Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2019

[NickMNS]

The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4931890.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 7:24 pm on Feb 1, 2019 - (PDT -8)


Just to update on the AMP issues, it appears that the issue is solved on my end. My traffic has gone back up to the pre-AMP-errors levels.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:32 am (utc) on Feb 2, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new month [/edit]

[Broaster]

Cralamarre
did you ask for backlinks? or you just post content and see if anyone links to you? how often do you post content.

How did you get your traffic up without posting links to your social media. Im curious because that is impressive when you say your traffic is up and you are earning money is it like a hundred or so visits a day or in the thousands?

Some people say their traffic is up but they are just going from 30 visits to 100 visits which isnt much.

[Hollywood]

I'm with Rlilly - Let's talk business
RankRanger shows big uptick in SERPS, wondering what this is all about, minus the I'm up a bit, I have 1000 blogs, I am sideways mumbo jumbo :)

I have managed a few sites for almost 2 decades, the last week I am getting new hits for new terms, I recently deleted my entire Disavow file, and got buried with new business, I am thinking it was never a good idea to have even submitted one to begin with.

Been doing a ton of work trying to make visitors happy, social posts etc, but what is it about today's huge SERP flux? Thinking this is a major update from what it looks like.

[Broaster]

HereWeGo123

I dont have a general or political news website, but I cover sports niche and if there is a trending topic in my niche I lose all traffic even though I am in google news

all of the major news networks will out rank me even if its the same duplicate AP article with one paragraph describing the trending sport event.

Before 2013 my article would instantly get lots of traffic for popular searches in my niche

Google doesn't give any more small publishers a chance so its very hard to make a living off adsense or even advertising space because of this

They reward only the major news networks or websites first because they are consider more credible, over someone with a little known blog or website.

My friend owns both a blog and started a youtube channel a year and half ago, and he told youtube is really the only way he earns money from adsense because his blog has tanked in ranking and he has no manual penalties no duplicated content just all original opinion pieces.

And he was blown away that he was making over $2,500 dollars a month off his youtube videos that are monetized he currently has over 70 videos and a lot of the older videos have ads, and he said it all ads up, and its the best way to make money from adsense, he has some videos with over 300 thousand views but the average views he gets is 10 to 20 thousand per video.

His blog for one month since it lost ranking only earns him $2.50 cents on average with adsense.

Blogging and relying on google search is now the most difficult thing in this day, remember before reading those stories of people starting up a website and blowing up and getting paid doing what they love? those days are long gone, its a establishment game now.

[Broaster]

Hollywood

you run 1000 blogs thats a lot, why so many?

Also yes Disavow tool was proven bunk, now Google says you dont need it anymore.

a lot of the stuff that was consider okay by Google are now considered penalty inducing now.

[Hollywood]

9 out of ten posts, yawn. Jees.
I have a niche business, less popular these days but I am growing again as most competitors have thrown in the towel. It's very IT. I see one of the biggest increases in algo activity today on serps, anyone see indications of quality updates etc? Wondering why this is one of the largest moves in a few months.

[pritz]

In SEMRush, the visibility for my websites showing 3% down today.Also SERP volatility is extremely high.

[mosxu]

And when it comes to shopping [emarketer.com...]

Wonder what is google doing about this?

[Martin Ice Web]

@mosxu,

Wonder what is google doing about this?

more ads, less organics

[Cralamarre]

@Broadster,

did you ask for backlinks? or you just post content and see if anyone links to you? how often do you post content.

In the 13 years I've been running my site, I have never once asked for links from anyone. My site has over 120,000 links to it at present, but none of those links were requested by me.
I post at least one new article per week. I try for more, but quality is more important to me than quantity.

How did you get your traffic up without posting links to your social media. Im curious because that is impressive when you say your traffic is up and you are earning money is it like a hundred or so visits a day or in the thousands?

My site gets 30,000 visitors a day and 50,000 page views. When I publish a new article, the first thing I do is submit it to Google using Fetch as Google in the Search Console. Within minutes, traffic to the article starts coming in from Google.

I then send out my newsletter letting people know about the new article. I have a few thousand newsletter subscribers.

And finally, I add a post about the new article on my Facebook page, where I have roughly 100,000 followers. Unfortunately, Facebook is useless at notifying your subscribers unless you pay Facebook money, which I refuse to do. So less than 10% of my Facebook followers are ever notified. I'm fine with that. Most people on Facebook never leave Facebook. They just Like the post, not the article it links to, which is why I refuse to pay for Facebook promotions.

I do have Share buttons on each of my articles so people can share them not just on Facebook but also Twitter, Pinterest, and so on. But as I mentioned, I'never asked anyone to link to my content.

And that's about it. Publish an article, submit it to Google, send out my newsletter, and then waste time with Facebook. Then it's on to the next article.

