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!

[Cyril TechWebsites]

After the last update you should be very careful when entering "Whitesnow and the seven dwarfs" query in Google Images, at least when you are at your workplace....[sarcasm, I'm joking of course]. Don't give up, guys, everything will be alright (at least for Google!).

[samwest]

@jmorgan....are you seriously trying to say people put down their devices when they go outside? I was at a campfire last night and EVERYONE had their face glued to their phone...Yeah, I'm sure facedump is doing fine. People in general are addicted to their internet like heroin junkies....and yet it doesn't explain why sales are off 50% from same time last year...and off every year since Mayday 2010.

[Dimitri]

EVERYONE had their face glued to their phone

Indeed, but I bet that 99% of them were on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snap Chat/What's App/Telegram... And not on "normal" sites.

[StupidIntelligent]

Google understands the context very very well now. It knows when people are ready to buy. So buyer traffic is moved to ads, while just poking around traffic is sent over to the TOP 3 URLs ONLY.
This is why it does not even matter, if you're on the first page, any longer.

[samwest]

@SI - paradoxically my #1 organic positions produce only a tiny amount of zombie and return customer traffic. My facebook page produces very little attention...probably because my content is not trendy enough for the mindless masses or the fb algo just throttles it...they have learned well from the master. Very interesting coinkidinks when you follow the path of Regina Dugan.

[universenet]

[twitter.com ]
google webmaster new indexing issue.....ok
but look down on comments
nothing positive...people are tired of that...

[RedBar]

And not on "normal" sites.

Two major things have happened.

1. When the www first started Joe Public used to be interested in finding and learning about all the stuff they wanted to know plus quite a bit more. Nowadays they are not so interested since they actually "know" where to find it therefore have no need to immerse themselves in it all the time ... they're actually getting more from family research etc., that is huge!

2. From about 1995 to 2010 businesses all over the world were searching/finding/locating/trying new suppliers/producers etc. Many did well, many also found out that their current widget supplier/producer was as good as they were going to get at the price(s) they were prepared to pay. As a specialised widget global supplier I can tell you that very little business is generated by the www these days, realworld buyers still want to see actual production facilities and quality controls.

Question

How often do you actually search for something new/different from a potential new supplier and actually buy from the new source?

Only this week I needed some more spot-on flea solution for my dogs. I checked my usual supplier plus half a dozen others thrown-up by a search, interestingly my regular supplier was not in the search results, yet I still ordered from my original supplier since nearly all the prices were the same plus I already had an account there and couldn't be bothered to set-up a new one with a totally unknown supplier.

I bet I'm not the only one who does that on a very regular basis.

[JesterMagic]

Google see's what Amazon has and wants that. Once users visit Amazon they usually stay. Google is forcing the internet to slowly change and follow what they want. Structured data so they can read content easier and display snippets to keep users on Google. Things like AMP also makes me wonder, I don't fully understand the ins and outs of who controls the AMP cache, but I can just see Google as some point starting to inject their own content (ie Ads) into AMP cached content they store. They do it for Search and Gmail, what's stopping them from continuing this idea?

[Milchan]

Indeed, but I bet that 99% of them were on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snap Chat/What's App/Telegram... And not on "normal" sites.

yes of course, like they are normally - but they would search for something they want just as easily if they felt the need. Point is, people being outside in the sun shine isnt going to have a big effect on user behavior overall, just means those same users have a bit more vitamin D in their systems

[BangkokBaby]

This year G has been on a tear. These are my experiences of 2019 thus far.

The last biggest site change relating to SEO I made was the first week in January, since then I've not done anything major related to SEO.

I've seen my site get a 70% , 50%, 30% increase in traffic along with a 40%-, 30%-, 20% decrease in traffic over the number of "algo updates in 2019".

I got a drop on the last update and it's kind of hard for me to know where to look or improve. I think the safest thing right now is to do nothing and see where this goes. Would be superful if G could tell us what each update is focusing on so we know what areas of the site we need to improve. I think this will cause less people being upset as direction is provided.

Relating to the new look of mobile search, must say it's pretty bad for website owners, especially in the gaming niche. I was stuck on a game and Googled the level to find out how to do it and, and it was full of YT videos and these new page snippets I've not seen before. I think I saw one organic listing for my search.

