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.

[HereWeGo123]

Whatever happened beginning Friday evening (U.S.) definitely appeared large enough to be considered as a broad core update, in my opinion at least. Those changes seem to have stuck since. Google has yet to confirm anything, although they said they “probably” will pre-announce future updates. Interesting to see what unfolds tomorrow.

[seomotionz]

No changes for me. Probably I've been left out again :(

@MayankParmar I will feel lucky if I am left out.

[BangkokBaby]

@BushyTop, no I did not notice any noticeable drop before.

It appears to have levelled out now, I got a jump of around 15-20%, on the grand scheme of things my traffic is still very low from the peak, and it’s a lot lower than the medic update in 2018 which I was hit in.

My site was unaffected by the July 1st "update" that someone people saw ups/downs.

Reading the comments on this forum and others, I'm struggling to find any type of obvious pattern to these updates. Why my site jumped 15-20% on this update I have no idea.

I did not add any new content, acquire important backlinks or make noticeable any changes to my site.

Google is using machine learning that it is unable to understand itself given the volatility of rankings for 2019. Jan to May I was going up for the most part (record highs) and today I'm at 3 year lows.

It's hard for me to spend $$$ or weeks of time to improve my site as the SERPs as it seems that by doing nothing my site has gone both up and down. In this state it's hard to make any big website updates, as my backlink profile, website speed, UX, time spent on site is all on par with my competitors or I'm better. If there was some pattern then it would give me a good idea on where to focus on.

For now I'm doing nothing and just riding the storm till we learn why things are the way they are and what I need to fix/improve.

[BushyTop]

@bangkokbaby very similar patterns to be honest. May was our strongest ever year, then we got slapped in June and we've continued at that level (some days up, some days down) for the past few weeks. Incredibly frustrating and not knowing why, which seems to be the main cause for annoyance among the SEO community. It's a real shame. The sky was really blue for the first quarter of the year.

[paranoid android]

We got hit by the June update. Then we seemed to bounce back early July. As of Friday, though, we seem to have sunk back to where we were in June.

They should call these series of updates 'yo yo'.

[whoa182]

My traffic is down 90% now. :)

I'm worse off than before I even started properly writing content at the end of 2017.

In fact, I get more traffic from DDG, Bing, Yahoo, Ecosia than Google because for my target keywords where I rank #1 for almost all of my articles.

Some of my competitors with their completely fake identities and use of stock photos from storyblocks pretending to be someone they are not (EAT much?) are doing superb! I have no clue how they get backlinks and people cite them as "professions and experts in health/fitness" with their fake photos & identities.

A little disheartening... I might be a bit bitter lol =) Excuse me..

[RareBit]

Boom! 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th for my main KW (2 sites) Google seems to like us at the moment!

[Jez123]

@rarebit from where?

[MayankParmar]

More drops after July 11 update :(

[seomotionz]

Suddenly, I am getting a load of traffic from Baidu. They are not zombie but irrelevant traffic mainly.

[MayankParmar]

I was also getting a good chunk of traffic from Baidu last week.

[southernguy]

Have a domain that I set up in 2017 it was solid had a good natural backlink profile and about 50 focused articles (fitness) all were getting a good amount of traffic? After this update, most keywords have dropped to page 2 and 3 replaced by non-relevant domain names from medical institutions all with big backlink profiles, those are ranking above me now. Saw that one had been auctioned off on GoDaddy 2 months ago for 1800.00 so it seems expired domains are still a big ranking factor regardless in any case that along with a few more of the same types of domains with similar profiles have dethroned me.

None of those last they eventually get replaced with the same after a few months a lot of churn and burn by big ad agencies from India in my niche.

[RareBit]

@Jez123 i was holding 3rd & 4th with one site and 6th & 7th with the other. Very few changes made since the 4th June

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar Did you see, traffic increase from Bing too? Because since last week it has increased for me too. I mean its no Google but still noticeable amount of increase.

