Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2019

[Cralamarre]

The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4929562.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 7:58 pm on Jan 1, 2019 - (PDT -8)


@MayankParmar, it's just New Years. Same thing happens every year. My traffic won't start to really pick up until next week.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:04 am (utc) on Jan 2, 2019]
[edit reason] Splitting thread to new month and new year. [/edit]

[ByronM]

>I have the some problem. My organic traffic drops 30-40%, but my SERPS are stable. How is the possible?

I see lots and lots of youtube videos in many serps now. I'm not sure if tools that track position track the fact that some page 1s have very little natural position

[broccoli]

I think they’re doing something with keywords right now that means you have to have the exact match phrase on your page to rank in other related serps. I’ve been doing a few little experiments and comparisons and I’ve noticed that even if you have the singular e.g. “red apple” you won’t be regarded as relevant for the plural e.g. “red apples” unless it’s also on the page. They’re doubling down on keywords and regressing the sophistication of their search engine even further.

[elos42]

I think they're using AI, and it's the bots that are doing this. The bots, in other words, are still learning, and they're at the 'keyword' stage right now. Should evolve soon to a more sophisticated level. AI takes time to produce results.

[ByronM]

I noticed my long tail keywords plummeted in serp position... all those years of chasing long tail and whatever they did last week killed many of 'em. i'll have to experiment if its plurals and related terms and see if i can find the results using the google recommended query/suggestion box

[TalkativeEditorial]

By the way.. [seroundtable.com...]

[NickMNS]

@talkative I guess you missed that link when I posted it here yesterday

[NickMNS]

And today on the topic of AMP Errors from SERountable. TL,DR:They are fixing it.
[seroundtable.com...]

[Malanje]

My sites have never been so UX friendly, fast, secure, beautiful, richer, and yet have never had less traffic than now. For those who have an online business, it should be very difficult. If the videos are so shamefully promoted, then the sites should also have at least a picture in the description.

[MayankParmar]

Featured snippet, YouTube videos pushes content really down, especially on mobile. It is even worse when there is a Top Stories carousel.

People who want video content can use YouTube or tap on 'videos' tab. I don't understand how it is useful to put YouTube videos in text search queries.

[hurwith2]

How long does everyone wait to evaluate the performance for a new blog? The site has bee in existence since 2014 and gets good traffic. We released a blog in December and am still only getting 0-5 organic landing page hits per day. We are writing about strong topics. What do you think? <snip>

[edited by: engine at 7:35 pm (utc) on Jan 29, 2019]
[edit reason] Please see WebmasterWorld TOS and Forum Charter [/edit]

[Jori]

hurwith2 : I think that one month is too short. Wait a bit more.

[broccoli]

It can take a whole year to reach full potential. Anything between 3-6 months to get a significant boost. Getting traffic from elsewhere helps, if the visitors are using Chrome it will help you build up your quality score.

[jmorgan]

@hurwith2 Is your blog in English?

[hurwith2]

@jpmorgan, yes. Thank you all. I appreciate the feedback.

[KaseyM]

@broccoli any source on the fact that chrome visitors help?

[lostshootingstar]

I'm curious if anyone with primarily US traffic notices a drop today given the extreme temperatures in much of the country. Kids aren't going to school, people not going to work, etc.

[NickMNS]

SERountable reporting that the AMP indexing issue is now fixed.
[seroundtable.com...]
@Rustybrick Thanks for following this issue.
Now let's see how this plays out in my stats. Yesterday showed some improvement.

[Cralamarre]

My traffic is down a bit today from yesterday. Still doing well overall, but maybe some of my visitors in the US and Canada decided to stay in bed today and keep warm.

[broccoli]

@KaseyM They use the user experience data they gather in Chrome for Panda quality scores. I believe there’s a patent for it.

[NickMNS]

@broccoli
The fact that Google collects data from Chrome to determine a quality score is one thing.

But:

Getting traffic from elsewhere helps, if the visitors are using Chrome it will help you build up your quality score.

This statement suggests that one needs more visitors to use Chrome to increase one's ranking and there is nothing to suggest that this is true. Indirectly maybe, in that one's traffic may be so low that a score cannot be established, but I doubt that holds for any reasonably trafficked website.

[broccoli]

@NickMNS No, that’s not how it works. You need to get a certain volume of traffic to a new site to get a quality score, in order to earn trust and get ranked. They can’t measure it from a small number of visitors because the data is so messy. You can get the traffic by waiting for it to dribble in naturally or you can pay for some facebook ads and get enough volume for a quality score and get ranked faster. The traffic needs to be real, bots don’t work.
Pro SEOs do it all the time.

[NickMNS]

My point was that your statement was worded such that it suggested that more Chrome users == higher rank, this isn't the case. I like to make that clear, because this how many misconception arise.

[browndog]

Is analytics real time not working? Mine is showing zero users which only happens when my site is down (which it is not). I've also been opening a few pages on the site and it's still showing zero.

[NickMNS]

Mine appears to be working. Albeit I have more dots on the map than the user count suggests. So maybe, possibly buggy.

[TalkativeEditorial]

No issues here with GA

[jmorgan]

If the theory about Chrome is true, wouldn't the reverse also apply? I.e. if you have a bad website, wouldn't Google know about it sooner if users were visiting it with Chrome (assuming the signals Google collects are accurate).

[V4Vendetta]

Ok I think it's time to give some credit where due....
How negative seo is being beaten by Google:

New sites copying content ignored
Linkspam ignored
Referral Spam ignored (in GA)
Hacked links ignored

To work on Google:

Hacked sites duplicating content on older pages (partially solved)
Hacked Pages with PDF's of copied webpage meta (partially solved)
Copied content then redirected (unsolved)
Image theft through api's (unsolved)

Just to let the spam team know efforts are appreciated

[EditorialGuy]

I'm curious if anyone with primarily US traffic notices a drop today given the extreme temperatures in much of the country. Kids aren't going to school, people not going to work, etc.

Our site's traffic isn't "primarily US," but we do get a lot of traffic from the United States, and our U.S. traffic was up noticeably yesterday--presumably because a lot of folks were at home with plenty of time on their hands to use the Web.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Anyone noticed an increase in "Crawled - currently not indexed" pages?
I know Search Console can be deceptive, but even so, it's so strange. And the URLs HAVE indexed - when I pop the url into Google it's quite clearly there. Driving me mad

[ichthyous]

@TalkativeEditorial I posted about this earlier. Google is not indexing a lot of content...t seems they are making a decision not to index everything or to prioritize it. There are pages on other sites linking to mine that haven't been indexed for almost a month. One page on a high trust site never got indexed at all despite being linked to from various sources. I suspect that this is the new normal. Could it be that perhaps it's user generated content or other specific content types that Google is declining to index now?