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.

[ashishmalik]

Why Google launch updates?
To throw those who do illegal activities... To Promote those who follow Google rules
So, If you Follow all The Giant Google Search Engine Rules, then Google Update will never harm your Business website, even the Update lift your business website at the top of the Google.

[satarsaadat]

tank u
How can I adapt to these changes?

[grammarchecker]

Can any one help me how to over come from this update?

[seomotionz]

@grammarchecker get over it?! ohh man!

We are still figuring what exactly hit us?

[RedBar]

@ashishmalik

So, If you Follow all The Giant Google Search Engine Rules, then Google Update will never harm your Business website,

In which universe are you living?

This is an extremely naive and completely inaccurate statement, so many innocent sites have been annihilated by Google over the years and no matter what the webmaster did most failed to recover from G's demotion/penalty.

[hurwith2]

Does anyone ever post good news here?

[aristotle]

Does anyone ever post good news here?

-- Yes, occasionally someone will report a significant increase in their site's google traffic.

-- Also, some members like to report short-term fluctuations, which go up and down, so sometimes "yes".

-- But there's usually a small (gradually-changing) group that does MOST of the posting, often repeating the same points, and agreeing with each other about seeing faults with google's results, at least for particular sites or sectors. So the thread usually has a negative tone overall.

[StupidIntelligent]

Another update...anyone else?

[EditorialGuy]

A scraper (note one "p")

That's one for the scrapbook. :-)

[RedBar]

Does anyone ever post good news here?

I'd willingly post it IF there were any good news to post like there used to be during the noughties.

Obviously I have no need to clarify this fact.

[EditorialGuy]

Does anyone ever post good news here?

Occasionally, but the response is usually something like "Just wait your turn" or "You must be a shill for Google."

The news that I personally post tends to be of the "no news" or "neutral news" variety, because very few of Google's updates have had an obvious impact on us. I'd guess that many site owners sail through most of Google's updates with no big losses and no big gains. As a result, they don't come here to blow off steam.

[heisje]

I'd guess that many site owners sail through most of Google's updates with no big losses and no big gains.

This is not what even big news sites and big retailers tell us - and also tell the EU and the FTC. Irrespective of what goes on here, based on what we hear overall, you seem among the lucky very few to not be negatively affected - not among the majority. Assuming lack of more bemoaners here is proof everybody else is doing more or less fine is erroneous in view of the broader facts. People are just fed up, have for the time being accepted facts on the ground as part of life, hope politicians & authorities will wake up in due course - while hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of webmasters worldwide have totally given up.

.

[EditorialGuy]

Irrespective of what goes on here, based on what we hear overall, you seem among the lucky very few to not be negatively affected - not among the majority.

I'm not hearing any chatter--negative or otherwise--from Web publishers in my sector. I'd expect to hear at least *some* complaints if only a "very few" were unaffected, but so far, zilch. Then again, most of my peers focus more on content than on SEO, so they're likely to be less vulnerable to changes in SE algorithms that discount easily manipulated signals.

[southernguy]

@EditorialGuy Google's updates have had an obvious impact on us.

There are some who have not been affected, I have been doing online marketing (affiliate) and have been doing so for several years. It has been my main source of income but I also maintain a few sites for local business. The local business sites seem to be unaffected regardless of what Google does, but then again they are not in high competition niches so they never seem to fluctuate. The more competitive the niche the more likely you will be affected.

I really don't know where a lot of people fit into the SEO spectrum, in other words, if I were someone who did SEO on the side (second income), as a hobby but not as my primary income I would probably be more complacent and would not care or complain as much.

While I am not giving up on SEO I am looking for another job to help ride out the storm until something changes, I still believe that SEO has a good future but with Googles erratic ranking and severe flaws in favor of their current business model it's going to take time for the hammer to drop. I am optimistic that it will happen sooner than later.

[EditorialGuy]

The more competitive the niche the more likely you will be affected.

Our audience is global, and we have no shortage of competitors that range from other mom-and-pop information sites to corporate megasites. (For one of our most popular queries, Google claims 574 million results.)

I really don't know where a lot of people fit into the SEO spectrum, in other words, if I were someone who did SEO on the side (second income), as a hobby but not as my primary income I would probably be more complacent and would not care or complain as much.

If you come at Web publishing from an SEO perspective, you're setting yourself up for failure (or at least for unpredictability), in my opinion. SEO-driven sites did quite well 15 or 20 years ago. TripAdvisor is a great example of a site that was essentially an SEO play when it got started: It slapped up millions of keyword-driven pages, invited users to "write a review," and relied on Google to bring in reviewers and readers. There was a time when TripAdvisor dominated Google's search results in its niche, but today, TripAdvisor pages often don't even make the top 10--probably because content is a lot more important than it was back in 2000, and external manipulation of search results is harder to do successfully.

[Treud]

@ichthyous

Can you share the IP you blocked ? I have a ton from Chicago ..

Thanks

Mods Note The discussion about IP blocking was moved here [webmasterworld.com].

[edited by: goodroi at 3:37 pm (utc) on Aug 7, 2019]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to stay on topic :) [/edit]

[Guidesify]

Hi guys, just registered to post. My website has been doing very well with organic traffic for the past 2 years but following June 2019, I have lost over 90% of this traffic and can never seem to recover it.

