Google Florida Update 2 March 12, 2019

[BushyTop]

---

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)

---

Seeing some changes this morning. Anyone else. UK.

[StoneSolid]

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).

Despite the fact you're an exception, I do hope you agree and understand what I'm saying?
99.9% of webmasters will surely avoid placing a backlink anywhere, simply because they prefer that surfer clicks on their adsense or whatever it is that they are selling or advertising.

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.

News sites kind of HAVE TO link to a lot of stuff, because they aren't making content, they are just "reviewing it".
Speaking of news sites, you're probably aware that almost every news portal allows "paid article" kind of thing. Each of those contain a link.
If that isn't plain buying links, I don't know what is.

(I'm not saying that YOU did it. I'm just once again saying you're an exception in how things work most of the time)

[mirrornl]

Please, stay on topic "Google Florida Update 2 March 12, 2019"

[StoneSolid]

Please, stay on topic "Google Florida Update 2 March 12, 2019"

Sorry for digression. However, it is hard to discuss something 100% invisible and mysterious :)

[Fatlossplanner]

Still no signs of improvements... It getting worse...

[seo2019]

@fatlossplanner same here. Are all your pages affected in the same way?

[Purd]

Tl:dr Key Takeaways (my opinion):
This update is mainly about searcher intent.
Outdated content is probably pulling your site down across the board.
Confession: I’m not an Seo
I’m the founder/owner of a site/application that was born in 2001, savvy enough to realise at the time that ANY content with a sprinkling of good keywords could, and most likely would, rank high enough to bring meaningful traffic.
It happened. At our peak – around 2011, the site was pulling in 1m+ visits a month, producing around 1000 new, paying, subscribers each month. (It’s a UK site aimed at UK users.)
I got bored/burned out and left the biz for a few years.
Re-entered late in 2015 because business was in deep trouble – not so much because of declining site visitor numbers at this point, but because of venture capital backed companies offering free services that we were charging for. (I’m not bitter, they had the foresight to make a lot of money, and anyway now they need to make a profit are also charging customers.)
Also mobile started happening in a big way.
At that point we had over 3000 pages of indexed content built up over the years – much of it written by professionally qualified experts. Almost entirely neglected since the day it was published.
Reviewing the situation in 2015/2016, I became aware that some of the content was hopelessly outdated but wasn’t overly concerned because we were still getting plenty of traffic. (In fact, when I looked at some of the searches G was sending us traffic for, I was surprised at how bad the page was in terms of answering the query. (Or how bad G was at finding good pages for those queries.)
Suffice to say that SEO didn’t make onto my urgent to do list, strategy was to concentrate on adding value to services, conversion rates and the mobile version of our app.
Fast forward to Aug 18
First sign of real trouble on visitor numbers was Medic early August 18 – around 40% traffic loss. Our site is in the health (but not medical) field. We made our credentials more visible on our About Us page and generally did things with more awareness that showing expertise/authority/trust is important. We had an uplift at end of October 18 that probably regained 80% of traffic lost to medic. (Our business naturally declines towards the end of the year and we had taken steps to get biz from elsewhere after medic, so it’s difficult to be precise about these numbers.)
To March 19
The content issue has finally caught up. We are too small a team, now, with too small a budget to bring all these pages up to scratch now that G has got better at interpreting what people really want.
It’s not that the content is bad. More that it was written with ‘keywords’ (as many as possible) in mind that were not really a perfect fit. The word ‘shoehorn’ springs to mind.
It’s also true that much of the content has not been updated in many years.
That is my understanding of what this core update is about.
It’ll take me many months, (optimistically) to get my older content sorted, and I’m fully prepared to work the hours and do what it takes.
My question to this community is: do you think it’s going to be worth it?
PS: I’m aware that this post is an indulgent distraction from my G pain and actually getting on with it 😊

[aristotle]

I don't know why I keep reading this thread. Everybody says different (inconsistent) things. People reach general conclusions based on what they see happen on one site. Sometimes the same person says their site's traffic went up, then later says it went down. Nobody wants to talk about the elephants in the room (Panda and E.A.T.).

