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.

[universenet]

ok RedBar you made duckduckgo in more light now... great... I like this

[w_hebb]

Regardless of opinions on the validity of SEMRush volatility, we got hammered by Pickard, started to recover, and around the fifth started to get hammered again. Not much change between ratios of PPC/PLA to organic, but conversions are falling off the cliff and traffic is starting a moderate decline - it "feels" almost like Pickard all over again.
Kind regards,
Bill

[BushyTop]

SERPs and Traffic all over the place. Switch on, switch off, literally within minutes.

In all seriousness, G Search the past 6 months, since medic, has been an absolute joke. Multiple listings from one domain on some highly competitive keywords (i bet they're not complaining) and sites built on off the shelf skins, loaded with gamed backlink profiles mainly from directories. To say there is a huge emphasis on UX, there doesn't seem to be any reward for it. You can knock up designs that a child would have put together and providing its indexable, that's all that matters. No reward for innovation.

[mosxu]

“problem for consumers and businesses is that a handful of companies control the bulk of advertising and ecommerce“

Yes but politicians don’t see it like that. They only dare to think to maybe tax these companies, a little digital tax or something?

They do not want to understand the impact of Chinese manufacturers selling direct to consumers via Amazon warehouses. Sorry AI someone was smarter than you but AI can keep moving things around like favicons and other very important things.

[samwest]

After a great start to the week, looks like SERPS have not changed in my vertical, but bounce is suddenly way up...here we go again with the apparent AI visitor behavior shaping.

[glakes]

@mosxu

I think many politicians are simply too old to understand the digital economy. They have people (aides) to handle their technology needs. Look no further than a current Presidential contender talking about having record players on at night. The same technology challenged staff problem exists with regulators. In general, most politicians are near the end of their careers and regulators that don't really understand technology are so old their productive working years have long expired. Proof in point is the forum discussion [webmasterworld.com...] currently taking place with the thread titled "FTC Wants to Know About Acquisitions By Large Tech Companies." The FTC is so lazy/technology challenged that they don't appear to be able to conduct their own investigations and instead ask big tech companies to implicate themselves. LOL It's these buffoons that are responsible for maintaining a "free market" that was enslaved and controlled by big tech years ago. Each year it gets worse as the result of incompetent politicians and regulators.

Google started my day with a very rare organic conversion. Traffic is down, and outside of the rare conversion, Google paid/organic remains dead. I'm seeing increased sales/new customer acquisition from Amazon, Bing and Yahoo. Our fax machine has been producing POs, so we're still rocking despite Google trying to snuff us out.

[RedBar]

From November 2019 until last week, I have made some serious alterations / upgrades to one of my main corporate sites and specifically to the most important widget keyword in my industry. I checked what all the ranking pages had done, most had copied mine yet presented it in a different ways, therefore created an even higher quality page than previously.

Ironically this widget has never ranked in Google, not in the top 100, even though it did well everywhere else ... so it looks as though all this hard work has paid off since I noticed a ranking increase during January, a couple of weeks ago into the top 20, last week #11 and the past couple of days #3.

This will be interesting to see how long it lasts however all my widgets that were not already ranking top 3 have seen good improvements resulting in some quite unusual, genuine enquiries.

[seomotionz]

Ironically this widget has never ranked in Google, not in the top 100, even though it did well everywhere else ... so it looks as though all this hard work has paid off since I noticed a ranking increase during January, a couple of weeks ago into the top 20, last week #11 and the past couple of days #3.

@RedBar I heard today that some odd widget rankings have been going on. I am glad it worked for you.

We (& some others)redid some sites (auto, internet & jobs in our case) which were effected by the September update. And they show consider ranking growth after the January update. But it looks like that they were hit again now.

[universenet]

update is going last five days and google still do not say nothing about, maybe just try experience diferent updates in one. like all in one, is suprising package of all updates from google, where is Danny Sullivan? Danny, where are you?

[sk7411]

Seeing swings like crazy , getting hammered hour by hour . I believe google has set many priorities for 2020 and this is just only the beginning .

[chrisv1963]

update is going last five days and google still do not say nothing about, maybe just try experience diferent updates in one. like all in one, is suprising package of all updates from google, where is Danny Sullivan? Danny, where are you?

Maybe they are not communicating because it's a bug, and not a planned update ...

[universenet]

Maybe they are not communicating because it's a bug, and not a planned update ...

I am thinking same and bug happnning many times
I hope they did not lose mostly all data by mistake again like last year

[mosxu]

@glakes

Politicians probably are proud of big tech, they may be thinking big tech even helps the economy and the same like the financial crisis until small businesses are completely crushed and unemployment will go south no politician will care.

[seomotionz]

Maybe they are not communicating because it's a bug, and not a planned update

So the bug is playing with the SERP's for more than three days. I highly doubt that.

[glakes]

Maybe they are not communicating because it's a bug, and not a planned update ...