I optimized my site again and again for speed (now with a 88 on google pagespeed mobile, 99 on desktop), change my site to a faster host, use Cloudflare's edge caching, write unique content regularly, etc. Nothing seems to work nowadays despite all the positive changes that I have done. Think I am not supposed to post the link of my website but it currently has an Alexa rank of 360k, 5100 links from 150+ referring domains. Not very impressive but I have never bought fake links.

One more thing. Google Analytics seems to report an increasing number of fake US traffic hits on my website's landing page (occasionally 502 bad gateway) and I have no way of rectifying it. Wondering if it could be a cause of my falling organic traffic.

Could anyone tell me what's going on or what resources/rules are available online for me to refer to follow "Google's Benchmark"?

Really appreciate it thanks.

[seomotionz]

@hurwith2 someone will post good news if there is any good news! Lately all is bad and getting even worse.

[Kshamaster]

@ashishmalik what is illegal in your books?

[RedBar]

Is it just my widget industry or are the Google SERPs trending to:

1. Short pages with very brief descriptions and usually only a single image

or

2. Very lengthy pages with loads of information, images, videos, almost everything etc.

Has anyone else noticed that this past few months?

[JesterMagic]

Regarding negativity on this topic... Most people if they are doing well in search (or with anything) don't go searching for forums to post in about their success. For those affected by an update, they will go out and actively look and participate in conversations to figure out what they may have done wrong and how to fix it. There is a benefit for them to spend the time and post their experience.

For those who post their positive experience on this topic usually have posted previously about a negative experience.

Nothing wrong with this and is usually the reason why you see a lot of review sites that have mostly negative reviews. This is also why after buying on Amazon or other online stores they ask you to rate the product/service so more positive reviews are posted.

[Dimitri]

Yes, it's known that you hear more from unhappy people than happy ones. the June updates boosted my traffic by 20% (so far so good) , I just mentioned it once, but it's sure that I am not going to repeat it everyday ... (I am not bragging :))

[hurwith2]

EditorialGuy + - I am right there with you in that we don't see large changes, good or bad, when Google releases something. After all, good SEO should mean +5% - 20% increase YOY (IMO).

[MayankParmar]

Analytics stats delayed by an hour or two.

[pupidu]

There is only one thing why google updates occur and occur very often. it is to make state of emergency for us, to make feel fear, to continue questioning ourselves. to spend holiday season with never more google updates like this summer. Spending days and weeks and months on something we cant change. imagine you planned to take kids on a summer vacation and there you just typing, reading about google updates. hell...

as you noticed, and know, there is much more people saying that they drop positions while those who gain are in much smaller percentage. that is because compared to previous years google cut number of search engine result pages. and we cant do nothing.

as we know - google was search engine. now, in 2019, it is not. it is just ad displaying service trying to gain profit. search result pages are still there, but they are very tight and mostly contain some major sites who are very hard to remove - it is not easy to remove some nasdaq companies from pages, and small sites are easily replaced with deliberately displayed rubbish like 3 years old news, google books, statistical data and similar, not relevant content, while from visitor expecting to click on ads. then new update returns some sites dropped, while positioned are deleted. thats it. we cant control. then we spend life on figuring hows that happened.

i have sites 10-15 years old. never touched them. then they are shows up in result pages, then they disappear. thats it. i do not touch them. they are not even mobile friendly - it just a lie.

it is a lie. lie is https, lie is sitemap, lie is everything that google told us what we need to use to get indexed. it is just giving us a job and another set of what we need to do so we are kept bussy. we do not need to do nothing. it is a same. serps dropped from 10 pages to 2. you got indexed 200 pages then out of nothing google says it is now 25.

never give answers in schema format. never.

EAT? it is just another way to remove small sites. why I need expert to share how to fix microwave bulb. to say what is a good t shirt. and who google is to say who is expert and who is not? what are they? experts of experts? who are they to judge expert things? it is just another way to remove sites - aka tighten result pages.

what i can suggest to you is:

do not use android phones. do not use email on them. of course, do not visit your site from android devices. delete personal data from devices. i am using windows phone - several of them. and android only to read stupid news or browse youtube. never checked my sites with any phone.

do never use their analytic service. there are server generated logs. use software to parse them and see real thing. you will be shocked with a ips that are over and over again known as zombie traffic.and other things. of course. use freeware scripts like old piwik or similar to track visitors. delete google cookies when checks that.

do not visit your sites without changing ip.

delete google cookie when browsing own sites.

do not use adsense. of course they know all of your sites in that way. in any case earnings are joke. so adsense is just tool for knowing your portfolio, while paying in fraction they used to pay for same amount of traffic.

do not use gmail or any other their service.

at the end, for search use alternatives. bing and ddg are much better.


peace and good luck

[jediviper]

@Guidesify

Did u find out why your site is penalised?
If not, then no matter how many changes u will do, then u won't know what really went wrong.

[MayankParmar]

[twitter.com...]

Looks like indexing issue is back.

[seomotionz]

@MP Our traffic is rising today but at a slow rate.

[MayankParmar]

@seomotionz Today is better than yesterday or Monday, but it's not back to pre-June levels.

[Guidesify]

@jediviper Not really sure if checking manual actions under search console is what you mean, but it has always stated no issues detected.