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]

@MayankParmar What weird results?

@hopepro @samwest Enjoy while it lasts.

Traffic was down as it was weekend, any update or not.

[hopepro]

@seomotionz

From my research,

Algo Changed on March 2019 (can't remember exact date). It took me around May 2019 to recover

Algo Changed on NOV 7. Traffic fluctuated until mid December to slowly recover and fully recover at the end of December 2019 (Again, there was BERT and so on along the way)

Algo Changed on Jan 14. Traffic fluctuated until JAN 20 (slowly recover during the period)

Icon widget changed on Jan 23 not sure how much time to recover

From my study, The big algo change will usually take around 1-2 months to recover. So it might be able to say that, the recovering period depends on the how big Google is trying to adjust its ranking. If it is broad core, it could take longer, if it is minor adjustments, if lucky, then, it could be only a week

So Maybe, just Maybe, when there's a small changes, it might take lesser time or so.

My study covers this:
- A person sitting in front of GA all weekdays
- Analyzing Search Console every day
- See ranking for competitive keywords every day
- indexing time from published to rank
- monitor old content rank

[seomotionz]

@hopepro Actually its quite normal these days. The bigger the update the longer time you take to recover. And then again another update strikes out of nowhere (or pre-announced) then again webmasters starts working on it. Its been like this since the last two years or so.

[jediviper]

Whoever said anything about new Updates around the 26th, well nothing seems to be moving differently for ranking and SERP since the 24th.
So, not really something that could cause any new troubles.
I believe that anything that people are experiencing recently is from the Core January update.

[BushyTop]

My traffic is all but gone this morning. Like a tap turning off.. again... something extra coming?

[RedBar]

It's strange how one can think traffic sources are changing, I was convinced that my US traffic was down until I checked it, not G's stats I hasten to clarify.

Site 1

Last 6 months US traffic 33.5%
January 2020 so far 38.2%

Site 2

Last 6 months US traffic 21.1%
January 2020 so far 27.4%

Site 3

Last 6 months US traffic 25.9%
January 2020 so far 35.0%

Overall traffic volume is up, genuine business enquiries and sales are up.

For those who do not know me, B2B, no ecommerce, basically all in-depth widget brochure sites.

[samwest]

not G's stats I hasten to clarify.

whose stats then RB?

[samwest]

@BushyTop - It shut down again here too. If this simply reflects group behavior, (based on a few news stories) then humans act more like a murmuration of starlings or shoaling fish than I ever thought possible. I think there's much more to it thanks to ongoing AI traffic shaping.

[jmorgan]

I actually preferred having the favicon there. Now it's hard to see where the heck my site is in the SERPs without squinting.

All those people who were complaining about it, well done. You got your wish.

[manishareddy]

weekly quotas have been met...

[hopepro]

Position Swings like crazy today, traffic down. I believe there's something going on. Anyone?

[widgetized]

I don't really know what's going on, my GSC account shows I gradually lost 40% of impressions / clicks since 13 January, and still not seeing any recover... I start feeling worried, I don't really have a clue about how to optimize my site this time.

[seomotionz]

@widgetized If you are from the widget industry (as your username suggests). Talk to @RedBar he might have some tips for you.

We were seeing throttling traffic until today. Today we saw a throttling effect of bot activity. At certain point of time site's are overrun by bots and at another moment no bots at all.

[samwest]

Something big happened yesterday and it makes no sense. My Matomo stats show one of the highest traffic days of the year (past 365) and lowest bounce and yet not a single conversion.

The SERPS are unchanged...or possibly BETTER...but user behavior fell through the floor...suddenly and without any changes to the site. This once again indicates their magical throttling...or something highly unnatural that causes that effect.

Looking at Matomo...I see almost every visit is 'one and done'...with zero time, but they are not registering as a bounce. Did a new type of bot just appear or does my site have the Corona virus ;) ?

Highly frustrating as this appears to be happening simultaneously across many other sites here and is a good indication of more knob turning in progress.

Google giveth and Google taketh away.

I'll be interested to see how quotas play out this week.

[BushyTop]

@samwest seems we are in lockstep again. Dreadful traffic behaviour for us again. Didn't need to bother coming into work.

[Shepherd]

Seeing the url back below the title for orgainc results in the SERPs this morning, nice imo- I did not like the url above.

Also, I did like the favicon.

[JesterMagic]

@jmorgan I actually like the fav icons as well as it was an easy identifier of my listings (except for the fact it more easily hid the ads). The problem is I am sure it was going to get spammed at some point.

I see Google quickly switched back to those green ad icons that are not easy to spot. Figures, they must have had a few days of data running with the black ad icons (without everyone else's Fav icons) and didn't like the dip in traffic to them.

I still amazes me that Google (the monopoly) can get away with showing so many ads that blend into everything and yet put limits on the sites and the number of ads they display. Then again AMP content is just filled with graphic ads now days. It was suppose to be something that was quick and small in size for mobile devices, I guess that has gone out the window (not that I think it was really needed and just another way for Google to control things).

