Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2019

[Mark_A]

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System: The following 12 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4940766.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 12:25 pm on May 1, 2019 (utc -5)

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For my main current site, Google Organic accounts for 28% of sessions.

I swear it takes up 80% of the effort though!

[SnowMan68]

Likely conspiracy theories about Google....if I was going to guess :)

[StoneSolid]

Likely conspiracy theories about Google....if I was going to guess :)

:)

I see a few people reported odd stuff on 15th... I can report one too.
My dead site had an insane influx of google traffic that lasted for 20 mins aprox.

Usually when I see 100+ google (or anything) visitors in real time analytics, it is all from same location with no productivity on site but this time it was different. Various countries, clicking around, doing stuff all over site (legit traffic). After those 20 minutes it was back to dead. I also checked data in search console, they got in via multiple keywords, not just one random one.

But anyway.. I don't really see the point of "seeing anything?" or "I'm up/down 20% since last night.." - because we're blind inside the fog, with no real knowledge about anything. All that we do see is that backlinks are stronger than ever and they are being manipulated like never before.

[SnowMan68]

I remember when they started rolling out Panda weekly. They didn't tell anyone about it, but it was obvious that it was happening. We had gotten hit by it, but instead of it being a big overnight whack, we were dying a slow death over weeks/months. Until they ran the soft panda update.

After the core update in March it felt like that was happening with that update as they try to get to a real time algorithm.

[universenet]

Usually when I see 100+ google (or anything) visitors in real time analytics, it is all from same location with no productivity on site but this time it was different. Various countries, clicking around, doing stuff all over site (legit traffic). After those 20 minutes it was back to dead. I also checked data in search console, they got in via multiple keywords, not just one random one.

This happenning when some of site (who has extrem big visits) is "dead" temporary so traffic coming to other site or when google analytics wrong identify spiders robots who visiiting website.. so can be visible from same location
Is like many real visiits in real time

[Milchan]

Usually when I see 100+ google (or anything) visitors in real time analytics, it is all from same location with no productivity on site but this time it was different. Various countries, clicking around, doing stuff all over site (legit traffic). After those 20 minutes it was back to dead. I also checked data in search console, they got in via multiple keywords, not just one random one.

I get similar patterns , it is like google turns legit traffic on and off.It is probably the AI experimenting somehow to see things like bounce rates, user interactivity etc to try to ascertain which of the sites it serves in top serps positions seem to perform the best.At least I hope it is that they are heading towards as the sites that come above me are garbage content in many cases and the user simply cannot stay on those pages for long.

[universenet]

I get similar patterns , it is like google turns legit traffic on and off.It is probably the AI experimenting somehow to see things like bounce rates, user interactivity etc to try to ascertain which of the sites it serves in top serps positions seem to perform the best.At least I hope it is that they are heading towards as the sites that come above me are garbage content in many cases and the user simply cannot stay on those pages for long.

Google doing that somtimes and this is normal
Sometimes real traffic can go 10x-50x bigger of normal and few minutes only
Yes.. can be that google checking server endurance too.. but no need check server with real traffic becaue mostly what making busy servers are spiders...spiders coming somtimes like a storm..

[Milchan]

I have just seen a new serp feature I have never seen before. I searched for : shoulder and back stretches and at the top of the serp it displayed snippet box with a youtube video in it but in a large full serp width display (not carousel type video display). The video had a blue bar below with "Suggested clip 52 seconds" and there was a point in time indicator showing that the video was ready to start playing at 12.53 seconds (of a 19.47 minute video - which it had someone how ascertained was the most suitable clip for me to watch for the search. Also , when you click play the video plays in the SERP in an enlarged format and does not take you to the site therefore another case of the user not having to leave the serp page.

Some thoughts on this ...
- the video site is youtube and therefore owned by google so in this case you can say they are entitled to do that no problem but will they be doing this for other videos hosted on other platforms? Also do the video channel owner get the views in the same way or does it effect their possible revenues. I.e if showing just clips then no ads are shown and this surely could effect revenues of the channel owner in that respect.

- when you play the video clip there is no mention what so ever of the name of the channel / person that made the video, nor any where in the snippet result box. I would be annoyed if I was the owner of that content.

-from a user perspective , it could be good or at least seem good but without watching the whole video I couldn't say if the clip chosen was the most suitable for my search. Im sure there is better to be honest as it seems mostly focused on shoulders when my search was for both shoulders and back.

- it seems like another step towards google trying to make google serp pages somewhere people stay rather than use as a jumping off point to content. Expect to see songs being played , movies and tv shows, live news reports being displayed and the ability to buy or book products directly there and then in the serps in the future. Google doesnt just want a bigger piece of the pie, they want the whole pie and to walk around the restaurant spitting on everyone elses pies.

[System]

The following 9 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at:

AdSense clicks and calculating earnings
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4946273.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:39 am (utc) on May 19, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new threads [/edit]

[renatovieira]

< moved from another location >


Seeing some big changes today...

Somebody else?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:12 am (utc) on May 19, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new threads [/edit]

[StupidIntelligent]

Large publishers will probably sue G before us small nobodies.

[MackamJames]

Seeing some movement in the UK 18th May

[samwest]

Large publishers will probably sue G before us small nobodies.

