Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2020

[seomotionz]

The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4974557.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:10 am on Jan 2, 2020 - (PDT -8)

20 years of data show that updates have created MUCH more than a "twitch" in traffic.

Its not a twitch if it costs you a significant amount of money.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:20 pm (utc) on Jan 2, 2020]
[edit reason] cleanup after split to new thread [/edit]

[seomotionz]

Today sites are flooded with zombie traffic. Specially 'not set' location ones.

[griffinx]

The SERPS are crazy and totally irrelevant. Earlier, whenever I used to search about things related to coding - I used to get stackoverflow. Now, its filled with junk sites that are totally irrelevent.

I feel with BERT they are trying to read and understand the content rather than give weight-age for keyword optimization.

But, in Keyword Optimization - the writer knows what the reader is looking for and tries to write good content to have good page time. That coupled with DA would lead to good results. Especially the searchers intent and content producers intent are matched.

Now, that has gone out the window and they are having BERT understand. Now, BERT understands content and is in the middle of content producer and searcher. And, I dont think BERT understands much. Human language is complex and I think they pushed the AI too much.

[whoa182]

The SERPs have never been more relevant from my point of view.

I do a lot of research, every day, and it's far easier to find things now since BERT.

It actually feels like Google is starting to improve again!

[Shepherd]

Featured snippet = organic listing demotion: [twitter.com...]

Poor Wikipedia...

New target for SEOs, snipe that image in the featured listing, big money.

As an aside, funny how easy it is for google to reshuffle those sacred organic listings.

[glakes]

Confirmed featured snippet push to #1 on page 2

Is there a way to get out of Google's "Featured Scrapeit" listing without noindexing the entire page?

I'm assuming the SERP tracker volatility today is solely related to the featured snippet changes. Still I'm seeing terrible conversions from Google. They outdid themselves with the last update...

[RareBit]

The FS change has actually helped us as for 1 query we always show as one of the images with a competitor link underneath. We were always 2nd on this term with said competitor 1st - not anymore:)..and due to the shopping results & reviews their URL is now halfway down the page

[NickMNS]

@glakes

Is there a way to get out of Google's "Featured Scrapeit" listing without noindexing the entire page?

[support.google.com...]

I would be very hesitant to opt out. Specially at this time, this change will have a major impact on how users will interact with the search results. The way users interacted in the past will change as they no longer find the duped listing in the results. In the near term this will likely increase the number of users that go to page 2. Over time users will get used to this change and the FS will be the new position one. How this will impact a specific websites traffic will be hard to predict. I'm not sure how easy opting back in will be if you realize that it was a mistake to opt out.

The other issue is that this will skew the data for all the rank reporting tools, making there results even less reliable. The good news is that this simplifies the counting of the position as we are now effectively back to 1 to 10, so in few weeks these tools should be a little more reliable then they were before this change.(but still not reliable IMHO)

[southernguy]

@whoa182 I guess it all depends on the niche, while I no longer use Google I do check the search from time to time and find it not to be relevant.

For health, I stopped using it because Google is too biased and only seems to keep two or three sites with irrelevant information, those that come to mind are Health Line and Medical News Today just a bunch of generic content with no substance.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a clients house upgrading a PC from Win 7 to Wind 10, I needed some chipset drivers (since the client had Google search set to default) I searched for a specific motherboard model number and brand, it gave me a bunch of repeated results that included Softonic and a few old Amazon listings neither answered the query.

I then performed the same search on DDG, the first two results were of the specific motherboard model and the chipset drivers from the manufacturer followed by the official manufacturer website, I did the exact same search phrase on Bing and the results were similar.

@glakes Is there a way to get out of Google's "Featured Scrapeit" listing without noindexing the entire page?

I was thinking the same thing this morning, I have a website that was converting well, its a single product and was never in a rich snippet, as of last week's updates it now shows up in several places for certain keyword search terms in Google, since then, my conversions have tanked. It is still doing well with other search engines. I am just wondering if its because the snippets are followed by so much clutter afterward along with answer boxes that it kills if for people leading them to try a different search term.

[ClosedForLunch]

Is there a way to get out of Google's "Featured Scrapeit" listing without noindexing the entire page?

Yes, you can opt out of featured snippets using meta tags.

[support.google.com ]

[support.google.com ]

[glakes]

@NickMNS & ClosedForLunch

Thanks for the link and suggestion about not opting out of FS. I don't plan to opt-out just yet, but definitely want it as an option.

I can see where SEO tools may be more accurate in reporting keyword positions. Unfortunately there is too much personalization going on in my industry from what I see. Positions are swapped on the fly, which leaves SEO position tools unreliable. Traffic quality from Google, which was already bad, took a huge drop for us on the second week of November and has only gotten worse. Google's poor traffic quality also impacted Adwords. For example, one $16 product with a conversion cost of $2 in Adwords rose to $8 in a very brief period of time.

About the only data point I trust these days, when it comes to Google, is conversions. Higher organic traffic from Google and far fewer conversions is the trend. One would not expect these to move in opposite directions, but they have been since November (and getting worse by the day). We've cut one guys hours last week as a result. The way things are looking, his position may be phased out entirely.

