Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2018

[broccoli]

The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4918232.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 4:08 am on Oct 1, 2018, (PDT -8)


I seem to have recovered most of my rankings from before my suspected mobile-first Fred penalty, apart from the very highest volume ones, where an annoying thin-content site is still pushing me down.

The traffic to my site has doubled to about 4K. I’m still well off the 10K figure I was at before the March update pushed up a bunch of low quality sites in my niche.

No corresponding increase in adsense earnings though. As I’m a viral site I see weird, unnatural adsense drops after traffic increases all the time. CPC is still the same but CTR has halved. I hope it settles down. If not, my entire niche may no longer be financially viable.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:11 pm (utc) on Oct 1, 2018]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new month [/edit]

[arunpalsingh]

After 27th Sep I have seen a further increase in number of visitors. I have recovered half the decline caused by Aug 10 update.

It is interesting to note that to cover 50% fall, there needs to be a 100% jump.

[BushyTop]

@Cralamarre be it far from me to agree with Yollo, there is some evidence of a roll back.

As confirmed by Gabe...

[BushyTop]

@jez123 interesting how stories differ.

Our is after a year of improving our traffic by over 200% (if you can believe it) , medic reduced our traffic by ~30%. The only life we have seen recently has been in the last few days. I am praying for a return so to finish what could have been an exceptional year for us.

[bwnbwn]

<snip>
either have constructive criticism or shut up. Attacking another poster is not how it is done. I agree with some and some I don't I don't attack them. PERIOD.

[edited by: goodroi at 2:06 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]
[edit reason] Let's get the focus back to SEO and not personal criticism [/edit]

[Martin Ice Web]

We got back a main part of traffic with this last update. Even conversions from google users are back.

We started to reorganize our sites and widgets to give a better UE after the 1st August update.
So whatever brought back our traffic we can only roll a dice or do some coffee cup reading.

From what i know ( or I read it from John Mueller ) is, that big changes on a site will effect rankings earliest after 5 month.

[Cralamarre]

<snip>

@BushyTop,
Just because someone lost traffic in Update A and then gained some of it back in Update B doesn't mean that B was a rollback of A. The two could be completely unrelated, especially when not everyone who was affected by A was also affected by B. Plus, it's all just pointless speculation anyway. No one here knows how the algorithms work, or when the next one will hit, or what it will target. That's why I prefer to stick to what we know, which essentially is whether or not other sites besides my own lost or gained traffic on a certain date.

[edited by: goodroi at 2:08 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to stay on topic [/edit]

[BushyTop]

<snip>

Again, its not speculation. Its educated guessing - which is the best we can do. However there is compelling data. See Gabe.

[edited by: goodroi at 2:07 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop, could you link to the data you're referring to?

Also, I apologize if I said something to offend you. I was just pointing out that B wasn't necessarily caused by A. And in fact, today again my traffic seems to be doing very well. I would think, if this was a rollback, that my traffic would be doing worse.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 1:17 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]

[BushyTop]

Twitter - Glenn Gabe.

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop,
Is this what you're referring to from Gabe?
"Also worth noting, I'm seeing some sites reverse from the August 1 update (Medic), but others either surge more or drop more during this update. So it's definitely not some type of straight reversal from 8/1."
Doesn't he say "not" at the end there?

[thejimster]

Google/organic traffic increased 50% starting August 1st. Now we're down 60% compared to our pre-August 1st traffic levels.

The site was migrated to mobile-first September 19th. Site is responsive.

Our rankings for primary landing pages are basically not showing at all. Performing searches for primary keywords where we previously ranked #1 to #5 now show random old semi-related pages (buyer's guides, info articles, etc.) ranking on the 4th and 5th pages of search results. Terrible.

We are sort of in a medical-related field, but only sell product, and don't give out medical advice or deal with prescription or non-prescription drugs.

Page speed is 8 seconds on 3G. Not good, but I hardly think a fairly slow website should be completely decimated in Google's search results. We have been largely unaffected by any Google updates for quite some time. We did have some link issues years ago, but got them sorted out and definitely don't purchase/build links.

My opinion is that this is an algorithmic penalty/filter.

*e-com, US

[BushyTop]

In that thread yes.

That's right, he does say that this is 'not some type of a straight reversal' and to Yollo's credit he says 'reversed some of the august 1st update'.

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop,
To me, he's saying that while some sites have gained back traffic they lost on 8/1, other sites have gained or lost even more from this latest update. Therefore, this latest update is not a reversal of 8/1. It's something different.
I gained traffic from the 8/1 update, and today my traffic is still doing very well. I lost a bit on the 28th but gained most of it back yesterday, and today is going strong. Sure doesn't seem like a rollback to me.