No doubt the web is fast becoming a much more litigious environment.
This whole business of copyright "fines" on stuff we found years ago or had posted by users under fair use really corks me.
Greed and scams have certainly overtaken the once "friendly" web.
The SERP's are (were) an open environment and a take-down should be sufficient...but nooo.

[samwest]

Wow, starting to see referral spam again. Thought that had died off. In my vertical, that's usually a sign of some change afoot.

[Milchan]

Wow, starting to see referral spam again.

Now you mention it ive not seen any for a while - didnt think about it until you mentioned it

[seomotionz]

@renatovieira What kind of changes?

[renatovieira]

@seomotionz

May 17/18 I had great oscillations in my trades. I think something isolated.

[BushyTop]

We've not seen a change in rank, but it would appear we have seen an influx of traffic since the 18th....

[StupidIntelligent]

YouTube videos and Others also asked are taking top two positions after ads for more than 50% of the queries in about 10 different sectors we operate in. In addition, the blue links have been reduced to 4, 6, 8, depending upon the query on mobile.
SEOs need to move to YouTube at a faster pace. Don't wait. Just open a channel right away. Google has already given an indication, that it will kill text in the next 5 years.

[Milchan]

YouTube videos and Others also asked are taking top two positions after ads for more than 50% of the queries in about 10 different sectors we operate in

Yes Im seeing it in so many areas and like my earlier post above , the youtube videos are now showing "snippets" that are played directly on the serp page so the user doesnt even visit the video producers channel to see it (whom isnt even mentioned as the creator either). The only way I can see that would be possible to harness for visitors would be to embed links in the video to your conversion pages in multiple places,

[RedBar]

SEOs need to move to YouTube at a faster pace

For which specific niches? All those chasing Google ad Dollars?

RealWorld businesses moved on from G "demands" years ago, it's not been a real business generator ever since its grand thefts became obvious.

[samwest]

Anyone notice very strange latency issues lately? Almost every website seems slow to load and this may account for much of the poor traffic and user behavior. My internet connection test out at 80Mbps down and 10Mbs up, yet most days it feels like I'm back to the days of 300baud.
Come to think of it, I had better sales and conversions at 56k.



.

[Milchan]

ive seen a massive influx of bots / hack scripts on my site today all coming at me from lots of different IP addresses. I have nginx rules that 444 to a long list of bots but it looks like I need to create a dynamic ip blocking solution now as it has been going on all day

[Jez123]

SEOs need to move to YouTube at a faster pace

I personally think that the constant annoying and intrusive ads has killed YouTube. For me at least.

[renatovieira]

@samwest

I noticed that in the last week. I thought it was some problem with my internet bandwidth.

[southernguy]

@Jez123

Its pretty much done the same for me, Youtube is worthless, all the good stuff has been taken down, used to be the little guy posting reviews or videos on how too stuff which made it unqiue. (at least for me), now its just a bunch of worthless garbage, maybe thats why Google is also giving it priority in search, maybe not as many people are using it anymore.

[edited by: southernguy at 1:16 pm (utc) on May 21, 2019]

[seomotionz]

@renatovieira On 17/18 we faced nothing odd. But that can't be said about this week.

[Milchan]

I can deal with the ads on youtube as they are usually just at the beginning, offer the ability to click out quite fast (if you had to watch the whole ad that would put me off completely). I dont like ads mid video though , I leave then.
For me the biggest problems with youtube (as is the whole internet but youtube seems to be getting exponentially worse)) is that it is now too spammy / click baity and the ai doesnt seem to learn that I really dont want any of that nonsense in my lists. For example any video that mixes lowercase with uppercase emphiase words like "reporter is SHOCKED when person a DESTROYS person b" .Ive tried helping the ai by saying I dont want to see certain channels , subjects etc but it doesnt seem improve it. Basicallly I think youtube, google etc is relying on AI too much too early as they do not have a handle on it.
Also the comments in youtube are just a cesspit of trolls and idiots rendering the feature useful in many cases

maybe thats why Google is also giving it priority in search, maybe not as many people are using it anymore.

I think google is giving it priority in search because that simply keeps people on the serps pages. I have not seen any evidence or stats saying people are using youtube less have you? My guess would be that people are probably using it more year on year.

[Dimitri]

Basicallly I think youtube, google etc is relying on AI too much too early as they do not have a handle on it.

Or may be there is no such thing as AI involved ...

[southernguy]

@Milchan No I don't have any statistical proof, but why would they be shoving youtube videos at the top of each search query? If I do a search I personally want to see text, if I want a video I can click on the video tab for results just like with images, much simpler. I guess that's why I have stopped using Google altogether just too annoying, it's even more so on my small screen smartphone.

At the end of the day trying to look at logic with Google search goes nowhere.

Last week I took my first step with Bing ads and so far am happy with the results. If it continues (fingers crossed) I can say goodbye for good to Google and stop worrying about organic search.

[Dimitri]

I personally want to see text,

Yes, "you", (and most of "us") , but the average joe, this is unsure. Look at how average people, and especially young people (millennials) are consuming the Internet. They like videos,and images, which are easier than having to read a text, and when they read text, they scan a page, and don't really read.