[seomotionz]

Yesterday, for example, I was at a clients house upgrading a PC from Win 7 to Wind 10, I needed some chipset drivers (since the client had Google search set to default) I searched for a specific motherboard model number and brand, it gave me a bunch of repeated results that included Softonic and a few old Amazon listings neither answered the query.

I then performed the same search on DDG, the first two results were of the specific motherboard model and the chipset drivers from the manufacturer followed by the official manufacturer website, I did the exact same search phrase on Bing and the results were similar.

@southernguy Know that feeling pretty well. Google keeps showing pages from the big dawg sites no matter how old and/or irrelevant to the present query it is.

[StupidIntelligent]

Another update may have started from the 22nd. We'll know soon.

[glakes]

@southernguy

Some believe many searchers just overlook featured snippets, which may be happening in your case. The clutter is indeed crazy. Google has added so much nonsense, such as the answer box with five question dropdowns, it makes it very difficult to find what it is we are searching for with all the distractions.

[samwest]

Just wanted to drop in to see if anyone experienced a conversion anomaly yesterday. For me this started at 1am CST and went through to about 8pm CST. Steady traffic and regular conversions all day...highest day of the year in fact. Not complaining, but when I see stuff like this, I gotta think something is up....or down. Anyone else see this? Today traffic seems to have reverted right back to fully throttled.

[SweetPotato]

Ok I'm done. I will ditch my domain and start over elsewhere I'm not even gonna 301 redirect, or js or meta refresh or roboted redirect. Screw it, I don't rank for anything anymore. I don't want my old domain to jinx my new one.
I also plan doing full theme change and completely drop rich snippets, it hasn't done anything for me in terms of traffic, even on sites that do rank.

I'll prolly force 404 headers on the old domain so it gets naturally deindexed. And add a simple line of text (not a link, just text) mentioning the new domain.

My only regret. I rank first on Yandex for all my main kws.
But on Google nowhere, not even top 100. I'm sick.

[cellist]

SEMrush Sensor is showing increased volatility today - kind of an after shock after the earthquake (5.6/10).

[w_hebb]

Since Jan 22, we have seen a moderate drop off in traffic, but a huge drop off in conversions organically and in PPC. I can understand why an algo change would effect organics, but hard to rationalize why it would also affect PLA and conventional adwords. SEM still showing high volatility for our Food sector and SEM notes a negative trend for the food sector for what appears to be an update. A lot of our products have also moved into the featured snippets.

[TeresaD]

@samwest, yes 2 days ago and it paid my weekly wage, nothing since someone switched my website off

sorry I wish it was better news

[universenet]

Seems google has some problem again
Last year they lost part of data of websites by mistake
Who know what is now
Google losing money too if search results is not relevant
Somthing is wrong.. maybe algorythm gone wrong

[samwest]

@TeresaD - it looked like a quota catch up...but at least I seem to have a quota. Traffic one day later was ridiculously dismal. Just more indication of throttling in action. I'm guessing all filters were off yesterday. This coincided with a hosting network outage too, which itself lowered traffic, yet still had the best day in the past full year. I thought it was a roll back to 2007. Something seems to have rolled through overnite in my niche. Traffic way down today.

[jmorgan]

What a write-off this month has been. First the Indian harvest festival, then the long (MLK) weekend in the US, and now Chinese New Year. And we can throw in Australia Day for good measure.

[abhishekyadava]

tHIS UPDATE help me to get more traffic and good ranking.

[sk7411]

Seeing activity from yesterday .

[RedBar]

So far across several sites, January's traffic levels are looking like many previous years with year-on-year growth.

Unfortunately I am still getting a lot of Polish email spam this week into one specific .asia address. Whilst it's very easy to cope with I may simply turn off that address since we consolidated our email addresses in November / December.

As was noted in an earlier post, it seems to be all mobile / smartphone related from seemingly genuine companies with unsubscribe links!

[universenet]

It is big change in number of visits inside short time...
It is new update or google has some serious problem with data?

Many visits was delivered from first page google search to twitter yesterday

[mondoinweb]

They talk about it here [support.google.com...]
write your problem here too, let's see if maybe some Google guru answers us

[universenet]

They talk about it here [support.google.com...]
write your problem here too, let's see if maybe some Google guru answers us

It is not my problem.. it is google problem

mondoinweb I care for google ...understand?
Google can finnish like Boeing.. close to bankruptcy
but I will not.. I do not depend of google..I just care for google because I like google

So..do you see? I am much diferent of you

[RareBit]

has anyones Favicons disappeared today? I am back to seeing the old version of the SERPs..

[RedBar]

has anyones Favicons disappeared today?

Nope but what I have noticed is that the favicon is not live from my sites, I changed it a few days ago and whereas DDG showed it immediately, Google's has yet to update / renew / whatever.

[Shepherd]

favicon is not live

Took several days for ours to update in the SERPs.

update: and just checked ddg, OLD favicon, headline, and description...