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.

[NickMNS]

I'm starting to get nervous as I see a pattern emerging, likely specific to my website. Generally, over the past few years we have seen two major* ("core") updates per year, one in early to mid March the other in September or early October. In late 2017 I saw my traffic sore, reaching a peak in March 2018, after the March 2018 update my traffic plummeted and continued to erode slowly to a new bottom reached in November 2019. Since then I have seen my traffic sore again I have now reached the level I was at prior to the March 2018 update, but March 2020 is nearly upon us.

There is not much one can do, regardless. So I going to sit back and hope for the best. (Unless someone has any better ideas?)

*By major, I don't necessarily mean by the impact as the impact is typically site/niche specific, and many "non-major" updates have occurred outside of these date ranges, but I mean major in that Google, typically announces them (usually after the fact) and they tend to have broad reach, and they often get a name, like Picard.

Note to Mods: I'm not predicting here, I'm simply drawing attention to a well documented pattern.

[fearlessrick]

From Search Engine Journal: "Beginning on March 1st Google will treat nofollow links as a hint for the purposes of crawling and indexing."

Who has time for this?

"(Unless someone has any better ideas?)" (above) - Yes. I have a better idea. Hit the ignore button on Google. Concentrate on running your business and your sites. Do what you want to do, not what Google wants you to do.

Google has made billions of dollars off the sweat and labor of millions of webmasters globally. They have leveraged our content to their advantage and they're making it even worse, enriching, then impoverishing us at their whim. It's nothing less than 21st century tyranny run amok.

If Google proves inefficient or incompetent in terms of providing reliable search functions on the internet, then their demise is a fait accompli.

Seriously, who can possibly keep up with their relentless updating, changing, evolving. It's gotten to such an extreme that compliance with Google takes up more time than compliance with the government, another irritant. Spend more time RUNNING YOUR BUSINESS. If you do it well, the world will still beat a path to your door, regardless of whther Google uses AI, algorithms, or chicken bones to determine their SERPs.

That's all I have for now. Carry on.

[universenet]

did you ever get visits from google ads but never paid for google ads?
of course, there is many ads in google search, many of almost crazy old and noussefull websites,
and we can see advertising even in 5. or 6. pages, but who
paying for all that sites ?
Answer is simple:nobody, google make (we can call this auto) advertising so that way pushing organic search out of pages, and making bids higher
How many websites what we can name as unknown is on internet what google can using? almost unlimited, ok around billion maybe
ok, so if you get visit from google ads and you never paid do not be surprised, strategy is strategy, seems like a google publishers will disspear with time? maybe yes, maybe no, but for now things are not good

[grandhi26]

Am seeing huge drop of rankings and traffic to mysite and competitors site is there any algorithm update

[RedBar]

For me the USA G.com SERPs are not looking too bad, for my widget keyword phrases I would say out of the top 100 certainly 80% relevant, the ranking order is always open to argument.

HOWEVER the G.co.uk SERPs is an out-and-out diabolical mess with many completely irrelevant sites listed plus many, probably 50%, US sites most of which do not even appear in their G.com SERPs!

WTF is all that about?

UK localisation is abysmal with domain crowding, one site has 3 consecutive listings in the top 20 and as for Pinterest, enough has been said about this crowd-generated image scraper and other such similar sites.

Just why do half a dozen scraped images justify top 10 rankings with no other product information, pathetic, and why does the UK get Pinterest in the top 10 and the USA not unitl the low teens?

[sk7411]

Took another 10% drop today , the sensors are being nicely fooled .

[aragates]

Update was at first neither reported nor affirmed by Google

On February thirteenth, Google expresses that there was no Center Update

Update influences a wide range of specialties, and sites with totally different profiles – for example no reasonable example to sites affected

A few destinations losing and afterward picking up traffic – conceivable indication of Google testing

Some hypothesis, however viewed as far-fetched, concerning whether the variances watched are associated with format/HTML changes in the SERPs

Update unmistakably not influenced everybody (yet), as certain perusers remark that they have not watched any change.

[nmbrsk]

My homepage is showing the date '3 March 2019' in its preview, like this:

[imgur.com...]

We've published over 600 articles since then, possibly more, and there's nothing in the source code to suggest that was the last time the website was updated.

My traffic has literally fallen off a cliff since January, so has my revenue, and I'm finding a range of different things Google is not getting right about my site. #*$! frustrating to say the least.

[StupidIntelligent]

Lots of irrelevant traffic. Website is about oranges and it is sending traffic looking for steaks.

[RedBar]

@nmbrsk

Nice to see G's well up-to-date.

[seowinning]

If google updates benefits you, then you simply forget google, when it's not, people cry. Time to stop being hypocrite, whether you hate or love google, you just need to decide.

[RedBar]

If google updates benefits you, then you simply forget google

Do you, personally forget any benefit you gain?

I certainly would not, if I saw a benefit I'd apply more of what I'd done to benefit even more ... OR ... Are you referring to people who don't do anything whatsoever to their sites and only complain when they lose rankings?

[Athedian]

Increase of traffic, decrease of conversions and ranking today. Seems like small incremental updates are happening (as with everyday). It's always like that.

At this point, I'd rather have less traffic and more conversions at any given day.

