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]

[Paperchaser]

I feel your pain @jrpfhc i have the same issue, my main site which is around 5yrs as well going down with no reason whatsoever to be replaced by copycats and junk site with no originality... Went from xxxx a day to xx and still going down, lesson learn though making my plans to not depend on google or search engin at all anymore. Done with this mind games, I mean we all sign to be working on our own it comes with the field but those massive changes and always with the clever explanation that tells you nothing lol...

[jmorgan]

I've noticed some improvements in my rankings. I think there was some update in the last day or so.

[hopepro]

I'm seeing a ridiculous way that google limits the traffic

For example, keyword A, keyword B, keyword C

keyword A is receiving about 5 hits per minute in GA

Keyword B started to gain traffic and it reaches about 3-4 hits per minute in GA

All of the sudden, keyword A started to fall off and no stats on real time traffic

Then again, keyword C started to rank in the same amount of traffic, A and B are gone

These 3 keywords can be in different niches or on the same niches

If we're talking in a bigger picture - real time stats show 270, going up to 290, break 300, up to 350 active users, once it reaches this limit it falls down to 260-250 right away at that very moment

- I've assigned one person to monitor GA traffic the whole day except night time a week after algo changed
- Started this test 3 weeks ago, results are all the same, never break 350 active user on site of which before NOV 7 it was 600-800 active users in peak hours
- No server problem, no site down, no other technical issues

Other findings:
- Never seen before sites going up 1st position
- Facebook and Twitter rank 1-5 on some keywords and with double and even triple ranking
- Spammy site, thin content, bridge page, etc.. on top
- new keywords enter my site with longer tails
- Youtube listed in normal search in some kws, most I've seen is the whole first page
- New contents published rank on desktop first, one hour later, mobile

Been through so many algo changes, this is the most frustrated and the most unreasonable + unnecessary one.

[hopepro]

I think i know how this works now.

i guess google tries to limit the traffic for any mysterious reasons. when kw rank fast 1st position, another google selected keyword will go down to maintain the traffic limit

the team has tested today, publish one content and it jumped to 1st position getting around 20-30 visitors active. Another 3 kws that ranked before getting 5-7 active each and receive around the same amount of traffic in total started to lose their rankings.

Can those who can publish and rank test the same thing as i did?

Anyway, i cant think of any specific reason for google to limit the traffic for website. Any ideas?

[mosxu]

@hopepro

“i guess google tries to limit the traffic for any mysterious reasons. when kw rank fast 1st position, another google selected keyword will go down to maintain the traffic limit”

A clear sign of quota, why they limit traffic is to keep small players with small bank accounts honest.

At an auction when you want to sell something expensive you invite rich individuals and it is the same here.

We actually only live in our industry from whatever is left from these initial first auctions. This is how far personalisation goes.

[themistral]

I'm seeing some very odd behaviour in our vertical (legal) which is service based and not generally seen as seasonal.

Friday (Black Friday in the UK) saw our organic traffic drop like a stone - more than halved.
Sat and Sun remained low.
Put this down to everyone rushing around to get all the black friday "deals" and so our services not being important in comparison. I can get that.

Monday and Tuesday saw organic traffic rise back up to just below average traffic - again we expect to see a dip in December.

Today is so far slow. And it really seems to me like Google are throttling traffic. I suspected this a few weeks ago.
1 hour we will see 10 organic visits, then the next 2 hours, no visits.

We are also seeing increased visibility in SEMrush which I would expect to help organic traffic.
We are a low traffic site, so it's not always easy to make any presumptions from what we see but it does seem odd to me.

[glakes]

@hopepro

Thanks for your two latest posts. The date of impact (November 7) coincides with our drop in conversions from Google and expected seasonal rise in traffic to our information pages. Looking at November 7 to current, this is what we see from Google:

Users: + 26.8%
Conversion Rate: - 69.4%

If I narrow the date range, the numbers are even uglier.

We are a manufacturer, and we sell our products directly to consumers on our website. To support consumer sales, we have a substantial amount of useful information for the consumer. As seasonal traffic to our information pages rose in early November, Google traffic going to our product pages almost completely disappeared.

Witnessing the dramatic rise and fall of keywords in Google, and with it conversions, is surreal. Based on past history, I would have expected the total number of conversions from Google to rise along with our rise in seasonal traffic, yet the opposite occurred - a massive fall in conversions.

How does a small domestic manufacturer adapt in this corrupt environment Google created? Do we add noindex to our most useful pages for Google so that we can regain some traffic back to our product pages? Or would that even be enough? Might we have to remove these pages entirely? Adwords is dead, even with very high bids, so that is out of the question.

Having great content on our information pages is clearly working against us on Google. The problem is traffic to these seasonal information pages will grow exponentially in the coming 1-2 months. Can we expect an exponential drop in conversions from Google, which are already bad, to occur as well?

