Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2020

[Shepherd]

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System: The following 6 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4978307.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 6:54 pm on Feb 1, 2020 (utc -5)

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FWIW, seeing the featured snippet holder (wikipedia in this case) gone completely from the SERPs this morning, no longer listed on page 2 or anywhere.

[StupidAI]

When a site is successful (traffic), then:

- others will start doing similar sites (same niche, or same way to talk about a given subject) => erosion of the traffic. Add to this that "copiers", often have more aggressive promotion methods to gain traffic fast... also, a copy can be an "improvement" of the original content.

- Google will detect the niche is generating interest, and so will start to target this niche for itself,

- If you receive a significant amount of traffic, Google can consider that you are making significant money from it, and so start "indirectly" charging you for this traffic by pushing you down, to make you buy ad spaces.

From my experience, "in the past", the triggering threshold was 70.000 visitors / day, when you reached this threshold, this was the beginning of the end. Had two sites like that. All was doing fine, until they reached this threshold, then boom.

i'm so agree with you bro, i feel like Google hate you when you are been in the sweet spot for a while and generating alots of traffic that convert into $, but when they check on you they don't see you spending a single penny on their ads.

Alot of people was talking about this too, and i'm pretty sure in the next update they will implement this into their algorithm or maybe it is running now.

@StupidAI Same here, 1.1M to 500k and keep going down by the day with no reason, 6+yrs site never had once had issue in the past. Very strange...

Yeah bro same here. but today my traffic just slowly increasing and all my kw's start to appear again. Before the core update my Average CTR was 100k per day. This past 3 days drop down to only 400 clicks per day, that was crazy !

[RedBar]

Before the core update my Average CTR was 100k per day.

Stupid question!

CTR to where? AdSense?

[EditorialGuy]

Google will detect the niche is generating interest, and so will start to target this niche for itself

I've been a Web publisher for nearly 25 years. I've seen a lot of competition over that time, but nearly all of it has been from other Web publishers, not from Google.

[Athedian]

Oddly enough, I'm starting to see "Google.com" showing up as one of the competitors for my Google Ads auction insight since two months ago. So why is Google.com showing and not before? Why are they even competing in the ads? Is this another ploy for them to force the keyword bids to increase?

With this in mind, if this is possibly true, then what's stopping Google from setting up all these filters to throttle traffic, kill off keywords, decrease site ranking, and keep the big players that are spending millions and millions of dollars on ads at #1 spot, just so that everyone else is forced to start paying for the ads to get even some kind of conversions to stay alive?

[cellist]

As much as I don't like many of Google's practices, I would be completely against a bunch of EU bureaucratic no nothings trying to regulate Google's Al. You think it's bad now...I can only imagine what a mess they would create.

[mosxu]

“Google goal is to fill the first page with Ads, results will start from second page”

Funny you are saying this but I see more and more results on high converting money terms with no ads at all probably because they cannot pull my personalised digital profile.

But it also looks like AI is in the coma, the loss of buyer traffic to Amazon, apps downloads, email marketing and small mobile screens is probably making AI decide not to sell ads under a certain value.

AI can’t allow the pay per click to drop and that means buyer traffic can’t be shared by all advertisers cause there is not enough of it.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm in business for 7 years, but last 1,5 year is just horrible. I'm not complaining on updates and their results (it's a different story for everyone of us), but I just tired of this non-stoppable rollercoaster. I'm tired on how the same content can be a SUPER in one month and give you a great amount of traffic and in one month it becomes useless, and after another week it becomes great again and recovering the traffic. How can we build some plans with this s***t?! Content is a king you are saying? How can you explain the situation with the content mentioned above in this case? Tired of this, honestly...

[glakes]

Oddly enough, I'm starting to see "Google.com" showing up as one of the competitors for my Google Ads auction insight since two months ago. So why is Google.com showing and not before?

Could it be the result of Google displaying Shopping Actions ads in your industry? I've been in the program for a couple months and only had one transaction. Shopping Actions is a dud, but I don't see them as a competitor (yet) in my insights. Regardless, Amazon competes with advertisers in the same way and it's all corrupt. Amazon and Google can both pay $100 per click, and outbid other advertisers, since they are paying themselves. Politicians and regulators are clueless by allowing two companies to dominate the ecommerce industry with little to no oversight.

How can we build some plans with this s***t?!

+1 in agreement. Google started hitting us hard in November, which wiped out our busiest month of the year. My company manufactures goods, and we have materials, employees, etc. to pay for. It's kind of hard to plan for material purchases, staffing and production when Google is all over the map. Hours were cut and material purchases have been substantially delayed. For us Google's see-saw actions will likely result in supply disruptions down the road as we run out inventory on stagnant sales originating from Google, with the exception of a few good days here and there. Once again too much of the digital economy rests in the hands of few companies, which should never have been allowed.