[pritz]

9/27 is very bad for us I lost approx 20-25% traffic. In addition to this no conversion.

[BushyTop]

@cralamere if you look at the reports and the data though, its a small update - meaning the impact has only affected a small number of sites. Your growth might not be related to this growth. What impacts others, will naturally have an impact on your site. All the serps have to be occupied. So while this update might not have affected you directly, it might effect you indirectly.

[vetofunk]

Hi Everyone,

I am not sure how this is all happening. We have been online for about 15 years, and now we are at our lowest amount of traffic in about 10 years. Our sites are <snip> and w<snip>. We sell commodity items, but I have focused on unique product descriptions, tons of UGC, blog posts and guides for awhile now and it has always done us well. Until as of late.

This is what I feel led up to this, but I am hoping there is something I missed.

May 1st, 2018: Migrated <snip> and <snip> from Shopify. Similar sites, but almost all unique content. We purchased <snip> about 8 years ago. A ton of traffic and sales, which is why we didn't just redirect it.

Around May 25th: <snip> took a big hit and lost almost 40% of its traffic. Nothing happened to <snip>, we actually increased traffic.

Aug 1st Update: <snip> lost another 25% of its traffic. <snip> lost about 40% of it's traffic.

Sept 28th: Nothing happened to <snip>, but <snip> lost another 30% of it's traffic.

So I have been trying to figure out if there is anything technically wrong, but doesn't seem so. These are issues we discovered in August.

During the migration, the reviews from each site were syndicated to both websites. There were 1000's. This was resolved in mid August.

During the migration, the company doing the migration pushed our blog posts to both websites. 100's of blog posts duplicated to each website. This was resolved mid August.

We found that a disgruntled employee instead writing unique content for our product pages, she was copying them one from another. This was about 100 product pages, which we have since resolved.

What's Left

I noticed on <snip> that we have 100's of blog posts that are getting hardly any traffic. I had trimmed <snip> of this low traffic content. I am working on <snip> still.

I am looking at changing the theme on one of the websites in order to make it more unique.

I have been in this industry since 2003, survived 2012, but have exhausted everything I know to figure this out. It's another sob story I know, but trying to keep everyone's job alive here, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[edited by: engine at 2:26 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]
[edit reason] Please see WebmasterWorld TOS and Forum Charter [/edit]

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop,
I agree with that. But as I'm reading through our comments, I still can't help feel like "what's the point?". I don't know what the 09/27 update was about, and it doesn't seem like anyone else does either, including Glenn Gabe. So if I gained traffic from it, I wouldn't know why. And if I lost traffic, I wouldn't know why. Which means there's nothing I could do about it either way.
I stand by what I said in a post last month. If we're being honest, we should just name all of these updates the "I Don't Know" update. A lot of these arguments and discussions could be avoided, and time better spent.

[BushyTop]

@cralamere Take this in the nicest possible way, but what I would say is that if you don't have anything to say, maybe don't turn to a forum called updates and serps changes.

This forum (from what I gather) is about sharing notable changes and sharing patterns. You don't have to know the specifics for whats causing the change. The reality is no one knows.

[aristotle]

Years ago I read somewhere that google always does very careful small-scale live testing of future rollouts BEFORE they begin the actual full scale rollout. Evidently one purpose of this testing would be to make sure that they don't need to do a subsequent "rollback" or "reversal".

The term "core update" suggests to me that google merely adjusts some of the parameters in the core part of the algorithm, but doesn't add any major new signals. Sometimes they might later re-adjust SOME (but not all) of the parameters backward toward what they were before an earlier rollout. Google would probably consider this to be an independent new update, but for some sites the effects could look like a "partial reversal".

Of course I don't know any of this for sure, so you can view it as speculation on my part.

[Cralamarre]

@BushyTop, I know but that's my whole point. If my site suddenly lost or gained traffic, a forum like this is a good place to go to see if anyone else has gained or lost traffic. If I lost traffic but no one else is reporting it, then I can start looking for technical problems on my site. If other people are reporting a traffic drop, then I know it was more likely an update. For that reason, this forum is invaluable.

