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]

[JesterMagic]

Well written article by CCN which as others have said speaks volumes on how much Google actually controls and why something needs to be done. Of course this shouldn't just cover news sites as CCN thinks it should. Not sure why they are any more special than others sites that employee people.

I also find it a bit of a knee jerk reaction. They have been in the business for 6 years they should know how updates work. Things can change over night with updates good or bad. Corrections also usually happen after a large update and things could change for the better or worse for them. I wonder if Google rolls back what ever caused their drop if they will still bang the drum.

[MayankParmar]

I am too in a difficult situation after the update. I am cutting down the expenses, migrating to a cheaper server and I will continue to work on the site.

Will wait for the next core update before making tough calls.

[heisje]

The "Daily Mail" : Founded in 1896, it is the United Kingdom's second-biggest-selling daily newspaper.

Lost 50% of traffic overnight. They are unhappy, puzzled & angry.
Please be so kind as to enlighten them (per comments above) and let them know that theirs is a knee jerk reaction, it's all their fault, they brought it upon themselves, have to work more diligently on their web site, be patient and wait, it's an inevitable correction, perhaps their authority is lacking - and that this has nothing to do with abuse of monopoly power.

And that the rightful judge/arbiter of everybody and everything on the 'net is Google and its shareholders.

Yeah, right.

.

[edited by: heisje at 10:27 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2019]

[paranoid android]

I don't see anything wrong in publishers, big and small, complaining of an overnight drop in traffic. Of course they aren't going to complain or raise the alarm in an increase. Why should they? But Google, being the over-bloated monopoly that it is, have a responsibility to not plunder businesses overnight and leave people without an income. With such enormous power comes ENORMOUS responsibility. Google need to be held to account.

[Dimitri]

May be this update revolves around clickbait-like articles and titles. Just a thought.

edit: for EU news sites, it might also be related to the new Copyright directive, and what some refer as the "link-tax" which mostly targets news aggregators (like Google News). Even if the directive is not yet translated into local laws, Google is certainly working on it already.

[Halaspike]

May be this update revolves around clickbait-like articles and titles. Just a thought.

I totally agree. Most of the sites i noticed dropped all had some misleading titles and clickbait type articles somewhere.

@Dimitri I'm starting to think you work for Google because it's either you say something supporting Google or something Google will definitely do. I've never seen you say anything negative about Google. I love your contributions tho lol

[edited by: Halaspike at 11:45 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2019]

[jmorgan]

On the one hand, I agree that building a business model on the assumption that one will get, and continue to get, free traffic from Google is flawed. On the other hand, I operate on that business model too, so I guess I'm screwed too.

But all I can do really is to keep working my butt off to ensure that my website stays ahead, or at least keeps up, with my competitors in terms of its quality and content.

... Yes, I can almost see it. Some people are going to jump in and say website quality and content doesn't matter.

[edited by: jmorgan at 11:52 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2019]

[emperor2]

I see some positive results after one week of poor search traffic.Don't give up guys, don't make any big changes to websites since the recent impact has nothing to do with our website. Stay with same hosting at least for few months, keep creating good content. I don't believe recent loss of search traffic for many websites are permanent.
We were on top search results previously because our content was good and it offers good user experience. Since google consider quality of content and better user experience as top qualities, still there is hope.
This is the first time my website affected, during previous updates i was on the happy side. Lets wait for google to fix the "crazy" algorithm.

[whoa182]

I don't do clickbait titles at all and was affected by this update. They are simple and describe what the article is about. Some articles survived the update and remain #1, but have the same sort of title/sentence structure as ones which got hit. Intent and structure of the article is also similar... just on a different topic.

It does make me laugh when I see some of these titles. Apparently, I was about to have my "MIND BLOWN" many times by what they were about to reveal. But ended up being a very generic article. Don't think that's what you mean though.. probably more misleading titles than something hyperbolic.

[aristotle]

From [salon.com ]

Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion.

NickMNS:
It's funny how on several occasions according to the traffic graph posted they have seen equally positive jumps...

Makes you wonder if they were buying links

[ichthyous]

if a site is "well established", then it no longer relies on Google to get traffic.

Dmitri that is such nonsense. How are people supposed to find these "well established" sites, through smoke signals? There are very few sites that have such well known brands that they don't depend on search. Most of those are large corporate sites owned by even bigger corporate media conglomerates.

[HelloSEO]

Hi all. Signed up here because I have got a lot of value from this thread and wanted to share my experiences.

My site (health/wellness blog, no google ads, only affiliate links and promoting my own products) got hit HARD with this June update.
I'm down about 60% since it went live.
Worst, I was also hit hard with the March update - down 60-70% after that update.
So after the June and March updates, I'm suffering big time.

My articles have all been long tail, heavily researched articles (sometimes 6000 words+ ) and over time have risen to rank high on Google. I have only ever done the basics in regards to SEO - as I believed that quality content was all that mattered. I mean it was working - invest the time (sometimes 40-50hours went into an article of mine), do the work and eventually the cream will rise to the top.

My backlinks and DA have steadily risen over the past few years, and there weren't any signs for the march drop off. I didn't use any blackhat techniques ( I didn't even know what this was until I read this thread!) I did some guest blogging in my early years, but hadn't done anything int he past year or so. I'm not on Facebook. Though I do have some videos on YT. I just focused on putting out quality content.

After march I started wondering what went wrong, someone told me my site speed was terrible - which it was. So I have been working on that and have seen improvements. But still my traffic was slowly declining from the march update.
When this June update went live I immediately saw a dramatic drop off in traffic.
As I don't use Social Media, or run any ads, this was a severe blow (and teaches me never to rely 100% on one traffic source).
My site is very small, but to put things in perspective in December 2018 I was doing ~7000 unique visitors a day. This was trending upwards.
After the march update it dropped to ~2500 a day. By the time the June update went live it had fallen to ~2000 a day.
A week after the June update, I'm lucky to hit ~1000 a day.

