Update Maverick : Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2019

[Malanje]

---

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)

---

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

[EditorialGuy]

I honestly think the only really groundbreaking things brought by Google in the last 20 years are Maps and Street View, the rest has never been that fantastic, and its SERP quality is now slightly worse than that old, primitive Altavista search, to tell the truth.

I think you're comparing apples and oranges. The Web has changed (and grown enormously) since AltaVista was a major search engine. (FWIW, my own favorite search engine from the olden days was Infoseek.)

[riccarbi]

I am not comparing apples and oranges. The question was "what if". Who knows what, after 20 years, Altavista, Infoseek, Yahoo, MSN, Excite, and the like would be now given that Google never existed. Are you sure that they would have not evolved into something even better than today's Google, by competing one against the other ?

[pritz]

Zombie traffic is back to the attack.

[NickMNS]

given that Google never existed.

woulda, shoulda, coulda

The point is moot, Google does/did exists and these companies failed to innovate and evolve. These companies would most likely have died without Google, because some other player would have come around instead. One can speculate on a infinite number of scenario but it is all pointless. Google exists and these company are all dead or dying.

[equidistant]

Agree with this , the current name just doesnt quite sit right - duck.com would easily stick in peoples brains and im sure marketeers could push it better.

Their logo needs to be changed too. Not professional looking at all.

[equidistant]

The point is moot, Google does/did exists and these companies failed to innovate and evolve.

The main reason why companies like yahoo, bing, dogpile, altavista etc. could not compete with Google is because of their non user centric approach or putting profit over the user.

Take yahoo for instance, at one point they actually allowed advertisers to purchase organic listings.

As for microsoft, their utter disregard of their users is evidently visible in their policy to shut down a hotmail account if it was not accessed within 15 days. Yahoo had a similar policy with yahoo mail. Now comes along gmail, you create an account once, you get insane amount of space, security and your account will never be shut down. Now that is user centric approach. Once Google did that, the others followed, and they continue to follow, but a follower is always a follower.

Similarly, Google introduced and gave away so many free services - docs, office, maps, analytics, chrome you name it. And again, the others merely tried to follow - half-heartedly at that.

Not condoning Google's recent behavior. Just stating the facts.

To take over Google search (at-least a small percentage), you need a company that is completely user centric, at-least in the beginning.

[riccarbi]

One can speculate on a infinite number of scenario but it is all pointless. Google exists and these company are all dead or dying.

Well, try to visualize where you would have been today solely (and sorely) dependent on the likes of Bing, Duck, Yahoo, etc clowns.
Get it

Someone asked to "visualize where you would have been today solely dependent on the likes of Bing, Duck, Yahoo" and I tried to ... visualize it.
Almost everyone, you and I included, speculates a lot on this forum. For example, SEO is pure speculation since nobody I know has ever seen the code of the (in)famous Google algorithm.

About what it would be if Google hasn't dominated the web search as a near-monopolist for almost twenty years, there are some basic rules of economics which state that Perfect Competition markets are more dynamic and develops faster than Monopolies. So I dare to say that, without Google, web search would be possibly better, today.

[Justin Watson]

Can any one brief me about the updates because I am not clear with tagline?
Thanks

[seomotionz]

Did something happened today? Traffic really fell hard all of a sudden.

[Treud]

it's up and down since weeks. We have to wait maybe another couple of weeks to see the outcome. For me I'm toasted since June, my mistake was to rely to much with organic traffic, good time to switch and go back to traditional catalogue mailed by post to real shops !

[Milchan]

im seeing changes today with both traffic down a lot and conversions zero. The serps for my niche seem to have more massive brand names returning to the top again also and plenty of shuffling around.

[seomotionz]

@Milchan Today I saw something that I never expected to see. Bing's traffic number is greater than Google. And I don't mean a few numbers up but a lot. Bing to Google ratio is 3:1.

[Milchan]

i dont get much from bing usually but in the last 30 days I have seen an increase of 42% from bing - now in real numbers terms that is not much traffic as I get 90% from google but if it keeps increasing from bing, DDG then all the better.

[whoa182]

If Google didn't expect and we were stuck with Bing, Yahoo, and DDG among others? And they had an equal market share? I definitely wouldn't be having money problems right now. The problem is that we live or die by Google unless we have money to spend.

I've seen a 300% increase in traffic from Bing recently. In absolute numbers, it's not amazing, but conversions from these search engines seem to be much better than Google for whatever reason... I like Bing Webmaster tools as well, only just set it up recently.

And to people who think it is just the right-wing that Google is going after, it's more like they are removing independent publishers, small businesses and it's happening across many of their products. A guy I used to watch who is really progressive and liberal is now suffering from these Algorithm changes (he's one of many). [youtube.com...]

