Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2019

[BushyTop]

- Split out of...
Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2019
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4957935.htm [webmasterworld.com]
by robert_charlton - 1:31 am on Sep 2, 2019



I've seen a comparable drop to the first of June. Like alot of people on here (I'm becoming increasingly frustrated) I feel like alot of the drops are down to the size of our brand and not the state of our SEO. Conversations internally in the business mean that i am going to have to lean away from some of the principles that i have leaned on and tweaked for maybe 10 years. I'm going to redesign the site.

We have a high proportion of non indexable pages. Whilst these obviously dont rank, I'm starting to wonder whether the high numbers of these pages proportionally across the site are maybe having an impact on our indexable pages. I know that might sound crazy. In my head, I dont understand how that would be an issue, but maybe Google thinks i'm trying to hide something?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:00 am (utc) on Dec 2, 2019]
[edit reason] cleanup after splitting & combining threads [/edit]

[BushyTop]

We saw a drop about a week ago. Same as start of June. Today we are seeing a drop in traffic. No serps changes from what i can see

[BushyTop]

Oh and I should note that we havent seen any additional G Bot activity. Just the normal amounts.

[RedBar]

Traffic down by 30-35 percent in India

I'm seeing similar for our Indian sites yet ranking unchanged there..

No serps changes from what i can see

Whilst using the generalised G.com I see very little change however when I use USA G.com I am nowhere, G's finally got rid of me, and many other specialised widget non-US businesses, and replaced them with US scrapers, one specific site that is THE global resource is down 50% already this month.

G's been almost absolutely pointless for my industry for at least the last couple of years, now it's simply worthless, pathetic results unless one is an American in the USA seeking localised retail purchasing results, forget trying to find facts and genuine technical specifications.

When one very bad image with only keyword1/2/3 on the page ranks #1, you know it's a total mess.

[seomotionz]

Massive update as I guess, Traffic down by 30-35 percent in India

It may have been due to the festivals.

I'm seeing similar for our Indian sites yet ranking unchanged there..

I don't think it has to anything with update. Traffic is slow. As I mentioned 'festivals'. But what strange is unusual rise in bot traffic.

[StupidIntelligent]

The top 30 listings are being rotated around; repeatedly.

[samwest]

Well, there it is...after 20 years. I have lost page #1 to this new "interesting finds" block smack on the fold. Pushed my root page out of the mobile serps completely. Cant find it on any subsequent page. Seems to still be on desktop' but that will get pushed out soon as this new update rolls out. BTW' all these so called "interesting finds" are affiliate links for Googles own pocket stuffing profit. Figures.

[HereWeGo123]

I don't know yet if this is related to any update or not, but one health/beauty site would rank prominently since the March broad core update. But within the past few days, I noticed they dropped in rankings for multiple KWs. The interesting part is they were engaged in blackhat link building techniques. They would buy out old expired domains that had previously acquired links from high DA sites, and just redirected them to their URLs on the main money site. Onsite, they appeared legit. Maybe Google caught up to them either just algorithmically and began discounting that link juice and/or they got a manual action. Who Knows...

[not2easy]

Admin note: The discussion about our forum software was moved to the WebmasterWorld Community Center [webmasterworld.com] to help keep this discussion on its topic. ;)

[fearlessrick]

Traffic on my site was actually quite good over the Labor Day weekend, but it just cratered yesterday. Maybe it has something to do with my running commentary on negative interest rates (BTW: the biggest story of the past 40 years and one out of 1000 people understand why. A clue: currency changes are on the way.) and dislike for central bankers.

Like StupidIntelligent said above, just when you start trusting them... Don't be evil, sure.

[StupidIntelligent]

Bill Lambert

You're seeing a flash rollback. It's typical...Word to the wise - during updates and rollbacks like we are having now - it would be a good idea to do routine updates to your sites and content.

[seroundtable.com...]

[Lakshay]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4963112.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 11:56 am on Sep 6, 2019 (utc +1)

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Hi,

I have seen a drastic drop in my ranking and traffic of the domain.

Has anyone else got affected too?

Also what can be done?

Suggestion and discussions are welcomed

[samwest]

Perhaps due to the latest update' Google is no longer using our specific meta description' but rather the captions in our home page image slider. Causing long time positions to tank. Fubar again.

[skaterpunk]

Google is no longer using our specific meta description

Yet another example of Google saying they know better. A meta description may or may not be used. Google decides what they think is the most relevant information to use. Many times that seems to be the first paragraph of my posts, so I tend to keep the meta description (provided by an SEO plugin) and first paragraph similar.

[skaterpunk]

@samwest, Also, are you using WP?

I don't have the coding knowledge beyond html and CSS, but using WP I have noticed that the google generated meta description tends to be the first "X" amount of information, whether that is the featured image caption, opening paragraph, or in your case the slider caption.

[Sissi]

I m afraid the trend will be on Zero Click SEO as Google users get the answers to their questions directly.

[RedBar]

after 20 years. I have lost page #1

Welcome to my world samwest!

My main business is a 100% EOU (Export Oriented Unit) specialised widget producer in India, we have been in the top 10 ten widget exporters for the past 47+ years, currently at #5.

However, Google in its infinite wisdom, has now decided that we are a local supplier, in fact 82% of our traffic is now from India, 56% of which is from our local state, only 0.6% of our traffic is from the USA consequently we get no www enquiries from there or, realistically, anywhere else for that matter.

But, how come that these top ten widget exporters of in excess of USD 1.5+ billion, not one of them is to be found in Google's USA SERPs for specific widget keywords? I kid you not, only US scrapers and BS retail companies reign supreme, several of which also feature very prominently in G's UK SERPs as well where they couldn't supply even if they wanted to.