[seomotionz]

If google updates benefits you, then you simply forget google, when it's not, people cry. Time to stop being hypocrite, whether you hate or love google, you just need to decide.

@seowinning What are you suggesting/implying/saying?

[jmorgan]

Is analytics real-time stats showing lower numbers for anyone else?

Edit: Nevermind, I think it was a temporary glitch somewhere.

[mosxu]

Amazon.com Inc. rolled out its checkout-free "Go" technology in a large grocery store and plans to license the cashierless system to other retailers.

“plans to license the cashierless system to other retailers“ how smart is that compared to being listed on a map ?

Not sure who clicks on those Google maps but definitely not buyers...

[iamxtian]

@mosxu What does that have to do with anything being talked about in this thread? xD

[samwest]

Lots of irrelevant traffic. Website is about oranges and it is sending traffic looking for steaks.

I could set my products to FREE right now, and with this current traffic, nobody would order. Total Zombies again. They continually screw with traffic quality and intent and yet SERP's appear to remain unchanged or just shuffle slightly. It's during each shuffle that conversions die off, until it settles and conversions return, at which point they shuffle again. Rinse & repeat.

[mosxu]

iamxtian,

Everything!

Why is google showing a map instead of your website because they will need to compete with amazon and will not care how many back links and how great the content of a website is.

[seowinning]

webmasters soon will be working for free for google just to feed their snippets with only-text mode, so the first page will be like their own page with no links pointing for external sites and site links starts to appear from the second page.

[glakes]

I could set my products to FREE right now, and with this current traffic, nobody would order. Total Zombies again.

There's no question in my mind that Google is rotating traffic. The rotation is not based upon expected personalization characteristics but more like a spreading the wealth pattern. Google spreads most of the wealth to Amazon, leaving us in prolonged drought periods. When sales coming from Google are high, we notice a dip in Amazon sales. But most of the time Amazon sales are high, and sales from Bing spike, when Google is sending us next to no converting traffic to our product pages.

In addition to people searching for the types of products we sell, people also search for us by both brand and part numbers. When you get multiple people calling saying they can't find you in Google, it's pretty clear Google is dropping us entirely out of the SERPS. When we get such calls, we observe elevated conversions from Amazon and Bing. Connecting the dots here, it's clear to me that Google is dropping us in and out of the SERPS while driving most converting organic traffic to Amazon.

While what I observe may be unique to my industry and online distribution channels, I can't overlook the fact Google's SERPS are so heavily cluttered. All the clutter has to be a huge turnoff for shoppers that find Google increasingly difficult to use for shopping purposes. It's as if Google is trying to force shoppers to go in circles with their only way out of the loop being a paid ad click.

[samwest]

When sales coming from Google are high, we notice a dip in Amazon sales.

Ex-actly!
Yesterday had zero sales conversions from Google, BUT, just my Amazon affiliate links generated a record amount. This pattern swaps and has repeated over and over again. They appear to always be messing with steering user behavior. Thanks for the confirmation.

[StupidIntelligent]

@glakes - It's definitely not unique to you.

[Hollywood]

Mostly agree with this scenario --> "There's no question in my mind that Google is rotating traffic. The rotation is not based upon expected personalization characteristics but more like a spreading the wealth pattern. Google spreads most of the wealth to Amazon, leaving us in prolonged drought periods. When sales coming from Google are high, we notice a dip in Amazon sales. But most of the time Amazon sales are high, and sales from Bing spike, when Google is sending us next to no converting traffic to our product pages."

[mosxu]

@glakes

“Google is dropping us in and out of the SERPS while driving most converting organic traffic to Amazon“

Yes my guess exactly and because you visited your own site a few times you will still see rankings/ads while a genuine buyer from a distant IP will see nothing about you.

[samwest]

Two full days, zero conversions. Has the corona virus hit the SERPs or wiped out all life on Earth?

[seomotionz]

Yesterday was no US traffic day. And today is no India traffic day.

Irrelevant pages are filled with SERP's. Some kw's just disappeared out to nowhere. CTR for some pages are just zero and some are reporting that they didn't have any sales since Wednesday. And some are saying sales are gradually decreasing this week.

I heard that something big is going on in stock markets today. Or, it could be the virus effect. Or, its just simply Google playing with us.

[RedBar]

I heard that something big is going on in stock markets today.

The global financial gamblers are out in force today, no need to worry about them, they always win ... Meanwhile your pension funds are taking an absolute hamering whilst they manipulate the markets.

Sounds a bit G'esque to me :-)

[renatovieira]

#CoronaUpdate

Yesterday my website hit all record traffic spikes. Today pathetically dead.

[ichthyous]

Two full days, zero conversions. Has the corona virus hit the SERPs or wiped out all life on Earth?

It's been very quiet for a few weeks now, even before the coronavirus scare started to ramp up and long before it anyone was worried here in the States. The only times I have seen it this quiet were when we were already in a recession, but the data doesn't come out until 6 months after the recession starts. The coronavirus is going to hasten, prolong and deepen any recession. Google's constant manipulation ensures that what little viable business there is won't reach you.

My traffic has been very slowly declining on desktop searches since January, and mobile search isn't that viable for my business. I'm ranking fine in mobile, but it's been weeks since I had a decent number of inquiries of any kind.