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]

[pritz]

Traffic is constant but no conversion in the last 5 days.

[zeus]

damn its a long time since I have posted here.
About Google lately, I think its getting all more "professional" means more focus on income, have the right contact in the right places to keep this going as a monopoly. Thats why we over the years have seen poorer results, more google own stuff, more big companies in results, more advertising. The last update here in Juni is also once again hitting website that focus on healht alternatives to big Pharma as it looks.

Dont bother with more content, profile under your content, thats simply not it. Also if you have a site focused on articles, be sure to think about another thing to get your income from. Problem ad blocking and Google.

Lets say you want to stay in the web business, then also focus on duckduckgo.com they are getting more and more visits.

[glakes]

It's hard to believe the world's #1 search engine could send even less converting traffic, but they have. The latest update made matters worse, though we are converting well on Bing, Yahoo and of course Amazon is doing just fine.

It's getting to the point where Google becomes irrelevant in ecommerce to me. Bing easily sends 4 times the conversions of Google on < 10% of the traffic. LOL

Thankfully our efforts outside of Google are paying off, and truth be told there are fewer shoppers using Google and it gets worse every year. Maybe if Google actually pleased their users, instead of displaying Amazon crowded SERPS and all the other noise (videos, images, knowledge panel, etc.), then shoppers might actually use Google.

[mosxu]

@glakes

There is something fishy here how is Bing converting X 4 still a search engine...

[seomotionz]

Today again 20% traffic is down. Is there again an update?

[BushyTop]

@seomotionz we've seen some changes today too - just seems to be every other day now, so i didn't bother reporting. we've seen a change of about 13%.

[Milchan]

there might have been a tweak or update yesterday / today - my traffic increased yesterday compared to what I had after the june18th/19th masacre and today so far looks similar levels of traffic but already the same amount of conversions as yesterday (and it is morning still for me)

[MayankParmar]

Nothing changed for me

Average position remains same: [imgur.com...]

[seomotionz]

@BusyTop yeah its every now and then. @Milchan yeah there was some traffic rise yesterday. Conversions were more or less same so I didn't bother. As of today conversions are same too just fall in traffic.

[goodroi]

Mods Note We removed a suspected spam post and responding comments. Your mod team greatly appreciates your help in spotting and reporting them :)

[Sally Stitts]

@ Mod's Note

I wondered what had happened here. Where did I go?
Looks like I was one of the "responding comments" (I don't do spam posts).
Caught in the crossfire. Perhaps I should be careful regarding my comments regarding ... beer. Ha.
.

[jmorgan]

Does anyone here actually have more organic desktop users than mobile? A couple of my competitors do, which I'm finding a bit curious given the trend towards mobile in recent years.

I'm actually starting to suspect they may be buying bulk traffic to boost their numbers unnaturally, although I have no proof of that.

This is based on third-party analytics, so I'm working on the assumption that the data is accurate.

[Sidoel]

Hi guys. My tech site has beeen buried by june 2019 google update.
The site loss 95% of traffic. It's the most "brutal" update so far(for me at least).
the weird thing is..my beauty site that uses an exact seo strategy isnt affected.

i believe that this update is related to content. Because the affected site has some low quality articles.
Backlink is also the culprit in my opinion.
i have bought fiverr guest posts 3 years ago.

[equidistant]

I'm actually starting to suspect they may be buying bulk traffic to boost their numbers unnaturally, although I have no proof of that.

Given the current state of the internet, it's getting extremely difficult for Google to accurately measure the quality of a web page.

Backlinks can be manipulated and be made to look very natural.

Social signals can be manipulated. Social shares, followers, facebook page likes etc.

User based statistics like bounce rate, time on site, click rates etc. can be manipulated. Given that VPNs and web proxies are becoming cheaper, Google will find it extremely difficult to track real users from fake users. There are some so called SEO gurus who keep shouting about how these metrics are the new benchmark for SEO success without realizing that these are insanely easy to manipulate.

As far as content goes, bad quality content can be made to look like authority content - link out to a few authority sites, add a few large images, copy other people's content and make a few changes so it passes copyscape (sky -'scraper' anybody?) etc.

And that explains Google's strange behavior. Updates after updates and still not able to get things right. Lots of legit sites getting penalized and many bad apples escaping unscathed.

[MayankParmar]

@Sidoel I am also in tech niche and got buried in this update.

