Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2019

[EditorialGuy]

The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4944194.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:00 am on Jun 1, 2019 - (PDT -8)

Also, with the ad model a majority of people know that you are trying to get something out of them - a purchase, a signup etc - so there is a lesser level of trust there but if they find you through organic whilst they are in the research stage and you provide good info and value, then there is trust built and you get more sales.

On the other hand, people who are actively shopping for a product or service may regard ads as useful information. That was the concept behind Yellow Pages directories and magazines like Computer Shopper.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:07 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new thread [/edit]

[MayankParmar]

Console updated again with new stats. It dropped drastically (50%) on June 4 and dropped again on June 5 (10%) - 60+.

Traffic from Google Discover and News are now zero.

[Dimitri]

Now I see that my pinterest pins are better ranked than articles,

Don't feed your competitors ...

[Eloiza Gabriela]

When you get caught up in an update like this, your site looks like #*$!. The more you move, the more it smells.

At last I had a quiet night of sleep, I could understand that there is not what I can do, at least now.

I'm starting new projects and coming back to the game.

[LuckyLiz]

@Milchan (and others with bricks and mortar businesses and employees): A couple of things come to mind (based on having had a similar problem with a site years ago that went from top of page one to page 10. ( At the time there was no competition issue with Amazon sellers, however.)
First, are you selling products or services that lend themselves to repeat business? If so, are you remarketing effectively to those customers?
Have you calculated the lifetime value of those customers (assuming they are repeat), to determine whether it pays to buy advertising?
Have you looked at ways you could streamline your business and cut costs (which sadly, might mean laying off some employees)? When I looked at what we were doing, I realized a lot of what employees were doing manually (and taking a lot of time to do) could be automated.
Have you checked your site to be sure you aren't inadvertently doing anything that would get your site dinged in an algorithm update?
And are there offline ways - or other online sites, blogs, or other product lines you could add - that you could bring in another revenue stream?
It's hard to know for sure what - if anything - will help without knowing the specifics. But sometimes if you think through all the angles you can come up with a solution. If you happen to be a US resident, there are some government sponsored organizations (SCORE, SBDCs) that are free to use and might provide useful insights.

[ichthyous]

So many panicked posts from new users. I personally wasn't affected by this one, but feel your anxiety after 8 months of constant traffic loss on my own site. Keep in mind that it might take a long long while to recover your ranking and unfortunately there's not much you can do about it. Also keep in mind that when you recover your ranking, your old traffic will not return along with it. Google has made sure of that... They are keeping it for themselves as much as possible now.

My site has been zooming upward for two weeks in SEMrush and I am back to where I was perhaps 6 months ago, but traffic has not improved at all and is actually slightly lower than it was before I started to recover. I am just starting to see an uptick in impressions now. This entire last week I had maybe two email inquiries.

Google is a total monopoly and it plans to squeeze the life out of the organic serps until they are dead, and you all give up and pay Google for what you had for free, or just go away and die. Some of you will end up paying because you can afford it and it works for you, the rest will find another way to market their business or disappear entirely.

The era of making a good living from organic search is over forever, please do not fool yourself about that. The era of SEO 'experts' is also over forever. In this last 9 months there has been almost no accurate analysis of what is happening with Google by these 'experts'. That is part of the plan, Google intends to render the SEO experts null by constantly updating the algo...and it's working. Don't waste your time listening to SEO experts, they don't have the ability to get a handle on what works anymore, and never will again. I'm sure that is going to threaten a lot of very high paying jobs providing SEO services...SEO experts are an endangered species now.

The most productive thing you can do with your time now is to diversify away from Google search as fast as possible. Move back to traditional marketing, email, social media, bricks and mortar, whatever you can. If you can't or won't, then go get a full-time job to support yourself.

[edited by: ichthyous at 4:02 pm (utc) on Jun 8, 2019]

[Milchan]

@luckyliz - no they are not repeat customer and very much just customer that will buy maybe a few things but are likely to never buy from us again. Although we do get many customers through word of mouth recommendations from previous customers. Ive tried advertising, including remarketing, adwords, FB ads. Ive gone deep into it running various campaigns ranging from highly targeted to more broad and none give an roi that makes it worth while. I have cut costs dramatically in the last year closing offices, letting staff go, reduces wages by stopping staff working holidays, lowering hosting costs to a min, canceling as many things as possible - this is the only reason we still exist now. Revenues fell by 50% so there was no choice.My plan was to reduce things enough so I could keep things going long enough for me to work on my exit plan which is what im doing. My situation is far from what your average person would be in so Im not in a position to just get a job simply because where I live there aren't the kind of jobs I can do and even if there where they wouldn't pay enough and I wouldn't get them anyway being a foreigner. So im forced to move to a country where I can get a job and that pretty much means UK, US, Europe, Aus, Canada etc - im prepared to move to a variety of places but it is further complicated in that my wife would find it hard to get visas for many. Im from UK and that is the ideal move but if you don't already have a reasonable paying job there or a large amount of savings (which are now all gone) then the spouse visa is impossible. One avenue we are trying is for her to try to get a scholarship for a phd somewhere (which she is certainly capable of obtaining) and then I can get a job where ever that is , giving us the change to get setup again. There are lots of other complications as well like selling property, ill relatives that will be left behind, finding homes for our dogs and just the simple fact that we are being forced to leave a country that has been my home for 2 decades. The impact of google on our lives is bigger than anything else ever has been - im certainly looking at the idea of removing everything google from our lives also.

