Update Maverick : Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2019

[Malanje]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4947706.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 1:17 pm on Jul 1, 2019 (utc -5)

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Many advocate that to combat reliance on visits through Google Search you need to build a brand. Obviously it is not enough.

[Jeff_Fidler]

Milchan: Really, another one? So close off the heels of the 13th update? That's unusual, unless its a rollback, or partial rollback...

[NickMNS]

This is one strange update. I'm seeing a continued erosion of impressions, this is the slow bleed that has been ongoing for month. But, I am now seeing my clicks increase. So traffic is up marginally. Hopefully the increase in CTR will earn me some more impressions over time or at least stem the bleeding.

My secondary site, with relatively low traffic has seen a big increase over the past week, I'm up 50%. Unfortunately 50% of small number remains a small number. But at least the trend is headed in the right direction.

[Brett_Tabke]

Update Maverick (in honor of yesterdays Top Gun trailer release). Because this update looks a bit stealthy and precise. However, all the major algo tools are reporting an update has occurred.

[youtube.com...]

[NickMNS]

TopGun Maverick more duplicate content from Hollywood. A clear sign that Google has no say in movie releases (Yet! I'm sure they muscle their way into that industry too at some point)

[Dimitri]

still captain

[travelin cat]

Starting on 7/12, my music history website's traffic went up more than 50% and then moved lower on the 15th but is till above previous levels by around 20%.

[ByronM]

I got punched while down on whatever changed Wednesday :( Still haven't recovered from June. One can only hope people start using Bing i guess.

[topaz]

Strange update indeed. I can't tell if it's good or bad yet as some keywords are still down... but overall traffic is way up.
This number was usually 300-500 since April updates..
[imgur.com...]

[Milchan]

Milchan: Really, another one? So close off the heels of the 13th update? That's unusual, unless its a rollback, or partial rollback...

We dont really know what an "update" is any more it seems to me. Google is constantly, several times a day rolling out changes of various sizes which range from experiments (likely only effecting certain geographic areas or constrained in another way) , small adjustments to what they call "core updates. The problem is that I dont think google fully understands its search algorithims anymore due to passing over at least some of the logic to AI so they have no real know of knowing what effects might be. So whilst a core update is probably something they know for sure is going to have a significant impact so they will name it as such, what is considered a smaller tweak (or even a bug) might easily have a ripple effect that causes just as much impact.

I personally saw a big change from June 30/31st for some time , then saw an effect July 13th and today im seeing erratic traffic. For everyone of those and other times the only pattern I can see is that what happens on the day or days surrounding any changes is not indicative of the 'final outcome' - things jump around for a day or two then settle, after which it is a bit clearer as to what the effect is.

[Errioxa]

Update Maverick (in honor of yesterdays Top Gun trailer release). Because this update looks a bit stealthy and precise. However, all the major algo tools are reporting an update has occurred.

Update Apolo XI ?

[NickMNS]

Update Apolo XI ?

One small update for Google
One big impact for Webmasters

[rustybrick]

Google had its chance to confirm and name the update - they did not. I guess it is the Maverick update. Thanks Brett!

[Jeff_Fidler]

Maverick is good. This update is not. :-)

[azlinda]

@ByronM, I have actively been encouraging people to ditch Google Search and start using another search engine, such as StartPage, etc.....any of those that do not track you.

[Milchan]

An interesting comment from a person that says tehy own SERPWoo (Im not familiar with it but it is an SEO tool) in searchengine roundtable under the report about this "Maverick Update" that says :

Hey, there was no update. It was Google that updated their HTML code for mobile devices. That resulted in a lot of rank trackers seeing 90-100% volatility. (Side note: I own SERPWoo). At SERPWoo we separate the volatility by categories, and got this result - I updated the code for mobile and things are back to normal:

And the graphic was this [uploads.disquscdn.com ]

Im not sure what he means by "updated their HTML for mobile devices" though but the graphic would suggest something specific effected their tools for mobile. Anyone else seeing big spikes for mobile stuff? Or anything that might back what he is saying up (or can explain what he might be talking about)

[jmorgan]

I see no change myself in my niche personally.

[equidistant]

@azlinda

I have actively been encouraging people to ditch Google Search and start using another search engine, such as StartPage, etc.....any of those that do not track you.

Well, StartPage serves results from Google.

[seomotionz]

Exactly like Maverick. A 4th generation aircraft flying very low to avoid radar detection. Its actually not stealth but pseudo stealth. Just like Google. It says something and then does something else.

[paranoid android]

Maverick is a good word to describe this update. Google, in this instance, are targeting any last remaining "maverick's" that might rank in their system.

Maverick (noun): "a person who thinks and acts in an independent way, often behaving differently from the expected or usual way"

Google: A search engine monopoly that decides which version of reality users get to see.