[givinguponlife]

Damn, what is happening in the last two days? I haven't seen drops like this in a long time 20-30% drop on most pages

[samwest]

@ universenet - Thanks for that link, it's so very indicative of this whole FUBAR'ed SERP situation.
The day has finally come where the once useful term "Google It" now means that something is completely futile and useless.
Synonymous with " F#@k It".

@Jester - Yes, Amazon gets long sessions that likely convert >70%, but Google gets repeat sessions all day on so many queries as we are blasted with so many of their own interests. If they have session envy it only indicates their incredible, limitless greed.

After a full week of zero conversions, I got ONE sale yesterday afternoon.
Yipee, I'm rich....now living on less than a benny per week.

The free enterprise internet as we know it is now dead...murdered by Gorg.
Thanks you greedy b@$*@&*$.

[edited by: samwest at 11:07 am (utc) on May 26, 2019]

[nikhilrajr]

Seeing the same here, a drop of 30% on all page types starting from May 22.

[riccarbi]

That's hilarious and nicely explains what Google SERP has become these days.
My search: "ezoic vs mediavine" on Google.com, Chrome set to US English, returned this:

1 AD
2 "Mediavine Review: How I Switched From Google Adsense and ..." from [nichepursuits.com...]
2 "Ezoic | Website Intelligence Platform For Publishers" from [ezoic.com...] (not the most reliable comparison source on this matter, I suppose)
3 "Why I Still Love Making Niche Sites That Make Money From Ads ..." from [growthever.com...] (a far-from-impressing article by an Indian guy which, by chance, reports the word "ezoic" and "mediavine" once without actually talking about them)
4 "Why Ezoic is better than Mediavine - Victor Mochere" from [victor-mochere.com...] (dunno what it is written there since the article has an English-language title and description in the SERP but it is actually in ....Romanian)
5 "Why Ezoic is better than Mediavine - Victor Mochere" from [victor-mochere.com...] (no, it's not a mistake, it's the same article as above but, this time, it is in ... Uzbek)

If this is artificial intelligence, I prefer natural stupidity...

PS. I don't know who the heck Victor Mochere is, but he's certainly pretty talented in making fun of Google's antispam and SERP manipulation prevention techniques

[edited by: riccarbi at 3:22 pm (utc) on May 26, 2019]

[samwest]

^ great post Riccarbi..

Just as an example of where this has gone...
In 1996, when I opened my site and when Google was still in Page & Brin's garage, during the first few months, I would have 20-100 visits at any one time and conversions so often and regular that you could set your watch by them. Six figures annually no problem.
In 2019, over 20 years later and with all the advances in computing, internet speed and increased audience, AND less competition than in 2000, I struggle with #1 (and stacked #2) position listings to get even 1 visitor at any one time and weeks now go by without a conversion. Now traffic is delivered in "drip" fashion.
Don't 'cha just love the mindless adoption of anti competitive technology like Google that can stifle even Moore's Law?
Oh how I long for the days of Yahoo!
Me thinks it's time for a serious SE paradigm shift.

[jxlarrea]

Likewise, from May 22 all pages have tanked 30% or more - overnight. What on earth is going on?

[Milchan]

If this is artificial intelligence, I prefer natural stupidity...

One of my favorite lines I have seen written here for a while!

Likewise, from May 22 all pages have tanked 30% or more - overnight. What on earth is going on?

Same here fallen around 30% since then

[Milchan]

Me thinks it's time for a serious SE paradigm shift.

Agree and as I posted earlier - I seriously do not think that google should be allowed to call itself a search engine any more. They are simply not a search engine, they are more a content aggregator & publisher or "request interpreter" rather than a search engine and should have to comply with different rules, laws than a standard search engine would. Laws need to be changed also to loosen their grip on .... struggling for the suitable word here but I guess "the internet" sounds pretty suitable.

[StupidIntelligent]

Ranking in top 5 for so many keywords. Getting not more than a few dozen visits. There are 4 ads on top, followed by videos and people asked this.

[samwest]

@Milchan
I totally agree. This is tantamount to content theft pure and simple. They take our content then monetize off the searches for the same. Not only that, they use totally unfair high tech AI to do so. They are now preventing visitors from even hitting our sites and I'm sure 90% of those here will agree to be suffering real financial losses. Google's 2019 motto should be: "All your base are belong to us". Somebody set up us the bomb! [youtu.be...]

Back in 1989 I never thought that game would actually portend our future financial doom.

