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.

[southernguy]

Yesterday two of my sites fell off a cliff "literally no traffic" like they have been de-indexed but they still show up, another site which was dead for months (same niche) all of sudden began converting yesterday and today I dont know what to think anymore.

[seowinning]

Optimizing whatever onpage/offpage for some sites doesn't affect ranks. Google just built a huge sandbox and millions of sites is inside, for what reason? no one knows... how do I know that? simple, every webmaster hit by those updates shares the same behavior. Focusing in a new domain is a way to go.

[Wildchild00]

The February update has really affected my blog, now my traffic has really gone down drastically, Google to me looks confused, no direction, I still get traffic from Yahoo, Bing, etc

[glakes]

Google to me looks confused, no direction, I still get traffic from Yahoo, Bing, etc

One SERP tracker (SEMrush) is showing volatility in Google today. Unfortunately in this traffic rotation environment, it's hard to analyze when one second I rank #1 then a second later my rank is none. I call it the "1 and none phenomena." But I will say on high traffic days, Google can't seem to send any converting traffic at all. On my lowest days of Google traffic, that is when I'm most likely to see first time visitors make a purchase.

[RedBar]

I really don't know how G is achieving it but they've made their UK SERPs even worse than ever ... there is so much irrelevant garbage it is nothing short of outstandingly shocking. Again their US SERPs are not too bad ... for my widgets.

On a good note last night in the pub discussing general stuff someone commented that they had found something on The Net that they'd been searching for ages. "That's good," I said, "how come you've only just found it?" "All due to you telling me about DDG last week, I'm using it all the time!"

There is still yet hope for us all, that's two people in two weeks that I know of and looking at DDG's traffic statistics there are a whole lot more new users:-)

[universenet]

Rotating traffic and injection with free ads in goal to push visits down will destroy any sense of quality of websites, this is reason why no converting more and why visits to websites are all time up down up down, not anything stable more, advertisers will recognise this with time and will leave google

[glakes]

advertisers will recognise this with time and will leave google

I think Google's true goal, by rotating traffic, is to limit the free organic traffic most websites receive (big brands excluded). In theory Google may believe this will prompt more websites to spend on Google Ads or increase their bids. The problem is Google's traffic is of such a low quality that it barely converts. I've compared the conversion rate of Google's traffic, both paid and organic, to pop-under traffic back in the day which still holds true to this day. A number of us here have greatly reduced our spending with Google and there are other threads where members have noted they left Google completely. I'm sure there is normal churn, but Aaron Wall of SEO Book went into detail once how Google only needs two advertisers to leverage their ad marketplace to drive up bids to excessively high levels.

Google was bad before November, when my site took a serious hit in traffic quality, but never this bad. My guess is when Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Alphabet he was freed to explore new and creative ways to extract more money out of the economy. I think Brin and Page set him up to be the fall guy, but he should be smart enough to know the risk of what changes are made and how it may impact economies. Sundar Pichai will be the one that has to testify in front of Senate and Congressional committees, so we'll see how well he performs in the near future when he goes from one hot seat to another.

[devoo]

Google's results are really awful these days. When I search for something in English like "how to install bla bla module on ubuntu", it totally ignores my search terms, translates the words I used in the background and shows me the pages in my own language which I didn't search for. It's like they are trying to be far too smart or overly helpful.

It's so annoying. Next step is showing the results about oranges when you search for apples because BERT or whatever AI they use thinks oranges are better for you.

[universenet]

Devoo. Google is amazing

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Hmmm... So friendly and good-hearted comments here... Keep on, Google!))) I'm seeing another further drop today...)

[seowinning]

Google isn't rotating traffic they are switching servers so the behavior is similar.

[RedBar]

Oh, wow, what happened in the last 12 hours, did someone switch off The Net?

After 10.5 hours of a stats day I have gone from a completely normal Saturday traffic day to, so far, 11.7, of PVs.

That's very unusuall for all my sites, the hotel / pub site I run is at 7%!

Today looks as though it may be interesting even though rankings "seem" to be normal.

[RedBar]

Investigation time ... I'm thinking I may have something broken, I know I have had visitors yet nothing is being reported.

It's certainly not an update by me since I didn't do anything to my sites ... time to delve.

[seomotionz]

Many sites which have been showing a gradual drop since the mid week are now stable or their traffic has increased a little bit. But so also irrelevant traffic.

[sk7411]

Many sites which have been showing a gradual drop since the mid week are now stable or their traffic has increased a little bit. But so also irrelevant traffic.

Could be the weekend effect , brace for the upcoming weekdays .

[System]

The following 5 messages were cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/4986200.htm [webmasterworld.com]
12:19 pm on Mar 1, 2020 (utc -5)