Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2019

[engine]

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System: The following 8 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4966830.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 4:01 pm on Nov 1, 2019 (PDT -8)

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Not what i'd seen, it wasn't even that.
I'd class myself as an experienced searcher, and, sometimes, when I look at Google's serps it's trying to pre-empt my intent. More often than not, it's presenting either highly-optimised sites, or, in this case, it was all wrong. Something's broke.

It works that way these days.

I don't ever use "best" as that is spammed out.

[samwest]

@tonberry - to answer youir question, same clicks but sales just stopped cold. I suspect Amazon changed the cookie duration from 24 hours days to 24 seconds for the holidays. I digress.

In more strangeness , seeing nothing but /?fbcid... visits this morning...Google traffic has totally squeezed. The few Google hits that do arrive are all foreign...back to this again? Something is up.

[SnowMan68]

It that traffic converting? Did you do anything specifically to improve your site? Or did it just happen? Either way, congratulations as this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Our conversions have remained consistent pre traffic bump. We have a fairly long buying cycle, so a traffic bump from two weeks ago will take a while to turn into sales. Short term I always look at other metrics like time on page, page views, adjusted bounce rate, etc. Those metrics have remained consistent, so I believe the traffic should be good for business, based on what history has shown for us.

I think the biggest things for us are linked to the following:

1. Updating old content (making sure it is current, with accurate information and dates within 12-18 months from the current date).
2. Continuing to consistently create new content
3. Adding high quality video to all new content posted
4. Going through old content and creating videos for those posts as well
5. Creating better hub pages to link out to all resources created on a main subject

We now have two full time videographers on staff and have been pushing hard on video. We post on YouTube and embed on the website. We've started to build a community for an industry I didn't think one could exist. The engagement on YouTube is really good and YouTube generates a ton of interest for our brand and products. This has lead to increase of brand searches for us, more direct traffic and of course sales.

I feel like anyone can write content, which you see with so many low quality sites online building links and ranking high. Creating video is a bit more difficult and is harder for people to fake. Especially when talking about products. Adding the videos to our content has increased dwell time and has helped us build more trust. I think these are important metrics moving forward.

[glakes]

Our conversions have remained consistent pre traffic bump.

Is your increase in traffic coming from the SERPS or YouTube?

Our videos are definitely getting more views and have produced an increase in traffic to our website. We are also seeing a lot of spam comments that need to be moderated. The pages where our videos are embeded are not getting any added traffic though. Google must be displaying the standalone videos in the SERPS.

Our conversions originating from Google, both paid and organic, continue to be poor and historically low considering this is our busy season.

[samwest]

@snowman - I agree with the importance of video. I have over 10 thousand still photos that I've started to create Ken Burns style videos of our client work. In my biz it's hard to get actual video. The audience is no longer satisfied with a plain web page...that's for sure. It's all about stepping it up, but some days all the effort just seems to only bring greatly diminishing returns no matter what I do. The pressure is not from my competitors, well, yeah, in a way it is....its' from Google who it seems favors monetization / ad density over useful content. Maybe that's just how it appears out my window...but the stuff ranking around me is nothing but ad filled content farm fertilizer.

[hopepro]

My site is getting around 100K visitors / day and rank about 400th of all site in the country in finace/shopping/travel niches

Last algo change in March 2019 made us drop by 30% but gained back a few months later by almost 200%

We saw unusual traffic drop on the 8th NOV and it dropped around 30%-40%

Usually, google index new post less than 20 mins after published, now it's fluctuate around 20mins to 2 hours

We saw a spike in GA before 8th Nov and it was insane. Normally, we have around 500-600 visitors GA real time. It spiked through 5,000+ visitors (we believe that was bot) but there were no actual real human visitors

From 8th up until today, the worst day was 10 NOV, dropped around 40%, now it is starting to gain back.

Regarding the search result we notice these

- Low quality sites are everywhere even on top of the high quality site almost every keywords
- Frog jump position. One of our high competition keyword rank 1-2 position in the morning, then 2nd page in the afternoon, came back 9th, then 4th, then gone, and came back again on the 4th and remain
- double ranking on some sites including ours.
- irrelevant search term vs landing page on search
- lesser conversions on finance and e-commerce, but higher conversions on charity landing pages
- Traffic remain exactly around 270 visitors (current in GA) currently on site up to 320 on site during day time
- new contents published got indexed 1st position - 4th position, dropped off, then came back 1 position lower on almost all
edited - Long tailed keywords are also observed. new keywords entering site everyday, keywords that have never seen before and never thought someone will type it down

Today 21st NOV our time, traffic remain exactly the same in terms of position and number of visitors since 18th


The funny thing about this is, it has impact on the most quality news site in this country that I'm keeping an eye on. One keyword that obtain 10M visitors per month, this news site dropped to 9th position for about 2 weeks now and I believe they're suffering.

for our site, we publish tons of quality, research, reference, everyday and we're known media brands to everyone.

Here is what I believe
Google might be trying to shuffle the position and the reason the low quality site is on top since google bot crawls that site more often. So, any site has google bots camping in there, the position goes up the ceiling. This is from my 10 years experience working on SEO.

