Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2019

[samwest]

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System: The following 12 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4951811.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 10:33 am on Aug 1, 2019 (utc -5)

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Can someone please write in few words, what we have learned from this latest update and what are the thigns that are now important?

1. Don't rely on Google for your income and 2. "They moved your cheese". What's important? quality time with friends and family.

[nordland]

My page is increasing every day, I hit records almost every day with traffic from google, facebook and pinterest. What do I do? I just care about my followers, nothing else, I don't work on google, facebook or pinterest. I work with them. big difference.

[ichthyous]

@nordland I was also at a high point with Google, right before my traffic started dropping. That's the point of all of these threads... There is nothing causing many of us to lose so much traffic, we just do. Google is making sure that ranking at the top (even top 3) means less and less every day. So I honestly doubt that your traffic is increasing every day unless it's starting from a very low point to begin with. You should check the traffic sources as well... Is a lot of it coming from single cities like a Chicago or Boardman? That's not real traffic. I filtered out the fake traffic and lost another 15%.

Nobody will be spared because Google is killing off organic traffic day by day, search by search in order to raise its own revenue. If you haven't been hit yet you will be.

I've been at this for 16 years, and I started to move away from Google completely... Social media is the same rigged game, it's their platform and their game not yours. The only security is in becoming a brand of your own and not depending on any of these platforms too much, as they will squeeze you like a boa constrictor.

[mosxu]

They are constantly moving the cheese aren’t they?

All the updates they do are useless AI is trained to bring in money because of the serious loss of buyers searching means that the smaller buyer traffic left has to be sold more expensive and it means to look to big pockets and not open that traffic to competition.

The problem we have the regulations are ignored and competition on personalised buyer traffic is not a transparent process.

[BushyTop]

We are in our quiet time of year, but conversions are super low today. Possibly throttled traffic?

@mosxu where are you seeing that... SEMRUSH sensors in the UK and US markets are low...?!

[StupidIntelligent]

@nordland Many of the posters here get thousands of visits per day. These are big guys talking about gradual destruction of their hard work. Doubling from 1000 visits to 2000 is not what this group is about. That's the small pie.

[browndog]

nordland, I’ve gone from 20.000 visitors a day to 5,000, I focus on my visitors too.

[glakes]

The problem is our focus on pleasing visitors conflicts with Google's focus on money.

Current Google traffic appears depressed. While the traffic is there for us, buyers are not. Maybe Google is directing what few buyers they have to those big brands in Google Express which leaves very little for small business retailers online. Google has already cannibalized much of the internet, and it should be interesting to see what it looks like ten years from now. My guess is organics will be nothing but filler material for SERPs that are mostly just paid ads.

[samwest]

Pattern Traffic has returned. It's like Zombie Traffic, but this traffic converts in strangely unnatural patterns. It's repeatable over several days, like the same conversion at 1am on less than a trickle of traffic. Happened three random days in the last week. Also still zero action during normal business hours. Weird.

[MayankParmar]

Still waiting for the update.

[Selen]

In Edge, I see search results have a favicon in the same location as the green "Ad" favicon. Now all search results look like an ad (or no result looks like an organic listing).

[jmorgan]

Still waiting for the update.

They might be working on making sure their indexing issues get absolutely fixed first before thinking about another update.

[RedBar]

Still waiting for the update.

Are you sat there with your fingers crossed hoping against hope that it will be beneficial for you?

What if it is not? Would you want it reverting to what it is now?

My guess is organics will be nothing but filler material for SERPs that are mostly just paid ads.

I thought that's all we have now for cheap, popular products and why anyone would search on G when they may as well simply go direct to Amazon or EBay / your country's equivalent.

FWIW, in my widget industry Google's just about lost all advertisers, it's simply not worth it.

[Kshamaster]

@MayankParmar last few G updates have not been able to achieve its goal, so this time G wants to make sure it doesn't play hit and trials anymore, maybe it will first sort its indexing issue and then focus on updates

[glakes]

I thought that's all we have now for cheap, popular products and why anyone would search on G when they may as well simply go direct to Amazon or EBay / your country's equivalent.

Since I don't search for popular/highly consumed products in Google, it could very well be as you say. I'm a manufacturer in a small and specialized industry. Organics are still very much alive in my industry, though one would have to dethrone Amazon which controls the #1 and #2 organic positions to be seen above the fold. Google's Amazon crowded SERPs in my industry have been around for years, and if all roads lead to Amazon I'm sure even the most stubborn consumers will eventually learn to just go to Amazon first.

FWIW, in my widget industry Google's just about lost all advertisers, it's simply not worth it.

Chinese manufacturers and retailers of their goods are still advertising in my industry. With high margins due to their low labor/material costs, and overall cheaply made/low quality products, they apparently can still afford the high CPC in Adwords whereas domestic manufactures can't. Still, Google is a sideshow in my industry as most consumers go directly to Amazon to shop for the type of products we produce. Once on Amazon, consumers are steered by Amazon to purchase the cheap Chinese products through a variety of tactics including Amazon's own product review manipulation, on/off inventory reductions (hundreds of available units mysteriously dropping to 0 throughout the day), etc. Both information and commerce are highly corrupt, but that is to be expected when just two companies control so much and regulators sit idly by just watching and ignoring the complaints of others.

[skaterpunk]

I watched this show recently and there was a part near the end talking about modern search algorithm's keying in on each individual and giving very different results from one person to the next. [nationalgeographic.com...]

[mosxu]

“and giving very different results from one person to the next.“

Yes send all ready to buy searchers to the big dogs and if there is some bones left for the rest of us we need to compete and bid high for it. This is called competition by the way...

[Milchan]

“and giving very different results from one person to the next.“

Yes it has been like that for a long time and results are personlised to the individual but only if you are signed in to a google account and to a lesser extent just using cookies even if you are not signed in. The only way to get a non personalised set of results with google is to use private / incognito mode and probably then only with a browser like firefox and maybe only if your using a VPN

[RedBar]

And it's pointless even trying to use Google search with a TOR browser!

[Milchan]

I use firefox with duckduckgo set as default browser and if I want to check google SERPS I use private mode only in firefox. I generally dont go as far as firing up my vpn for most day to day checks

[skaterpunk]

I forgot to add my main point.

If search results vary, and publishers keep tracking their spot in SERP's, how is the spot calculated? Do page rankers use an average? E.g. I can be seeing one of my pages in the #1 spot, but that's not the case for all searchers, or it's not an accurate number?

Is this the complaint I see on this thread each month? "I'm seeing my page being listed at #1, but my conversions are low or zero… the data doesn't add up?"

[RedBar]

"I'm seeing my page being listed at #1, but my conversions are low or zero… the data doesn't add up?"

I wonder how many when checking their SERPs positions do so with clean browsers and no tracking?

[Jori]

+15% traffic today (against same day last week). Something happened. It is just me ?
France, Finance niche

[whoa182]

Not much of an increase in traffic here, but Google is giving me some traffic back to pages that used to do very well before June.

[Solipsism]

Crawls from Google has increased in my logs something is happening, i guess Bill Lambert was right !

[Rageboi]

SEMRush Sensor (Germany) - 5.0 [semrush.com...]

[Solipsism]

Europeans countries are higher than others

[cabsco]

If there is a major update, Google will announce it. At least they promised to.

[sem4u]

I am seeing some big increases for USA keywords this morning. Most of these are ones that dropped quite a lot in the last two or three weeks.

[BushyTop]

Any of you guys that are now seeing lifts, those that got hit by the June update?

[sem4u]

No, this site wasn't hit by the June update.