[seomotionz]

Something is definitely happening. SEMrush is showing 3.9

Strange pages are getting lots of traffic and the usual pages are not. And also from what I am seeing large sites are dominating the SERP's more than ever.

[renatovieira]

Yesterday 3/12 I had a high (abnormal) traffic spike. Today the traffic has disappeared. Sounds like some test/update.

From the way it happened, it does seem to me like a Google filter test.

Someone else?

[heisje]

@jrpfhc : what is the primary topic of the site you mention?

.

[samwest]

Clearly getting stomped by the algo today.If the beginning of the week is any indication, I predict a slow rest of the week. It's pretty easy to see these days.

[frankleeceo]

@hopepro

Echoing you, I have observed what you see since a long long time ago - 5 yrs+. I believe this effect is easily seen by small/mid scale publishers with smaller amount of URL's. In addition, this is mostly easily observed when new content is consistently published. Many sites do not.

I also believe that this effect is only applied to a specific bucket of publisher. Some niche saw it way before others, I believe I was among the first, as I operate in non-important games/entertainment sector. The obvious choice of lab rat to pick on.

If you did not see it before and now experiencing it, maybe the "system" just got rolled out to your niche as well. And if that's the case, then soon or later it's coming for everyone!

Many big fish SEO's with millions of URL's under their site cannot really tell / test due to their scale. When a new KW/page is introduced, and a resulting -0.001% loss across millions of KW/URL's is negligible. It's not that easy of a test with keywords variation / combination.

In essence, it's a part of a system and there's nothing we could do. I also call this part of the system traffic filter / dampening factor, and there are a few others vow not to call it that :). It is what it is.

I actually see it with a positive light. So that most sites get some rotated traffic into them. Google then is able to get some type of feedback loop about how the underlying sites perform. But of course you could also put a monopolistic / conspiracy spin into this setup.

The "quota" can only be broken on an overall site traffic pool basis. What I realized..simply adding content to try to break traffic ceiling is a hopeless tactic. Not to say it's not necessary to add content, but more needs to be done like...links / promotion / coding / underlying tech / the usual SEO stuff. Rephrase...content itself usually isn't the really why overall site traffic is not increasing. It's the Google game.

[riccarbi]

I actually see it with a positive light. So that most sites get some rotated traffic into them.

I totally agree with your analysis. BUT
Wasn't Google's mission to provide the most relevant/best results long time ago?
Didn't they say to us that content is king and to improve your ranking you'd have to create more original and high-quality content for your users?
What's the point in doing those things, if Google rotates traffic randomly in order to do not let websites exceed their pre-assigned traffic quota?

[glakes]

I actually see it with a positive light.

Whether it's positive or negative depends on ones perspective. Those who have ads or affiliate links on all their pages would likely not see much of an impact from a page's keywords rise as another page's keywords fall. I'll explain how this impacts us, as a manufacturer, with a fictitious product example in quotes below.

We are a domestic manufacturer of specialized snow shovels that are ergonomically friendly. Because of the added cost in making our snow shovels ergonomically friendly, big box stores don't want to carry our products because they are too pricey for their customers. While we do sell to smaller wholesalers, we make our products available to consumers for purchase directly on our website.

For years we've sold many snow shovels leading up to winter. During the thick of winter, we still sell shovels too as people break, wear out or simply want a better snow shovel that won't hurt their back. October was great for sales as was the first week of November. Then the first major snowfall hit and people started searching for ways to reduce back pain when shoveling snow. We have a great information page that helps people reduce pain shoveling, and it's not specific to our products since there are methods one can use to reduce back pain with any shovel. Because our reducing back pain when shoveling information page is now getting a ton of traffic from Google, Google is no longer sending traffic to our snow shovel product pages. As a result, consumers can't find our shovels on Google and sales have dropped substantially despite our overall website traffic being up by 25%.

As I said before, the above is a fictitious product example. However, the example above tells a similar tale to that of our present situation. We're a manufacturer and also provide great information to help consumers. But in helping the consumer by providing very useful information, Google may be penalizing us by dropping traffic to our product pages as a way to throttle total website traffic.

So in the fictitious product example above, how would anyone dig out of this mess? (Pun intended)

1. Put noindex on the reduce back pain when shoveling page?
2. Remove the back pain when shoveling page?
3. Do nothing despite the knowing the back pain page's traffic should quadruple in the next month?
4. Get the pink slips ready to handout for Christmas?
5. Something else?

If this is truly how Google throttles traffic to a website, then having non-product pages on an ecommerce domain will definitely be a no no going forward. Unfortunately we don't have thin content info pages to trim. All of our info pages are top notch in both providing information and related visuals. All I can say is it's a sad day when we have to even consider deleting pages that consumers love and find useful - just so we can get some Google traffic back to our product pages (store). In fact, some of our visitors actually take the time to send us emails thanking us for the information we provide.

[frankleeceo]

@glakes

Have you gained more traffic to the backpain pages while lost traffic on the shovel store pages?

