Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2018

[Cyril TechWebsites]

---

System: The following 18 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4922186.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:04 pm on Nov 1, 2018 (PDT -8)

---

Facing with big changes. Something is happening again? I'm pretty tired of Google updates for the last few months... Niche: IT how-to's, technology...

[NickMNS]

I figured out the problem. I crashed my db last night while doing something on the server and didn't realize it. That is with Cloudflare and amp doing all the caching it takes a while to see the impact in the analytics. Everything is back up and running now, and nearly instantly back to normal. Arrrggh... I feel real stupid now...

[lostshootingstar]

@NickMNS we've all been there, glad to hear it was a technical problem. Those are much easier to solve.

[southernguy]

@aristotle there are plenty of expired or expiring domains available if you look around, just a matter of how much you are willing to pay for one, this particular competitor did just that.

In fact, the domains that were purchased are not even niche related to the site its being redirected to. Since the August update, the site has not moved, it even ranks above WebMD, NCBI and all other authority sites, in most searches it takes up to 4-6 top page positions.

[broccoli]

@NickMNS

Phew, I’m glad to hear that, hope it settles down for you.

@southernguy

From what I can tell the links that count the most are ones relevant to your website topic, or ones from high authority sites. They will especially work if your website is about blue disease and you have a link from a high authority website about blue disease. I don’t know if they send trust signals per se.

I believe they have made most backlinks so low powered they’re barely worth having and it has levelled the playing field and hit many long established sites.

In their effort to stop link spam they’ve actually created an absolute party for black hats, because you can now rank on a lot of topics purely by getting your keywords and “trust” signals exactly right, buying a couple of high authority links, and then creating a little network of websites related to your main topic and using them to rank each other. This combined with the fact that they are still having problems telling the difference between an exact match domain and a brand.

Sounds like your competitor has figured this out already.

I believe there are a lot of on page trust signals as well as off page ones, see the posts further up about trust signals.

The right thing to do is to report spam sites, but I’ve been there and done that with a pure spam adsense exploit site that was wrecking my rankings back in 2011, and a few weeks later I got hit with a manual action for not having canonical urls (which I had never even heard of at the time).

[aristotle]

Expired domains must not have been very successful, or they wouldn't have been allowed to expire.

Also re-directs don't necessarily transfer much trust and authority

[Dj_JMJ]

So, my theory on the massive changes Google is implementing is this. Follow it carefully:
1. Google, and the U.S. in general seemed to have been exporting a lot of money to other countries, mainly India, Philippines, African countries with bloggers etc. The reason for this is that before the updates, so many of the websites that were ranking for the majority of keywords (collectively) were the ones owned by people outside the United states.
In the eyes of Google and the American government, this is not good economically especially if the trend continued for the next 10 years.

2. The U.S. Government gets concerned of the amounts of money being shipped overseas and asks (or forces) Google and other major corporations to find clever ways of stopping this. Google finds the best excuse of content quality and drops a majority of these websites from page 1 of SERPs. Their earnings also drop like a stone from the sky. Collectively, most people who earn money online now come from the U.S, Canada, U.K.

POINTS TO NOTE

There was a significant role Google played in Trump's election, whether deliberate or not, what you know is only what they want you to think. The truth is, there's MANIPULATION.
There's nothing generally wrong with your content. Everything is OK. The updates are politically motivated.
Today, even if you start a website, it doesn't survive past 3 months. If it does, it doesn't survive 6 months. There's a deliberate measure to stop websites outside the U.S from growing regardless of quality.
Why is it that no matter what you do, recovering a website that was hit by Google is almost a miracle?

Just my theory, my 2 cents.

[mosxu]

@NickMNS

Did you get any sleep? How did you crush the db?

[suklambara]

looks like since thanksgiving google made lots of updates.

[broccoli]

I've just been looking at Google Trends and I'm heartbroken. I had some really successful memes that people were looking for by name. When Google took away my traffic in the spring and replaced my site with a bad copycat site there was a massive spike in searches for my pages. I can see how the search volume has dropped off over time as people have stopped searching for my stuff, because they've been put off by the results they're getting. Yet still they don't Panda that site, despite it being plastered with ads. This is just awful. What have they done to me?

[aristotle]

Dj_JMJ -- The U.S. public is more familiar with U.S. brands and U.S. organizations. This gives these brands and organizations an advantage in climbing to the top of the search results that google shows to the U.S. public. You should take this into account in formulating your theory.

[Shepherd]

What have they done to me?

Welcome to the new norm. If sending free traffic to your site has a negative effect on google's revenue it will be eliminated. Disruptions in revenue will not be tolerated.