[mosxu]

@samwest

Did you get the latest on how they are moving our cheese?

Did you hear the quote “People like us are programmed”

[Robert Charlton]

PS: Regarding the <Dr Snip> alternative med site that Mayank mentioned on cJune24... there's some discussion on Twitter that one needn't blame the drop on his bad reputation, the revealing Wikipedia article, the bad QuackWatch review, and Dr Snip's problems for making illegal claims ...

Rather, the SEOs say, a quick 10-15 min look at his site by several well-known SEOs reveals a great many techical and structural problems which could easily be the cause of the bad rankings.

I'm not linking here, and I'm not naming names... as we'd be transgressing our TOS to analyze that site (this rule, btw, for the protection of everybody here)... but it's a set of interesting observations... that simply bad design, structure, and sloppy implementation might also be the problem.

[samwest]

@mos- no I haven't, can you enlighten me? I'm stuck in my pre-programmed loop... lol

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar I thought you recovered after a while!

[RedBar]

Does anyone here actually have more organic desktop users than mobile?

Yep, and it really does depend on the target audience, country of visitor and time of day.

For instance I have a .co.uk hotel/live music venue site that never drops below 66% mobile whereas another .co.uk site retailing specialised widgets rarely gets 40% mobile, both have UK traffic in the 90+% range.

Several of my global specialised widget .com sites vary depending on the time of day. Early in the day China and Japan I tend to get more desktop, India is overwhelmingly mobile sometimes up to 80%, Middle East through Europe to USA/Canada varies depending whether it's trade or retail visitors.

Trade visitors, in general for me, always view many more pages than retail purchasers however I get more retail visitors than trade therefore it can vary enormously and is totally unpredictable on a daily basis but for this year for these sites is about 60% desktop.

If it's of any interest a lot of what I do is initially started by desktop yet then progresses to WhatsApp/Telegram and occasionaly WeChat.

[Selen]

With Google, everything can be attributed to ranking loss, but nothing to ranking gain. Some explanations of ranking loss which should normally give ranking gains:

- You wrote an article, but it's too long or too short.
- You added proper HTML tags, but too many or too few of them.
- You made your page loading fast, but it's still not as fast as AMP.
- You gained some good links, but they are not from the NYT or NASA.
- You added nice images, but they are stock images.
- You made your site SSL and responsive, but you should have a separate mobile app instead.
- You improved your About page, but you don't have a local business presence.
- Your site is rated high, but an affiliate link made it worthless.
- Your site went viral, but it doesn't align with "mainstream science".

It's getting close to paranoia.

[Rndm]

Does anyone here actually have more organic desktop users than mobile?

I work on lots of sites with more organic desktop traffic than mobile. All of these sites are B2B. For the most part everyone searching for their products/services is sitting in an office at a desk.

[Mark_A]

We are UK industrial / technical B2B and are still 84% desktop.

[skaterpunk]

- You wrote an article, but it's too long or too short.
- You added proper HTML tags, but too many or too few of them.
- You made your page loading fast, but it's still not as fast as AMP.
- You gained some good links, but they are not from the NYT or NASA.
- You added nice images, but they are stock images.
- You made your site SSL and responsive, but you should have a separate mobile app instead.
- You improved your About page, but you don't have a local business presence.
- Your site is rated high, but an affiliate link made it worthless.
- Your site went viral, but it doesn't align with "mainstream science".

This list reminds me of "I can't prove it's fact, but I know it's true".

[mosxu]

@samwest

Problem is you are not like them and therefore can’t be programmed [projectveritas.com...]

But you might have been right all along.

[aristotle]

That <Dr Snip> discussion must have been deleted before I had a chance to read it. Now I'm wondering what I missed.

[heisje]

@Rndm @Mark_A : Technical B2B : Conversions over 95% desktop. US / UK / Canada.
.

[sunjun]

I haven't see a guy which got higher rank at this time.So who rank higher than us?

[HereWeGo123]

I am seeing big changes in the SERPs now. I see what feels like an update is underway OR at least some kind of tweaks. Definitely not subtle “everyday” types of fluctuations. Anyone else noticing the same? I try to be reluctant to say anything if I notice some kind of change, unless it's big (at least on my end)!

[BushyTop]

Not seeing anything massive @herewego123, but yes, some notable changes