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.

[Fatlossplanner]

@whoa182 that's what I meant to say above.. The results does not look relevant at all...

[EditorialGuy]

I'd love to see an answer to the question, "What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

Or, to put it anther way, "What are the characteristics of sites whose Google traffic is relatively stable, compared to the characteristics of sites that experience dramatic ups and downs?"

[mirrornl]

"What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

Good question, but personally I see many similarities with the August medical update. what was the conclusion there?

Ahh, you mean in general?

[NickMNS]

"What are the characteristics of sites whose Google traffic is relatively stable, compared to the characteristics of sites that experience dramatic ups and downs?"

I don't think that it is site specific. I think that volatility occurs at the niche level, in one niche one can have a great site that remains pegged in first place because the others sites in that niche are all sub-par, or you can have the same site but be in another niche where competition for the first place is fierce and even small impacts from updates will shake up the rankings.

[broccoli]

@RedBar They just *removed* your page? That’s very interesting and supports a “severe penalty for something mysterious” theory.

@Lagonda

Are you talking about me...?

Aristotle is probably talking about me, he’s always making jabs in my direction! :D

@EditorialGuy

"What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

The strongest ranking factor is the sum total of all of your ranking factors. Your site needs to be antifragile to survive. If you have areas of vulnerability in a crowded niche, you can expect to swing up and down as they make small tweaks to their scoring system. Big drops when everything seems to be in order? Probably their scattergun penalty system.

[StoneSolid]

"What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

Two things make a site successful:
1. Luck
2. Ongoing link building

What I mean when I say LUCK
I'm in this business for aprox 15 years and I've seen a lot of nonsense.
I've seen a bunch of sites with google traffic graphs like this _/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\ (in thousands),
WITHOUT even changing anything through the entire long period.
Sometimes google considers the site as good, sometimes as bad, and it goes in cycles.

I kind of feel it goes something like this within their algo team, simplified:
Chief: "Hey, lets give +10 points to sites that have image captions with 50 letters or more and -10 points to site with shorter, -20 to sites without any"
Coder: "Brilliant idea, it will make our search awesome, I'll do it right now!"
..and it moves sites with GOOD content to page 77 of index, despite the fact that articles are brilliant. It simply received too much negative points.

Also...
Mini rant


Google got a very good reverse images search.
I constantly see my pics on top spots of google images for related searches.
Problem being, those results lead to sites that stole the pics from my site.

That part puzzles me the most.
I understand it is hard to compare gigabillions of text to see originality but they obviously CAN do it with images. Yet, they don't.

So, there is all kinds of small details that make a site great.. but it seems like originality is not one of those details.They don't want / need it to be.

[swright]

In one niche that I follow I can't see any rhyme and reason as to who gets hit and who doesn't. One of the best sites in the niche has jumped up and down since August, gained quite a bit with this update, then lost most of the gains a week later. Another site with good quality content gained a little after the last update, then down and then up a couple of days later, and is now on a downward trajectory. There is a competitor that uses PBNs and these are very visible - perhaps because they are not SEO savvy enough to know how to make them undetectable. This one has been bouncing up and down for the past couple of years like a roller coaster and is now losing traffic. Another site with very poor UX that churns out low-quality content like a content farm has been on a downward slope for the last several updates, but with this one it's gaining like crazy.

I don't think gains and losses with this update have much to do with reevaluations of quality but rather with changes in how the system judges intent and relevance.

From the analysis of my data I saw several things:

- A portion of the drop of my site is due to Google ramping up their shopping ads on the days when it changed the algorithm. Check Mozcast's serp features and the serp features in Semrush's sensor by niche.

- Most of the drops in my KWs come from reevaluations of whether the page actually satisfies the intent of the query. For example, if I have a page about how widget X works or something to that effect and it ranked for the general query 'widget x', now it is being demoted in favor of pages that sell that widget - it's likely that Google is reassessing what the searcher is most likely to mean when entering a general query. Not all of my KWs have dropped like that though - for others I'm still ranking pretty high for general queries although the page is more specific.

- By far the biggest loss of traffic comes from queries that suddenly get zero impressions in GSC. Sure, some of these KWs may have dropped to the second or whatever page if they were on the fence and at least on mobile they don't get impressions as people don't scroll that far. However, a lot of these KWs actually are on the same positions when I check them (through proxies, VPN's, private mode, etc.) but for some reason GSC shows that suddenly searches stopped occurring for them. It may have something to do with autocomplete, but I'm not noticing any such changes when I start entering the query in the search bar.