It's a real shame that this is happening because the reason I loved YT and the Web was the fact that I could find interesting and unique perspectives. And who wins? It's the main stream corporations who tend to be really shallow on many topics with their 3-minute shouting match debates before the next commercial break.

[seomotionz]

Bing traffic is good. But I am not seeing much engagement from Bing traffic since the last couple of days.

[MayankParmar]

Articles that dropped in July update recovered their positions. No sight of recovery from June update yet.

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar Good for you. And see that if it holds or not. Can't say anything surely about Google these days.

[koan]

Yes Google has devalued small publishers during the past years in their fight against spammers but it has affected everyone, only some conservatives have turned it into political issue because complaining about being victims of bias is their first reaction to everything.

[Milchan]

also today,ive noticed a definate difference in traffic with conversion levels close to none after being steady since beginning of July - I think there was a change today or last night of some sort

[devncp]

get ready for google dance. feels bad

[seomotionz]

@Milchan since the last 10 hours something again changed. Traffic is slow but going up.

[BushyTop]

Seeing more change again this morning. Most of our terms have dipped, and a few have seen an increase. I look at the competitors who are on the rise and I'm so disappointing. I understand that its easy to say that when we have seen such a hit, but I just dont understand what this update is doing. We're in ecom, so factoring in EAT doesnt really apply on a content level, alot of these sites that have seen increases dont have any content whatsoever. They are just established, large sites, with lots of links.

Its a tough school out there.

[equidistant]

@bushytop

alot of these sites that have seen increases dont have any content whatsoever. They are just established, large sites, with lots of links.

This is exactly the problem with Google right now. Ranking pages purely based on domain authority. A domain gains a ton of links and then whatever crap they publish starts to rank at the top. I have seen crap pages with less than 500 words from high authority domains rank on top while highly quality articles ranking at the bottom. No wonder, most of these so called 'authority' sites simply hire cheap labor (namely college grads) and churn out tons of low quality (scrapped/rehashed) content.

@bluejeans

Pretty soon one of the big "authority" sites will stumble across my article and one of their miserably-paid authors will rewrite it and Google will rank them for it.

I hear you. That's exactly what's happening these days. People simply rewriting copied content and ranking solely based on domain authority.

Google can deter this from happening by ensuring that the site that broke the original story should always rank on top irrespective of anything. The copycats always rank lower. If a keyword in a title tag is unique, then anyone else who uses that title tag should rank lower than the site that first used that unique keyword. Unless of-course the original article is downright spammy.

[edited by: equidistant at 9:53 am (utc) on Jul 26, 2019]

[MayankParmar]

We need another core update to recover from June damage. Hopefully, there will be another official/pre-announced core update later this year.

[RedBar]

We need another core update to recover from June damage.

I have to tell you that it would deliver absolutely nothing for you.

Google is not in the business of driving traffic to your site for you to make money for free, if you want to make money using Google, as per several years now, then you have to play by their game rules.

Unfortunately that's the reality of the G game, realise, accept it and decide on your strategy.

MP - I have spent a lot of the last 50 years doing export business in India, do you realise how many companies have dropped / do not upgrade their sites since they know the G game is utterly pointless, it hasn't driven any new business for at least 5-6 years and, most likely, since the noughties.

Sure, tech stuff still holds a huge interest but realword businesses employing thousands of people producing real products, G's unnecessary, trade fairs and long-established contacts rule!

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar Well you most certainly can hope. But since its Google we are talking about I would rather assume that it will get worse.

[universenet]

The main reason why companies like yahoo, bing, dogpile, altavista etc. could not compete with Google is because of their non user centric approach or putting profit over the user.

Equidistant
yes... google is still the best and will be best seems long time
Many free tools from google (ok..some free tools are not free anymore) and comunicating with users
Of course we are not happy about that crazy google updates
(we are never sure what will happenning with our websites tommrow)
but real problem is that google really does not have real competition
I do not see any search engine for now who can be good competition to google
I feel like nobody is seriously interested to be serious search giant engine

[ichthyous]

I'm not seeing any changes. Same pattern since early June... Increasing visibility across my terms, which are ranking higher. But no traffic is resulting from the higher ranking whatsoever. My traffic hit rock bottom in June and has stayed there... No improvement. That is definitely due to Google's loading the pages with many more options now. I don't expect my traffic to recover

[zeus]

what do you think about the idea block google access to all articles to boost health ecommerce site. Google censors alternative views on Health, so that could help a site to get back into rankings i think.

[Milchan]

what do you think about the idea block google access to all articles to boost health ecommerce site. Google censors alternative views on Health, so that could help a site to get back into rankings i think.

problem is blocking access to google can cause problems so you would need to be careful about how you do so. You could use rewrite rule to return 410 to googlebot for those urls for example