Google Florida Update 2 March 12, 2019

[BushyTop]

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System: The following 23 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4937425.htm [webmasterworld.com] by brett_tabke - 8:43 am on Mar 13, 2019 (cst -6)

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Seeing some changes this morning. Anyone else. UK.

[whoa182]

I've not really noticed anything like that from analyzing my own site and others. My long articles are still doing the best. I simply made them more focused.

I think it's just hard to say what's going on. I've spent the last hour looking at SEMRush, and to be honest, many big sites and small have gone through a rollercoaster ride since around March 2018. Gains and losses of millions, 2-3 times, over the period of just a few months.

Has it always been like this?

When I recovered on the 12th, things were so good, and then around the 19th-20th, it appears that they tweaked something and I lost some rankings.

I have an article that is something like: "Best red widgets with themes"

After the 12th, it ranked about number #5 on google. Stayed there for a few days, and around the 19th it went to page 9 on google.

The article used to do well prior to August 2018.

It doesn't seem like anyone really knows what we're dealing with.

[HereWeGo123]

@whoa182

When I recovered on the 12th, things were so good, and then around the 19th-20th, it appears that they tweaked something and I lost some rankings.

can definitely agree that they tweaked something on the dates you mentioned. Noticed a big change again during the evening of 3/20. Some sites that I noticed ranking on page one for KWs after the 3/12 update dropped again to page 2-3. We slipped on many KWs too that we slipped for earlier on the 13th. But unique to our site specifically, I am still noticing consistent distinguishing patterns in the content that dropped vs content that stayed strong. All we’ve been doing long is heavily Analyzing our site since the 13th

[flatfile]

Something interesting from Pinterest's SEC filing.

Our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our service from search engines is not within our control. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, that we are not able to predict or without prior notice. When that occurs, we expect to experience declines or de-indexing in the organic search ranking of certain Pinterest search results, leading to a decrease in traffic to our service, new user signups and existing user retention and engagement. We have experienced declines in traffic and user growth as a result of these changes in the past, and anticipate fluctuations as a result of such actions in the future. For example, in the first quarter of 2018, Google de-indexed our keyword landing pages, which negatively impacted traffic and user growth in the quarters that followed. Our ability to appeal these actions is limited, and we may not be able to revise our search engine optimization (“SEO”) strategies to recover the loss in traffic or user growth resulting from such actions. Changes in policies or their enforcement may not apply in the same manner to our competitors, or our competitors’ SEO strategies may be more successful than ours. In addition, some of these search engines are owned by companies that compete with various aspects of our business. To offset the impact on our user growth, we would need to increase our investment in other growth strategies, such as paid marketing or other initiatives that drive user acquisition, which may cost more and be less effective. Any significant reduction in the number of Pinners directed to our website or mobile application from search engines could harm our business, revenue and financial results.

[sec.gov ]

Pinterest used to have autogenerated categories under /explore/ and they were ranking for pretty much everything. I haven't paid that much attention, but only noticed a few months ago that those categories were gone. The site still ranks for pins and pinboards like it originally used to, maybe this is why I never noticed. I wonder if this is the change they are referring to in the filing.

Edit: I meant to post this under the "Google Updates and SERP Changes" thread and there's no ability to delete, so I'll just leave it.

[Zboob]

Hello everyone,

I just registered to share my experience:

I have a blog in the travel niche since 2 years, and it was doing amazing (reached Alexa 150k in 2 years) until march 12, when I dropped -20%. I work a lot on it, making sure i have the best articles for every subject I talk about. Average reading time on each page is around 8 minutes!

The only thing I never did was link building, as I thought great content would be enough (and it was!).

I guess that's what this update sanctioned me for. Google seems to now be prioritizing even more old domains with a lot of trust and backlinks, whereas good content that actually performs very well become underrated. So I am being outranked by websites written by freelance writers, with almost no practical information for travelers, it's just crazy.

In a perfect world, backlinks shouldn't even be a ranking factor, as it's completely irrelevant to content quality.

- You can obtain fake backlinks (or work your ass off to get them, instead of writing content).
- You can't fake great content.

I'm disgusted.

[Shepherd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Zboob.

- You can't fake great content.

You also can not quantify great content in a vacuum.

...visitors directed to our service from search engines is not within our control.

This should be something eCommerce operators say to themselves every day and then act on that truth accordingly. (no matter what the SnakE Oil sales folks tell you)

[tangor]

@Zboob ... welcome to the forum!

These core changes are generally followed by a correction (or three!), so time will tell how this all balances out.

[puckparches]

So I am being outranked by websites written by freelance writers, with almost no practical information for travelers, it's just crazy.