[StoneSolid]

Improving how search mode works is a good thing, but with google it always feels like they are "correcting massive errors" in serps.
When a site goes from stable page 1 to page 50 of results, it is like google admits they were entirely wrong about that site, until the moment of the update, when they fixed the error.

[Nichita]

Since 13 March, for a lot of searches, the Romanian pages have been replaced in Google's results with English pages.

For some keywords, 80% from Google's results are now in English instead of Romanian, even if the browser is correctly setup (Romanian / location Romania).

Strictly for Romania, the latest Google algo update broke something and now all the Romanians have mixed results on some queries, with about 80% of them in English.

I listed some keywords examples and the problems below:

“Trump” - zero results in Romanian, the displayed results are in English;
“Barack Obama” – a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Benjamin Franklin” – a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Thomas Jefferson” - a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Abraham Lincoln” - a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“George Washington” - a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“George Soros” - two pages in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Steffi Graf” - two pages in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Donald Tusk” - two pages + 1 news in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Frans Timmermans” - three pages + 3 news in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Game of thrones” - three pages in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Adolf Hitler” - a single page in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Bashar Al-Assad” - three pages in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Vladimir Putin” - two pages + 2 news in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Kim Jong Un” - two pages in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Venus Williams” - two pages + carousel in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Theresa May” - a single page + carousel in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Boeing 737 Max” - only the first carousel is in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;
“Brexit” - only the first carousel is in Romanian, the rest of them are in English;

I don't know what they done but it's obvious that's something wrong with this update.

I reported this issue to Google and I hope they will investigate / solve the problem.

LE: Semrush shows right now huge variations on its sensor, for all the categories. Fingers crossed.

[NickMNS]

Two things make a site successful:
1. Luck
2. Ongoing link building

90/10

Many successful people believe that they know the secret sauce, they claim to able to repeat their success, but when that is put to the test they rarely succeed. There are far too many moving parts, it is questionable if even a Google insider would be able to launch a new site and achieve immediate success.

Your success or failure has as much to do with your site as it does with the websites around you. But don't get me wrong I'm not saying that one doesn't need to create a good quality, high value website. One does, it is necessary but not sufficient.

[tangor]

I suspect that many of these changes are linked to the fact that the web continues to grow by immense numbers, the scrapers and copycats are siphoning off traffic, and g has fiddled with all of that.

No one can stay number one... and few can stay on page one with that kind of pressure (new players) eroding the traffic.

Yet, this core update has to be for "something" and as yet, I am not sure what that "something" is. Reality? Not enough time has passed to draw a conclusion for the PURPOSE of the update and g will rarely, if ever, say what they are fiddling with.

Those who are banging out desperate searches from forty-eleven different browsers/vpns, ips, etc. are not helping to settle things. The noise of the desperate, or searching for an answer and polluting the results with unnatural signals.

YMMV

[rdbseo]

Is anyone seeing some recovery on the 27/28th? Our visibility has gone back to more or less where we were before the 13th.

A bit of background, we're a UK national lead generator and we lost a lot of traffic locally with this update. We had our main landing page (not location specific) ranking in the top 3 across the UK (we track location specific SERPS). When the update came along our main landing page was replaced in the SERP with our local landing pages, but these weren't good enough and naturally local traders were ranking above us.

This morning we're seeing good recovery. All we've done in the past week is delete a bunch of low performing blog posts from 2/3 years ago and improved our internal anchor text profile for these local landing pages. I don't think this would have made that much of a difference in such a short time. I'm seeing some keywords come back for our main landing page and some where our local landing pages are now ranking.

[Mark_A]

"What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

My feeling is if you are doing everything in moderation you might survive an algo change with less negative effect. That means not adding the maximum of keywords in your content, not generating massive amounts of inward links etc etc .. Your normal level of traffic won't be massive, but I think your rankings are likely to be less fragile on algo changes.

[lauranineham]

"What's the difference between sites that see dramatic swings after Google updates and sites that don't?"

One of the sites I work with is in the health/medic space but hasn't been hit by either update. Traffic has been steadily improving, with big jumps in visibility. Why? I suspect it's because the site puts content first. The whole strategy is based around finding out what content users want to read, and writing to fulfil that need. The content is high quality, authoritative, and there are plenty of reviews and positive signals throughout the site that highlight why it's a reputable company delivering a reliable service.

