Google Updates and SERP Changes - December 2019

[glakes]

This post and the following 3 posts were moved from Nov 2019 thread [webmasterworld.com...]
by not2easy at 5:42 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2019

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Solid quantity of traffic coming from Google, but it's all rubbish. I'd likely have a better conversion rate with the same quantity of traffic using pop-unders on unrelated sites.

Bing/Yahoo are converting well and Amazon is solid as always. Just another day of Google proving their irrelevance in my ecommerce industry...


[edited by: not2easy at 5:42 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2019]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:44 pm (utc) on Dec 2, 2019]
[edit reason] split cleanup [/edit]

[JesterMagic]

Seeing this for a few brand searches related to our niche.

The first serp page looks like (not including actual paid ads):

1 - Link to brand
2 - People Also Asked Widget
3 - Link to YouTube video
4 - Link to YouTube video
5 - Link to YouTube Channel
6 - Link to YouTube video
7 - Link to YouTube video
8 - Link to YouTube video
9 - Related Search Widget for other brands (showing their icons)
10 - Related Search Widget for other brands (showing their icons)
11 - Searches related to "my search term" (text keyword list of searches related to brand)

So for 11 returned search results (including widgets) on this page only 1 goes to a 3rd party site (the actual brand), all others either go to you tube or google search again.

[RedBar]

For my widgets I certainly see YouTube links plus regularly, completely irrelevant Ebay links plus, of course, their favourite site for which they seem to be lining-up a take-over bid, Pinterest.

I'm sick of seeing that site with all my images plastered everywhere, the only Pinterest.tld site that seems to acknowledge mine is the Philippines!

[samwest]

@Jester & Red - Yep, it's a mess for sure. All results are biased in some way toward their own financial interests. In my case, I am shadowed by a dot dash domain that ranks for every imaginable related key phrase and yet is nothing but a thin , AD FILLED aggregation article. No EAT whatsoever. Pinterest is another ridiculous SERP hog these days...and I would venture a guess that Gorg owns it by year (2020) end.

[southernguy]

Yesterday I decided to start writing again for a couple of my sites. While doing research for ideas and looking at what competitors who are ranking are doing I could not believe the garbage at the top of the search. A bunch of sites, some scrapers others legit are poorly written with bad grammar, wordy, incorrect sentence structure and a couple of lines per paragraph.

Just for the heck of it, I am going to start a new site in a few days and spew out some garbage like my competitors (cringe) and see if and how it ranks, I know I shouldn't be but I'm truly mind boggled at how bad Google search is now.

I'm sure Google has metrics and most of those must be positive in order for them to be returning the search that we see. I personally just can't use Google anymore, but obviously millions still do.

[OldFaces]

Southernguy are the 'garbage' results all from new websites? I ask because of the 'Google Honeymoon' period that indexes and ranks higher than usual new webpages for a short period of time.

When I start doing random queries related to my brand I discover a lot. I don't do it often enough obviously...I just realized our wikipedia page ranks higher than our actual website which has been online for 19 years. :P I know that particular wikipedia page doesn't have more 3rd party links than us, I know that the page on wikipedia is considered a 'stub' article so it doesn't win on content... Riddle me this: How in the world does Google consider a search query for our brand that a thin content non linked to wikipedia article ranks higher than our homepage? lol

[mhansen]

Re: Update for brands?

I've got a site that compares widgets, features, pricing, consumer ratings, etc in the lead-gen sphere. I'm an SEMRush user for many years and while the data is not perfect, it does help with historical growth, drops, discovery etc, so I have enough trust in it to believe the data.

In the last 3-4 days, we are seeing a drop in non-targeted brand related terms on pages where the brand itself was not a goal in content. We don't always target these specific users, but they were picked up due to the "brand + keyphrase" queries, where "keyphrase" was the actual target for the users and "brand" was simply a small part of the page content. Overall, in SEMRush, I'm seeing a drop of 7-10 positions for most brand related queries where the brand itself is NOT a goal of the page content.

On pages where the brand WAS a user we're trying to appeal to... ie: "brand + keyphrase", I've seen no change at all. Static rankings.

In other old news... ranking #1 in an organic query is just about useless any longer. If you don't have the "featured snippet" or the top "people also asked" question boxes, you might as well be on page 2. We lost a "featured snippet" on a 8,400/mo search query, but kept the #1 and #2 organic rankings along with many answers within the "people also asked" question (not the first one though), and went from 80 or so conversions per day on this specific page, to under 10 per day, with that overnight change.

2020 here we come! Woohoo!

[southernguy]

@OldFaces Most of the sites I see have been around for a while, I did further research and two of them were dropped domains that were registered. They outrank one of the authority sites that I have babied for many years and it has been clobbered for several months and outranked by the sites I mention. I guess there is just no way of knowing.

I have a couple of others that are in very low competition niches that have not moved at all for a long time and have maintained their ranking.

[EditorialGuy]

In other old news... ranking #1 in an organic query is just about useless any longer. If you don't have the "featured snippet" or the top "people also asked" question boxes, you might as well be on page 2.

That hasn't been my experience. As with most things, it depends.

[mhansen]

That hasn't been my experience. As with most things, it depends.

