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]

[whoa182]

In the health/diet niche, Amazon appears to be getting a lot of the featured snippets. :( Affecting traffic and sales quite a lot.

[jmorgan]

@samwest Well if your rankings haven't changed, maybe it's just a seasonal thing. Maybe the coming spring break?

[samwest]

@jmorgan, ah, from robust traffic to zero overnite? I doubt it. In my niche traffic should rise about now. From more convincing evidence, my Google insights show these odd behavioral shifts often, but never this extreme. After 20 years I know my traffic patterns pretty well. I also know when Google is playing games with the AI again.

[broccoli]

I have been on the receiving end of the “new sites outranking old sites” phenomenon. Not to sound like a stuck record but last March Google promoted an 18 month old EMD with 300 backlinks (with only one good link from a large clickbait/meme site) to the top of my niche and took the traffic from me, despite my 400K backlinks. Refreshing all my content, increasing my on page trust, reoptimising my keywords etc has helped me gain back most of my lost traffic over several months, though I’m still getting hit by updates and at the moment my traffic is up and down like a yoyo.

There is another thread on here about how google has stopped indexing older content on the web. I think Google is ignoring many of my backlinks because it’s no longer indexing the pages they are on.

[webmasterworld.com...]

I’ve come to the conclusion I can only fight young EMDs with other young EMDs, so I’ll be churning out a few new (unique, useful) sites this year to go after my competitor on a level playing field.

Re: watermarked images - I do have my domain name in small text at the bottom of all of my images, but I figure I can put it in the middle and make it extra big. :D

[universenet]

broccoli + google not indexing all pages because
1. they migrating to new webmaster tools last time (months) and never done yet
2. they can not manage internet... is too many data from websites... they can not do all that... even google can not do it
So for result is that can happening that even good content can be lost because not possible covered all internet
I think that googe covering maybe 10-20 % of important things from important websites (even 10-20% is much)
All other can not manage and is too big for put in their data centers and to be active in search results
3. they choose website and playing how to make bigger money..they are private company so this is all normal and logical... they are not humanitay organisation... problem is that they have too many publishers (2 millions) so can manage traffic to them how they think is bes for earning money for google. not necesery how is best search result... of course all this is logical but for publishers is not good

[southernguy]

@universenet I'm not saying you are wrong but Google can handle the data and the index, Bing and DDG do. In the past there use to be a consistent shuffle of pages so it seemed everyone got a small share of the Google search results, some pages more others less, when you search now it brings up the same results as when you click on one of the Google suggested searches.

The biggest issue is so much clutter now from top to bottom, and yes it's just Googles way of making more money. I was reading an article the other day on "I don't remember the publication" but it had to do with Google and privacy, there were dozen of users comments, most of them were in the order of "who still uses Google 2019?" or use "DDG or Bing instead" So people are catching on and will slowly move to alternative search options we just have to stick it out and hope it happens sooner than later.

I have a small niche site that ranks nowhere in Google now think it has some sort of penalty, but it shows up in Bing and DDG and the conversions are incredible there, much better than they were with Google when it did rank.

[universenet]

last year google "lost"... removed searchengineland from indexing
so.. things can happening...hehe... bad things

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

@RedBar Where did you hear this?

I didn't hear it anywhere, I experienced it across thousands of images which were demoted with watermarks, many were demoted so far they might as well have been removed altogether. If I remember correctly it was discussed here as well as one or two other webmaster sites.

After replacing some with non-watermarked images they returned thereafter any new or upgraded site I launched had no watermarks but with my own image hotlinking code which all search engines continue to honour and display.

I know I was not the only one to have experienced this, I was getting in excess of 100,000+ image requests per day, therefore I had to protect myself from hotlinkers which, I may be wrong about this, doesn't seem to be so prevalent these days.

Yes, you will see images from well-know sites with watermarks, however you should also notice that these images are usually unique to that query whereas in my industry a generic image of keyword1keyword2keyword3 will result in many images BUT if I search for a specific keyword1keyword2keyword3 image for which there is no alternative, then Google will show a watermarked image.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar

I experienced it across thousands of images which were demoted with watermarks, many were demoted so far they might as well have been removed altogether. If I remember correctly it was discussed here as well as one or two other webmaster sites.

