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.

[broccoli]

Yes, Pinterest were hit pretty hard last March and again in this update. They were rising sharply from early January onwards and this update has halted their rise. Their Alexa chart looks very much like mine, which is why I’m playing around with this tin foil hat theory, wondering whether I have anything in common with and can learn from the big sites that have been hit.

Google went after Pinterest specifically last year and deindexed all their category landing pages:
[bloomberg.com...]

@RedBar Thanks for the response! Does everyone in your image niche have the same style site?

@Lagonda Core updates are mostly about technical factors rather than user experience. That’s why they often surface thin content from authority sites. Quality based updates and backlink refreshes appear to be on a different cycle and are happening every 2-3 weeks at the moment.

[aristotle]

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.

That sounds exactly like a "content farm". When Panda was originally rolled out in 2011, google said that it was mainly aimed at content farms. Most of the sites hit by Panda, either then or later, have never recovered, but instead have continued on an overall long-term decline.

[StoneSolid]

Haha, indeed it sounds like it, but that definition doesn't apply to my site. For starters, my site isn't that big, and it also involves a lot of pics and videos, all related to a specific niche in which I simply can't rank with "main keyword", despite the fact I got broad and detailed coverage of the "keyword" itself.

[glakes]

There are a lot of Amazon sellers complaining about a 30%+ drop in sales. One seller noted Amazon lost short phrase positions in Google and gained in the long tail. I definitely noticed a decline in my Amazon sales, and my website more than made up for it - until today. My fingers are crossed that today was an anomaly. I'd much rather see Google sending converting traffic than hand over 15% of every sale to Amazon...

[Dannnn]

Hey everyone,

I've been following this forum for years and this thread in particular since the middle of March. I'm in a health related industry and I've certainly noticed some of the things mentioned in this thread.

Whilst doing my own research, I've noticed 2 things that have heavily affected my industry / site.

1. Branded searches - I've noticed that brands are getting a higher weight in the SERPs. Today (25th), I searched for a particularly popular brand in my industry. Their own domain occupied the first 15 positions in the SERPs. This isn't an exaggeration and I have some screenshots. There were results for pages on their site that in my opinion do not belong in the search results, such as sign up pages, careers pages, even the login page. I've seen often seen 4,5 or 6 results on the first page when searching for a brand, but to go into the 2nd page and display 15 branded results isn't something I've seen before. Clearly a terrible experience!

2. The intent of the results has changed over the past 2 weeks - Whilst searching for certain health-related terms, I've observed that more and more informational sites are being displayed in the SERPs rather than Ecommerce sites. In the past, simply searching for a health-related product showed a number of Ecommerce websites occupying the top 3 or 4 positions, followed by the informational sites. Now, the Ecommerce websites are pushed down below informational sites and often into the 2nd page. These are Ecomm sites have occupied these positions for as long as I can remember.

I've seen somewhere (can't remember if it was in this thread or doing external research) that 'intent' was mentioned and I know there has been talk of the previous "medic" update, but I can certainly back up the theory of 'intent' being the focus here and its certainly affected my health-related industry.

Over the past few days, I have seen hugely differing results and some Ecommerce results creeping back up, but informational sites are still dominating at this time. Hopefully G won't continue to show 15 results from the same domain going forward...

[Martin Ice Web]

Selen wrote

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

robzilla answered

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

I say:
if this is machine laerning then the results haven´t been testing at a wide range. Machine learning needs input for verifying the output.
IMO google can only guess how their core algo change will effect the serps.

My observations are:
brand items are completly killed for ecommerce. All items that we marked as brands don´t sell anymore. Its the non branded items that still have traffic.

[valiraikkonen]

Hello everyone,

I also just registered to share my experience. One of my financial websites was hit very hard.

It is a EMD and was ranking #1 pos for almost 4-5 years, traffic on this keyword is big. On 13th March was put on #2 and on 21 March was thrown on page 2, #12-14. Today it ranks on #20 positon. It's true that in the last year we lost some important backlinks from some important newspaper websites (but still have a lot from other websites).

Today the first positions for this keyword are filled with bank websites. None of these websites have adsense.
The bank that occupies the #1 position also has a blog with rich content.

So, after reading all your posts, I just want to confirm with you: 1. brands have gained a lot after this update comparing to the publishers and 2. non-adsense websites are ranking better.

[robzilla]

if this is machine laerning then the results haven´t been testing at a wide range. Machine learning needs input for verifying the output.
IMO google can only guess how their core algo change will effect the serps.

Google is a data-driven company, they don't (need to) guess. Once an algo change rolls out globally, you can be sure it's been tested at "wide range". With ~6 billion queries per day to experiment with, it doesn't take all that long to reach statistical significance.

non-adsense websites are ranking better.

