaseyM]

@redbar

No need to be unpleasant. If 80% of your traffic comes from the US (like ours) then it's definitely a factor.

[arunpalsingh]

@Mosxu

Seems so!
Semrush appears well sedated after the seizures except for some twitching in UK and Germany databases.

[TalkativeEditorial]

First poster. Long-term hoverer. Hi. *waves*
Just want to add to the current discussion, that something really weird is going on. I work with a big news website and we've been noticing a down turn in organic search, despite positive keyword movements. Biggest issue I can see is, as mentioned before, localised results are out of whack. So for things like say, results of something related to country X, we're seeing them from country Y in news (if that country has the same thing, you know, say like the Lottery). This has been going on since last week. It steadied, then worsened again. No idea what is going on.

[Bluejeans]

We're seeing some recovery after taking a big hit in March and a smaller one in August. The recovery in ranking is small but at least it's moving in the right direction.

[dethfire]

My Internet marketing website and a catering website got hit hard today. I think it's just tracking from the past weekend google update.

[Mark_A]

We are 7.6% down on G organic sessions for the last 8 weeks, compared to last year, despite spending more effort and money on SEO than last year.

We also spent more effort and money on Google Ads, but there we are up 40%.

The result is that, perhaps predictably, I am coming to view that spending on google ads is something that brings results, while SEO spending is much less certain.

[Leosghost]

The result is that, perhaps predictably, I am coming to view that spending on google ads is something that brings results, while SEO spending is much less certain.

Well Eric, it all seems to be going according to plan..

[Mark_A]

Well Eric, it all seems to be going according to plan..

Yes, but irritating though. Like lambs to the slaughter ...

[yollo03]

Nothing special to report from my end. I got hit again for sure but not as bad as August. My organic daily impressions got hit in the first big update in August by as much as 85%. I am actually seeing increased traffic from bing. I can only guess that people are not getting the results they want from google and turn to other search engines.

I am sure google is aware of it.

[Shepherd]

...spending on google ads is something that brings results, while SEO spending is much less certain.

Sadly, over the years we have seen the opposite. When we spend more on google ads our sales decrease and our organic rankings decrease. It's a strange case, not sure why it happens. If I were to guess I think it has to do with CTR on our ads. Competition with higher ad CTRs do not seem to be affected on the organic rankings side.