[KaseyM]

And finally, I add a post about the new article on my Facebook page, where I have roughly 100,000 followers. Unfortunately, Facebook is useless at notifying your subscribers unless you pay Facebook money, which I refuse to do. So less than 10% of my Facebook followers are ever notified. I'm fine with that. Most people on Facebook never leave Facebook. They just Like the post, not the article it links to, which is why I refuse to pay for Facebook promotions.

Agree with you 100%. We've got roughly a similar following and with the exceptions of pictures and videos. We're lucky to even get a 4,000 people reach. Disgusting really.

I don't like having all my eggs in Google's basket but with Facebook actively discouraging me partaking in their service, I won't be giving them a dime.

[Cralamarre]

@KaseyM, Another problem I have with Facebook is that the number of followers it claims that you have is really just the combined total of all the people who have subscribed to your page over the years. It doesn't show how many of those people are still *actively* following your page. Some of my "followers" have probably died, but their Facebook account lives on. And I read an article a while back claiming that up to 70% of people who Like a business's Facebook page never return to it.

Between that and all the other phony-balony nonsense that goes on with the delusional fantasy known as social media, I stay away from it as much as possible.

[browndog]

I find I get quite a lot of shares and likes via FB although do find the whole social media thing to be quite painful.

Like Cralamarre, I've never asked for a link either. I had somebody contact me a few days ago who had written a paraphrased article based off mine. He noticed I'd linked to a scientific site (because I'd used some of their information), and asked if I'd link to his article too. I thought that was a bit cheeky.

My traffic is now 1/5th of what it used to be. The problem I have is I genuinely enjoy writing and helping people, but am now at the point where I think I'd be better off just walking away and letting the site finish its process of dying. I do love the site, but can't help but feel a bit resentful that I've wasted years of my life on a site that has gone kaput and been replaced with Flickr threads and short posts by insurance companies on the topic.

[Cralamarre]

@browndog, If there's a silver lining to your site losing most of it's traffic, it's that you have nothing to lose by trying anything you can think of to get that traffic back. If you really enjoy the writing and helping people, and you honestly believe you have something of value to offer, I say keep going. Look at the articles that have replaced you in the SERPs and see if you can somehow combine whatever they're doing with what makes your content unique and special. Easy to say, I know, but I had to do it after losing 50% of my traffic a couple of years back. Why not try anything at this point? When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

[Selen]

Look at the articles that have replaced you in the SERPs and see if you can somehow combine whatever they're doing with what makes your content unique and special.

How about paraphrasing your own content? :}

[broccoli]

I think yesterday’s technical update has been followed by a small quality update today. Anyone else seeing across the board changes?

[ClosedForLunch]

Anyone else seeing across the board changes?

A page on one of my sites must have been featured in a Google snippet or something. Today it had a 1,000% increase in visitors from Google.

I was king of the hill for a couple of hours.

Other than that, overall traffic has increased by 100% today but I don't expect that to last.

[shadowlight]

Well ive just came across a serp on google chrome mobile that has exactly 5 organic results. No more organic results what so ever, just 5. No link to more results, nada.

Two massive ads at the top, followed by the first organic result followed by the 'people also ask' garbage then another 4 organic listings. Then an ad followed by 'related searches'.

Unbelievable. It is a high value keyword with lots of competition too.

[Broaster]

Cralamarre
great info and helpful
I have a blog and its 10 years old but never added a subscription newsletter should I do that? I have the option on my jetpack pro plug in to ad an email list.
Also I use a XML sitemap so when I publish the articles it gets picked up by search
Is it better to do fetch as google in webmaster tools the way you do?

That amazing that you get instant traffic when you post up an article. I wish I had it that good. Is your niche competitive?

[Cralamarre]

@Broadster,

I have a blog and its 10 years old but never added a subscription newsletter should I do that?

You should absolutely set up a newsletter for your blog. These are people who have specifically requested to be notified when you publish new content. Just make sure not to use your web host's mail server to send out the newsletters, otherwise they'll most likely be blocked as spam. You'll want to set up something like Amazon SES for the emails.

Also I use a XML sitemap so when I publish the articles it gets picked up by search. Is it better to do fetch as google in webmaster tools the way you do?

I use an XML sitemap and I use Fetch as Google. No harm in doing both. Fetch as Google is quicker.

That amazing that you get instant traffic when you post up an article. I wish I had it that good. Is your niche competitive?

My niche is incredibly competitive. A search for my main keyword brings up over half a billion results. People told me not to bother with my site because I could never compete. My site is currently ranked #4. I'm pretty happy with that.

[Histerius]

@KaseyM No penalties whatsoever, never in 10 years. I had a small thoughts exchange with John Muller on Twitter, he claims amp is not a ranking factor but that's a clear correlation I can see. Amp errors in the search console leads to a disaster.

[System]

The following 11 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/4937425.htm [webmasterworld.com]
4:52 pm on Mar 1, 2019 (PDT -8)