Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2019

[JesterMagic]

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System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4962430.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 5:42 pm on Oct 2, 2019 (utc -5)

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Dealing with Google as a business is tough and dealing with Google as a normal user is becoming a huge headache as well. I was trying to find some info about some software on the latest Smartphone I just bought and it was insane how stupid the search engine is now. It blatantly ignores keywords and uses synonyms for others which was not my intent and important for the search. It just returns articles of general information that are 5 or 6 years old. Even the stupid "People also ask" widget just regurgitates these same articles with information that is either outdated or completely wrong regarding my query. My whole mobile screen seems to be filled with either ads or search widgets.

I disagree with the use of all these widgets, and see a lot of it as content theft (people work hard to provide this information). It would be one thing if Google actually returned the correct information but in a large percentage of queries it does not making these widgets and the AI behind a huge failure.

Google please become a real search engine again instead of trying to be an information provider on the backs of other peoples businesses. (I know this will never happen unfortunately unless the government steps in)

[BushyTop]

@jediviper yeah i thought so too, wondered if it had got more granular. Its very strange...

- appears for low level search terms
- appears as a sitelink when searching for the brand name
- no cache
- de-indexed from high level search terms
- no manual penalty (as of yet)

[Mike12]

I was observing a very worst pattern these days since a month ago, despite in Top 3 position, CTR is just 0.2% ,

What is wrong? is Google showing wrongly or else People clicking more Paid ads or else they not at all visiting a site and going back?

Out of few clicks we get, Some want to sell their things to us, this was pretty worst part. Can't even imagine after been working so hard, not even seeing any conversions despite impression count is decent

[RareBit]

@BushyTop - same as mine except I have a cache link (Im Chris on SERoundtable btw!)

[RedBar]

The SERPs simply get worse for one of my big widgets ... In the UK for the past couple of days I am seeing a 1 star, 1 review ebay site at #2, it's even pushed US sites down in G.uk ... I had wondered whether they could make the UK SERPs any worse, never had I considered such garbage as being ranked so well.

[MarvinG]

Traffic definitely throttled. Wednesday big increase in traffic, but Thursday I saw less traffic than normal. Average of the 2 days is nearly the same as the normal daily average for weekdays. Almost as if you can not get more traffic than a fixed amount a week. Or maybe I'm just crazy haha...

[karolinam]

Hi guys,
Regarding SERP, how do you actually track featured snippets? I have noticed that they are fluctuating, however I am not sure how properly track it on daily basis. I would much appreciate your help

[System]

Google announced a big change to their search technology - BERT models. Full discussion at Next Google Search Evolution - BERT Models [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: goodroi at 11:59 am (utc) on Oct 25, 2019]

[YabaiSeo]

@ karolinam I have used serpbook.com for years, they track snippets

[System]

Several messages were moved to their own dedicated thread at: Balancing Image & Text for Best SEO Results [webmasterworld.com]
7:40 am on Oct 26, 2019 (utc -5)

[edited by: goodroi at 12:46 pm (utc) on Oct 26, 2019]

[whoa182]

Whatever happened over the last few days has made Google search results WAY better. Like a major improvement! Getting very relevant results now.

[browndog]

Maybe they dialled things back whoa182? They always seem to hit these updates hard and then tweak, over the last week I'm seeing a daily increase of around 10-15%. Like my site is always collateral damage, and then moves back into the 'semi' good books.

[southernguy]

@whoa182 I guess we are seeing different results in different niches, one of my sites that was ranking for a particular set of keywords has now been outranked by an Ezine article (I had forgotten about that article directory) and two blogger sites neither of which are close to being relevant, I'm not surprised anymore. I'm not really focusing on trying to rank quality sites any longer just focusing on social and churn and burn, seems thats what Google is looking for.

On the flip side of things, my old sites that have been around for a while are ranking well with Bing so I do have a trickle of income coming in enough to pay the bills.

[samwest]

Saturday morning, top positions for main terms and suggested terms, yet zero traffic for over an hour.

[Milchan]

yesterday and today are breaking records for all time traffic lows for me now. Zero sales today also. Im hoping it is the initial effects of the update and things will move up again next week as that seems to have been the case after the last updates, never full recoveries but at least returning to something. Ive kind of learned to not freak out completely now when this happens and try to turn my focus from GA and the site and work on something productive unrelated.

[SweetPotato]

I got some algo penalty in February 18. Lost 80% of Google traffic. Still for some keywords I rank 1st (go figure). I did tons of cleanup. Literally removed thousands of pages (big site), merged others. Disavowed 1500 domains. Let's see how it goes, no sign of recovery yet, pretty stable. Waiting for disavow to kick in. I never built a single link yet I have thousands of spam links. Maybe negative SEO? Folks say it doesn't exist or doesn't trick Google. I believe otherwise.

