Update Picard - Google Core Algo Update - Jan 2020

[Brett_Tabke]

Google Announced today that it is rolling out a Main Algo Update - Via the following blog post.

Unfortunately, the post is not so much about an update, but another diatribe against website owners and content producers. They continue to insinuate that if you lost traffic, you have violated the webmaster guidelines.

They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines.

[webmasters.googleblog.com...]

None of the analytics rank watchers have yet to go off in any meaningful way. Most assume the the first algo update of the year is to correct issues with the last update of the previous year. Going all the way back to the Florida, Google often has a way of messing with the algo late in the year and correcting it in the spring. Some have speculated that the fall updates are intended to drive PPC traffic around Christmas shopping and January/Feb updates roll that back to fix results because of irrelevant shopping heavy results.

[jediviper]

@swright
No FS will appear for a website that is ranking at the 2nd page.
In fact, to get a FS you must rank in the top 7 positions, according to some studies.

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: "FS" in this context means Featured Snippet.

[derflotr]

@jediviper

I've seen the same thing @swright describes but very sporadically (featured URL as top result on page 2). Looks like they're testing it.

[nmbrsk]

Has anyone experienced any issues with their presence in Google News?

[swright]

@jediviper
These are all pages that are ranked within the top 5 and also shown in the featured snippet. At some times of the day, in some locales, the page is still shown in the featured snippet, but its SERP position is changed exactly to #11. I guess they are testing it because it's turned off after several hours and things go back to where they were before. Today I'm again noticing it in some locales.

[Ralph_Slate]

I don't know if it's just me, but I'm finding Google results to be absolutely horrendous as of right now.

For example, I just tried to search for when tickets for a band my daughter likes go on sale. I typed in "The 1975 Concert Madison Square Garden". First three results are, predictably, ads which are fake because the tickets aren't on sale yet. The fourth result is review of the concert from 2017, the fifth result is also such a review from 2017. The sixth result is a link to Madison Square Garden which has the information on it, though I was actually looking for the press release announcing the concert. - however that was only apparent to me after doing a more thorough review. After not seeing what I wanted in the first 5 results, I tried a different search.

I searched for "the 1975 concert madison square garden announced". The first result was the announcement - from 2017! Second result was a review of the 2017 concert. The third result was the one I wanted - but it was infuriating to have the top 2 results to be so blatantly wrong.

I have also recently done some searching where I wanted to see Wikipedia articles on a topic - but had to actually type in "Wikipedia" in the search because without that, it was not returned.

[worker]

^^^^ This is what I have been seeing. I have been testing various search phrases consisting of 2 and 3 words. Basically they are Widget Site and Red Widget Site, that type of thing. What I have been seeing since the update began is 2-3-year-old articles about Widget Sites and Red Widget Sites mixed in among results for actual Widget Sites and Red Widget Sites. I infer from this that Google is confused about the intent of someone entering 'Widget Site'.

Where they used to view that search phrase as implying the searcher would like to see 'Widget Sites', they now seem to be mixing in news/information/videos/Apps about 'Widget Sites'. They seem to be saying 'Hmm if someone enters 'Widget Site', they (searcher) want us (Google) to provide a broad array of information regarding 'Widget Sites'. They are not asking for us to give them a list of 'Widget Sites'. While I find this change to be ridiculous as it pushes actual 'Widget Sites' lower in the results, what is more infuriating is the articles/news/blogs/etc that they have mixed into the results. In most cases, they are single-page articles or blog posts that are from 2015-2018. Why they have given preference to many-year-old one-off articles that have some content regarding 'Widget Sites' is beyond me.

Since much of what I am seeing is obviously missing the mark, and since Google closely monitors what is clicked, I believe there will have to be an update to address the above in the near future. Since searchers can see enough in the results to know that the articles and blogs are not what they wanted, they will not click those. As Google sees first page clicks drop due to the bad results provided, they will be forced to re-evaluate their ranking criteria to remove the types of results I've described.

[phranque]

I've seen the same thing @swright describes but very sporadically (featured URL as top result on page 2). Looks like they're testing it.

according to danny sullivan (today):

If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.

source: [twitter.com...]

also tweeted by danny today in that thread:

Today, 100% globally.

[phranque]

a bit more "clarity" from danny sullivan on the "position 11" thing:

The whole page two stuff, by the way, people shouldn't get hung up on. It's about deduplicating on the first page. It's not always guaranteed the URL will somehow come back up on the second page.

source: [twitter.com...]

[tangor]

One unintended mess cleaned up ... thirty-seven-eleven more to go!

These changes will help re-balance the top ten and I suspect a few who have been left out will have a better chance of placing in the future.

Time will tell.

[JesterMagic]

"position 11" is such an obvious fix to implement and it took Google years to figure it out. It just goes to show you that Google's right hand doesn't know what it's left hand is doing. With all the widget clutter Google has in the SERPS now, they need to go further and remove a page that has appeared in a widget from appearing in any page after for the same search. Treat a listing in a widget just like a regular listing.

I am sure there are many of these types of fixes Google could do if they actually cared about the quality of the results.

Now I am just waiting for them to remove all the you tube videos that appear in the video widget and then appear magically right underneath in a listing.

[Edge]

Some have speculated that the fall updates are intended to drive PPC traffic around Christmas shopping ...

And academic targets in the early spring, summer fun and related targets during summer, etc..

Of course, Google could just be responding to the bulk of their advertisers, Google is of course a business first.

[EditorialGuy]

Some have speculated that the fall updates are intended to drive PPC traffic around Christmas shopping ..

Sure, just like the recent January Core Algorithm Update was intended to drive PPC traffic during the frantic dead-of-winter shopping season.

[System]

Mods note: The following message about featured snippets was cut out of this thread and moved to dedicated featured snippets thread by robert_charlton.

breeks had posted....

I have quite a few featured snippets and the URL shows up as number 11, the snippet is number one. The question is if you lose the FS do you stay at number eleven or move back to one of the top three spots.

Moved to existing discussion aobut featured snippets, at...
Featured Snippets Changed to One Entry in SERPs
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4980941.htm [webmasterworld.com]

While featured snippets was technically part of the Core Update, we'd also been maintaining a separate featured snippets discussion. As it turned out, a featured snippets discussion materialized here anyway.

I'm thinking the post I've moved might keep the discussion balanced to both threads.

Continue with "Update Picard - Core Algo Update" discussion below.....

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:45 pm (utc) on Jan 26, 2020]