Are you sure it wasn't the hotlinking code that got your images demoted? Some years back I remember that people were using frame busting code to get back their traffic from Google Images but it ended up backfiring on them. Did you implement the code after your images were demoted or before?

After replacing some with non-watermarked images they returned thereafter any new or upgraded site I launched had no watermarks but with my own image hotlinking code which all search engines continue to honour and display.

I would be interested to hear what that code is, I've never found a good balance between blocking hotlinkers and permitting search engines to index properly

I know I was not the only one to have experienced this, I was getting in excess of 100,000+ image requests per day, therefore I had to protect myself from hotlinkers which, I may be wrong about this, doesn't seem to be so prevalent these days.

It's more prevalent than ever...the number of sites scraping and linking to my images is enormous. I could block them on Cloudflare, but then I also block Google Images. They have a workaround at CF which doesn't really work as far as I can tell.

Yes, you will see images from well-know sites with watermarks, however you should also notice that these images are usually unique to that query whereas in my industry a generic image of keyword1keyword2keyword3 will result in many images BUT if I search for a specific keyword1keyword2keyword3 image for which there is no alternative, then Google will show a watermarked image.

There are few truly completely unique images, mine included...yet I still rank quite well with the watermark. As I mentioned, it's smallish and in the corner of the image though. The real issue for me are the scraper sites stealing your images then ranking higher than you do for the image.

FYI to all reading this...if your image is infringed and the infringer crops off your watermark/copyright notice you are usually entitled to higher damages because they have violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. My attorney warns me against using unwatermarked images. Also, how about the extra traffic from those googling your site when they see your branding on the image?

[ichthyous]

The biggest issue is so much clutter now from top to bottom, and yes it's just Googles way of making more money. I was reading an article the other day on "I don't remember the publication" but it had to do with Google and privacy, there were dozen of users comments, most of them were in the order of "who still uses Google 2019?" or use "DDG or Bing instead" So people are catching on and will slowly move to alternative search options we just have to stick it out and hope it happens sooner than later.

I agree...Google is intentionally devaluing placement in the organic search results because they want to keep as many eyeballs on their properties and they want us to pay them now. It's the end of free traffic from Google so people better get ready.

As for Bing/Yahoo and DDG...still a small portion of my traffic...maybe 10% combined? Most people are fine with Google's results they aren't switching in mass and probably never will. What is happening is that people are using apps and not search at all. Amazon is the big winner here. I have recently started moving to promoting myself on branded platforms. Very expensive to pay to play but one cannot depend on organic traffic anymore. If it doesn't work out at least I tried something new.

[ichthyous]

Regarding the previous comments about Google not updating link profiles in GSC. I am seeing the same thing. My backlink profile hasn't updated at all in quite a while not and many spammy scaper site links are still showing long after the sites have vanished. In the meantime the great quality IBLs I've gotten not showing up at all. Wondering what will happen when that does update? It is already baked into the cake?

[RedBar]

Are you sure it wasn't the hotlinking code that got your images demoted? Some years back I remember that people were using frame busting code to get back their traffic from Google Images but it ended up backfiring on them. Did you implement the code after your images were demoted or before?

My hotlinking code was implemented afterwards, I have never used a frame buster.

I would be interested to hear what that code is, I've never found a good balance between blocking hotlinkers and permitting search engines to index properly

After experimenting with several popular ones I created one which was a bit of a mash-up and it worked. It allows search engines to spider and display in their results yet as soon as a hotlinker tries to it throws a 403 error. It's been this way for what, 6/7 years now, and I have many top ranking images but saying that I get less than 5% of the image traffic I used to after Google's image theft like most other people who have posted about it.

There are few truly completely unique images

I create all my own images and since they are of specific widget products they are always unique (think snowflakes) however that doesn't stop people from visiting my sites and downloading them which, by the way, is far, far less than it was during the noughties. My early images from 1994 - 2000 can be found all over The Net yet the ones I've created in the last few years very little whatsoever.