I'm in the same boat. Looks like some websites, that are not even related to my niche, hire a bunch freelancers to create content, which is inaccurate, and now they rank higher on the SERPs.

[robzilla]

I guess that's what this update sanctioned me for

Most likely Google agrees with you that "backlinks shouldn't even be a ranking factor". Remember, it's 2019. So... maybe guess again :-)

[Selen]

Yesterday, I was asked by my family member who runs an information website with a couple of thousands of pages. This update damaged his ranking by about 30-40% (despite very good, constantly updated content - he knows his stuff, it's his hobby and work at the same time). He doesn't do any SEO or link chasing, the site is very fast, SSL, responsive, good UI - everything by the Google book.

The most interesting thing I noticed is that for the last week (starting from about Mar 12), the majority of his search query impressions were related to his brand domain (or variation of domain). It strongly suggests, proved by a CTR of around 85% for such queries, that people are looking specifically for his website and Google penalized it for some reason.

Perhaps it's some Google test - hide the site and see how many people try to find you another way (using your brand or domain).

[seo2019]

Interesting theory and to be honest my homepage visits have shot up and bounce rate is very low compared to other pages. You might be on to something.

[Fatlossplanner]

I have lost 90 percent traffic.. Pinterest and Facebook page is out ranking me... Duplicate content copied from my site is not outranking me.. M disgusted... I have already started exploring other traffic sources... Want to keep Google away now.. They earn millions with our free content... All they do is just tweak algos and love playing.. Even if they want to enhance user experience it should be better than what ist is at present.. . Facebook and pinterest ranking for informative keywords.. Not sure how that is adding any value...

[blackswan79]

Guys:

If you are seeing some strange things in the top positions (and seems to me that most of you is seeing it) please be patient and try not to change anything.

So far, I see in the top positions things like this:

1. websites without ssl
2. websites not ready for mobile
3. links to facebook
4. links to pinterest
5. links to user generated content
6. links to websites with autogenerated tags and categories

Do your really think that it will continue to be like this? Just let UX do it's job and a lot of things will go back to normal.

By the way... it may sound like a crazy idea, but maybe we should join efforts and create some kind of super website from the beggining. We could do it like the guys from theculturetrip: 100 articles per day until we get 1 million pageviews/day. Enough revenue for everybody! :)

[Selen]

Since the update, I too often notice wrong user intent. When I search for, for example, "Is it safe to travel to Utopia?" I get top results like:

Top 10 reasons to visit Utopia
Things to do when you are in Utopia

I'd hope the intent should be the word "safe / safety."

Also, I see some other strange results on 2-5 pages, like some historical articles about "Prince John visiting Utopia in XVI century" or some world news articles that mention "Utopia during a civil unrest."

I agree this still looks like a beta test, not real results.

[robzilla]

It's not a test, it's a roll-out. These results have already been tested, and the data must have looked good.

[Zboob]

You also can not quantify great content in a vacuum.

Indeed, it should however become less and less relevant the higher you get in the rankings, where UX related factors should be the most important ranking factors IMHO. It doesn't seem to be the case at all for now.

@Zboob ... welcome to the forum!

These core changes are generally followed by a correction (or three!), so time will tell how this all balances out.

Thanks, let's hope they will!

I'm in the same boat. Looks like some websites, that are not even related to my niche, hire a bunch freelancers to create content, which is inaccurate, and now they rank higher on the SERPs.

By the way... it may sound like a crazy idea, but maybe we should join efforts and create some kind of super website from the beggining. We could do it like the guys from theculturetrip: 100 articles per day until we get 1 million pageviews/day. Enough revenue for everybody! :)

Yeah, that's exactly my definition of a bad website with thin content copied here and there. Personally, I can't do that, I know it would be a money machine, but I value my reader's trust more than anything else. I am also a perfectionist, so hard for me to give control over published articles to someone else.

I have lost 90 percent traffic.. Pinterest and Facebook page is out ranking me... Duplicate content copied from my site is not outranking me.. M disgusted... I have already started exploring other traffic sources... Want to keep Google away now.. They earn millions with our free content... All they do is just tweak algos and love playing.. Even if they want to enhance user experience it should be better than what ist is at present.. . Facebook and pinterest ranking for informative keywords.. Not sure how that is adding any value...

My god, I feel the pain mate, it seems it's not that worse for me now. Let's hope you will recover!

[broccoli]

Hey guys, I have a crazy tin foil hat theory I’d like to explore, and it relates to Google going after Pinterest.