Any site that has it's traffic drop now, will come back and gain normally 50%-200% more than it used to. However, I saw site that never come back too.

I don't care about politics in USA, or how google make money since it is out of our hands, so as long as we produce good, different contents for google to sell its ads on constantly. It will eventually come back.

[trinorthlighting]

For those that sell on eccomerce, google shopping actions are taking up all the google shopping feed real estate which is not good. Guess a few cents per click is not good enough for google any longer as they would rather become like amazon and take a 12% cut....

[glakes]

For those that sell on eccomerce, google shopping actions are taking up all the google shopping feed real estate which is not good.

Thanks for the heads up. In my industry, the 12% commission would be better then the poor ROI from PPC for lower cost items. Even with high bids and good visibility, shopping was not generating much in terms of sales for us. Our prospective retail customers have largely abandoned Google.

[steffanlv]

@ Snowman68 -

1. Updating old content (making sure it is current, with accurate information and dates within 12-18 months from the current date).

That's mostly irrelevant. I have two sites that I tend to point to as proof that Google doesn't give a crap about freshness. One site hasn't been updated in over 5 years and still ranks #1 for competitive "SEO" related keyword phrases. Yes, i'm sure I could increase the ranking of the site for a few other competitive phrases but my point is the sites have ranked top 5 consistently for years, without new content.

[glakes]

That's mostly irrelevant.

I see forum posts for some buyer keywords from 2008 that have sat on the first page of the SERPS for years. There's nothing special about the forum posts, so I'd have to agree with you. What I think may be more relevant is SnowMan68's use of YouTube videos and also hopepro's statement "so as long as we produce good, different contents for google to sell its ads on constantly." The common denominator here is having a Google product embeded on the destination site, which gives Google another opportunity to pull visitors back into their walled garden and/or produce more PPC revenue.

[SnowMan68]

Is your increase in traffic coming from the SERPS or YouTube?

Our recent 30% increase is coming from Google organic traffic.

[SnowMan68]

I agree with the importance of video. I have over 10 thousand still photos that I've started to create Ken Burns style videos of our client work. In my biz it's hard to get actual video. The audience is no longer satisfied with a plain web page...that's for sure. It's all about stepping it up, but some days all the effort just seems to only bring greatly diminishing returns no matter what I do. The pressure is not from my competitors, well, yeah, in a way it is....its' from Google who it seems favors monetization / ad density over useful content. Maybe that's just how it appears out my window...but the stuff ranking around me is nothing but ad filled content farm fertilizer.

Not sure what line of business you're in, but I've seen the Ken Burns style videos work. Especially if you're using original content and consistently pushing new videos. Similar to Google, you just need to make sure your targeting what people are looking for on YouTube and then do a good job covering the entire subject with different high quality videos. That way you can get into the suggested videos and you'll really start to take off. Videos are a longer brand play, but I honestly think that is going to be required moving into the future.

[SnowMan68]

That's mostly irrelevant. I have two sites that I tend to point to as proof that Google doesn't give a crap about freshness. One site hasn't been updated in over 5 years and still ranks #1 for competitive "SEO" related keyword phrases. Yes, i'm sure I could increase the ranking of the site for a few other competitive phrases but my point is the sites have ranked top 5 consistently for years, without new content.

Google might not care (which is still disagree with) but the user definitely cares. It's all about perception. If you were searching for something and there were three options: one posted with a date from 2015, one from 2018 and one from 3 months ago, which would you be more inclined to read and trust? Especially if you're unfamiliar with the brand and/or subject.

If the user is learning about something new to them and they don't know that product (using product as an example) hasn't changed since 2015, wouldn't they still assume that the content from 3 months ago is most relevant, since it is the most current? Wouldn't you also trust the website that has put the time into ensuring their content is up to date versus a site that has content that "appears" old? I understand that this is gamed all of the time, so you still have to come through with legit content and be better than the next site, but you have to hit on all things, not just one or two anymore.

This makes sense to me, especially when I ask family and friends who are not webmasters what their feelings are on the exact scenario.

I can tell you that doing a better job staying current with our content had a positive impact for us. We started to receive more calls, emails and sign ups on our buying guides, from content that hadn't performed as well as it had in the past. This turned into more sales and it appears it could have had an impact on our relationship with Google's core update.

Like I mentioned above, this was just one of the things we've done. But I believe it is an important one.

We've been fighting the good fight with Google for the last 14 years. Our business was built on Google traffic and I understand all of the stuff everyone is going through on this thread. We've dealt with all of the animals. We are just trying to break free from relying solely on Google search, since it creates a lot of sleepless nights. We've made really good progress over the last year and I'm hopeful we can continue to branch out with the different things we've been doing with social and YouTube.

[seomotionz]

so as long as we produce good, different contents for google to sell its ads on constantly. It will eventually come back.

@hopepro Your speculation is correct. As long as we produce content or different forms of one content for example videos, infographs etc where Google will be able to put its ads in it. The rankings will come back.

Now we just have to figure out that where else Google can put it ads on?!