Yesterday traffic was the lowest ever I have had, fallen about 50% from recent levels that were already low due to previous updates.

[MayankParmar]

I can see sites with spelling and grammatical errors on the first page. One site's about us, contact us pages have broken English, formatting, emojis.

I guess this is how Google improved 'quality' of its search engine with June update.

[Milchan]

ive seen sites on first page that have Lorum Ipsum in their contact pages and other default page and the content just copied from other sites

[Kelowna]

ive seen sites on first page that have Lorum Ipsum in their contact pages and other default page and the content just copied from other sites

Like I have always said, with Google its all about the links

All my sites are doing fine, all my clients sites are doing fine... 100% not effected. All clients have well laid out local business sites, plus I have many that use spun content, so content just does not matter.

Proper exact onpage keyword densities + proper exact anchor text densities = Win through any/all of these updates

If your website took a dive, then somewhere down the line you lost some links when Google updated their database(s) and that lost power also probably threw your anchor text densities out of whack... its all about the links

[whoa182]

Is it worth disavowing spammy links, image site links, etc? I have quite a lot of them showing up in search console.

My weakest point is definitely my backlink profile. I didn't bother to do any link building at all... And while I would get one here and there, they'd almost always come from very new bloggers who had limited knowledge of SEO and how links help. Successful bloggers seem to be more reluctant or add a nofollow tag to it. I remember one time, I was asked to do an interview, so I gave them about 1500 words, and really put a lot of work into it for them... they were kind enough to link to me (I didn't even ask) with a nofollow link lol.

I think you could be right though.. the sites that I see most stable, even fairly new ones, are those with much better link profiles than me. And I can tell that they are experienced in internet marketing.

[ichthyous]

Is it worth disavowing spammy links, image site links, etc? I have quite a lot of them showing up in search console.

In my experience no. I've updated my disavow file several times to include sites with thousands of spammy backlinks pointing to my pages. Google has ignored my disavow file for months and they are still being counted.

[NickMNS]

I've updated my disavow file several times to include sites with thousands of spammy backlinks pointing to my pages. Google has ignored my disavow file for months and they are still being counted.

Google has always said that adding link to the disavow will not prevent them from being shown in GSC. Basically, there is no way to know whether or not Google is truly ignoring or not those links.

To answer whoa182's question, I would suspect that there is far more benefit in spending your time generating new links than disavowing them. I doubt that you would be able to disavow your way to recovering from an update.

[heisje]

Frogs scrambling over a few leftover crumbs . . . .
.

[ichthyous]

To answer whoa182's question, I would suspect that there is far more benefit in spending your time generating new links than disavowing them. I doubt that you would be able to disavow your way to recovering from an update.

Exactly right...in fact the only reason I've recovered at all is because the 500+ pages with quality backlinks which I lost in September were suddenly indexed again. All of those links are now showing up in GSC after 8+ months, and up and away I go. The problem is that there is no commensurate increase in traffic. None, zippo, nada. My traffic is still 30% below what it was before the Google sh!tshow started in September 2018.

[samwest]

Not really SERP related, but I'm curious...for those losing conversions, do you use Paypal and have you recently been flagged to provide ID documents? Just testing a theory...

[StoneSolid]

Is it worth disavowing spammy links, image site links, etc? I have quite a lot of them showing up in search console.

Nope, no point at all. I can expand my answer but.. no need.
Don't bother with disavow. Period.

My weakest point is definitely my backlink profile. I didn't bother to do any link building at all... And while I would get one here and there, they'd almost always come from very new bloggers who had limited knowledge of SEO and how links help. Successful bloggers seem to be more reluctant or add a nofollow tag to it. I remember one time, I was asked to do an interview, so I gave them about 1500 words, and really put a lot of work into it for them... they were kind enough to link to me (I didn't even ask) with a nofollow link lol.

Exactly.
That is also the fun part and I already wrote a post about that (2 months ago or so).

No one links naturally anymore. Actually, I'll say it like this - 99% of web sites DO NOT link naturally, never ever (I'm putting it at 99% because last time I wrote that statement I got jumped by a few bloggers on this forum that claim they "always link to their sources because this and that..." :)

Once again, 99.9% of links are made with an agenda. Promotion, paid, fake, arranged, agreed, whatever. Those 0.1% of natural links are done by rookie bloggers that like to think they are helping out their dozen of visitors or something. On the other hand, experienced bloggers (or any webmasters) know that any external link is actually a traffic leak that leads the potential user/buyer/client away from his money making master plan. Therefore, they do not link out naturally (or yeah, they use a nofollow if they really have to use anything).

