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!

[StupidIntelligent]

SEMrush is all green.

[samwest]

^ wow, nice first post there HRC...

and apparently another from Google themselves...

I think there is misconception and fake news within the webmaster community about that. If you allow your website to be crawled, you allow 100% of your website content to be organized and displayed to maximize user satisfaction. I (and most other users) find it more convenient to view your content that answers my query directly on Google than to wait for a slow server full of ads or other useless content to load.

What the point of having a website if you don't allow it to be crawled...lmao!
We just don't want our data to be used and abused without at least having a crack at some kind of conversion or monetization...after all G is doing that to the tune of 36 BILLION each quarter.
SMH

[JesterMagic]

I think there is misconception and fake news within the webmaster community about that. If you allow your website to be crawled, you allow 100% of your website content to be organized and displayed to maximize user satisfaction. I (and most other users) find it more convenient to view your content that answers my query directly on Google than to wait for a slow server full of ads or other useless content to load.

@Selen - Wow surprised you said that. So as a webmaster (I assume you are since you are on these forums) you are perfectly fine for Google to copy your entire website and display content from it to answer the users query completely, there by passing your site? This may work for a small percentage of businesses but not most of them.

It may be more convenient for users but Google's pages are full of ads themselves which are earning them money while they use your content.

As for websites that are poorly designed, slow, or full of ads, Google has an algorithm that should take into account sites that are like this and demote them in the results.

[StoneSolid]

With replies like the one below, I'm going to start believing in conspiracy theories.
This sounds like it is coming directly from google propaganda department, not from a webmaster.

I think there is misconception and fake news within the webmaster community about that. If you allow your website to be crawled, you allow 100% of your website content to be organized and displayed to maximize user satisfaction. I (and most other users) find it more convenient to view your content that answers my query directly on Google than to wait for a slow server full of ads or other useless content to load.

Yeah, and whenever McDonalds gets NEW kinds of burgers, my user satisfaction would be the biggest if I can take a free bite of each before I pay for it.
However, I have to buy the entire burger to see if it is good or crappy.

Also..

We're talking about "user satisfaction" on google.com when serps looks like an expired domain landing page full of ads?

Please.

[Selen]

The question is, are there any limits when a webmaster allows a search bot to crawl the site? It looks like allowing to crawl is like giving full license to use your content and it would be okay for a search engine to use 100% of the crawled content on the searched pages.

[glakes]

Just got a J.O.B. after 15 years on the sideline living fat & easy off the web....BTW I'm down to 98 lbs soaking wet thanks to Gorg eating my lunch every day. ;)

Try to get a job at Google, they have the 24 hour free buffet and massages too. Earn money, eat well (gain some weight) and relax afterwards with a massage. But if it were me working at Google, I would have a hard time relaxing knowing that all those excesses Google gives me comes from the deprivation of others...

[thepointer]

Does anyone else get the "Mother's Day" drop? My traffic drops around Mother's day every year. I used to think it was a Google update but it's like clockwork now for me.

[samwest]

Try to get a job at Google

Not sure my moral fiber would allow me to even consider that option. ;)
Besides, all they have available is robot call center positions to recite "Don't hang up, Your Google Business listing is about to expire...."

[StoneSolid]

Anyone remember the google serps heat map from years ago? - [imgur.com ]

Would be cool if some study would produce the same thing NOW, when there is 1.5 screen of scrolling to reach organic results.

[ichthyous]

Just for 404 and forget it. There is no negative impact. Over the years I have had hundreds and thousands of 404 reported in GSC and it never impacted me.

That works fine for new sites maybe, or pages that haven't accumulated links. By my 301 redirects were from ten year old pages to new urls for the same content and I wanted any and all link juice to transfer to the new page. There are still a surprising number of old links out there pointing to old urls on my site that I can't do anything about. It thousands of redirects suddenly disappear it could have a major adverse effect in losing those links.

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:10 pm (utc) on May 11, 2019]

[ichthyous]

Just for 404 and forget it. There is no negative impact. Over the years I have had hundreds and thousands of 404 reported in GSC and it never impacted me.

That works fine for new sites maybe, or pages that haven't accumulated links. By my 301 redirects were from ten year old pages to new urls for the same content and I wanted any and all link juice to transfer to the new page. There are still a surprising number of old links out there pointing to old urls on my site that I can't do anything about. It thousands of redirects suddenly disappear it could have a major adverse effect in losing those links.

[samwest]

@stonesolid - yes, I remember those heat maps well. The typical pattern was a triangle that extended down to the fold (and I didn't even preview your image before writing this), after which, clicks rates turned cold as ice. My best years were when I appeared above the fold, now that space if fully owned by the worlds most profitable advertising engine.

[Shepherd]

now that space if fully owned by the worlds most profitable advertising engine.

For the record, google has always owned that space...

[samwest]

@shep - yes, but they "own" it, meaning they use it MUCH better today.
I don't think anyone here really believes there is not some crazy smoke and mirrors going on in the SERPs .
As a perfect example, I've had basically no conversions in days, yet suddenly last night I get a string of back to back conversions, five in all within 3 hours, some 10 minutes apart. Stranger yet was that I was not near my phone when any of these came in...as if they know it. That's the pattern I see lately, never hear or see them come in, but if I set the phone down and walk away, things convert. This is a classic example (with a new twist) of the ON/OFF windows that started around the MayDay update of 2010 where you suddenly start or stop converting. That or it's just an incredible coinkidink. The AI is definitely in much better control today, and we are all being "owned". It's definitely as "Creepy" as Schmidt said it would be. Personally I could now care less. Just sharing my observations...
...or hallucinations.

[StoneSolid]

@samwest let me add my observation (hallucination) as well... even though I already wrote plenty about such stuff.