The whole G thing is an utter mess, G has made trying to find genuine international producers and exporters a nightmare. Yes, I get it that there are probably a lot more retail purchasers searching for widgets than there are importers and traders but when even using G.co.in delivers those same US companies in its Indian SERPs, then something is seriously wrong with its algorithm and its bias towards US companies appearing to be gross manipulation.

Plus, I know from my Brazilian trade colleagues that they too are having very similar issues and they are the biggest global supplier of my widgets to the US market, so I know it's not solely me with this happening.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it again, Google is no longer a driver of international trade, it hasn't been for several years now, it's perceived to be very flawed in its selection and promotion of its SERPs to its OWN advantage.

The sooner everyone catches on to this the better for all ... and I've been saying this for probably 10 years now!

[Guidesify]

Site has seen very slight improvements from Google. Not having any confidence in earning any money from the big G now.

As AdBlock, instant answers and Google's self-appointed role of what should be and should not be seen on the Internet, I think we should all start to persuade our existing but declining audience to switch to Duckduckgo and maybe even the Brave browser (auto AdBlock but it has some kind of auto contribute feature) before it's too late. Privacy is the future of our internet now.

[RedBar]

I've been using Firefox's built-in ad blocker for several years now and it makes using all those slow ad-heavy newspaper sites much easier to view however those sites that ask me to white list them can go coco, I'm not ruining my use of The Internet just so they can make my browser jump and flash all over the place!

Yes, I know there are responsible sites with ads, I used to be like that, however the minority, as usual, screwed it up for everyone else in their hunt for every last penny and if you don't want me to visit because I don't accept your ads, fine, I'll go elsewhere, you're not achieving anything by taking that stance.

[HereWeGo123]

Don't know how to interpret this, so surreal, not getting hopes up but out of the blue about 30 minutes ago, our real-time traffic stats skyrocketed about 40%, pretty much back to Pre March update levels. The numbers have been sustaining themselves since. Anyone noticing anything?

[RedBar]

Anyone noticing anything?

Nothing out of the ordinary here however our major markets, the Far East, Middle East and Europe, are mostly shut down for the weekend.

[browndog]

I'm very up and down over the past 24 hours. This morning I noticed domain clustering again, and there seems to be more focus on 8 signs of X, 9 best Y and 10 causes of Z.

[Jori]

Had much fun reading old "Updates and Serp changes" threads back from 2015.

Looking at november that year, the thread had only 3 pages. No one complaining about how evil is Google.
Look at the thread now...

Can you believe Google, a very profitable company, is that greedy, wanting to kill all of the independant webmasters for their own profit ?

I don't take the excuse of authority websites deserve more than small websites. Mainly because a lot of those authority websites are telling utter rubbish, even (and maybe mostly) in my finance niche. Do Google know that this kind of niche, the huge banksters are all but greed ? YMYL websites yeah... sure, giving more confidence to a bank than angry customers.

Aniway, I'm seeing improvments in my positions, but nothing in real traffic.

[StupidIntelligent]

Google has always been evil, just like any other corporation.

Money just doesn't make the world go round; it makes it dance.

[glakes]

In my industry it's one monopoly (Google) sending traffic to another monopoly (Amazon) making an oligopoly. Both Google and Amazon are under scrutiny for antitrust violations and they feed each other. Google just happens to use Amazon crowded SERPS to accomplish this in light of Amazon being engaged in the active practice of steering product reviews to those items Amazon sells/ships and away from third party sellers.

Google requires shipping fees to be present in shopping feeds. So I must ask, why would Google steer consumers to Amazon instead of directly to us when shipping costs are $3 less per item? Why would Google send consumers to Amazon when we offer one year extended support/warranty for those items on our website -vs- the 30 day Amazon return period? When it comes to products, Google does not do what is in the best interest of the consumer but instead steers sales in such a way that further strengthen the existing oligopoly.

[samwest]

Lots of changes alright, all bad at this point. Looks like they 86'd domain crowding for all but Pinterest and Youtube. Stuffing the SERPS with Google interests. You can hardly find and organic results theses days. Their total elimination of webmasters is nearly complete.

[samwest]

Astonished at the silence here. Whatever just happened looks to be MAJOR! Lost all traffic. Zero for hours on end. SERPs are a MESS!

[browndog]

My traffic is still okay, but the search results are a mess. I'm seeing all sorts of junk listed, so I switched to duckduckgo to see their results for the same topic, and they were fine. I have just searched for a different topic, and Pinterest is featuring well as well as a random article by Martha Stewart. Bizarre.

[samwest]

Apparently after 20 years, I've been singled out. I am getting occasional hits to the only remaining page 1 listing I can find. All longtail long gone. It's no longer worth hosting the site for a few dozen zombies per day. Bizarre is right.

[Milchan]

Astonished at the silence here. Whatever just happened looks to be MAJOR! Lost all traffic. Zero for hours on end. SERPs are a MESS!

Im actually not seeing much difference. Conversions are low, traffic about the same - still around 30/40% down these last months. Saw some serps movements on Friday in my niche but seems to have returned to about how it was before , so nothing really notable for me. Conversions being low is normal for September anyway plus there are other external forces that are meaning even less that are specific to my area.

[glakes]

Astonished at the silence here. Whatever just happened looks to be MAJOR!

Unfortunately fewer and fewer webmasters are feeling the impact of major Google updates. When small businesses have been buried on page 2+ of Google's SERPS for years, expectations for positive outcomes after major updates are low and often not even noticed when the dust settles. In my industry Google still has Amazon crowded SERPS. This latest Google update has resulted in an increase in Adwords clicks and lower conversions. Since I'm in a branding phase, the lack of conversions is not a deal breaker for me. Organic traffic quality remains about the same with most people doing research and few conversions.