That's too specific. It's not about AdSense.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[Martin Ice Web]

Google is a data-driven company, they don't (need to) guess. Once an algo change rolls out globally, you can be sure it's been tested at "wide range". With ~6 billion queries per day to experiment with, it doesn't take all that long to reach statistical significance.

Data and user real behaviour are two different things. Only the feedback from user behaviour can proof the algo.

(Look at the last US votes: All data driven companies told something very different!)

[RedBar]

@RedBar Thanks for the response! Does everyone in your image niche have the same style site?

Nope, I was the first in my global industry to do this in the mid 90s then many of the large global suppliers followed my lead and did the same. It was a very logical thing to do since the larger image page also carries lots of widget product information required by architects/specifiers/etc.

Many widget companies in the 90s/00s copied my coding since it was, and actually still is on a couple of my sites, perfect for what was required and code-error free. Even to this day on mobile these pages still perform well but are not responsive ... I am actually sorting this out and within a couple of months will be completed, I'm halfway there.

The vast majority of retailers really do not need to post this product information therefore usually only have pages with 200 x 200 or 300 x 300 images.

The remainder usually use the lightbox method which I also have on a couple of small niche widget sites. I like lightbox however no matter how well it is SEOd it can be difficult to rank for competitive keyword products, for non-competitive keywords it's usually fine and for anyone who wants to post lots of images quickly it's ideal.

[billgoiaba]

Sorry to hear this from you guys.
I work in a company in the health industry. Our website organic traffic basically grew 40% in the last 2 weeks.
And it was on the 5 digits per week. So it was not small.

Until August last year, we were having some shy organic growth, almost inexistent.
From August on, we started to get a beautiful natural growth, adding some hundred clicks week over week.
In the last 2 weeks, we had a huge increase, a steep 45 degrees curve with 40% increase.

We've been producing articles and content for a long time and provide a good UX, even though it's not marvelous.
Hope we can enjoy this a bit more. :)

[robzilla]

Data and user real behaviour are two different things. Only the feedback from user behaviour can proof the algo.

Isn't that precisely what happens when they test algo changes with a subset of users? They get real user feedback. Once you reach statistical significance, it's unlikely that throwing more users at the experiment (like when you roll out globally) is going to flip the results.

[edited by: robzilla at 12:48 pm (utc) on Mar 25, 2019]

[Milchan]

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 agree with this. I cannot come above my main competitor simply because they have a PBN and various paid links from blogs. I know for a fact that google has been made aware of this and provided with clear evidence of it and they have taken no action what so ever no penalized them in any way.
For all of googles shouting about webmasters should concentrate on great content , that they penalise and can detect fake links, paid links, PBNs etc it is all nonsense and they simply do not care. If you competitor is using PBNs and has more links than you because of it they will beat you regardless of their content , the quality of it , the fact that it is clearly scraped and spun. Google dont even seem to care about user experience anymore.
Google cares about Google and nothing else.

[whoa182]

Regarding backlinks...

This morning I've been looking at mentions, links and looking to see if anyone has used my images on my sites. Some common things I'm noticing is that :

1) New bloggers without knowledge in SEO have no problem giving a regular dofollow backlink if they found my content useful.

2) Experienced bloggers with SEO knowledge are using my images and mentioning my website as the source but quite a few are using a nofollow link and giving credit that way or simply giving a mention under the image or when quoting part of my text.

They have no problem giving dofollow links to .gov sites like pubmed and big authoritative companies. I'm guessing this is done on purpose, not because they think the content is low quality, they just don't want you to gain authority by giving a regular link.

Is it possible that just being mentioned on websites will make a difference instead of backlinks?

[BushyTop]

Seeing a massive influx of G bot activity from the 23rd. More than ever. Any guesses to what that might mean. In my experience its usually, good, but I could tell you now in today's climate.

[NickMNS]

It looks like my gains have been rolled back. Sunday last week I saw nice gain of about 25%, which subsequently settled down to about 10 to 15% gain that then remained steady for the whole week. Now as of yesterday, that has been rolled back and it is look like I back to where I started.

[Cralamarre]

My traffic has been slowly but steadily increasing since March 12-13. Last week's traffic was up 25% from last year, and today is continuing the upward trend.

[Jori]

@whoa182 : yes, If I recall well, G has already said that "mentions" are good for you. Not like a link, but still, good for your brand.

[robzilla]

good for your brand

Or bad, perhaps. Depends on the sentiment.

[vlexo]

Things got better after a pretty poor start to March for the website I work on from Thursday last week.

