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.

[glakes]

Welcome to 'behavior shaping'...

For years I've suspected that Google throttled converting traffic from their search engine. You reach a number of conversions or a daily total transaction value, then boom - nothing but zombies the rest of the day. I wonder if Google expanded this to consider converting traffic from other sources? Say one gets a lot of conversions from outside of Google then Google decides that you've had too many conversions for the day so they send nothing but zombies. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with the reason why Google's traffic is the worst converting traffic we have. Possibly Google's way of saying you are converting too much as compared to your competitors so we will send you nothing but trash?

If nothing else, this has me thinking twice about having GA on the site...

[mosxu]

@glakes

Very unlikely that such a big account like amazon will not have the facility to pay on conversion only.

If that is the case other converters will not show when new buyers are searching and what you see is not what profiled buyers see.

[KaseyM]

Feel like most people in this forum are ecommerce.

Entertainment publisher here. We're down 20% by the looks of things since February 2nd.

Can't put my finger on what's changed other than my usual complaints of crap Indian sites now allowed to copy and paste our work and rank in Google News.

Happy days.

[UpdatePains]

After a relatively positive month, this latest 'update' has caused G to boot me from the 1st page for one of our highest value search terms. The most gutting part...other SE's (Bing, DDG, etc.) find it appropriate to award us 2 positions on this same term!

I do wonder sometimes (have more time for daydreaming these days with such abysmal enquiries) if G is the victim of believing that they are more clever than they are. The main site I see ranking are so obviously gaming the system in terms of bought links/anchor text that they don't even award us for playing by their own rules. FG! Torn between carrying on or short cutting and spamming the hell out of my site. I just know that again, I wouldn't be given the same leeway other sites are to game the system.

[seomotionz]

Some say it might cause more harm than good, since only Google knows which links are doing you good or bad.
I'm trying to establish causality between drop in ranks and the use of disavow.
Does the people seen drops update make use of it?

@SweetPotato We too give that suggestion. That's why we do the disavowing ourselves after thoroughly checking the link.

[Sissi]

it looks like Google is not indexing poor content pages anymore.
Means that G. Is not giving them a poor ranking.

[glakes]

@mosxu

Very unlikely that such a big account like amazon will not have the facility to pay on conversion only.

Possibly, but I don't think that's the case (yet). Having a CPA program solely for Amazon would create legal problems between the two companies. I believe it's more a case of Google giving Amazon an astronomically high relevancy score when it comes to both paid and organic results. But as more small retailers leave Google, due to the high cost poor/negative ROI on ads, I wouldn't be surprised if the two companies did entertain some sort of strategic partnership.

[McPheeSees]

I don't post very often, because a lot of what I see mirrors samwest and glakes. I have noticed something for the past year when it comes to search results and activity. Sometimes we look at google as the problem, but honestly it's bigger than that. Here's what I see. I see all different entities on which our web site is listed and the behavior of all of those various places at the same time. In other words, when google isn't giving us much traffic, neither does bing or DDG. This also applies to other ways we have our web site shown across the Internet, it all seems to go together. I can also say that when there seems to be a lull in business online or traffic activity, I also notice less human interaction in the form of phone calls. And this isn't just first time business contact, we also see a reduction in the amount of customer service issues. But when everything pops back up, we not only see more orders from our website, we see it from other entities that we also own. And that is the time that we get a lot more phone calls in the real world and more customer service need at the time. What I'm trying to say is that it all goes together and that it's not just one entity like google that is doing this. It's as if the Internet all runs together in the same direction. This is not unlike a starling murmuration swarm in the natural world. It's either that we all do the same thing at the same time and that's how we function as human beings or something more sinister, there's some entity that has control of the Internet globally and can change things like turning a dial. I don't think the search engines have much control over it, even though we think that they do. It can only be one of the two. I've experienced it this morning once again, seeing this same behavior where it seems like the Internet is deadlocked. Then, all of a sudden it comes to life again, without coordination from the many different entities where we are listed, they all seem to be coordinating in some kind of synchronistic behavior. They all come alive at the same time and we know they do not coordinate, not possible or legal.

[engine]

I'm now seeing more Facebook content in Google SERPs

On Jan 30, 2020 I saw Facebook videos appearing in the SERPs [webmasterworld.com...]

Today, i'm seeing Facebook page content.

I thought Google was locked out of Facebook, but this is either legitimate and, perhaps, there's some kind of agreement, or it's a problem with Facebook's blocking. Perhaps because Googlebot now looks like more like Chrome.

Earlier Googlebot Evergreen User Agents Start Rolling Out [webmasterworld.com]

Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2020 [webmasterworld.com]

[glakes]

Today, i'm seeing Facebook page content.

Troubling. My FB business page allows us to interact with people in a more relaxed environment. The last thing I want is potential customers finding our products on FB or even worse - us having to compete with our FB pages to get traffic to our website. I have enough headaches doing that with Amazon.

I'm also seeing favicons. Seems the only thing I'm not seeing are conversions...

[engine]

There have always been a few pieces of FB content, but not videos and from Pages.