[whoa182]

It looks like Google is finally starting to achieve what they set out to do. Just looking at queries related to beauty skin serums.

The whole top 10 is full of massive brands: allure, health.com, glamor.com, business insider, cosmopolitan... you get the idea.

What's interesting is that none of them include the keywords in the title and the majority don't even have relevant products for the search term.

Keyword modifiers don't seem to matter that much anymore, it's as if Google just ignores them.

[SEO programmer]

Still seeing rankings improve, yet traffic dropping dramatically. Trend data on the search queries are holding steady. Last year trend I was growing traffic roughly 15% each month during this time. At a loss of words at the moment.

[Milchan]

Keyword modifiers don't seem to matter that much anymore, it's as if Google just ignores them.

Whilst it has been the case for a while the results seem less relevant for me I have noticed that in the past days , maybe nearly a week, I have been having real trouble finding things im searching for when using quite specific queries. Mostly tech based queries relating to redhat, linux , configuration type questions have stood out as being the most problematic for me when in the past I would have found the answers easily

[southernguy]

@Milchan Yep and the answers are redundant and always take you back to the same place delivering almost the same answer, round and round we go, pitiful to say the least.

[MayankParmar]

@seomotionz Spikes on Bing too, but it has happened for me every month.

[Dave_Hybrid]

Got hit hard last Halloween -90%. Full recovery starting Friday.

[Chrispcritters]

I've been seeing large spikes in traffic for misc countries since late April.

[MayankParmar]

There was an update apparently

[twitter.com...]

[Milchan]

@mayankparmar - that would match what I experienced . From 13th in the evening I had no conversions , folllowed by nothing until late evening 14th (and my worst day this month by far), serps jumping around and shuffling in my niche every minute or so . Today it seems to have settled down a bit again though

[whoa182]

[semrush.com...]

[semrush.com...]

After Dr Axe was seeming to show good signs of recovery, he's back down again. SH, another big site with a lot of expert writers are down massively too.

So who is taking everything?

Edit: Healthline

[ichthyous]

Still seeing rankings improve, yet traffic dropping dramatically. Trend data on the search queries are holding steady. Last year trend I was growing traffic roughly 15% each month during this time. At a loss of words at the moment.

Check your average placement and your CTR in search console. According to SEMrush my visibility is up steadily for six weeks, but traffic still steady or slightly down. GSC shows an entirely different story... CTR that was 1.0-1.6 for most terms for years is suddenly 0.8. Placement is going lower and lower over this same time so the CTR is trending down. Number of impressions counts for nothing anymore... You will still have the impression counted if you show somewhere on the page, even it that is now much further down the page than before.

So how can SEMrush say placement is improving while GSC says it's declining? I would guess that SEMrush isn't taking into account all the new ads on the page, the video carousels, etc and Google is. SEMrush needs a lot of work to become accurate again. Google is making ranking top three oranically totally irrelevant now. Very smart on their part... They are sowing panic and desperation on the part of webmasters while they rake in the cash. There is nothing anyone can do to stop them.

[HereWeGo123]

I'll be the obvious guy here for a moment – The only logical explanation as to why Google has not yet confirmed this update was most likely due to the fact that they did not anticipate it to be large enough initially to where many webmasters would take notice. They probably thought it would be a daily ongoing update that would be classified as one of those that they can just say “every day we release updates to improve search”. Just my opinion, though.

[Treud]

Since the banhammer in June, no change after the few upgrades.
GSC is showing an improve in ranking and CTR. But impression and clicks are going lower. Have to grind all the way back to the lost Keywords

[HereWeGo123]

Something major is brewing right now, once again… Seeing massive fluctuations

[aaheel]

What should be the best possible things to do to recover traffic that was down due to thing 5.1 high range SERP volatility?

[Jez123]

Is anyone else missing pages from the SERPs today? One of my pages has dropped out of google overnight. Reminding me of the bug a couple of months ago