You are very correct, I should not have generalized. Much depends on user intent and serp layout for the specific query. In my case, the query is very focused and the layout contains quite a bit of knowledge panels.

- Ad 1 [Large Product Ads on right]
- Ad 2
- Ad 3
- Ad 4
- Featured Snippet
- Users also Asked
- Small Product Slider
- First organic result

[EditorialGuy]

Sure, it's going to depend on the page layout, among other things. It would be interesting to see an objective analysis of user behavior on various types of SERPs and layouts. As SERPs become more cluttered, what percentage of users scroll to the organic results? Does that percentage vary according to whether a query is informational or commercial? What other factors come into play?

[OldFaces]

@mhansen I know this is also old news but your post about the ads just made me smile. I just can't help but smirk every single time with how many advertisements google has inserted into their SERPs ABOVE the content whereas the old algo for publishers about top heavy ad penalties. I know, I know...this is probably a useless comment I'm making and it's SO old news...but whenever I see someone say (in this case Google) 'do as I say not what I do' I love to point it out.

[christianz]

Google ranking garbage over authority sites is common in my experience, and I expect nothing less :)

In fact, a much smaller spinoff site I created based on my main site data is now bringing in almost 1/2 as much visitors as the main site which took 15+ years to produce and gather data.

Google AI is either broken or optimized too much to boost Googles own profit and search result page quality is collateral damage.

[StupidIntelligent]

Another update started today or yesterday. Results will be found tomorrow or after.

[hodl2themoon]

What makes you think an update started yesterdat? Makes no sense

[seomotionz]

Happy New Year in advance. It looks like Google has a gift of its own for us this new year. Boom! 40% reduction in traffic, smile webmasters its time for you guys to switch professions.

[StupidIntelligent]

@seomotionz - Here's an anecdotal rumor. Sites that get the boom, when updates are being rolled out are destined to get a boost in traffic and vice versa.

[OldFaces]

FWIW Search Console finally updated their Index > Coverage information a few hours ago. Last Updated date now shows 12/29/19 for me. Regardless of what date it shows for you (the updates run every 3 days but we don't all have the same start date of course) we all should have updated information. I guess that hypothetical Google engineer that pushes the 'update' button went to work yesterday or this morning ;)

[seomotionz]

@StupidIntelligent So you are saying? I should expect a boost in traffic while the update is being totally rolled out?!

[samwest]

SERPs have taken yet another turn for the worse with the new.... ["search term" on TWITTER] block. This is new in my niche. Who needs a link to Twitter garbage? It's content is not even related to the query, or contains only one query word. Still seeing seasonally expected rise in traffic, but it's still all Zombie. What a mess to start 2020.

[glakes]

Who needs a link to Twitter garbage?

Google is likely gearing up for 2020 Presidential SERPS with increased news and social visibility to further their own desired political outcome.

It has become so bad in Google that it is impossible to find anything. News? I'm sorry to those that run news sites, but Google is the dead last place I would go to when looking for news. Everything Google outputs is heavily biased, and news/social are no different IMO.

[sk7411]

Happy New Year in advance. It looks like Google has a gift of its own for us this new year. Boom! 40% reduction in traffic, smile webmasters its time for you guys to switch professions.

I am pretty sure what you are seeing is nothing but new year's eve effect and probably will stay like that for a couple of days . Relax :)

[EditorialGuy]

Boom! 40% reduction in traffic, smile webmasters its time for you guys to switch professions.

For us, it's closer to a 40% increase, which is entirely normal (and always welcome) at this time of year. Not every traffic peak or dip is the result of a search-engine update.

[NickMNS]

I'm seeing an increase in traffic too. I was up close to 20% yesterday, and going strong today. I don't typically see a seasonal uptick at this time of the year.

[samwest]

For us, it's closer to a 40% increase

@EG have you EVER seen a decrease? Do you do any videos? Use CMS? Do you advertise? Seems the travel guide niche is full of big brands and lots of ads. Are you getting volume traffic because 14 hits over 10 hits could be considered 40% increase.

[EditorialGuy]

Yes, samwest, we get significant traffic (and revenue). My point, which you apparently missed, is that every twitch in traffic isn't the result of an update, and the sky isn't falling everywhere every day of the year. Sometimes, ups and downs are just business as usual.

[griffinx]

Can webmasters reporting a huge drop in traffic from November please check the date the indexing crawler was switched to Googlebot Smartphone?

We got switched to Mobile First Indexing on 3rd Nov 2019 and think it could be an issue.

[griffinx]

You can check the date of switch on Google Search Console under Settings.

[EditorialGuy]

We got switched to the mobile crawler in April of 2018. In looking back at Google Analytics for March to June, 2018, I can't see any effect at all.

[nomis5]

#griffinx

We swapped several months ago and it had zilch effect.

However, your website may have some problem associated with viewing it in mobile mode / navigation etc.. I would concentrate on that rather than the Mobile First indexing itself. Also, there seem to have been a whole pile of significant algorithm changes in changes in November / December. They could be the reason for your drop.

[samwest]

every twitch in traffic isn't the result of an update

20 years of data show that updates have created MUCH more than a "twitch" in traffic.
You're niche must be immune to the drastic changes many of us have experienced.
ON/OFF behavior is not a twitch.