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.

[jediviper]

I am seeing all these comments about fluctuations, drops etc but most of the posters neglect to mention the country where this has been noticed.
What's the point of writing such post anyway?

[Kshamaster]

Updates are global, not targeting any country/region/industry

[oleotio]

I see missing pages from the index, I think it's another error in gooogle

[aaheel]

I have a dropped in traffic and rankings but not see any page invisibility from SERPs

[Jez123]

@ oleotio I had this today. I resubmitted using GSC and it was back in the index within 10 minutes. Whether it stays is another matter...

[oleotio]

In Search Console they appeared as indexed, curiously it is the best positioned pages that have disappeared. I've indexed it again but they still don't appear.

[oleotio]

I sincerely believe that Google has lost its way, is introducing a technology that does not work (AI or whatever) and that all these updates are not, are failures or defective implementations of its algorithm.

[Treud]

I have a question with the function "site:yoursite"
I'm tackling since 1 month a lot of duplicate content on my site and when I use this function I end up with a number which is more than the GSC (maybe it's a delay between the GSC and the google servers).
But If I explore all URL it does not match. It this I don't get it. It far less that what should be indexed.
For instance, if the total says 1500 URLs for example, if I click on all the pages, the last page tells me 300 pages indexed.

[oleotio]

@Treud The site command for a long time is not reliable to know the number of pages indexed, but very useful to know if a particular page is indexed.

[Treud]

@oleotio ok thanks !

[BushyTop]

I think any hope that anyone had of June's update rolling back should be gone. This latest update just looks like an enhancement of the previous. Its terrible and a bitter pill to swallow, because i don't see improvement in the SERPs. One of our competitors that is argueable the best in the industry has been hammered by this update. While I'm relieved its not us, part of me questions how the algorithm could possibly come to the conclusion that this site isnt good as pertinent as it was.

[oleotio]

The sitelinks are gone, can this be a sign of penalty?

[MayankParmar]

[twitter.com...]


The sites which dropped in June have seen more drops after July update. I dropped too and other sites that were hit have also experienced a decline.

I was expecting recovery and Google did the opposite.

[Treud]

@MayankParmar yes looks like the July update tanked us as the June one. We will need quite a few updates to have an idea of what was wrong with our sites.

[Milchan]

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.

Ive been saying for a while something along these lines and that it doesn't matter if there is a 'core update' or just one of the daily updates - both can have significant effects on sites. A core update is probably more likely to effect a broader scope of sites Id guess but if you are in the sector that gets effected by a general announced update a lot it can have equally large effects on your site. Plus google admits they are rolling our several updates every day so the cumulative effect of these over a period of weeks could easily be equal to the effect of a core update. The difference with a core update is that it will receive a lot of attention and analysis which may result in some idea of what it might of targeting but ultimately we are all flying blond.

I actually saw an increase in traffic yesterday and day before , with an increase in about 25%. I am also seeing lots of serp fluctuations today

[whoa182]

I've been trying to do some research for the past 2 hours.. and I although said it was difficult since August 2018, but WOW! It's impossible to find what I need now. It's getting incredibly frustrating if you're researching anything in the health field. Searchers that are quite specific are often resulting in very mundane and general articles by very high authority sites.

Google? What are you doing?

[Milchan]

yes, I find it hard to find info I need now also. Im using duckduckgo and bing a lot more (have duckduckgo as my default search , with firefox now instead of google +chrome) and they cant be better sometimes but they are honestly not as good as google used to be - but google now is terrible giving results that are are irrelevant for the info Im looking for and it is not like I don't know how to use search queries correctly to try to get more specific results.

[Shepherd]

interesting morning, seeing some minor changes on page 1, however big changes on the deeper pages. also, not seeing the proliferation of books.google... until way deeper than normal (page 18 and on as opposed to page 7 and on.

[SnowMan68]

Our ECOM site is seeing a 10% boost in traffic, but there is a chance it could be related to increased searching from Amazon Prime days.

Anyone else ECOM USA, seeing something similar?

[steffanlv]

Is anyone else missing pages from the SERPs today?

Yes, something not talked about much here is the number of pages indexed that are fluctuating for many sites. I have one site that has a high of 7200 pages indexed and a current low of only 4210. Massive flux over the past month.

[NickMNS]

@steffanlv what are you basing your index page count on? If you are relying on "site:" then all you are seeing is noise and I would not be surprised if much of what is reported in GSC is also noise.

To be clear when I say noise, I mean data that is unreliable almost random in nature. That is, a report can read 1000 one day 1200 the next, but there is nothing to suggest that 200 pages were added or suddenly removed.

In my experience pages that are added to the index are never removed. 404 a page, and you will still see it showing in error reports years later despite the fact that it doesn't exist. That is not the sign of a page that are being removed from the index. How one is supposed to interpret the meaning or use of the indexed reports in GSC is beyond me.

[EditorialGuy]

Ive been saying for a while something along these lines and that it doesn't matter if there is a 'core update' or just one of the daily updates - both can have significant effects on sites.

Or it can have little or no effect, depending on the site, the query, and whatever other variables may come into play.

Even here at Webmaster World, some members experience a lot more drama (in terms of rankings and Google traffic) than others do. Why? I'd guess that people who spend a lot of time on keyword targeting, link-building, making articles shorter or longer for SEO purposes, etc. are more vulnerable than the average site owner is, just because an SEO technique that works today may be ineffective or even counterproductive tomorrow.

[aristotle]

In my experience pages that are added to the index are never removed.

Not sure what you mean by this. But occasionally pages on my sites, even high-ranked high-traffic pages, have temporarily disappeared from the search results for a day or two. I've always thought that this is caused by some kind of bug, or temporary database problem.

But I would bet that previously-indexed pages can also disappear from the results permanently, either due to changes in the algorithm or changes in the content of the page.

Another point is that what really counts is whether a page ever appears in google's search results, not whether some operator or GSC says that it's in the index.

[Milchan]

@aristotle I think what @nickmns seems to be refering to by 'index' is the record of pages that google keeps in order to return and crawl and not I think the index of pages that show in search results.
So I get what he means as I do still see googlebot visiting urls for my site that are from a site structure/ version of my site from over 10 years ago that havent existed for many many years and there are no external links to them that I know about. Most people though refer to 'indexed' as being the pages on their site that google currently has included within the search results pages. I think this is what might be causing a bit of confusion here?

[steffanlv]

If you are relying on "site:" then all you are seeing is noise and I would not be surprised if much of what is reported in GSC is also noise.

I understand what you are saying but when you look at cache date and pages indexed on a daily basis and see volatility it is a marker.

[aristotle]

Putting a noindex tag on a page tells google to exclude that page from the search results. This implies that the term "index' refers to all the pages that google's algorithm draws from when determining what to show in the search results for any particular search.

As for site operators, GSC, and cache dates, all of those are known to be inaccurate and unreliable. So they shouldn't be depended on for reaching any conclusions.

[Milchan]

This implies that the term "index' refers to all the pages that google's algorithm draws from when determining what to show in the search results for any particular search.

Yeah I know that, but I was just pointing what seemed to be causing the confusion.

[aristotle]

Yeah I know that, but I was just pointing what seemed to be causing the confusion.

Yes I knew that. I was just trying to add to my arguments in my own previous post.

[whoa182]

Is anyone else also noticing a significant increase in traffic from DDG, Bing, and Yahoo? (Health/Diet).

[SnowMan68]

We are up about 19% from the recent update. While I'm contributing some to Amazon Prime day, traffic has remained strong today after the sales are over.

Almost everything gained is in the tail and I can't really see changes in the handful of keywords I spot check.