Users most certainly won't be seeing anything deemed"independent" or "different" anymore, thanks to Google. Only massive corporations are allowed. Buh-bye small independent publishers. Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

[whoa182]

When you think it couldn't get any worse... it gets worse :o

10 people on my site from Google in the last 11 hours. I guess it's as good as dead now unless Analytics has stopped working properly. I should have over 120 by this time prior to June.

Must be a "punitive filter" as described by Marie Haynes after Medic last year. There's just no way the top ranking sites for many of the queries I'm checking deserve to be on the first page. They don't answer the query, or they just sort of answer it but not really, and many are very generic and thin articles (2 - 3 paragraphs.).

Google doesn't seem to care about small publishers anymore, you're right. But it's okay, you can apply for a job as a writer making the corporations richer.

What is Google's algorithm doing? Perhaps... [youtube.com...]

I don't expect Google engineers who earn 250K or 500K a year (whatever it is) to understand how much this affects small businesses. Do they really care? Do they listen?

[paranoid android]

Google doesn't need to cater to small or medium-sized publishers anymore. It has met its objective of dominating the search engine marketplace. It has moved onto the next phase of now purging almost every publisher from its enclosure so it can control the billions of users trapped within its walls.

[glakes]

The heavy crawling I saw prior to the Maverick update has not stopped. At 7:24 AM EST., G Bot is going crazy on our site. I suspect there is much more to come with this update....

My conversions (product purchases) from Google literally stopped with the initial Maverick update though overall traffic remains comparable to what it was prior. Google's traffic also appears dummied down - visitors are incapable or unwilling to navigate a simple ecommerce site which has lead to lower page views. Though these symptoms may be indicative of visitors having minimal interest in what we are offering, which is a Google problem of matching their user's intent to those websites that will satisfy their needs.

For those that have been hurt with this update, myself included, I can only hope the massive crawling activity I'm seeing means there is more and hopefully improvements to come in the very near future.

[MayankParmar]

What I should do for recovery?

- I am updating old articles and nuking thin contents.
- Constantly posting unique content and gaining backlinks to them every week.
- Audited site with Ahrefs and it fetched healthy scores. No technical issues.
- Improved EAT.

Nothing has worked for me. Traffic is declining and I am running out of resources.

Google News support didn't help, Google Webmaster forum is a joke and John or Danny haven't responded to my tweets.

[Milchan]

@mayankparmar - I understand how you feel. It is so frustrating trying to work out what the hell to do. I dont have the answers but the one question I will ask is "what are your competitors doing different to you?" to see if you can spot anything that might help.

[skaterpunk]

@MayankParmar - I believe you use WP as a CMS. Did you change themes in the last year? Add a plugin? I use WP as well and don't believe in coincidence anymore when my numbers drastically drop when making changes with a theme, or perhaps a plugin. I can only assume google doesn't like what's in the code or the major code change triggered an alert.

Getting rid of thin content and making site improvements is good for UE, but to my last statement, I'm not sure google sees these massive changes as a good thing in the short term. Seems google likes stability…new and fresh content appear to be the only changes that are welcomed.

These are just assumptions based on experience.

[aristotle]

I agree with skaterpunk

Over the years I've noticed that people who are always making changes to their sites tend to do poorly in google's results.

It could be that google's algorithm prefers stable sites whose owners have a long-term plan and stick with it, but is suspicious of sites whose owners keep changing their minds about what approach to take.

[jmorgan]

Over the years I've noticed that people who are always making changes to their sites tend to do poorly in google's results.

Some changes actually do result in rankings improvements.

The problem is there is so much disinformation out there, that people tend to panic when they suffer a rankings drop and make drastic decisions that could actually make things worse! (I've been there, done that myself)

Just this morning I read someone on Twitter say it's better to block Googlebot with robots.txt or remove a page entirely rather than noindex it. Really? I've never heard that one before.

[MayankParmar]

@skaterpunk I'm so scared of Google update that I stopped changing themes or adding unnecessary plugins in 2017. I made no major changes, no new ad networks and constantly generated content/backlinks in 2019.

Competitors? One has insecure content issues in thousands of old articles, another has mobile viewability issue caused by video ad, another one has published so many unverified articles that 'safe' 'legit' appears next to their name on Google auto suggestions.

Competitors remain unaffected, it's only me who got pushed down to the second page overnight.

[Dimitri]

always making changes to their sites

"always" making change is sending a negative signal (in my opinion). Do these changes look "natural"? That is the question. When someone changes "always" / "too often", it suggests that he is trying to game the ranking algorithm, and Search engines do not like this of-course. The same can be said for those who are massively deleting pages from their site, it doesn't look "natural".

[zeus]

all those on page optimization will not bring you further.