Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2019

[Martin Ice Web]

The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4934804.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 4:52 pm on Mar 1, 2019 (PDT -8)



biggest hit last night into the day.
Refs from google are down by 99%.
Seeing it across several domains.
And again serps are full of shops that i would trust a penny. If it is this that google tries to compete against amazon, google is lost

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:11 am (utc) on Mar 2, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new month [/edit]

[Selen]

In the past, when I searched for some information, I would always click on a few links to websites found on the first page to get the details. My clicks would create traffic / possible revenue for those websites.

Now, up to 100% of my query is answered right on Google pages (in a form of the answer box, an embedded Youtube video, text snippets below the links, or "People also ask"). I find what I'm looking for without visiting any external websites.

[RedBar]

Now, up to 100% of my query is answered right on Google pages

Which is ok when the answer is correct however in my widget industry I see a lot of incorrect information especially so from G-favoured US sites.

[Selen]

But then, if nobody visits your sites because the "meat" is taken and presented right on Google, how are you going to pay for maintaining the site (not to mention making money).

[riccarbi]

Which is ok when the answer is correct.

No, it's not ok at all. Google is (was) supposed to be a search engine, not a stripped-down version of Wikipedia. Diversity is what keeps the web alive. The web was not intended to become a sort of USSR's Pravda providing one and only one answer to every question. No different views, no different opinions, no different sources of content; this is killing the web and a part of our freedom together with it.

[Spiekerooger]

Oh, riccarbi, I'm with you. And I'm not even thinking about seo here but about society & information in general.

Finding out by asking about the height of {insert building here} that you could measure from ground or from sea level, that it could differ based on whatever and by that learning a lot about thruthness, science and sparking new interests in physics or whatever, this was the internet once. Now it is: "building xyz is 1234 feet high" - easy (and often wrong) answers. And by that stupitiy on the rise (just look at worldwide politics these days).

[RedBar]

But then, if nobody visits your sites because the "meat" is taken and presented right on Google,

Heck, I have a darned sight more widget information than can be shown in their answer box. My sites are for my global widget trade, if Joe Public is happy with what's shown in the answer box without double checking it then that's up to them however as I wrote above I see a lot of errors in the answer box especially from the USA.

Trust what G shows with scepticism.

[ichthyous]

@martin ice web - Yes that's exactly right. Google is cannibalizing its children because it needs to drive quarterly profit. We've all seen this coming for a while. The financial markets will punish Google severely it it doesn't keep delivering increasing returns. The only way to do that is to devalue organic search and shunt everyone toward paid ads as much as possible. It's a calculated move... Google knows that users have no place else to go and most probably won't know the difference or care. Google will feed us what it wants (and what it makes money on) plain and simple. It will be nearly impossible for a serious competitor to arise due to Google's size.

[jmorgan]

Did anybody see any significant change in the last two/three days?

[sk7411]

Did anybody see any significant change in the last two/three days?

jmorgan ,Did you miss the Florida 2 Update Thread?

[webmasterworld.com...]

[jmorgan]

Did you miss the Florida 2 Update Thread?

Yes, sorry about that.

[topaz]

Google News and AMP traffic is all messed up right now.

[aleduran]

Really hard changes on the serps, hopefully will roll back...
my traffic in some of my sites are down around 8% since last week and other are up.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Facing with very strange traffic patterns. Everything is just terrible since last Thursday, but when the US traffic starting to roll out - everything becomes great again. Like a holidays pattern. Guys from UK and Canada - can you help me and tell if St. Patrick’s Day is a massive holiday or not in your countries? Can it be the reason of such strange things? Or it's just my illusions and I was just hit with Florida 2? Will be very appreciate...

[Mark_A]

As St Patrick's day was on Sunday the 17th March, I doubt any significant effect would impact Monday / Tuesday.

[vlexo]

Got a feeling Google's neural matching is off a little.

In the industry I work in, it seems to confuse two relatively similar terms against each other - as a result we've seen some drops, but are now double listed. And then for another related search term, it has actually got the less relevant pages showing, for more than the site I work on, but also for competitors, but then it gets it right in some instances. It's strange.

[BushyTop]

Semrush spiking again for UK..... Mobile in particular.

[Spiekerooger]

@vlexo: this hat been the case in lots of areas lately (at least since mid of feb) but it seems to be better w/ todays update. At least I'm seeing a lot less keyword cannibalization problems compared to mid february.

[KaseyM]

Been quiet but whatever happened this month has sent our site flying. Up around 40% to around the levels we saw in mid-2017.

[lostshootingstar]

For anyone who has been negatively affected by the updates in March, I have some great news for you. This update actually helped our site quite a bit, which means that there is a 0% chance it lasts long term. I'm sure the universe will return to its natural order soon.

[i.imgur.com...]

[BangkokBaby]

SEM Rush show 8.8/10 in changes, hang on to your seats boys!

[edited by: BangkokBaby at 2:15 am (utc) on Mar 28, 2019]

[NickMNS]

@BangkokBaby
Mozcast is also showing 96, but that was for yesterday (Mar26). When you look at the 30 day trend, you see a weekly spike, so the spike is right on schedule. Not sure what the impact is/was/ or will be.

[capulkit]

Google once again has started to screw up results.
All unrelated pages are coming on top.

User intention is not matching with Google results.

[kayser]

Here in Spain, one of my websites that's and EMD from 350 visits per day to 160... domain... and a subdomain from that one..

[vlexo]

Seeing some nice positive recovery from the updates at the end of February, and mid-March today.

Seems in my area (Finance), they're getting better with separating certain terms that are similar to each other - and the 'double listing' is no longer occurring for us or competitors and our ranking seems to have recovered as a result.

[mosxu]

Trump-Sundar meeting ended very well,

The White House needs a good SEO to explain why is only negativity brought arround certain entities / people ?

Why is the algo bringing up only negativity?

[EditorialGuy]

It would appear, yet again, that Google is trying to squeeze small ecommerce businesses even more by redirecting traffic that converts to Amazon.

Why would Google do that? Amazon is one of Google's main competitors.

If Google favors Amazon pages over Unknown-site dot com pages, it's probably because users do (just as most users these days prefer supermarkets over corner grocery stores). To paraphrase an old saying, "Follow the searcher."

[steffanlv]

@mosxu, because the White House and Trump are too stupid to understand how search and simple 'sort priority' works in related to querying. Sounds like you might need to open a book and do some reading. I'd start with an overview of how search engines work. Maybe check out the initial proof of concept documents from Page and Brin.

[lostshootingstar]

Well, I wasn't kidding with my comment here on Wednesday. All the gains we made are now gone, rankings all back down, traffic back down.

Every. Single. Time.

[whoa182]

@lostshootingstar

Looks like it's the same here... Even though Friday and Saturday are my worst days normally, today is much quieter than last week.

What happened to the nice and steady growth webmasters could expect with hard work?

Traffic down:
[imgur.com...]

[StoneSolid]

Can't even remember last time I saw steady growth (or even steady decline).

It is always update & drastic change, up or down. No real slow progress after a good article or something like that.