Also on my competitors, they seem to rank first for everything with about 300k dofollow links from a single domain! (Hello penguin) And they say private networks are things of the past? I respectfully say: "my balls" to that.

[JesterMagic]

Negative SEO still works!

2 of my top performing pages got hammered starting a couple of years ago and now have almost disappeared while my other similar pages (that have some spam links) still appear in the search results as expected.

I find Google seems to handle a certain bunch of spam links but when it reaches a specific threshold your page just tumbles in the serps. The disavow file seems useless in these situations.

When I talk spam links I mean full on very obvious spam links. I get thousands of spam links from pages in Russia and China. These spam pages contain copies of text from other sites, links to other sites, and full of #*$! material (which my sites are not related too). When I visit these spam pages as a normal visitor I instantly get redirected to some other nefarious site. The only way I can see the actual spam page is to view the page as Googlebot.

[RedBar]

I'm seeing some extraordinary bouncing about in the SERPs with many of my competitors and bloggers, some have been quite rightfully demoted simply because they were scrapers, whereas some company sites have risen which are all remarkably similar in page construction and information, all gleaned from my site, and one in particular that G loves and I really cannot fathom out why.

It's an ok page with pertinent information and images but there's nothing excepional about it whatsoever, it's nothing one would bookmark or cite, it's bland, semi-useful however nothing I could recommend as a widget resource.

[glakes]

Our Amazon sales have substantially increased. Sales coming from Amazon have increased so much that we have opened up Sunday, with limited staff, to process/pack orders for Monday's morning shipment.

I can't say whether the spike in Amazon sales is the result of even more Amazon favoritism in Google's SERPS or simply from buyers being unable to find products in the mess Google calls their search results. Maybe Google's "walled garden" has gotten so bad that shoppers can't even find their way in. Regardless, our sales on Amazon have been elevated ever since the Sesame Street update from Google. No complaints here whatsoever. From the looks of it, those in ecommerce should dump Google/Adwords and march over to Amazon if they have not done so already.

[RedBar]

Is it just me?

Whenever I check an Amazon / EBay result in the SERPs the page I actually land on has absolutely nothing to do with the results displayed in their SERPs, yes the correct "product" however not the specific "item" G shows.

[jmorgan]

Just going to ignore my traffic stats until Diwali (and to a lesser extent Halloween) is well and truly over. Too depressing otherwise. heheh

[Martin Ice Web]

realy worse update from begining 26. okt. ( Bert Update ? )
Traffic again down by 70%. Sales equal down. Yet amazon and ebay sales see a gradual increase since 26. okt.

We now get traffic from finnland, ukraine, russia .....

[glakes]

We now get traffic from finnland, ukraine, russia .....

The last couple of visitors that Google sent to our site were from India and Kuwait. While this was happening our Amazon seller app reported a sale. Yes, it's ugly on Google right now. I think the only ones that think Google's AI is intelligent are those that created it. Because if AI was so great, we would see higher quality traffic coming out of Google instead of this crap.

I think once the rest of the shoppers jump the sinking Google ship those that use Google to find information will soon follow. It's hard to imagine a different outcome when Google is serving up such terrible search results...

[MarvinG]

@Martin Ice Web: Traffic also dropped here since 26 okt. Don't know if it is caused by BERT. Traffic was up after the september / oktober update.

[seomotionz]

@RedBar Its not just you. SERP's are more or less sh*t now.

[jmorgan]

@MarvinG Probably Diwali. Check your GEO stats.

[MayankParmar]

Traffic was low due to Diwali. As Diwali is over, it's all normal on Analytics.

[skaterpunk]

Whenever I check an Amazon / EBay result in the SERPs the page I actually land on has absolutely nothing to do with the results displayed in their SERPs, yes the correct "product" however not the specific "item" G shows.

I would imagine this is from indexed pages that are now removed or a listing/auction has ended, so a redirect is in place.

[Milchan]

DIwali doesnt effect me but other outside forces are having an effect for sure, but that is in addition to all the negative effects of googles changes so things are super low right now.
Another example I just saw of either automated bots not being filtered by GA or just GA being nonsense was this morning I had the live view of GA on one screen and there hadnt been any visitors for 30 minutes then I got 1 single visitor that landed on my checkout success page. That page is not in google index and if you visit it directed it it pretty much tells you there is nothing to see, yet this "visitor" stayed for 10 minutes. I will probably get round to changing from GA to another analytics platform this week as I have been meaning to do that for a while.

[RedBar]

As Diwali is over,

Huh? Maybe for you however our factories still have another week's holiday, I don't expect normal Indian traffic to return until next week however I am making realworld products, not here today gone tomorrow.

[RedBar]

I would imagine this is from indexed pages that are now removed or a listing/auction has ended, so a redirect is in place.

I know that, you know that so why does G's algo with all its so-called AI let its spiders loose on pages that will soon become outdated and let them rank at #2 in the SERPs, it's a total and utter farce displaying non-available products as the most relevant results!