Google has acknowledged far less disruptive bugs in the past. Whether legit algo change or a bug, Google's silence speaks loudly - Google does not give two hoots about anyone other than themselves.

@mosxu

Excellent point. An oblivious and technology challenged politician fails to see the harm being done right in front of their very own eyes and at the hands of their own incompetence.

[edited by: glakes at 5:55 pm (utc) on Feb 12, 2020]

[lostshootingstar]

I have zero evidence to back this up, so in other words this will fit in great here:

I wonder if this is not necessarily an algorithm change, but a massive recalculation of the data that feeds those algorithms. For example, Page rank is usually calculated on the fly and in small sections across the web, but in theory you can do a full deep recalculation of the entire link graph. Doing something like that, even with Google's computing power, would take days or weeks.

[RedBar]

update is going last five days and google still do not say nothing about

But isn't this the standard Google way of working nowadays and has been for quite some time?

Updates every day, every week, some site owners may experience big shifts whereas others may see absolutely nothing.

I would venture to suggest that it is probably easier to gain site rankings with quality site improvements but going by my experience one has to give it a couple of months to take any effect rather than an immediate whoosh up the SERPs.

I'm not saying nothing is happening because it clearly has been and I'm seeing many poor / thin pages being demoted, however, fingers crossed, I am seeing in my widget sector a lot better results than 6 months ago let alone 12 months or more.

[BoredMeteor]

Traffic is just falling, falling, falling. I'm seeing traffic levels right now that have more or less sent me back to year one of my biggest website, which I've been working on for nearly a decade. It's quite something.

You do everything Google asks. You jump through hoops for HTTPS, you experiment with AMP, best practices, GDPR, blah blah blah. Original content. Fast loading speed. Doesn't matter. At a certain point, I guess they just hate your website. They apparently love websites that spin content though, oh yeah.

[RedBar]

@BoredMeteor

In which generic widget sector are you?

[universenet]

But is possible that this "update" will never stop, Google Quantum Supremacy is on the way.. they will play days and weeks maybe or forever

[RedBar]

But is possible that this "update" will never stop,

Absolutely correct, they'll simply keep fiddling with it, playing with it, adjusting it, it will be in a constant state of flux and IF AI ever gets to an acceptable level insofar as G is concerned, then expect even more intervention and suggestions and especially so if one rarely / never clears their cache / history.

Already two people entering the same question will most probably get different results simply because users in general don't clear out their crap and block the spying.

The problem with all of this is that because of users' laziness, it will be extremely difficult to SEO for ... Guess what? You'll end up paying for keyword advertising!

[ichthyous]

I'm rather surprised by the level of naive thinking in these forums sometimes..."oh maybe my site lost half its traffic because Google has a bug?"... "Maybe the constant updates will stop when AI learning is good enough", etc. Nonsense...this is a marketing strategy on Google's part, it's just that simple.

The strategy is, grab them by the ankles, turn them upside down and shake them hard, keep them so befuddled, worried, exhausted and hungry for traffic that eventually enough of them will give up playing with SEO and just pay us. Can't afford to pay us? Then drop dead.

Google needs to keep growing all the time, the second Google's ad revenue stops growing it will be massacred by Wall Street. In order to find new revenue Google will destroy the quality of its own organic SERPS, it's own credibility, and our traffic and businesses in the process. Stop moaning about what you have lost, because it's not going back to the good old days...I've been at this since 2003. It's been getting worse and worse for years now. Those of you who can turn to amazon or other sources of leads more power to you...do it ASAP and get away from Google as quickly as possible

[universenet]

ichthyous
like I said before, if this continue and will continue of course, google will finnsh after all like a boeing

[EditorialGuy]

We've had a very slight increase in Google traffic since February 7, but I would have ascribed it to seasonal growth (or perhaps normal variation) if Barry Schwarz hadn't written about a "big unconfirmed Google algorithm update."

[samwest]

Examining the data, from the 7th through the 11th, we saw a large rise in traffic and conversions. Traffic jumped about 30% and peaked on Sunday 2/9, which is atypical for the last 24 month pattern. Conversions were great. What happened on the 9th? Anyone else see that rise? It seems to mark an update where the filter mechanism was temporarily turned off. It's definitely back on now.

[Countryside tech]

Google confirmed no core update took place : [searchenginejournal.com...]

However, we witnessed a good +65% in organic traffic (News Media/Western Europe) since the 8th, still going strong today for no particular reason other than an update. If nothing came from Google, I can't explain this... even though we are enjoying the results!

[sk7411]

Google confirmed no core update took place

We believe you Google :)

[joamuk]

All major keywords where they were last week - just no traffic!

[Manana]

@samwest

I've also seen a surge in new inquiries and sales on the 9th but not a surge in traffic. I even got my hopes up that google finally solved a bug that was wreaking havoc on my sales but the zombie traffic didn't take long to return.

[rustybrick]

Google did not actually say "no core update took place" - Here is what Google said [twitter.com...]

"We do updates all the time. I would suggest rereading our general advice about this: [twitter.com...]