So 7000 down to 1000 in 6 months. And in this time I have published more content, have received links from some high profile sites (DA of 80+ etc) and I have upped my YT and Instagram game to push more traffic in. Oh and my page speed has improved in this time.

Some of my articles were ranking in the top 5 listings for their keywords. Now I'm way back on page 4 or 5. One article of mine was higher than the wikipedia page with the same term. The article bounced between 2nd and 3rd spot for 3 years. Today I'm back on page 3.

Likewise with my reviews - as well as publishing health articles, I do some really in-depth reviews - again 6000 words + a lot of these were ranking well (top 5 position), and now they're back on page 2 or 3.

I've been reading threads like this hoping to find a reason behind these changes - at least that way I can fix what has gone wrong. But I'm discovering that this isn't the way it works. It's all a big guessing game, which is frustrating. I'm now torn between doubling down on more content (longer, more indepth, more frequent etc) or using those resources to improve my SEO, work on backlinks etc.

Because the rate things are going my site will be non-existant come 2020!
Unless bing and duckduckgo take off... as I'm still ranking extremely high over there!

[Treud]

@helloSEO

Same experience here. Since the last March update 2018 it's a trend down, but this one June almost set to 0 my traffic.

I still have indexed pages. But almost no impression, and no view. I'm really push behind.

[ichthyous]

All of you who are experiencing a near total loss in traffic...this sounds like when Google changed the Google Images UI some years back and we all lost all of our image search traffic overnight. I lost about 95% and it never came back. Typically one does not lose all their traffic unless there has been a major design change in google.

Otherwise I would think that this is a temporary drop and traffic will start to return over time as Google rolls back the update. I've never heard of a near total loss in traffic like many of you are reporting. It might just undo itself so don't have a nervous breakdown (yet).

[Treud]

I hope it's temporary.
We are continuing the fixes we were doing before the update, and let's see. Bing is now higher than Google :D

[koan]

I'm not British and I don't read it but The Daily Mail has long had a reputation for being a sensationalist, populist and click baity type of newspaper, so I wouldn't make a martyr out of it.

[jmorgan]

The content on The Daily Mail is IMO okay if you like to read those sensationalist articles (there's always a market for that).

But honestly, my biggest gripe is with the crazy ads and docked videos which make the site slow to load and frustrating to use. I have personally actually avoided clicking on any Daily Mail links as a result of their terrible user experience.

[HereWeGo123]

If you look at SEMRush, you will see that DailyMail has been having quality issues for a while. They have been dropping for quite some time. And then again with this most recent update. Browsing through DailyMail's website for a moment, it becomes really clear why (amongst other reasons too) they had a history of dropping and dropped once again recently. THeir site loads very slow. Rendering takes a while, so many intrusive ads, things just flickering all over the place. Just an overall frustrating user experience. Just compare it to CNN and FoxNews' user experience. Those sites aren't ideal either but still night and day when comparing. FoxNews and CNN appear to load and run much more flawlessly. Plus, DailyMail's site just looks so 2005.

[Halaspike]

Here we go again with yet another SEMRush user. Still can't believe people still take SEMRush seriously. If SEMRush was good then there won't be webmasters here who use it but still lost their traffic.

If Google doesn't even know what's going on... what makes you think SEMRush does.

[MayankParmar]

I also don't have clickbait titles. Clickbait could be one of the factors in June update.

Forbes Tech has got all clickbait stories and they do fine lol.

[MayankParmar]

I learned the big lesson to not depend on Google. After my traffic is back, I will focus more on push notifications, email subscriptions, bringing likes/followers to social media, so I can convert some of the Google traffic to regular readers.

Bing + DuckDuckGo + Yahoo are bringing more traffic than Google. I wish they were popular..

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar How much of your traffic is back?

[BushyTop]

Anyone seeing any evidence of a roll back yet? **he says looking nervously around the room**

[mosxu]

This algorithm update happens every summer start doesn’t it?

We can all go back to the discussions of last year.

[Dimitri]

After my traffic is back, I will focus...

Good state of mind!

[samsseo]

@BushyTop I'm definitely seeing an improvement today, bringing traffic back up to pre-June update levels. Conversions have also (finally) started to return...

[BushyTop]

@samsseo Did you get hit? How badly? Where are you based?

[MayankParmar]

@seomotionz Nothing. Not even 0.1%.

Devasted :(

[Martin Ice Web]

(germany) We got hit on friday and over the weekend. Today we see a total lost about 90% in traffic. Conversions are bad too. And it seems that exactly our traffic sites have been hit.
This one hurts more than penguin and panda togehter. And snobbish google doesn´t give a hint.
I bet next quater will be great for them again.

One competitor i monitor is now #1 and #2 for all quiers arround the topic/widgets ( ecom related ).
He has 100s of same pages with products that only differ in one property ( like lenght 5m, 10m ).
He doesn´t do nofollow or canonical links on this pages.

Why on earth did we put so much effort and work into our site and follow the guidelines only to see poeple with no idea of SEO and EAT bypassing us?
I have the feeling that we should forget all we know about SEO, compelling content, guidelines and UX.

[samsseo]

@BushyTop yes my main site has customers globally and lost around 13% of traffic, while conversions were down around 35%. US traffic didn't seem to be affected, although conversions were. Traffic & conversions from Europe were down quite a bit, particularly France and Spain. How about you?