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]

[samwest]

I am also seeing the effect where obscure sub pages are suddenly getting oddly high traffic. Luckily my privacy policy and terms pages are not indexed. Traffic is very poor quality and non converting...again. It's all one big crap shoot experiment. Can't rely on the web these days. Clients are screaming too.

[glakes]

You know what that mean?! Its the job of the webmasters that it is going to be more and more tough.

It always gets harder as time passes for most. It's not just Google algo updates, but new competitors and other uncontrollable variables in our industry. But this algo update poses new challenges since the pages Google is giving a lot of traffic are not designed to funnel people to our products. Not only that, but at the present time there is a very high concentration of visitors from Canada. Because the high cost of shipping, they likely would not purchase from us anyway since we serve primarily the USA market.

The sites which has gained rank or still gaining. Its just because they have improved somehow.

If I look at the page level, the pages we updated/improved have fallen and our oldest/unchanged pages have risen quite a bit. How Google handles algo changes/ranking is likely also influenced by the type of site (information, news, ecommerce, etc.) and the industries they serve. Definitely makes it challenging!

@samwest

Are you also seeing a high concentration of Google traffic from Canada or another location outside the USA?

[glakes]

As a follow-up to the Google traffic from Canada....

12/30/2019 - Ratio of USA to Canada traffic (7 USA to 1 Canada) - Normal
1/11/2020 - Ratio of USA to Canada traffic (3 USA to 1 Canada)
1/12/2020 - Traffic from Canada began to rise substantially.
1/13/2020 - Ratio of USA to Canada traffic (1.1 USA to 1 Canada)
1/14/2020 - Ratio of USA to Canada traffic (2 USA to 3 Canada)
1/15/2020 - Ratio of USA to Canada traffic (1 USA to 2 Canada)

Our total USA traffic remains stable when comparing pre-update to now. Our increase in traffic is almost all coming from Canada, which is a market we do not often serve because the high cost of shipping. I wonder if this traffic increase is the result of Geo filters being off or a DC gone haywire? Am I the only one experiencing this anomaly or are others reporting big traffic increases dealing with a similar situation involving Canada?

[frankleeceo]

Are people's serp still jumping around? Or is the update pretty much settled?

[jmorgan]

@frenkleeceo I'm still not seeing these new favicons in my google desktop results which probably means they're not done yet.

[universenet]

Favicons are visible to me and all is in colours like carneval search.. maybe google should put some nice flowers and smell too in search

[frankleeceo]

@jmorgan, the favicon update is the same one as core update?

[universenet]

Important is that "Ad" favicon is now pretty good masked and camouflaged... all search is in "perfect" harmony

[jmorgan]

@frenkleeceo I believe it is part of the same change/update that's being rolled out, if I'm not mistaken.

[ichthyous]

It's been unusually quiet for more than a week before this update, which I noticed tends to happen well before an update is announced these days. No calls at all
and hardly any emails for the last 8-9 days. Traffic according to GA is normal and rising. GSC shows clicks recovering from the holiday lows but there has been a much higher number of impressions and a lower CTR since early December. Overall, my CTR is half what it was last year this time, and my average position is ten places lower than last year this time. The overall amount of traffic is slightly higher than last year this time due to the higher number of impressions, but inquiries are much lower. SEM shows a drop three days in a row, with the biggest drop coming yesterday. Overall however it's not a huge drop (yet)

[Shepherd]

Just now starting to see the favicons in the organic results consistently, no changes in the actual sites returned though.

[frankleeceo]

I am seeing favicon with all of my searches now. But I saw ranking changes near 1 day before favicon change, so it appears that the two might not be exactly connected?

[jmorgan]

Yeah, you're right. The favicons are now appearing for me but rankings are the same.

[Kendo]

All sorts of things are jumping around. My guess is that they have problems at Houston.

The other day I had problems getting Analytics pages to load (404) and later saw that on the 1th that my page speeds averaged more than 6 seconds when everyone else reports 1.5 secs. Even Search Console using the mobile friendly test is reporting some weird stuff, such as:

Page partially loaded
Not all page resources could be loaded. This can affect how Google sees and understands your page. Fix availability problems for any resources that can affect how Google understands your page.

But wait...