[Milchan]

@samwest - something will give at some point though - they simply cannot be allowed to be the gate keepers of the internet, turning on and off our livelihoods when they choose. Im not sure how exactly but it seems there are enough rumblings of discontent both from everyday people and from people in government, academia, media etc that the tide might start to turn.It probably wont be soon enough for most of us though

[ichthyous]

they simply cannot be allowed to be the gate keepers of the internet, turning on and off our livelihoods when they choose

Google is not a public utility it's a private corporation with a monopoly, and that is exactly what monopolies do. Everyone keeps talking about breaking up Facebook. If any modern tech company matches the definition of monopoly, it's Google not Facebook. I wouldn't hold my breath for the American government to ever tackle the problem... The EU will need to do it or Google will just continue on destroying small business. The real question is, if Google were broken up into smaller competing search engines would any of us be better off? The amount of competition keeps growing and growing.

[BangkokBaby]

April 2019 Google Outages Due to Human Error:
[searchenginejournal.com...]

[universenet]

yes..and I all time say that google have some problem in catching net..now seems problem is biger and need much tume for fix this....is not only that google want earn more and more money.. they doing big mistakes in crawling and indexing..seems new noneducated generation came there...they think they know all and they doing basic mistakes..ussualy new generation coming with new little managers..what need earn much money in short time..we can expect some suicide there too

[StupidIntelligent]

Regarding human error in April; doesn't really matter, whether their entire index was wiped out by a 19 year old kid testing his coding skills. The moneyline traffic is directed to ads. Organic scraped results are there for the show and tell.

[WhoKnows111]

My traffic is down 20-30% the past 3 days too, without any visible changes in rankings.

[PlinyTheElder]

Despite the fact that my traffic increased after the last Google algorithm updates and my website is in the TOP 1 by a bunch of queries, there is no TOP 1 (as it was previously) anymore, unfortunately.

Today, especially if we are talking about the mobile devices, a visitor has no chance to reach the website which is in the 1st place since Google provides him a lot of unnecessary data such as:

1) People also ask
2) Video
3) TOP stories
4) Feedback
5) 1, 2, 3 results from YouTube

All these supplemental results are located above the 1st place in the organic search.

As a result, if a particular query gave me 1K unique visitors a day, to date, it could be between 100-200 unique visitors a day. I managed to restore all the organic positions, which have been axed due to another Google update happened back in December 2016, yet the TOP 1 doesn't give me the same results because of all these "supplemental results" that Google gives to the visitor, instead of showing my website in the 1st place.

Looks like that in 2019 we faced a death of the organic search.

[bonsbracked]

we are hiring now.
join to #make new search engine's search engine that give users right results not bad one and also not full of ads.:) .

Look at your phone (the doreway to enter the world).

when ever you want to buy some thing (common people just search not researching ha ha. how bad is common people).

Yes the search is the doreway of the internet.

and which search engine 90% use google (automatic not chosen by common people ha ha. now how bad for common people. only one choice for this common's).

and common people think that the google always right.
they trust google blindly ha ha.

It's not bad for their health. It's bad for their pocket and good for Google's pocket. NO ORGANIC things happen in google.

All thing controlled by google. they using common people's Data from google's product.

Google controlling mindsets and controlling world the internet.

So NEED awareness . AND now time to clean up the internet doreway.

Developer can join also common people ha ha.

[samwest]

Yes the search is the doreway of the internet.

Wait, I thought FACEBOOK was the doorway to the internet...lol

@Bangkok Baby - thank you for that link, it makes a lot of sense. I guess all we can do is ride out this mess and start using and promoting other SE's like Bing, Yahoo!, Dogpile and DuckDuckGo. I surprised to see the article was written by martinibuster, I haven't see that name around here for years! Come on back Roger and thanks for that great info!

This morning I am watching my GA display go on and off line...anyone else noticing that?
Things really appear to be messed up at the plex.

Also funny to see the (contrite perhaps?), generic grey Google doodle today, and not some witty memorial day...thingamajob.

Happy Memorial Day, never forget.

[southernguy]

@samwest Believe me Bing, is converting better these days for me not sure about DDG, I make it a point to not use Google at all, not even my kids (it's blacklisted in my house) It's gotta start somewhere.

In the meantime we gotta hang in there with other promo methods until Google dies or people smarten up which who knows, that may never happen. I'm still a wishful thinker.