[broccoli]

In fact it isn't just me. I've just taken an in-depth look at all the sites in my niche. Everyone has been completely destroyed this year. Literally everyone. If they weren't destroyed in March/April, they were destroyed in August. All because Google has decided that this one spammy ad-heavy EMD with hardly any backlinks except its own little network of related sites should be served at the top of the results for all queries, whether it's relevant or not. This is crazy.

[KaseyM]

Anyone else seen around a 10-20% drop since Tuesday? In entertainment niche.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Dj_JMJ

I think you've been reading some of my posts from years ago!

I've just taken an in-depth look at all the sites in my niche. Everyone has been completely destroyed this year.

To be very polite, G's SERPs are almost a total horlicks ... Honestly my global industry has given up with G, only two major trade portals remain open, mine and one other, and even mine is only there because I'm an awkward ****

Has anything replaced these widget trade sites in the realworld? No, no, no, no ... far from it, the realworld stockists are doing better than ever, securing more business simply because G does not have the answers about those sites.

G does not have the answers because realworld traders in my industry are not giving G the information, they are not giving G the information because they do not want it to be BROADCAST to all their competitors via The Net and end up driving their prices and profit margins down!

Your industry will defintely vary since this is for my widget industry however I'd bet that other industries are seriously looking at doing similar things.

[lostshootingstar]

I am starting to see more movement in our industry than is normal, I would not be surprised if there was something coming in the next day or so. We'll see...

[RedBar]

A simple question?

Does G's algorithm simply prefer a whole load of BS code and therefore ranks it higher?

The more I look the more total BS code I see ... so much for running clean & mean sites Mountain View!

[RedBar]

BTW, I'm in a foul mood tonight if MV wants to try taking me on !

You will LOSE

[jmorgan]

Why is it that no matter what you do, recovering a website that was hit by Google is almost a miracle?

Many websites, including mine, have recovered. It just takes a bit of research from some trustworthy experts (who actually have a good track record) to figure out what you're doing wrong.

The folks at moz do a decent job. Glenn Gabe is also someone I recommend reading (his blog, that is). And also, watch the Google Webmaster Hangouts on YouTube to get some useful inside info.

[broccoli]

@RedBar I’m a firm believer that if you want to determine the motivations of a person or organisation the best way to do it is to look at the outcome of their actions and work back from there. So you can imagine what I think of them. The French government has apparently decided to stop using them. They know Google has enough power to crash economies now.

@lostshootingstar The serps went very still for me today then started shuffling excessively in the last few hours. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

[lostshootingstar]

Yeah, I only started noticing it after around 6-7pm EST. I think the coming days will show some movement in the trackers.

[whoa182]

Yeah, I just started noticing some big changes in the SERPs. Quite a few of my articles which ranked well still have been thrown to pages 2 and 3.

[NickMNS]

@Mosxu

Did you get any sleep?

No issue there I only realized it was problem in the morning when I woke up and checked my stats. Problem was solved by lunch time.

How did you crush the db?

I was messing around on the server and open a large file and I assume it caused the machine to run out of memory and crash the dB. I have had happen before but I usually realize it immediately. But I have been busy working on other stuff lately. I've my head buried in some heavy code lately so not really worrying about other stuff. In hind sight I did notice an immediate drop in traffic but it wasn't as pronounced as usual. I using AMP and I have Cloudflare's Always Online feature switched on, between the two they are able to keep serving a good percentage of my traffic.

What a difference a day makes.
Today was my best day since early October. I still have the hot-linking switched off so maybe its that, or maybe I making up for my quota (lol), you know fewer impressions yesterday, they add them to my traffic of today. Who knows!

[BushyTop]

SEMrush off the scale again this morning. I saw someone else mention that they had seen more spam come through there site. We saw the same. I'm starting to think that this might be a good indicator to major algo tweaks....

[mosxu]

“Making up for my quota”

The more happy visitors the bigger the quota (lol)

[MayankParmar]

Searchengineland has been deindexed?

[broccoli]

Holy smoke. You're right. Was that a mistake or was it because of the googlebot article?

[Shepherd]

Searchengineland... surely a "glitch."

[broccoli]

Yeah, wasn't it founded by Danny Sullivan, Google employee? I mean, if that's a glitch, it should get fixed pretty quickly...

[expmrb]

SearchEngineLand is really gone from the SERP's? Or its just a small minor set backs?

[broccoli]

If you do a site: search it isn’t there. They’ve put up a statement saying it was misidentified as being hacked and will be reindexed soon.