[broccoli]

Thanks @redbar - is this the same site that was hit last year and recently recovered? Which update hit it?

Meanwhile - back to backlinks. Roger Montti posted about what might be a change to how Google assesses backlinks, apparently taking into account surrounding text:

[searchenginejournal.com...]

The purpose is to look for brand mentions. If Google have started using this it might explain some of my problems. The sites Google is promoting in my niche are EMDs, and I believe Google thinks their names are actually brands and is rewarding them for it. Whereas my site actually has a brand but few of my links or surrounding text refer to my brand, they refer to the titles of my pages, since when I first started out I’d created something unique and treated each page in effect as its own brand, but my pages were later copied by others and the terms became generic. So it’s possible I’m getting penalised for lack of branded links despite being one of the few branded websites in my niche...

[StoneSolid]

Nobody wants to talk about the elephants in the room (Panda and E.A.T.).

Both of those are google narratives to make the search algos look more complex than they actually are.
Backlinks are 99% of seo, as simple as that.

[tangor]

<dark satire rooted in reality>

The real chuckle is most seem to forget that the fabulous black box is operated by humans. Sadly, the humans working it (ie. inserting their data choices as "best user intent") are largely young whippersnappers with university education (take that as you will) and that is NOT mainstream, or even friendly to ordinary society or economics in general.

When the bean counters at g see an over correction in their core updates they tell the young coders to back it off and do better ... and so wild swings will ensue, and yet, each time, the whippersnappers will color the changes ... because that's all they have been taught.

AI is only as smart as those tweaking the code, and sadly, these days, we are dealing with a box of rocks.

</dark satire rooted in reality>

Meanwhile, give it six months. These daily/hourly angst sessions will only give you heartburn.

[sql500]

Do you remember the good old days?

There was alltheweb, yahoo, lycos, hotbot, aol search, live search, netscape, bruce clay and so many others.

We always got descent traffic from all of them, and they seemed to include sites fairly quickly.

But today... :(

Niente, Nada, Nothing

[tangor]

@sql500 ... indeed I do! Meanwhile, welcome to the forum, just in case nobody said hello!

The biggest change in search these days is "intent" and the only problem I have with that is "who decides what the intent" really is?

[Lagonda]

Anyone worse than this?

[i.imgur.com...]

[mosxu]

Amazing update of the buyer journey, getting twice more organic traffic but not converting.

These “researchers” got smarter they seem to engage more even getting to the basket but do not have the mental strength to cross the line.

[RedBar]

Is anyone else having to log-in to WebmasterWorld through "My Threads" to view these posts?

Thanks @redbar - is this the same site that was hit last year and recently recovered? Which update hit it?

Nope, no update hit it, Google simply decided to completely remove the index page from their SERPs, it was indexed however did not rank for anything after being #1 for several years especially for keyword1keyword2keyword3 on an EMD for which we hold the registered trademark and introduced to the global widget market nearlry 40 years ago.

A large US company that plagiarised that index page last year now ranks at #1. All other search engines still has my site at #1.

Recovery is a relative term when so many advertisements are above the fold no matter the device.

[aristotle]

Hmm.. Some of the same people who recently came here because their sites have been losing traffic keep trying to give SEO advice to people whose sites aren't losing traffic. If these newcomers know so much, why are their sites losing traffic?

[Fatlossplanner]

Does anyone in this thread see recovery to the rankings?

[sk7411]

Does anyone in this thread see recovery to the rankings?

Not really , it’s getting bad and flatlined day after day .

[Fatlossplanner]

It's getting worse...

[whoa182]

I'm doing okay but many keywords are not stable. From one our to the next they can be up or down 5 or more positions. Google needs to let the search team go on holiday. :)

Still down 20% from August 1st, so not that far off to where I was. But this is with a lot of new articles since the update. Impressions in SC were much higher up until the 19-20th March (which is when I felt they had changed something).