Traditionally, FB was a walled garden, so it's a big change.

[MrBlack]

Has anyone else seen their traffic from Google fall off a cliff today? I am used to getting caught in algo updates to a certain extent but today is the worst I have ever seen. Widget price comparison UK.

[MrBlack]

I just noticed that a site where I got a lot of links from over the years has been down all day. Would the algo have picked that up so quickly?

[NickMNS]

I just came across an interesting search "case", that demonstrates the extent to which search results are dynamic.

I just googled "weather 'my city'" as I often do, typically the results are the same, Google knowledge box, leading commercial weather site, government site, other sites.

But today is different! A winter storm is rolling in, and so now the results have adapted.
Ad,
Google KB,
leading commercial weather site,
Google in the News,
Google Twitter boxes,
leading commercial weather site(2),
government site 7d forecast,
People Also Asked (with really moronic questions),
government site 24h forecast,
and 2 more results from 1 other site,
then page 2.

My description doesn't really do this justice, because the actual organic results are typical but the Google owned result are large and dominant. It appears that Google sees an increase in traffic to this search term (due to the coming bad weather) and has decided to funnel it to its own pages. Pages populated by scraped data from the sites that would typically be providing the information.

[universenet]

NickMNS weather forecast is very good and one of most easy way for check how google working, good or bad

For weather forecast everyone understand what should be in googe search results and what no

[samwest]

SERPS are bobbling around as usual. Different on mobile, tablet and desktop. Seems every bobble marks a new round of Zombies. Once it settles, conversions briefly return, then they mix it up again and the Zombies return...rinse and repeat. Worst week this year. Remaining traffic quality is poor and not converting.....again.

[worker]

I have found at least 10 fake search results that redirect to #*$! sites in the first two pages for a couple of quick search results tests. I am reporting them as I find them, but it's odd for #*$! site redirects to make it through Google's systems, especially in the first two pages. Two of the sites also attempted malicious domain redirects that my Norton Antivirus caught and stopped. I feel sorry for the average user who doesn't have virus protection on their computers because these results read as valid, but they were most definitely not valid (unless you like sudden unexpected redirects to #*$! sites).

[browndog]

I just Googled a phrase 'type of product safe for unicorns', and the first result is an ad for a product which is a toxin to 'unicorns'. There is no way to report this. I don't know if I'm being picky or not. I know that that product is extremely dangerous, but for the average searcher, looking for info for what to use, it could be very dangerous.

[jediviper]

February is a News and Entertainment month so far.
If someone checks with some SERPS reporting platform its easy to see that both industries are at high levels of sensitivity.

[seomotionz]

@browndog Another update or some other thing of such sort is definitely happening.

SEMrush is showing 5.6. And from what I am hearing sites who provides online services like free plagiarism checker or grammar checker are hit pretty hard. There rankings have fallen from 2nd or 3rd position to 3rd or 4th page.

Today when I saw a pretty high bot activity I expected atleast 12 hours to pass until I hear something fixed. But guess I was wrong.

[SteveWrz]

Was there an update around the 2nd? My traffic was noticeably lower, but I attributed it to the Super Bowl. However, the trend of declining traffic continued on through the week with today looking abysmal. What the hell Google? January was starting to look good again after a very depressing November and December, and now I'm back on the decline. It makes no sense.

[glakes]

January was starting to look good again after a very depressing November and December, and now I'm back on the decline. It makes no sense.

Google released BERT at the end of October, and our November and December conversions crashed. January was not as bad, but still down substantially YOY. I don't know if the reason why we are still down is because of BERT or the UI tests Google appears to be conducting. But from what I've read, Bing has been using BERT six months prior to Google. We don't have problems with converting traffic from Bing. Maybe Google needs to poach some BERT programmers from Bing...

[fearlessrick]

I have been using Bing as my primary search tool for longer than I can remember - probably about 10 years. They are kicking G's behind. They're more innovative and less driven by an agenda, IMO. Over the past six years, they've gained 10% points on Google in search and that trend is not slowing down.

[StupidIntelligent]

Can confirm another update today 7th February. Guess it will hit the shelves by Monday.

[NickMNS]

I'm seeing a positive uptick in traffic (between 10 and 15%) today. Still too early to know whether it will stick.

[renatovieira]

@NickMNS

Also here. But for me it started yesterday.

[glakes]

I see increased traffic too, though none of it is going to our product pages.

Our last conversions came from Bing and direct traffic. Google's traffic = nothing but duds.

[TeresaD]

I had a reasonable week, wages and some bills paid but today is shocking

[goodoldweb]

Google is an absolute mess and can't get even the most basic queries now.

Was looking the other day for information on feeding my new fry fish.

Try Google for "feeding salmon to fish fry"

Than

Try Bing for the same "feeding salmon to fish fry"

Google results are shocking while Bing is absolutely spot on for first results.

I don't know what Google is anymore but it sure ain't a search engine. Google is broken and quite dumb.

Slap on more ads Sundar Pichai....

[cheegum]

Semrush showing 9.3