Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2019

[dollarsound]

The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4937425.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:52 pm on Apr 1, 2019 (PDT -8)



Today traffic is 35% up. This site wasn't affected by these previous updates in march, in august had an increase in organic traffic also, and since then has been fluctuating

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:58 am (utc) on Apr 2, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new month [/edit]

[sofie77]

But anybody seeing any patterns?!

Please read the last 6 hours. There is imho no pattern.

The problem is, that google has deindexed tons of pages and when the page is deindexed, there is NO ranking for.

The question is, why does google deindexed pages and which criteria is behind that. I hope, that this is a glitch and they fix it soon.

[edited by: sofie77 at 12:42 pm (utc) on Apr 5, 2019]

[broccoli]

Yes, can confirm significant deindexing issues in my niche affecting me and my competitors.

I presume this is a mistake because omg.

[Robert Charlton]

Barry in seroundtable cites widespread reports of Google dropping pages out of the search index. Though there's no official word yet from Google, it appears to be a bug. It is, however, costing sites traffic. I've started a thread in this forum for discussion peculiar to the problem....

Reports of Google Dropping Pages Out of Index... possibly a bug?
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4941198.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Thread includes links to Barry's article.

[SnowMan68]

I'm seeing pages disappearing and reappearing, every time I click the search button. There is also a ton of movement in the SERPs, with pages moving all over every time I click the search button. These issues could be linked. I've never seen so much movement EVERY time I click search. Pretty wild.

[sofie77]

Thank you very much Robert and Barry.

I think the google engineers has noticed the error. Sites and positions are coming back slowly.

[SnowMan68]

@sofie77

I'm not too sure about that. It appears on our side that sites are coming and going, as you click the search button. There is definitely a bug or some major change in the index.

[broccoli]

Hard to know if this is one of those different datasets at different data centers scenarios or not, but I seem to have my missing pages back for now after requesting reindexing through GSC.

GSC claimed the pages were still there even though they weren't in the results. Very odd.

[Jori]

I confirm the error also. Even more weird, I filled a dmca some time ago.

Some of my pages disapeared with this glitch, but the notification of a dmca complaint still shows on the serp.

What can we think about this ? Why this page, and not another one ? Is this pages under a special "treatment" from Google ? Like a strange sandbox or something?

It could be nice if we could see any pattern.

[sofie77]

I'm not too sure about that.

me neither but its more stable since the last 6 hours, so It looks like a fix

What can we think about this ? Why this page, and not another one ? Is this pages under a special "treatment" from Google ? Like a strange sandbox or something?

Maybe it has something to do with the last crawl time. Page that were crawled in the last X hours or X days where in a seperate folder / cluster whatever and during the serps update they where deindexed instead of updated. This would explain, why so many "home" pages are gone, because the crawl frequency is higher...

[Spiekerooger]

Not seeing changes so far. Some homepages still missing. Others go and return.

(and one of those missing homepages is a onepager, so you can imagine the traffic loss...)

[southernguy]

I don't know if its a coincidence but only one of my sites was deindexed as described above and its the only one that I had in search console, none of my other sites that are not in GSC seem to have been affected.

[Milchan]

My guess (and it is 100% a guess of course) is that there was a new core update released yesterday and of course it takes a long time to synch around the world. We arent going to see any patterns for a while until things settle and it will likely take 3 to 5 days to stabilize.

Looks like it might include something that requires everything in the index to be reindexed and "something new" applied - Im wondering if it has anything to do with the reports of the new google "Read-Aloud" agent that people are reporting is crawling their sites? Maybe an effort to 'improve' Voice search results in some way?

Or maybe something to do with new GSC funcionality if SouthernGuy has picked up on something with the previosu comment. Would be interesting to see if anyone else notices something similar.

[mosxu]

Very disappointed,

Being hit by a huge wave of zombies, how come personalisation never works for me regardless how much I bid ?

[JesterMagic]

Anyone else notice the new button on the right side of the video, image, and news carousel in the desktop SERPS? When clicked you perform the same search you just did but under just videos, images, or news..

[swright]

Anyone notice that real time Google Analytics has not been very reliable lately. Depending on the time of day, I sometimes see much lower visits than usual in real time, but the regular stats seem normal.

[broccoli]

Those pages I reindexed yesterday have deindexed again!

[Milchan]

Anyone notice that real time Google Analytics has not been very reliable lately. Depending on the time of day, I sometimes see much lower visits than usual in real time, but the regular stats seem normal.

my real time stats have been broken today and last night showing zero people on site when I know there were people but have started working again now

[Milchan]

im also seeing the deindexing issue for some pages now aswell . Wasnt until today

[v008370]

I've seen a spike in direct traffic since these issues started

Google is weird right now

[v008370]

Deindexing has hit one of my sites. site:url says the page doesn't exist. Fetch as Google says the page doesn't exist. My sitemap in GSC says the page was indexed.

:-/

[swright]

I'm also seeing some pages deindexed. They also disappear from the search results and can't be found when I search my site. The same thing is happening to some of my competitors.

[swright]

Just submitted one of my deindexed pages back to GSC and requested indexing. It was back ranking as #1 within seconds and the competitor that was ranking for it minutes ago was pushed down a couple of spots (checking in incognito mode from a VPN). WTF?

[southernguy]

Same here off and on since yesterday just with one of my sites, it's nuts. [media.giphy.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

John Mueller reports that it was a "technical issue" that has been resolved, and that the affected urls are being reprocessed. In the Twitter thread where he comments, he's what I'd call necessarily evasive about what the issue was...

[twitter.com...]

Sorry -- We had a technical issue on our
side for a while there -- this should be
resolved in the meantime, and the affected
URLs reprocessed. It's good to see that the
Inspect URL tool is also useful for these
kinds of cases though!

[whoa182]

Traffic was very low today so I thought something was off... Just submitted a couple URLs and they went back to the top of the SERPs within a minute.

[DaffyCali]

My site is an informational blog about social issues. Around March 11, 2019 traffic started rising quickly and was up about 50% within a few days and stayed that way throughout most of March.

On April 3, traffic fell off a cliff and was lower than it was before the March update. It dropped about 60% and has been dropping gradually over the past 4 days since then.

Some info about my website:
-Created in 2013 with 20 posts of 1,000 words or more. All original content which I wrote.

-Informational topic which is evergreen and not related to date or time of year

-Everything indexed from what I see and no problems in Search Console

-Hadn't updated it at all since 2013, but it steadily grew in traffic over the years on it's own. I left it alone all these years
and around July 2018 I started updating it regularly after realizing that it was growing on it's own and had large traffic numbers. I've been busy lately so have not updated the site since December, but it was still gradually growing. A lot of colleges link to my site since the information is used by college students and studies, which is why I think it has grown on it's own all these years.

-I don't see any major changes in traffic around March of last year, so was not affected by the medic update.

[Spiekerooger]

Don't see it resolved. Even as those pages missing on friday are back, others are gone now. Semrush Sensor is going nuts for today.

[sofie77]

@spiekerooger

yes.

For me it was fixed completely on friday afternoon but today the problem is back on a couple of DC´s.

[Cralamarre]

My traffic dropped considerably yesterday (Saturday) beginning around noon EST and remained down for the rest of the day. But this morning, everything seems to be back to normal. Not sure what happened.

[broccoli]

I think there might have been a small update - perhaps a quality update - during this deindexing debacle. My home page has risen to position 20 in the last 24-48 hours (before March update: #8 - after: #35-#45). It isn't because of other people's home pages getting deindexed.