[universenet]

hey people..
seems biggest problem is now that google sutck with webmaster tools migrating and is too many data that is why some sites like dissapering from net...
We just need time and be patient
Even searching do not looking much stable... traffic not too

[StupidIntelligent]

Even ranking doesn't mean much. You could be ranking in the top 10 for commercial "ready to buy widget" keywords, yet get nothing.

[StupidIntelligent]

Despite of what people have to say here; millennials couldn't care less if it's an ad or not. Most money keyword traffic does go to adwords spenders. No top brand would shell out $50 per click, if it weren't getting an ROI.

[samwest]

It's nothing new, Google owns everything above the fold but is simply getting MUCH better at getting it to convert for them. No other way to explain being the #1 result below their ads and suddenly getting zilch for traffic. No it's not a seasonal thing, but maybe the low pressure of the recent bomb cyclone sent all visitors scurrying for their holes.

[universenet]

StupidIntelligent ranking does not mean much is ocrrect
Most important is how many visits from google search coming to your website from many many diferent keywords
You can be ranked very good for some keyword what people not using much so can not be useful much

[StupidIntelligent]

@universenet - Any website that ranks for two word keywords will rank for virtually thousands of others. The issue is getting traffic IF you're ranking. For non-adwords keywords, Google will and does send thousands of visitors (medical info site for the sake of an example), but commercial ones (buy smartphone) - you could be ranking but not getting the same traffic as the ones spending $20 per click.
Getting traffic for money making keywords is dying out, which is why conversions are getting lower every year.

[StupidIntelligent]

People always dream of getting ranked for the main prime keyword in their niche. The reality is that even if you do end up getting into top 10 for it; chances are very low you'll get those conversions. At least with long tail low converting visitors, Google doesn't throttle you.

[samwest]

Long tail? what's long tail? they clipped those wings long ago. lol

[StoneSolid]

They sure did clip the long tail, plus they made sure to stuff it with google books results so you have no chance to rank for anything bigger than two-word query.

[samwest]

This recent zombie traffic is like watching a fish finder...they come into the site, hit the signup page, sit there for 20 min then leave. My traffic suddenly seems to correlate more to the solunar tables.

[JesterMagic]

For those of you thinking that Bing or DDG are going to save search, think again. Google has such a grip that It is virtually impossible for anyone to gain traction. With the default search engine on Android devices being Google and with Google paying Apple $12 Billion a year to be the default on iOS how is another search engine suppose to find new users which whom most just use the defaults setup on their phones (and wouldn't know how to change them).

[StupidIntelligent]

What is a Bing? serious question....

[Milchan]

@jestermagic - I agree , the only way google is going to be stopped from its all out domination is either via legislation (highly possible as that is becoming a bigger political discussion month on month) or if they start to experience facebook level scandals that make the majority of the public more aware of various issues.

[universenet]

StupidIntelligent bing.com try to be replica of google.... but not good replica.... even not enough that msn and yahoo working together.... today no exist search engines what can be compettion to google... this is not good... even is not good to google because they will be start to be leazy.. arogant... etc...

[goodoldweb]

bing.com try to be replica of google.... but not good replica.... even not enough that msn and yahoo working together.... today no exist search engines what can be compettion to google... this is not good... even is not good to google because they will be start to be leazy.. arogant... etc...

Google is holding the world for ransom via chrome and the Android platforms. They will continue to do so as long as the world continue and use these platforms, which seems to be in almost every home today. No doubt great platform, but a modern way of exploiting society.

There is no viable competition and possibly will never be as long as Google are allowed to continue and abuse their power. Soon in almost every device, mobile or not.

You can't beat them and you can't really join them. They want you to serve them.

[azlinda]

Hear, hear, goodoldweb. I totally agree with you.

[Mentat]

1. There is no competition and no contender or underdog. Bing is a joke.
2. There is no real alternative to Android and IOS. See the faith of Windows Mobile.
The problem is not only the OS but also the sustaining services: email, maps, video, drive etc.
Everything is "free", but this means "ads powered".
If you should pay for all the Google services, we will be back to Garmin era and ISP email with 2-20 Mbs storage.
3. I really want to believe that Google is overwhelmed by demand.

On another note, I suspect new movements this weekend on my niche.
Nothing moves.

[BangkokBaby]

Is anyone noticing a drop in traffic since Friday (12th)?