Is the traffic to shovel store pages remains the same but non converting?

[glakes]

Have you gained more traffic to the backpain pages while lost traffic on the shovel store pages?

Yes

Is the traffic to shovel store pages remains the same but non converting?

No. Traffic is much lower to the shovel store product pages. Also, Google is not crawling the shovel store product pages as often and is now crawling the back pain pages aggressively.

[samwest]

@glakes... so long as Google operates a black box SE with zero transparency... apparently operating outside the WMG's...then the success of your site will continue to be smothered. What gets me is the ad filled garbage aggregations that now dominate our SERPs provide poor value and multiple tiers to get to your 'shovel' pages. I'm seeing a very similar situation. I'll bet you have at least one such site listing your "shovels" within their ad ridden content. I do.

With a hot start to the week...I totally predicted today's decline. Its throttled alright and it's a complex process that is changing hourly. My weekly totals have been quota'd weekly for many months.

[samwest]

As I write this...my GART shows 20 visits while active pages shown 3...and Matomo shows 1. Something is definitely fubar again....and now the GART number is climbing to ridiculous numbers while the active pages remains the same 3. Knobs appear to be changing as we speak.

The "Right Now" number keeps counting UP and not resetting. Never seen this one before.

[samwest]

Today Google made $444.444.444.44 and we all made diddly. Merry Christmas.

[SnowMan68]

It does appear something happened last week Wednesday. We are up another small amount from last week. So far since the core update ran in October, we are up 47% with G organic. We made a small increase when core first launched, then a much larger increase during the November tweak. Now it seems like we are gaining 4-6% each week. We consistently publish longer form content on our blog, but our organic growth had been stagnant for over a year.

I don't have a great feeling about it staying this way for an extended period of time, which is why we continue to diversify our traffic and lead sources. I'll take it while it lasts though.

[gatormark]

Wow! The traffic on one of my websites just increased by 450% a couple of days ago. Was there a Google algorithm update the first of the month? A lot of my keywords went from about #4 to #1 or 2 in the Google SERP. The first good news in 2 years. I got hit really hard in the December 2017 Google update.

[glakes]

so long as Google operates a black box SE with zero transparency... apparently operating outside the WMG's...then the success of your site will continue to be smothered.

@samwest

It certainly appears Google is trying to cap our traffic, which is new to us. In prior years our "back pain" page would take off as normal without impacting traffic to our product pages. This year is much different, and the lack of Google crawling the product pages leads me to believe this will not change anytime soon. I never thought having very good and highly relevant information pages on an ecommerce site would be like a boat anchor on sales, but Google continues to turn the screw tighter even when one thinks it can't be tightened any further.

With Page and Brin stepping aside, I think we are going to see Google flex their dominance far further to extract even more profits from search. What I'm seeing now may just be the early stages of what will ultimately devastate many small businesses that have managed to survive thus far in an already hostile environment.

[renatovieira]

Yesterday 04/12 at semrush I noticed a huge drop in my two sites.

In G Analytics nothing too sharp.

Has anyone else noticed a huge drop in semrush?

[NickMNS]

I am seeing signs of an update. My main site was up ~10% on Tuesday, over 20% yesterday, and today things are going strong, it looks like it'll be even better than yesterday. Unfortunately my second site is seeing a drop in traffic over the same period.

Figures are based on comparison to same day last week.

[gatormark]

@NickMNS yes, it seems like updates are taking place right now. I don’t know why Google always seems to do this in December, right before Christmas. However, for me, the updates are proving to be good...finally.

[topaz]

[support.google.com...]
^ that's brutal...I guess when @methode said on twitter a few weeks back that we shouldn't depend on Discover traffic..he knew something was coming down the pipes.

I'm looking at a -50% in discover traffic the last 4 days. Lower visibility in top stories and Google News too. International news site with majority US traffic. I feel like their algos are off when it comes to US GEO searches for non-US related keywords. They serve up US sites instead...which are often irrelevant, and stale by weeks and months.

[hopepro]

I've done extra research and found out that

- Many medium size sites shows traffic drop in Similarweb of about 20%-78% (ours is 51% drop)
- Even though similarweb shows 51% drop, I'm still rank on the same number of which I believe that there might be many other publishers dropped more than me
- On many high competition keywords such as lotto. The search result in google shows only 5 pages that can be navigated (50 results) and keyword like [new car] has only 8 pages
- Search position insanity swings every 20 mins

Can those who have the same concern do some research and share? Thanks

[seomotionz]

@hopepro Don't know about SW. But from Monday a lot of site's traffic has fallen upto 30-40% and then on unusual times the traffic has bounced back to the very same limit that was fallen previously.

[hopepro]

@seomotionz my side, traffic has been stable since NOV 7, swing a little on weekends. last 2 days were about 10% increased. Today it seems to come back to the same level just like after NOV 7. It is exactly the same amount. So weird

[seomotionz]

@hopepro Its like Google has given us a daily quota of traffic.