I have an image thumbnail navigation on my site. Every page has a selection of thumbnail images and you click through them to a page that has a bigger version of the same thumbnail. Which is effectively what Pinterest does. I’m the only site in my niche that does this on every page, it’s one of the things that makes my site more user friendly.

However, if, hypothetically, for example I were a large search engine corporation with an image search and I wanted to go after rival image search sites (which I’m sure would never happen because that would be anticompetitive wouldn’t it?), and I happened to run the “thumbnail click through to bigger image” site structure through my machine learning algorithms, it might hit a lot of small sites unintentionally.

My site got hit hard in the March 2018 update, which is when Pinterest got hit hard, and then it was hit again this March, after shooting up from January onwards. Pinterest’s growth curve is the same as mine, and they appear to have flatlined this March. Something else I noticed this time last year was that Google started showing an awful lot less of my image thumbnails in the regular search next to my serp entry.

So I’d be really interested to hear from people who’ve been hit, and whether they have thumbnail image navigations that lead to bigger images on the linked page. I’d also like to hear from anyone using this structure that has not been affected or has been rewarded, because SCIENCE!

[Lisa01]

Hello everyone! My website was hit by Google update on 24th October, when almost every post, which was on the first page, was thrown to 7th or 8th page. I kept losing keywords and rankings on SERP for days. Some days, a few of the lost keywords would come back to the original position and would stay put for just a few days. Then again, they would be thrown to 8th or 9th page. I don't remember doing anything shady to get on the first page of Google for almost every keyword. It was just good content and my hard work. So I'm perplexed.
I just want to ask one thing. Is there any kind of penalty for using WP gallery for a single image?

[jmorgan]

Was pinterest ever hit hard? Just looking at the Alexa rankings (yes I know, a bunch of people are going to get on my back for trusting Alexa, but whatever), pinterest is still as popular as ever.

Personally, pinterest doesn't really make sense to me. Just "pinning" a bunch of stuff to your profile seems kind of pointless to me. But what do I know?

[jmorgan]

I just want to ask one thing. Is there any kind of penalty for using WP gallery for a single image?

If it ruins the user experience or decreases the value you provide to your users yes. Ultimately, the question you should ask yourself is "Is a decision I make going to add to the value or experience I provide to users, or detract from it" and not "Is there any Google penalty for doing this."

[Lisa01]

I have an image based site. So instead of putting full sized images, I use WP gallery to add images. I don't think it affects user experience. The issue is that Google doesn't index full sized image when I select medium or thumbnail sized option in Wordpress.

[Lagonda]

I read all these theories and I'm kind of bewildered by some of them.

People, let's get one thing right.
Google, with its algorithm, is only aiming for one thing: user satisfaction.
If a user for a certain search is happy after its #1 SERP experience, then, Google's algorithm did a good job.
If not, then, Google's algorithm didn't do a good job.
Google's job is to get 100% user satisfaction.

But, just like with some politics, TV programs, sales techniques, marketing plots, personal interactions or anything in which the average person isn't perfect judging, the human being doesn't always know what's good for him (or, what WE think it's good for them - fascism/communism ALERT).
So, although the #1 result in any SERP is a piece of sheet to a knowledged human, the average human being doesn't know that.
So, it's perfectly normal to see SERPs that are sheet to a not average human (a human specialized in a specific matter).

To my understanding, there's nothing more than this.
All conspiracy theories, all <insert here> theories are just that, theories that have no substance.

Aim for the average user and you should get #1.

[nikhilrajr]

Is there any data related to this update giving a boost in rankings for websites in mobile first indexing? For the websites which lost traffic, are they not in mobile indexing?

[whoa182]

Fatlossplanner.. That's terrible, I hope you bounce back from it..

Nothing really makes sense anymore to me. I checked another keyword today that I ranked #1 for since March 2018, but now it's slipped to spot #5. Average time on page is 8 minutes, low bounce rate and it gives the answer clearly to the question. The content that is beating me for the keyword doesn't even have the keyword in the title or URL, and there's a bunch of youtube videos that weren't there before.

Traffic for me is still up, but I lost some important keywords that really helped boost my earnings. Hopefully, the gains I made will make up for it.

Better get back to work now, so I'll wait until things settle and report back if I figure anything out lol.

GL all

[RedBar]

I’d also like to hear from anyone using this structure that has not been affected or has been rewarded,

I do not appear to have been affected and I have thousands of images across several websites using this structure since the mid 90s.

Google started showing an awful lot less of my image thumbnails in the regular search next to my serp entry.

I do not ever remember seeing that for any SERPs in my industry.

[whoa182]

@RedBar

Images for my posts show up in the SERP on mobile. Seems fair, since they have images for YT videos.