SERP trackers note movement today again. Yesterday was another dud day of converting traffic from Google, and today has started out the same. Amazon orders are coming in strong, which appears to be largely unaffected by Google's mess by drawing on their own loyal and substantial user base.

[Malanje]

@Cyril TechWebsites

This search engine business should be regulated like any other business. The sooner the better. Let's just say a store opens on a certain street in town. Then the city hall changes traffic every day. One day comes down, the other day goes up or doesn't allow traffic there this week just because they want to divert people to a new shopping center. This is not a healthy environment. And most of all it is subject to any kind of corruption.

[RedBar]

WooHoo Google, just what are you doing, I haven't seen such a mix-up in years?

Apart from worthless Ebay ranking #1, I am seeing multiple domain entries from the same domains (several), loads of Pinterest and plenty of tenuous trade links, very, very slightly associated however ranking well.

But there's more, what about UK localisation? How come I'm seeing .in and .sg sites along with plenty of USA sites I've never seen in the US .com SERPs?

I haven't see a .in in the UK SERPs for years, the last being my own which I removed since G wouldn't rank it anywhere outside of India yet here we are with a very tenuous .in

I can't even call this a mess, Google's obviously had an explosion somewhere or a heavy night's drinking and simply regurgitated what it could find all over the place!

This is a very quick way to lose users.

[worker]

Just did one of my regular tests for 'Blue Sites'. The results used to only show 'Blue Sites' but now I see Facebook Groups pages about Blue Sites, 'Blue Sites', Pinterest pages about Blue Sites, multiple news articles about Blue Sites and the cherry on top is a fake result that leads to a p0rn site that attempted 3 malicious attacks (that were thwarted by my virus protection software). Why is Google not seeing an obvious p0rn site redirection and a site that attempts malicious attacks? Why is Google no longer listing pages of Blue Sites when the search term is Blue Site, but instead mixing in this weird group of information and Blue Site related pages? It would seem clear that if you type in Blue Site, you want to see Blue Sites and not a weird combination of FB pages, Pinterest pages, Apps, and malicious attacking p0rn redirection results. I cannot make sense of what is going on with Google.

It's like they had this very large very complicated jigsaw puzzle and someone flipped it over and took it apart, and now Google is trying to put it together without using the picture side. I can't imagine them leaving this mess of results as is, but Semrush is calming down despite the garbage I'm seeing for very basic search terms.

[Hollywood]

Google, Alphabet, etc, they just want more revenue for the investors. It's better to already have $ and buy the stock (GOOG, etc) then to own a website and try to make money that way, GOOG wants the eyeballs (Studies prove it in eyeballs viewing tests) to click on the section that 85% of everyone sees (Their adds), the top of the page at the left. [neilpatel.com ]

[universenet]

Sundar need do much job for Larry and Sergey

[hopepro]

@Cyril TechWebsites

Agreed with you. We've been hit around 5-7 times starting from Nov 7 2019 and it was the biggest. After that date, we have been gradually climbing up, then hit again and again.

Until recently, Feb 7 2020. Being hit again, now traffic slashed for almost 60%

What we're seeing are these

- Get rich quick site rank first, no SSL, no mobile friendly
- domain with few contents that have just begun their content writing a month ago are everywhere
- sites with 2 sentences landing pages. Nothing related to queries
- Big banking sites which of course the most reliable in finance content have dropped 50% but payday micro blogs replaced those positions
- Seen some malicious websites
- any kw queries that ask for info, those e-commerce sites will appear

If google think that BERT and its AI are the coolest. I tried searching for "headphones that are able to translate" google return the result of translation "headphone = XXXX" a brilliant job for AI

Search results are weird enough, Most people that I know have to use longer terms to tell google to give them the accurate result since most of the serp are filled with e-commerce sites

Edited: Even though the traffic is lesser shown in GA and SS, but the conversions are going up better than last month, cvr rate from 4% to 10%

[Athedian]

Could it be the result of Google displaying Shopping Actions ads in your industry?

@glakes: It could be.

Although still doesn't make sense as they've never showed up before and only started to appear two months ago when one of the major updates killed off our site ranking badly. Also, we're offering services instead of actual products in a very niche market (education sector). I'm pretty sure Google isn't qualified at all to provide what we're providing to our clients.

So their sudden appearance in GA auction insight basically is screaming: Hey! We're here! How about increasing that keyword bid now that your ranking is messed up by us, we screwed up the SERP for you so that all your SEO efforts are for naught, AND any kind of organic conversions is pretty much non-existent for you because we manipulated the traffic sources just. for. you! And by the way! Your competitors that provide 2 paragraphs blog article content are so much better than your 2-3 pages in-depth content so we're gonna give them 2.5 million ranking increase in one single month!

I did notice that there is some kind of a filter going on even with Google Ads, as there are two days specifically that had a crap load of clicks on the ads but almost no conversions, whereas other days, very little clicks but a lot of conversions. Definitely seems like manipulation of traffic sources from Google.