[NeapTide]

All of you who are affected by recent algo update, please check your backlinks too. If they are pile of junk, spammy or coming from dead websites then disavow them. My one site that lost 50 percent traffic this month has dead backlinks coming from hundreds of dead sites. Someone intentionally made those to hurt my ranking. This negative SEO also affected my site last year and it has happened again after 1.5 year. So do analyze your backlinks too.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

What do you call "dead sites" ?

[dollarsound]

Today keep dropping additional 10%

[poptima]

All of you who are affected by recent algo update, please check your backlinks too. If they are pile of junk, spammy or coming from dead websites then disavow them. My one site that lost 50 percent traffic this month has dead backlinks coming from hundreds of dead sites. Someone intentionally made those to hurt my ranking. This negative SEO also affected my site last year and it has happened again after 1.5 year. So do analyze your backlinks too.

did you get out of the penalty?
how much time did it cost you?

[JesterMagic]

@samwest - Unfortunately today's rank isn't the same as 2014. Mobile phones with smaller screens and all of Google's extra widgets and ads pushing organic down.

@rustybrick (and the rest of the major SEO players) - Your SEO site and reporting are very good but I find sometimes the major SEO players don't call Google out on what they do wrong. It seems like everyone who has contacts within Google doesn't want to burn any bridges.

(here's a way-out there idea) You guys that have the media clout should get together and create a new website that explains how the different parts of Google search works and what needs to be improved/fixed. Make it a place where Government officials and other Media can go, that have no real experience in search, so they can find an explanation that they can understand.

I think this is the only way to educate people and get the ball rolling on some real changes and hopefully prevent things like the recent WSJ article that full of errors. This will obviously take a lot of time to do but maybe a GoFundMe campaign could help out.

[southernguy]

@JesterMagic I did not find the WSJ to be full of errors, it had a few and it was harsh, but trying to explain Google search with a subtle tone to the average person/user I don't think works. That is why Google dominates even today because most people today can't differentiate between good and bad search results.

[southernguy]

And Google keeps going further and further trying to keep users, WTF. [seroundtable.com...]

[samwest]

You guys that have the media clout should get together and create a new website that explains how the different parts of Google search works and what needs to be improved/fixed. Make it a place where Government officials and other Media can go, that have no real experience in search, so they can find an explanation that they can understand.

I totally agree and I'll take that challenge...I'm putting that on my list and I have the perfect retired domain that is as old as Google itself and ample hosting space. Combined, we can have the clout. I'll need professional contributors & collaborators like all of you to make it work.

[edited by: samwest at 3:18 pm (utc) on Nov 21, 2019]

[Delta3Girl]

Brand new although I started reading with the October version of this thread. I tried to post this in The Wall since I wasn't sure where to put it, but I was asked over and over again to log in even though I'm clearly logged in. So I apologize if this needs to be moved.

I'm in the homemaking/homeschooling niche and have a well-established website with good traffic. I have ranked very well for many keywords after a lot of work on SEO the past few years, but now it's anyone's guess. I can open my AdSense account each day and almost exactly guess how many page views I have that morning. It can vary from X to 3X depending on what Google is doing. The fluctuations are insane.

So my honest question.

I daily get multiple emails asking me to either insert a specific link in a particular post or else publish a guest post. For years I have always said no since my understanding is that taking money for such things would hurt me in the Google rankings. (And I'm not doing it for free.) I already link out liberally when I write, but it is all organic or clearly affiliate links. These links would be paid.

However, given what Google is currently devolving into and how much I'm not making on AdSense, I'm wondering if it makes sense to continue to turn down these income opportunities.

Do I understand Google's policies correctly? Would my entire site get deranked? I know it is frowned upon, but is it illegal or against the TOU? I won't do something illegal. But I also don't want to miss out on opportunities if I'm understanding things incorrectly. I also have a WooCommerce printables shop and I don't want to hurt that part of my business by Google tanking whatever is left of my rankings.

Thank you for any help you can provide!

[MayankParmar]

Discover/News traffic is down. Anyone else?

[StupidIntelligent]

@MayankParmar - are you again hit on discover?

[samwest]

Zip traffic and whatever manages to get through is full tilt zombies again today.

[samwest]

Interesting finds is back again...it destroys traffic by stuffing the top with non authoritative useless ad fill link bait garbage.

[samwest]

Zero or 1 hit per hour all day...what happened... again? Unbelievable. Anyone else?

[trinorthlighting]

Eccomerce sites are all down to half of what they were last year, nothing changed on our end, just looks like garbage traffic. Seems like this Google Shopping actions is getting all the traffic now.

[aristotle]

Delta3Girl
If I understand google's position, you're supposed to put nofollow tags on that type of link.

[samwest]

@delta3girl... welcome! I get your concerns but why would it be illegal or against any rules for you to make a buck when Google is clearly cleaning up to the tune of billions per quarter and partially at your expense? I personally would do as mentioned above, unfollow and don't worry...besides it's supposed to be about great quality content, out link trivialities be damned.

Since the precipitous drop began in 2010...my site has now dropped to 10% of what it was and I've resorted to allowing google to slap auto ads all over my site just to make some pizza money. Seems to actually help my rank more than hurt. YMMV.