[RedBar]

Images for my posts show up in the SERP on mobile.

Lol ... Well I have never noticed that before, so they do!

[koan]

I was never happy to see Pinterest pages cluttering the results, they copy other people's content and forces a registration popup if you scroll down more than half a page, which I consider a dark design pattern, so in my mind they're essentially spammers, glad that Google also noticed.

[robzilla]

Aim for the average user and you should get #1.

I'm not sure there is such a thing. I think you need to understand the queries deeply and then try to satisfy as many possible users as you reasonably can. That's essentially what Google's doing.

This recent update only affected my rankings for a single-word query, like "widget", and I'm pretty sure it's because the term is somewhat ambiguous. Other popular queries for which rankings have not shifted tend to include additional keywords (like "car widgets") that remove much of that ambiguity, essentially clearing the path for my site to rank highly. It seems to me that Google has gotten better (YMMV) at understanding that single-word query deeply, and is now showing a more diverse result set to satisfy different users (and probably shifting rankings based on their confidence leaning one way or another). I think they also classify different content types and couple those with queries based on what they think users of a particular query are seeking, and then create a mix of different types of results (videos, lists, news, visual, textual, commercial, non-commercial, etc) to answer a query in as many ways as possible (again, reasonably), with the highest-confidence results first. I think it also explains how some fairly obscure pages have recently surfaced without the backing of strong backlinks, social profiles or on-page SEO; that's old-school stuff, these pages appear to be ranking on the merit of being different yet relevant (and authoritative enough). I guess that's basically what RankBrain and neural matching set out to do. It's quite interesting to see it actually work. At the same time, I also can't help but think that the patterns that emerge from these new SERPs might be exploitable, but perhaps I'm underestimating the Google brain.

[southernguy]

Very exploitable.

I have a couple of PBN's that I have been experimenting around with over the last few months which are ranking well right now. The issue I have is that I am afraid to actually replicate those changes on my money sites because I keep on thinking that this cant be the future of Googles results. If it is, so be it but they are pretty bad right now.

[StoneSolid]

I would like to add my 2 cents to this post, since my story is pretty identical (different niche though).

Shortly, just like the quoted post says, applies to my site as well:
- I kept writing and adding high quality content (daily)
- I never ever bothered with backlinks, all the ones I have are as natural as it gets
- Traffic was growing, slowly but steadily, with each article I was rising more and more
- ..until I lost 50% overnight due to some xy update, and then in few months another drop, and another and another.....

It used to bother me a lot but I'm pretty sure I found the reasons for it.

In short, my "success" back in the day was in long tail keywords. I never ranked good for "big keyword", but I had a ton of "how to small keyword when big keyword" kind of things, and google was very precisely showing my pages for very precise queries. It was wonderful really.

IMHO, there is no more long tail keywords whatsoever.
With search on mobile becoming dominant, google "DUMBED DOWN" the search process. Barely anyone writes full sentence or 3-4 word queries in their phone, and even if you do write "how to small keyword when big keyword" kind of query, you'll most likely get results for "big keyword". If you ever searched for some specific hardware or sofware issue, you've probably encountered it as well, that would be my best example of dumbing down.

Back in the day, a search like: "directx xyz.dll fails because graphic card blabla" used to give me an exact answer by someone on some forum.
Now, search like that will produce 100 results of pages with "Definition of xyz.dll"

Only way to get exactly what you want is if you use an entire mathematical equation in your query, keyword+keyword-keyword - and people don't use that at all, not regular surfers at least.

Which leads us to backlinks once again being the 99.99% of everything when it comes to ranking, even if content is utter crap.


TL/DR:
Google search is now much dumber than it was.
Backlinks are everything, literally.
Good content is good to have but not necessary.
PBNs are a must have, coz all your competitors already have them (as scary as it sounds, it is the truth).

I have a blog in the travel niche since 2 years, and it was doing amazing (reached Alexa 150k in 2 years) until march 12, when I dropped -20%. I work a lot on it, making sure i have the best articles for every subject I talk about. Average reading time on each page is around 8 minutes!

The only thing I never did was link building, as I thought great content would be enough (and it was!).

I guess that's what this update sanctioned me for. Google seems to now be prioritizing even more old domains with a lot of trust and backlinks, whereas good content that actually performs very well become underrated. So I am being outranked by websites written by freelance writers, with almost no practical information for travelers, it's just crazy.

In a perfect world, backlinks shouldn't even be a ranking factor, as it's completely irrelevant to content quality.

- You can obtain fake backlinks (or work your ass off to get them, instead of writing content).
- You can't fake great content.

I'm disgusted.