[southernguy]

@lauranineham I think that would be more an exception than the rule, there are many sites that got hammered and have good content, I know, the term "good content" is subjective. Several of mine lost rankings and have not recovered.

I have a couple of sites that are small niche sites that are some of the first ones I ever did over 6 years ago, they were also affected by the last few updates. I kept on telling myself I need to correct them and rewrite the content in them yet I did nothing. I was trying to recover two authoritative sites that I have which were affected. This last update gave them a boost again, the content in those two, in particular, is terrible. I have decided not to touch them at the moment because they are now ranking again. What both of them do have in common is that they are not in competitive niches.

I personally think that there are way too many things that can influence rankings, a lot depends on how competitive the niche is and many other factors. From what I have seen since August a lot of good sites which ranked for years took a big hit, some have partially recovered others have not and keep sinking. What I see is that Googles algorithms are more volatile now than they have ever been and while something is ranking today it could easily vanish from top positions for no reason, no matter how good the content or authority of the site is.

[Milchan]

Is anyone seeing some recovery on the 27/28th? Our visibility has gone back to more or less where we were before the 13th.

I haven't seen recovery but something may have changed yesterday on the 27th? Too early to tell of course but I have had the following pattern since the 12th :
1. Florida update (or what ever google want us to call it) went out and my traffic dropped about 20 to 30% and sales dropped around 80% for the next 7 days
2. From March 19th onwards conversions recovered and massively improved over the previous months - things were looking very good, but im not so naive as to think it would remain. Did look good until 26th though.
3. 27th sales dropped down by about 80% again and today seems the same

So whilst it is just 1.5 days and you cant draw conclusions from that , it looks like there might have been a change again yesterday, maybe a tweak of the previous update or something. Usually it seems to me that any updates or tweaks takes several days to rollout and take effect so it wouldnt surprise me if the next 4 or 5 days for me remain low and then I see a bounce back again. But honestly , it is just guessing and comparing to past updates in the last years or so and none of us have any real idea.

[Mark_A]

For us G organic traffic was down on Tues March 12th to the end of that week. Then we had a good week, back to where we were before the 12th. But then on Wed March 27th we went down again and today on the 28th we are still down.

I have been reading all the threads but I don't get the feeling I know what is going on, except that G moved the goalposts, perhaps twice, and if anyone has a clue what exactly happened and what to do about it, they seem to be wisely keeping it to themselves! :-)

[Milchan]

@mark_a - so pretty much the exact same pattern I had. Would be surprised if that is a coincidence

[StoneSolid]

this is the google traffic graph of my currently main website, since 01.01.2012 until today (you'll also see the -40% trend since the LAST update)
[prntscr.com ]

as you can see, you can see the date of almost every google update on the graph (UPs and DOWNs)

as I previously said.. it is ridicoulous all together, and I NEVER did big fixes on the site, simply because there was nothing to fix
code is tidy, mobile friendly, server is fast, content is unique and high quality, nothing broken, nothing messy, nothing shady

only thing affecting the traffic is google changing its mind all the time, and me being totally in the dark on why it happens :D

[JesterMagic]

One of the sites I work with is in the health/medic space but hasn't been hit by either update. Traffic has been steadily improving, with big jumps in visibility. Why? I suspect it's because the site puts content first. The whole strategy is based around finding out what content users want to read, and writing to fulfil that need. The content is high quality, authoritative, and there are plenty of reviews and positive signals throughout the site that highlight why it's a reputable company delivering a reliable service.

@lauranineham This will only work for so long, people will either start copying your ideas to share in your success, steal your content, or do negative SEO on the site. SEO and backlinks are a big part of staying successful. Until Google can actually understand the meaning behind the words this will always be the case. (and we are a LONG way from that)

Our site is not part of the health niche and wasn't really affected in August and only marginally now. Seeing big media brands continue to rise. Most are fluff pieces that do not deserve to be there. One niche site is kicking butt. It's rise happened last March and has continued.It shouldn't have. Below average content, but a lot of it. No real backlinks. All English content but they have pages designated for different countries. Same English content but just spun slightly.

Meanwhile older niche pages are pushed farther down. One of the large media companies that actually has very good content, well researched, also has been pushed down.