What makes it less valuable is the endless speculation about updates, what they targeted, and what can be done about them, when no one here has any insider information about updates or how the algorithms work. Not all speculation is bad, but some of it is just flat out nonsense. Many people come here looking for answers, hoping to learn what they can do to recover from a recent update. When they read nothing but misinformation and speculation, and they confuse it with answers, they can end up wasting a lot of valuable time on something that isn't going to work. For that reason, I think it's important to question statements when we see no evidence to support them. Not to stroke our egos, but to help the people who are honestly here looking for answers.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 3:02 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2018]

[Cralamarre]

@aristotle, that's actually very interesting information. Definitely would make sense on Google's part.

[Mark_A]

Our G organic sessions for the last 4 weeks are 20% down on the same period last year.
This is despite having added more targeted content, and having payed our web company to do SEO!

The choice is:
a) either we pay for SEO (even when we do it ourselves it costs) and get converting traffic
b) or we pay for Google Ads, which I do myself, and get converting traffic

At this moment we are doing a bit of both and it is too expensive.

[Milchan]

these last few days traffic for me has been on an upward trajectory , conversions this last week have been better than they were, not great still but hopefully they and the traffic with go on the upward trend ... but im not holding my breath. I definitely saw a bit of a spike though Sep 27th onwards (I also saw an anomaly on Sep 24th when I have good conversions but then next day was terrible next to nothing - that might .
I had mobile first enabled on 19th Sep so doesn't seem like that had any impact , or at least not that I can see.

In the SERPS post Medic update I do now see some adjustments were by big brands are not dominating completely as much as before in my niche. There are still thin content using black techniques winning but before there was plenty of close to no content massive brand taking several spots but now just maybe one spot or none.

In short , seems slightly better for me but still seems unsettled and still inferior content seems to win out in many cases (I see this in my personal searchs also , not just my niche)

EDIT - just checking GSA and saw that today it seems traffic is again a bit up and noticed something - previous to August highest percentage of traffic was from the US followed by traffic from countries more local to me , but After medic update that changed and I had less from US and more local to me was the highest (and overall down) , it now has reverted since 27th to the US being top traffic source and my traffic levels back to pre august levels these last few days. I also remembering noticing that the localisation searches were a mess throughout august and saw several reports of this online and Im wondering if there has been a reversal or fix in relation to that area in this latest update.

[southernguy]

I would just like to chime in here about those concerned about site speed.

I have several competitors in my niche using CSS content menus on their pages and the load times range anywhere between 10-12 seconds for the page to load. These competitors are showing up in snippets as well. And their speed is around 50 with both googles mobile and desktop speed.

It's always good to have a page as optimized as possible but I am not seeing that speed is affecting many websites.

[Milchan]

The choice is:
a) either we pay for SEO (even when we do it ourselves it costs) and get converting traffic
b) or we pay for Google Ads, which I do myself, and get converting traffic

At this moment we are doing a bit of both and it is too expensive.

Have you tried using a retargeting service like adroll? I used that for quite a while (might restart it again soon) and found it drive a far bit of traffic for quite a low cost. You can set your own budgets so can easily do a test. I found the web targeting to be better value than the FB , but both are quite good at getting you brand name in peoples heads. The main challenge is how to truly ascertain what the ROI is

[Milchan]

@southernguy - agree , whilst speed might have some impact on the serps there seems to be plenty of other things that are more significant. In general my competitors actually do have good speed and decent design on their sites but I have also seen plenty of instances of really bad sites, super slow looking like they were built using MS frontpage by someones dad in 1980 appearing in decent serp positions. Having said that , i think design, and increasingly mobile friendly design, has more impact that speed. Just my own opinion based on my instincts / observations.

[justpassing]

It's always good to have a page as optimized as possible but I am not seeing that speed is affecting many websites.

Speed is affecting visitors...

[Cralamarre]

I think site speed would also depend on your niche. For an education or information site where it's common to provide lots of images, or even videos, on a page, then Google would not be as concerned with the official speed numbers as it would be with how your site speed compares with your competitors. If everyone's site is slow, then so be it. Better to be slow than to remove valuable content just to be faster.

[justpassing]

Videos are not counted in the speed of a site, a site which embeds a 1 hour video, will not be counted as taking 1 hour to download ...

About images:

- lazy load them, no need to waste bandwidth downloading images, which are not visible

- serve different resolution of an image, based on the device, using the <picture> or "srcset" attributes.

[Cralamarre]

Videos are not counted in the speed of a site, a site which embeds a 1 hour video, will not be counted as taking 1 hour to download ...

Correct, the video's runtime does not matter. But embedding videos does still add quite a bit to the load time of the page.

- lazy load them, no need to waste bandwidth downloading images, which are not visible

I would love to lazy load my images. But after trying different methods and still getting complaints about images not loading, I gave up.