The 7 page resources that couldn’t be loaded are simply images on the page that are delivered via CDN, ie: from another server. In fact it has listed its own Google Analytics image as failing to load and declared it a fault!

The monster is starting to devour its own tail :-)

[seomotionz]

Am I the only one experiencing this anomaly or are others reporting big traffic increases dealing with a similar situation involving Canada?

@glakes I don't know much about your situation. But I am seeing a certain surge in "not set" Canadian traffic, in almost every ranking pages.

[BushyTop]

I feel like there are a lot of success stories out there. makes me even more concerned about our decline/

[hopepro]

I can see ranking improvement, but still with traffic CAP

Older contents rank better, new content rank faster.

iOS search result rank faster than Android. But Android shows lower position. Each Android shows different results without Google Account Login.

Still seeing duplicated position from the same domain. For some kw, 1 domain 10 positions (what the heck?)

Still seeing FB and Twitter rank higher (anyone knows any reasons?)

[glakes]

I feel like there are a lot of success stories out there.

Here's what a successful failure looks like to me. Note the conversion/revenue data. Google can't seem to squeeze out even a single conversion. This is the absolute lowest quality traffic I've ever seen from Google.



@seomotionz

Thanks for taking a look at your source traffic. I'll try to dig into the data later, if time permits, and look into this Canada issue further.

[fearlessrick]

Is it over? My Adsense figures took a huge jump - past normal - overnight into Jan. 16.

[seomotionz]

Thanks for taking a look at your source traffic. I'll try to dig into the data later, if time permits, and look into this Canada issue further.

@glakes Well we don't have a problem with Canadian traffic. They are always quite good converting traffic. But these traffic is just hopeless. Thank you for sharing the pic.

[RedBar]

For those not seeing favicons, you have cleared your cache haven't you?

[seomotionz]

@RedBar I don't why people are talking about favicons in Google. BTW I haven't missed them once.

[universenet]

Google SearchLiaison @searchliaison
it say:today 16 january
"For those who have asked, the update is mostly done, though as with any core update, it may take to two weeks to fully complete."
This update will be to almost next update... from update to update

[Steven29]

I see the new Favorite Icons for the search since Yesterday and do not like it. The ads also just say Ad now where the icon is and look no different than the regular listings. I feel like i'm being bombared with Ads now, but from Google themselves. My YouTube since about a month or two now has been trying to get me to watch two ads in a row, back to back. Do you have that too? Is this to keep up with all the "free resources" that will eventually be more expensive than they are today once the competition is gone. Cloudflare has essentially became useless - unless you are willing to pay 200$+ a month for simple settings like bypass cache on cookie and when trying to create your own "cloud servers" you will run into the issue that you do not pay $10,000 a month for "premium bandwidth" and will have slow cloud servers (can't find the link now but there are 3 tiers and if you are not on the premium tier, don't waste your time if your looking to speed things up). [cloud.google.com...] ).

[glakes]

I see the new Favorite Icons for the search since Yesterday and do not like it.

I agree. What value does a 16x16 pixel favicon add to the SERPS other then to make the ad labels harder to distinguish from organic results? I can't even discern what half these favicons even represent because they are so small...

[universenet]

Steven29 + I saw you talking about speed... I think that this current core update is more related to webpage speed now.. even google making experimental speed test... (or maybe I thinking wrong)...of course is many other factors too what they are implemented ...

[engine]

The favicons are clutter.

It could be this is to confuse and obfuscate organic from ads.

Bad move by google, also clipping the url.

[mosxu]

Favicons are spammy looking, some old directories looked like that

[notoriusbean]

@glakes I'm seeing a change in geo distribution, started a bit before the update was supposedly rolled out though. See my post on the previous page (not sure how to link to my post, sorry).

It's also not exclusive to a change between USA/Canada. In fact, I'm seeing more India traffic and my USA/Uk/Canada traffic is decreasing. So may not be the same thing.

[glakes]

@notoriusbean

I viewed your post and you noted geo targeting was recovering a bit. Has this recovery continued? Today I'm seeing about a 1:1 distribution of USA to Canada traffic, which is an improvement, but still far off of the normal 7 USA to 1 Canada ratio.

My site has been through many updates, and I've never experienced such a major geo traffic surge.