Still have to remember though that part of our traffic issues also rises from the fact that Google itself is taking it. They have more featured snippets, video carousels, etc... taking up space and pushing everyone else down.

[samwest]

agree with Stone Solid about the ^V^V^V thing...first I got hit, then bumped up to record traffic, now back down to zero all within a week.

[Milchan]

only thing affecting the traffic is google changing its mind all the time, and me being totally in the dark on why it happens :D

that is the problem in a nutshell - every is at the mercy of google and has no idea what they will do.

I do think something will have to change at some point and either market forces or legislation (no idea how) will have to deal with the fact that a single company has far too much control and influence over the livelihoods of so many people and can pretty much decide if a business lives or dies.How can that be allowed to continue?

[Shepherd]

only thing affecting the traffic is google changing its mind all the time

That's a mighty small box to try and package the dynamics of traffic in.

[themoabird]

StoneSolid - That graph is quite insane!

[EditorialGuy]

My feeling is if you are doing everything in moderation you might survive an algo change with less negative effect.

That statement implies that algorithm changes have a "negative effect." For every page that goes down in the rankings, another page has to go up. For the owner of a site whose pages are mostly going up, the effect of the algorithm change is positive, not negative.

[StoneSolid]

@Shepherd

That's a mighty small box to try and package the dynamics of traffic in.

Trust me, I'm all about dynamics, evolution and progress (of everything, not just google search).
However, these DRASTIC changes with every update need to STOP if google really wants to provide quality.

The way I see it:
Currently, most of the ranking factors are sitewide.
That is why you rarely even see steady growth or decline anymore. You just see: stable, drastic up/down, stable.... x1000

Sitewide rank calculation comes with massive flaws, and it is proven over and over:
- complex queries simply CAN NOT be found anymore, because algorithm pushes results from sites with stronger overall standing and ignores their coverage of your query
- makes it much easier for black hatters - by doing fake pbn links, they boost the entire website and even their weak content ends up high in serps
- sites with $$$ resources will succeed, regardless of level of expertise


For comparison sake, current situation with google updates is like..
..a construction company builds a hotel. People visit the hotel and enjoy their stay. All is good.
Inspection (google) comes and demolishes the hotel, without even saying why they did it.

We can assume something was wrong with it, but what?
Staff? Rooms? Prices? Freebies? Color of walls? Plumbing? Restaurant?

For the sake of quality, it would be better if inspection would clearly say - restaurant is selling bad bread. Stop selling bad bread or we'll demolish the entire hotel.

I hope you get the point.

[Milchan]

For the sake of quality, it would be better if inspection would clearly say - restaurant is selling bad bread. Stop selling bad bread or we'll demolish the entire hotel.

Whilst this makes sense in regards to fairness and would encourage site owners to 'improve things' and therefore improve 'quality' for searchers there are some clear issues :

1. Transparency makes it easier for people to cheat the system - could be argued though that that would be the systems fault though if it can be cheated (which it is and it is basically easier for google to keep people guessing rather than deal with that issue)
2. It still means that google are the ones that define what "quality" is and decide what "user intent" is.

I think google are failing massively on that second point and the search results (this is from a personal user experience and not from my site owner perspective) are far less useful than they were before medic update onwards. I honestly have trouble finding what im looking for on a regular basis in google now yet can often find it instantly by switching to bing or duckduckgo.

[whoa182]

An oldie from Matt Cutts.

I believed this before, not sure after August update last year.
[youtube.com...]

It's really depressing how quickly things can change. Big businesses can more easily restructure and adjust to these changes, but many small businesses are probably being crushed by the volatility since last year.

Is this what we can expect from now on? Can't Google get it right?

[AlexB77]

@whoa182 this youtube video predates the last August update, it was published in April of 2014, which if remember right was one of panda refresh periods. Nevertheless, language is the same as always.

[jmorgan]

Two things make a site successful:
1. Luck
2. Ongoing link building

I do agree that luck plays a big part. Some people just "luck" onto the right niche at the right time. Where would Zuckerberg be now if he didn't "luck" onto the Winklevoss twins? Of course, you also need some ability to turn the luck that comes your way into success.

However, I consider my site successful to a certain extent and I've never engaged in link building. I would probably replace it with "2. Working hard to give your users what they want". Do that and the links, or the "signals" as Mueller calls it, will come.