[glakes]

we're offering services instead of actual products in a very niche market (education sector).

Google uses ads to promote their tools for schools/educators. Is it possible those ads are now overlapping into your education niche?

[Athedian]

Google uses ads to promote their tools for schools/educators. Is it possible those ads are now overlapping into your education niche?

@glakes: It's possible. It's kind of bs when Google's competing with advertisers and driving up the cost at the same time.

[fearlessrick]

WOW. I am impressed by the level of understanding on this thread. Seriously. I am not being facetious.

Google, and, by association, Amazon, Facebook, Ebay, Pinterest and who knows how many other Silicon Valley companies may be colluding to make the rest of the world pay for anything and everything on the internet.

There are antitrust investigations underway, but I don't know if the investigators are a) honest, b) competent in this area, or c) already part of the conspiracy or whatever you want to call it.

Anybody who's read "Stand on Zanzibar" will understand when I say that corporations have no physical boundaries and no allegiance to any nation. They may be a few steps attaining a new paradigm that plans to eliminate nation-states altogether.

I'm trying to be cogent. There is something afoot that is more than a SERP update, that's for sure.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Malanje

This search engine business should be regulated like any other business.

That's the most realistic future, but I do believe that Google can avoid this situation from happening. As I see, the only way on how successfull and efficent communication between Webmasters and Google can be constructed is the relationships builded on the principle of respect for each other. As for me, the strategy that Google uses today (when the algo can crush bussiness in one day) can lead to strong society reaction and regulations from the government authorities in some future. I can't get WHY Google makes these things with Webmasters, as I see - they are a fundament of Google's bussiness? That's look like a pretty dangerous strategy for me.

[EditorialGuy]

This search engine business should be regulated like any other business.

Maybe in countries where press freedom is limited. In the U.S., courts have ruled that Google's search results are "opinions" that are protected by the First Amendment.

[RedBar]

For my widgets the UK SERPs are now a complete and utter joke, a compounded mess and as for localisation that's disappeared altogether, since when has Nigeria been local to the UK?

Checking the US SERPs and things look a lot, lot better for my widgets. Out of the top 20 results 18 are good, including my own site which doesn't even appear in the UK top 100!

One thing I have noticed this week are a lot more Yahoo and DDG search referrals.

Any other non-US businesses seeing similar?

[RedBar]

In the U.S., courts have ruled that Google's search results are "opinions" that are protected by the First Amendment.

And therein lies one of the biggest problems, fiction taking over from fact!

[MayankParmar]

Got manual penalty for outbound links :(

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar When I got that once. I made all of the site links no-follow and get rid of the unnecessary links. Google removed it asap once I notified them.

[ichthyous]

As for me, the strategy that Google uses today (when the algo can crush bussiness in one day) can lead to strong society reaction and regulations from the government authorities in some future.

I doubt that, you're assuming that the people in charge of promulgating regulations 1) care and 2) understand the scope of the problem. There is no outcry from the public yet, and there probably won't be. The public is happy to have free search results, and they don't necessarily care whether our businesses are crushed by Google as long as they find what they need. At some point Google will face a reckoning with the markets because it won't be able to squeeze any more profit out of its outdated search model, and increase profits incrementally by stuffing the page or manipulating the search results. By that time Google will have moved on to other lines of business and revenue from search will be only a part of the business...just like computers are now only a small part of Apple's business. In the meantime, small business will be shut out of the internet completely and Amazon and other large players will own it all.

[RedBar]

Got manual penalty for outbound links :(

Were you notified?

If so, where? GSC?

I don't use that so wouldn't have a clue!

[Malanje]

@EditorialGuy

In relation to regulation much can be done. Limit the number of consecutive search ads to a certain amount of organic results. Make these ads clearly distinguishable from the results. Prevent the search engine from copying websites and display summaries in boxes.

These are some examples. And if politicians have no idea where to start, they can read forums like this.

[MayankParmar]

@seomotionz I removed low-quality links, nofollowed some after analyzing site with Ahrefs, and applied for reconsideration.

@RedBar Got an email and also GSC (now there's a new notifications center in the GSC).

[Kendo]

So why don't you all do something about it?

If everyone switched off their ads for one day, a week or a month, what would that cost them?

Then ask them how it feels to be treated like they treat us.

[RedBar]

So why don't you all do something about it?

I have no idea to my question which is "are there enough small publishers now to have any kind of effect"?

Certainly a few years ago there were however thousands of small publishers have given up AdSense in the last 3-5 years, me included and I was at one time USD 10K+ a month and ended up taking 2 months to get to the minium threshold.

One only has to go to the AdSense forum here to see how quiet it is compared to not so long ago.

Maybe there are, maybe not, I simply don't know and in any case my guess would be that G wouldn't care less anyway ... Why would it, it doesn't care now!