..and at the same time, backlinks are strongest ranking signal than they ever were.

[jmorgan]

Probably the type of site most likely to naturally link out would be discussion forums such as this.

[Halaspike]

I see YouTube videos outranking very established websites and those YouTube videos/channels have no backlinks.

[Dimitri]

This is not to tease, just to try to give "hope". But, from the initial increase of 25% of "human" traffic I experienced, I am still at a solid 22-23% increase (compared to last month, and to last year).

[jmorgan]

Wouldn't surprise if there a few little tweaks and adjustments over the next few days/weeks, but I'm guessing the major rollout is over.

[SEO2Go]

Guess I'll get to work on my fake backlink profile.

[whoa182]

Silly me.

While I've been working on improving my site and focusing purely on content, my competitors have been very busy link building.

I stayed up all night looking at what are the differences between me and my competitor. Well, there are a few, but one site, in particular, has gained over 500 backlinks (unique domains), many of them on highly relevant blogs, with many guest posts. The site is about 18 months old, content is pretty nice, the design is clean and simple, but looks very much like an affiliate site. His rankings are way higher than mine despite being a younger site. He has no special qualifications either.

He just has good content and far more backlinks than I do. I only have a handful, very few, and he has 500 links, 85% + dofollow. His traffic just has consistent growth, not affected by any algorithm.

Same story for a few others as well, but I've not looked too in-depth.

[BushyTop]

Is the assumption now that this update has fully rolled out and that the results are what they are. We’ve been hit pretty hard and it’s devestating tbh. Especially after the hard work that’s gone into the last year. I’m guessing there’s pope on here thinking the same?

[topaz]

It's not just DailyMail. [support.google.com...]
I feel something is still seriously wrong with Google News and indexing.

[Milchan]

I’m guessing there’s pope on here thinking the same?

I would be surprised if the pope was on here, but it looks like ive been hit with traffic lose of around 40-50% and big dip in conversions. Im still hoping that it will settle and return back a bit in this next week but who knows.

Basically looking in GSC I see that impressions have dropped a little bit but not a lot but click have halved. What ever google has done has either made the my serp placements less visable to the user and / or the results they are serving to users with me in them are less relevent to the user and therefore lowering my clicks. I suspect it is both of these things.

[StoneSolid]

@whoa182

While I've been working on improving my site and focusing purely on content, my competitors have been very busy link building.

Do some backlink efforts (term by goodroi).

I felt like that 2-3 years ago. Naive me was constantly fixing sites. It was like an obsession.
Then I had an epiphany.
- my sites are on blazing speed dedicated servers
- my sites css and scripts are optimized to work like swiss clockwork
- my sites give top user experience, confirmed by users as well as by stats
- my sites content is top notch, confirmed by reviewers and collaborators (as well as thieves that regularly steal my stuff)
- my sites conversion is off the scale, better than ever

However, gee whiz.. I'm constantly vanishing in google (drastically)....
I mentioned the epiphany -B A C K L I N K S.


Sidenote, this is a nice thing to read, regarding backlinks and current state of google:
[detailed.com ]

[ichthyous]

@StoneSolid Getting new backlinks from high authority sites helps, but all the rest helps to keep them on your site. As I have mentioned several times on here recently, don't be surprised if you don't recover any traffic if you do recover your placement. That's what I am experiencing. Tools like SEMrush are now totally out of date. They are counting the organic placement, which is being pushed further and further down the page.

This morning I was checking my placement on the phone. Top three terms are driving no traffic because there are simply so many options now... A carousel of paid ads, a large paid ad, local businesses, a carousel of images, a Wikipedia excerpt, a block of relevant article which took half the page, YouTube video carousel, one organic serp, more paid ads, then the other organic serps. The organic serps are totally drowned in a sea of options now so nobody clicks on them.

So we have moved beyond "how do I get to the top of the organic serps?"... Thats yesterday's conversation. Today it's much harder because you will have to have videos, articles, images, paid ads, and products to get seen at all. Google is hoping they will exhaust us and we just give up and pay.

I'm also still seeing duplicate serps from the same sites, and pinterest is still very strong. I thank God I have a strong presence on pinterest for my niche because my pinterest pins are competing with my own site very strongly.

[whoa182]

Really interesting article, StoneSolid. Thanks for sharing...

I am also noticing that Reddit and Pinterest are getting high positions in the SERPs.

Google also made another interesting move recently by removing the URL from the mobile results, making it harder to discern between Ad and organic results.

[MayankParmar]

@topaz I also feel something is wrong with Google News and Google Discover.

My traffic from G news dropped by 95%

[Milchan]

stonesolids article is interesting and worth noting that was in 2016 , things are much worse now. Kind of depressing as it makes it seem pointless to even bother trying when your up against the power of these huge companies.