My google traffic still measures in thousands, few notes on it:
- I do regular content updates and site is already very big
- daily fluctuation is super minimal (in 20-50 visitors range), as if I've been assigned an exact number of visits and that is that
- none of my best content additions manages to draw in a +100 boost anymore, as it used to
- not to mention, I don't even remember last time when I saw my rank improve after x days of adding a great piece of content
(side question for people that do super big updates - do you ever see a traffic spike, X days after you've added something big you've worked on, a big coherent article? )

I already wrote about it last month, about a site that stole a bunch of my content that I wrote and published in 2015 and 2016. My ranks for it are long gone.
- my stolen article ranking #5 for "some widget" - I DMCA google and remove it
- my stolen article 2 ranking for #5 "some widget" - I DMCA that too
- rince and repeat a dozen or so times
- they still hold #5 for "some widget" but this time not with my article, but with some crap stolen from who knows where

AI simply gave them #5 spot for that based on sitewide "rank math", no budging, at least until another update happens. No natural growth or downfall and it scarily proves that content is really not important for that #5 spot, because they hold it with just about anything that barely mentions "some widget".

So yeah, that is that.

[samwest]

@stonesolid - I had to DMCA a few items back in about 2007-2008 and that's when growth really seemed to cool off. It was like I had "squealed" then got G blacklisted from any future growth. Yeah, I know, hallucination...but the "chilling effects" are what they are. That CE notice followed my content dispute for quite some time and the site has never seemed to recover. As our old friend the late "tedster" used to say, this looks like traffic throttling or "shaping". I loved having those thought provoking and insightful conversations with him. He is truly missed here at WebmasterWorld.

[Milchan]

- they still hold #5 for "some widget" but this time not with my article, but with some crap stolen from who knows where

AI simply gave them #5 spot for that based on sitewide "rank math", no budging, at least until another update happens. No natural growth or downfall and it scarily proves that content is really not important for that #5 spot, because they hold it with just about anything that barely mentions "some widget".

I have seen the exact same behavior playout although for the number 1 position for a top keyword in our niche.
The site with that number one slot uses PBN and various paid links and lots of fake reviews (nothing happens when you report them to google of course) and that is how they keep that spot and many others.

[Dimitri]

as if I've been assigned an exact number of visits and that is that

Sounds familiar :)

[StupidIntelligent]

Google is the new Standard Oil.

[broccoli]

Google deindexed one of my pages again, but not on all datacenters (yet?). Anyone else seen this?

[Milchan]

i can see 3 pages have gone from the index in my site

[universenet]

i can see 3 pages have gone from the index in my site

I see every day few thousands pages gone off from indexed and again back few thousands in indexed....google doing that all time.. depends of data center from where is loaded

[karan]

Just checked today, I got affected with huge traffic down and SERP ranking also has gone from 3rd position to directly 9-10th position. Do you also affect the same?

[vlexo]

Went from top positions to bottom positions for a very competitive search term with loads of volume. The websites for that particular term now rank in a completely different order.

Not sure what has caused that, but practically for other top search terms, we've not felt any sort of impact - so this seems quite isolated to this specific niche that I cover. A similar change occurred back in March for this niche, but it wasn't as impactful as what we're seeing today - where the 'update', as such, seems to have been amplified - negatively in this case, for the website I work on.

[glitterball]

For the main term that I monitor, the results have been pure garbage for the last few months: the official government site has dropped to page 5. My site has dropped from position #5 to page 12. My main competitor has dropped to page 10.
The first 10 pages are full of results that I actually find myself laughing out loud at.
There are about 4 results on page one that still make sense, but most of the first 10 pages are now composed of pages that are related to the search term - but are all selling something (previously the results were dominated by informational pages). It looks like Google has massively boosted any pages that are selling something over informational pages.

What is weird, is that a parallel market that I also compete in, has remained the same as before - with the government site, my site and competitor's all still in the same positions as before.

[Dimitri]

It looks like Google has massively boosted any pages that are selling something over informational pages.

This is odd, because I've always read theories about Google downgrading e-commerce and affiliate sites, to force them to spend on adwords.

[glitterball]

It is weird, but as I said, the parallel market has remained as before (and the parallel markets used to mirror each other with roughly equivalent results).

[HereWeGo123]

A few observations here - when I’m not checking my own SERPs, I am a regular user and consumer just like the rest of the world in the evenings for various queries involving personal interest, lifestyle, health, etc. I have noticed bad and irrelevant results at times. When I’m googling stuff as an average joe, I have not always been satisfied with the results displayed. As a result, I gave up searching for the answers I was looking for.

Secondly, back to when I monitor SERPs as a webmaster, I’ve noticed many sites that dominate do not have Google Adsense units. Google Adsense does significantly slow down load time according to page insights and lighthouse. I’ve ran tests with our site and saw near perfect scores on URLs with no Adsense units. When I would revert the ads back, I would see an average of a 40-50 point reduction in the scores.

I’ll just leave it at that for now.

[Dimitri]

May be Google is pushing low quality sites, so that high quality sites buy ads,

As for the speed of pages, i truly believe that it has an impact on the Google ranking, especially in high competitive niches. And, of-course, less ads, and more generally less third parts requests are helping. As I said numerous times now, on mobile devices, I get ride of all ads, and just kept an anchor ad. it easily divided by 10 the download time of my pages, I also , since always, been drastically chasing any unnecessarily code and external requests, and trying to take advantage of every tricks I could to make my sites very fast.

[southernguy]

I'm really not sure how much impact speed has on a site ranking, for the last several months I have several sites that outrank me in different niches they have a good backlink profile but are lucky to reach a score of 30 they are slow as hell but they are at the top.