If it sticks like this, then I'll be happy.

[seo2019]

What’s the common denominator in relation to the March update.

Did we drop in SERP’s due to content issues or lack of Backlinks?

[ichthyous]

My traffic is not improving at all. It dropped on the 12th and only very slight recovery.

I used this opportunity to redesign my home page and some other critical pages. I had a full screen slideshow taking over the home page and I reduced it to a panoramic slideshow so the content is pushed up higher. Also pared down the image sizes and removed unused assets so pages would load faster.

The biggest change was to the text in the internal links on my site. Whereas before the link text repeated the word "widgets" for every category ("brown widgets, Grey widgets, green widgets") now the links are pared down and only refer to the category type ("brown, grey, green"). I am hoping that this may help more than it hurts... Im about to see very soon. Removing the same "widgets" keyword from my footer links did not seem to help, but it sure looks better and less redundant to visitors.

I also removed the schema markup from pages. I suspect that the original published and original created dates in the schema markup might work against sites like mine with a lot of products that stay in inventory. They are updated all the time, but it's not fresh content. I'm hoping that removing this date info might help... Does anyone have any insight about that?

[EditorialGuy]

I think you need to understand the queries deeply and then try to satisfy as many possible users as you reasonably can.

Or try to satisfy your target audience. If the people you're focusing on like to read and research, in-depth or long-form content will serve them well, and that should pay off in better user metrics, more backlinks, etc. (especially if your competitors are concentrating on filler-quality fluff for people with ADD).

[Mentat]

1. I saw a -25% in traffic on 12 March and again this week-end.
It's like Panda all over again - nightmare.
2. The main problem seems to be on the long tail, but I've also lost some major kw, like from the first page, to page 20!
3. It seems to be the silver bullet for me, as I have no more expenses to cut anymore.
Low traffic and abysmal Adsense payment = death of my site and company.

It was fun while it lasted...

[robzilla]

Or try to satisfy your target audience. If the people you're focusing on like to read and research, in-depth or long-form content will serve them well, and that should pay off in better user metrics, more backlinks, etc. (especially if your competitors are concentrating on filler-quality fluff for people with ADD).

Sure, but maybe try to serve those with smaller attention spans (or interests) as well, e.g. by adding summaries to go along with the in-depth stuff.

But I agree that satisfying "as many possible users as you reasonably can" isn't necessarily a good goal. I suppose that's why I added "reasonably".

[StoneSolid]

@Milchan

I agree with this. I cannot come above my main competitor simply because they have a PBN and various paid links from blogs. I know for a fact that google has been made aware of this and provided with clear evidence of it and they have taken no action what so ever no penalized them in any way.

Of course, I don't know the exact case / site you're talking about, but I do can tell you one thing:

PBNs have evolved. I see it all the time.
No more quick sites with scraped content and default template.
Nowadays, good PBNs are hard to be recognized even by experienced webmasters, and from what I understood on forums, google got some office section (in India or wherever) that does such "investigations". If a PBN is nicely written, with unique articles and media, they simply don't penalize it.

It is kind of funny when you think about it....
Comments, blogposts, all kinds of things that involve backlinks are penalized to hell and back.

I wonder if anyone at google ever ask themselves - who even "naturally" links to anybody these days?
Webmasters want sales and advertisement clicks. No one wants a traffic leak because of big link in the middle of the article "hey check out this awesome site.."

[whoa182]

Someone used one of my images before from my site and so I asked them to credit me for it. They sure did! WIth a rel="nofollow" :D

[EditorialGuy]

who even "naturally" links to anybody these days?

Some of us do. My policy is to use links the way they were intended to be used, as citations: e.g., if I'm writing an article that mentions Elbonian fritters, I'll link to a recipe or an article about Elbonian fritters (since it isn't something that I'm inclined to cover in depth myself).

FWIW, I got an unsolicited "dofollow" link from the Washington Post recently that was based on the same principle. So it isn't just cranky old-timers like me who still use links as citations.

[Milchan]

Nowadays, good PBNs are hard to be recognized even by experienced webmasters

Yes , this is exactly the case of my competitors. The PBNs seemingly have good content (relatively speaking as opposed to auto generated spun sites on PBN farms) and are actually manually run but they are still that - PBNs created purely for the purpose of increasing SERP results for their money sites. I simply do not have the resources to do the same and also feel that it is wrong so wouldn't feel comfortable doing it anyway - I guess that is why they will win and I will lose though: more resources and less integrity is what is required to win nowadays.

[bonanza22]

Hey everyone,

this update is pretty tricky, in my opinion we have to wait one or two weeks and everything should stabilize. Then we will decide what to do next.