[imgur.com...]

[ichthyous]

My only consolation is that my competitors are going down as much as I am. This clearly seems to be an effort to tamp down organic search traffic to everyone, not just to recut the pie. I've redesigned several of the pages on my site... They load quickly and look great on mobile and desktop. Getting lots of new links from reputable sites and disavowed the spammy crap links. Shortened page titles that were too long. Let's see if it moves the needle at all. New links used to help a lot and rapidly... Not seeing that much these days.

[Lagonda]

Hmm.. Some of the same people who recently came here because their sites have been losing traffic keep trying to give SEO advice to people whose sites aren't losing traffic. If these newcomers know so much, why are their sites losing traffic?

Are you talking about me...?

[jmorgan]

I have a feeling this latest algorithm update renders the SERPs more dynamic and susceptible to change. So what I'm saying is, if your website is sending the right signals to Google, you will see positive changes quicker. Likewise, if your website is sending the wrong signals, your site will drop a lot faster.

Just a hunch though. I could be wrong.

[BushyTop]

Semrush UK is off the charts again.

[aristotle]

Lagonda -- No I wasn't talking about you. There are a couple of other individuals who I specifically noticed and led me to make my comment.

[AlexB77]

I am trying not to make any assumptions at the moment and arrive at an early conclusion at this time. Still, think that it is an early stage of the algo update and need to wait for a while longer to do something about it, if anything at all. My traffic is about 15 - 20% down on some important pages, but up by 15 - 20% on some of my new pages. I am checking my major keywords from 46 different locations and each of these locations has an entirely different set of sites displayed for the same query with exception of 2 -3 sites. What really is interesting that my site appears in all of these locations but each time on the different page of the search results. For example this morning I was on page 1 in one geolocation, this afternoon I am on page 4 for the same query in the same geolocation, but at the same time on page one in the different geolocation where I was on page 3 this morning. At the moment I do not see any stability on the global search scale. YOY drop is 3 - 5% on some of my main pages and 7 - 9% up on the newer pages. All pages are content pages with not less than 700 to 1500 words.

[Fatlossplanner]

In my niche if I search ayurvedic medicines for weight loss I get results such as ayurvedic tips for weight loss.. Not sure if that's the right search intent in Google eyes... Google search is giving a lot of irrelevant results... It's messed up completely

[robzilla]

if I search ayurvedic medicines for weight loss I get results such as ayurvedic tips for weight loss

That still sounds pretty relevant to me. Mixed with results about "medicines", it paints a more complete picture than if "medicines" were to be the sole focus. Sometimes people don't know what they're looking for. But if that's pushing down your page about "ayurvedic medicines", I can see how you might be upset ;-) That doesn't mean the results are "messed up" though. Anyway, tough niche probably.

[whoa182]

I was doing a lot of research last night for some new posts and it's getting very frustrating to find the right information. I don't think that's the best example, but it's not getting better. I've already been over this before: it's as if "trust" goes above "keywords".

So I might type in "best widgets for xyz" and it'll return me articles from WebMD, NHS, Healthline with a title of "benefits of taking xyz"

They might not contain the keywords, they might only contain one sentence in the whole article that is somewhat related... but it's really not what I asked Google to give me.

For me, as someone who has been using Google for research for many years, it's getting harder to find the information I want.

Even if I type in a long keyword phrase, as someone said, I might as well just typed in two words cos it shows the same results. And those results are usually teh big boys.

Prior to August last year it was much easier to find what I wanted to find. Not what google wanted me to see.

[StoneSolid]

@whoa182

Exactly what I wrote earlier about google DUMBING DOWN search.
You search for "what to do with X if Y" and you get a ton of "Definition of X" results - definitely not your intent.

However, it isn't something new, it is going on for well over a year now.