Don't get me wrong we need online advertising so content owners can get paid, but things are starting to get out of control in terms of the number of ads we are seeing. It all just blurs together now...

[glakes]

Very low traffic from Google today, though it has not impacted conversions. When Google is sending ZERO converting traffic, it does not matter if one gets 1,000 Google visits per day or 1,000,000.

We've been up and running with Google's Shopping Actions for a little while and no conversions from that either. Maybe Google should rename that to Google Shopping Inactions. LOL

Our conversions are doing fine elsewhere. The lack of converting traffic is isolated to Google, which has been terrible since November. I'm beginning to think that shoppers are leaving Google quickly. Maybe there's just too much manipulation going on and a lack of diversity in Google for shoppers to even bother using it? That might explain the increase in conversion rates I'm seeing from other sources.

[samwest]

Google appears to be using AI to steer buying traffic into their insatiable maw. Simple as that. They get the wheat...you get the chaff.

[TeresaD]

Bert has got the hang of "time of day" traffic so he has learned something

[glakes]

Google appears to be using AI to steer buying traffic

In my industry it's all going to Amazon. There's no way for my company to compete on Google. Amazon's top text ad (mobile) in Google has a category landing page chock full of sponsored products. Clicks that Amazon gets on those sponsored products helps defer the cost of their ads on Google. Amazon also has ads in Google Shopping in my industry. I know there was some talk before about Amazon not advertising in Google Shopping anymore, but they never stopped in my industry.

I just can't see spending anymore money/wasting time with Google when the SERPS leave shoppers nearly nowhere else to go but to Amazon. I'll not be so stubborn to think there is anything I can do on Google, or bid higher, that will make any difference. If anything, increasing my bids on Amazon would likely have more of an impact on sales. Where would I come up with the money for that? Obviously by taking it away from Google just as quickly as they took away our converting traffic in November.

[ichthyous]

I don't really know what's going on, my GSC account shows I gradually lost 40% of impressions / clicks since 13 January

I have seen a huge decline in impressions as well, but a small increase in CTR so the clicks are lower but not drastically so. Generally when these downturns happen you can count on 3-6 months for it to turn around. I skyrocketed in Sept, after a long dismal slog from March-Sept. Stayed high October-Jan 13th. This drop doesn't appear bad, but the number of new inquires and calls are much lower. Google keeps manipulating and we are the lab rats, that's all.

[ichthyous]

Wondering if anyone has seen improvement from the Jan 13th update by improving page speed? My pages all updated to 'slow' on mobile on Jan 12th, and then after much work speeding up the pages they've all returned to being classified as 'moderate speed' for mobile. Impressions, position, and clicks all remain lower. Interestingly, most of the decline was on desktop ranking, not mobile.

[nomis5]

My pages all updated to 'slow' on mobile on Jan 12th, and then after much work speeding up the pages they've all returned to being classified as 'moderate speed' for mobile. Impressions, position, and clicks all remain lower.

This reply is from a very cynical old timer who has been in this business for many, many years and is still around to earn a decent living from adsense and affiliates.

Google's "slow on mobile" guidelines are load of tosh unless your website is incredibly slow.

Their speed initiative will get you going around in circles after an impossible goal. Forget it.

[ichthyous]

Their speed initiative will get you going around in circles after an impossible goal. Forget it.

@nomis5 - Google is tightening the noose and looking for any excuse to knock sites out of the box. To be honest, my pages needed work for mobile load times. If I can get them to load faster for my customers then I will do it for them and not just for Google. Having said that, it took Google's prompting to push me to do it now. I do think their error codes are a bit of B.S., but if your site is slow and UX isn't great because of it you're going to suffer.

[Manana]

"Google appears to be using AI to steer buying traffic into their insatiable maw. Simple as that. They get the wheat...you get the chaff."

@samwest, based on my experiences, I also believe this to be the case.

I'm running a blog. I monetize the blog by selling my ebooks. I was making a nice profit until January, 2019. Google update of January 2019 doubled the organic traffic I get from Google and I was happy that finally a Google update benefited me but my happiness didn't last long as my ebook sales dwindled to nothing.

All the traffic in the world is useless unless I make sales.

September 2019 update cut my traffic in half but my sales numbers were unchanged. I continued to have long stretches of zero sales. I thought of re-writing my sales pages but I was busy with writing a new book so I didn't have time for that.

I released my new book on December 29, 2020. Sales and conversions were excellent for the first 2 weeks but Google update of January 14, 2020 completely wiped out the conversions for my new book. I made zero sales to the new organic visitors since then.

I've poured thousands of hours of work into my blog, I have my own products in place but I make no money out of them.

[MayankParmar]

Was there another update over the weekend?

[StupidIntelligent]

I reported the latest update on the 26th. Forbes got impacted on the 27th.

[StupidIntelligent]

And, something is again happening today; the 29th.

[MarvinG]

So far the Jan update seems pretty good for me. Increase in traffic and also in converting traffic. Looks like a recovery from previous update(s).