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.

[Shepherd]

Many a time when searching I "feel" like the SERPs seem... less, just had that feeling on a search and did a count, found only 7 organic results with 2 from the same domain on the first page (desktop search, incognito).

7 ads (4 top, 3 bottom)
7 organics

Page 2 went back to 10 organics.

[RedBar]

Whatever is happening seems to have got their knickers in a twist which, outside of the top 2-3 results in my widget sector, has got stuff bouncing all over the place.

Site 1 keyword phrase late last week #3, then 83, yesterday nowhere, today back in the 80s
Site 2 keyword phrase late last week #15, then 40s, yesterday 60s, today nowhere
Site 3 keyword phrase late last week #14, then 60s, yesterday 30s, today 60s

I'm also seeing lots of very strange artciles by unknown boggers with no backlinks and no likes plus several sites with a titlebar keyword phrase and one poor on-page image and nothing else.

Am I changing anything? What for and why?

It's turning, yet again, into yet another mess that no one can do anything about furthermore I'm not degrading my sites, to whatever, for their mistakes.

I really wonder what "they" see when examining "their" results? Surely not anything to do with quality and relevance?

Last week things were looking so much better, did they have a heavy party weekend?

[MarvinG]

Nice increase in traffic since January, but suddenly a significant drop this weekend (and still going).

[MayankParmar]

Articles are indexing slowly since yesterday. Anyone with the same problem?

[glakes]

I spoke too soon regarding my conversions. Now traffic and conversions are back in the toilet.

Looks like SERP tools are reporting high volatility today. Are we beginning another round of 5+ days of massive changes?

[RedBar]

Are we beginning another round of 5+ days of massive changes?

It would seem to be PT or PF!

Permanent Turmoil and / or Permanent Flux ... Take your choice!

[StupidIntelligent]

@Robert Charlton - I think you're confusing me with someone else. I'm not Bill.

But, it's also true, that I'm a #*$! nobody. If you don't want nostradamus-styled posts, it's fine. Fair call.

[universenet]

[semrush.com ]
StupidIntelligent Important is that update started

[StupidAI]

Google just killed my website, from 825k organic daily search to only 3.6k yesterday.

All my kw's disappear, anyone having same issues ?

[StupidIntelligent]

@StupidAI - Did you do anything stupid like bad link building or copying stuff from other websites - over many years, say around 5 or more? Be honest.

If you didn't, then I wouldn't worry about it at all. In fact, just wait it out, and you will return to your former glory.

[universenet]

Google just killed my website, from 825k organic daily search to only 3.6k yesterday.

All my kw's disappear, anyone having same issues ?

Google is amazing, surprising, never boring with google.

[edited by: universenet at 8:00 pm (utc) on Feb 18, 2020]

[TeresaD]

That is interesting I got penguined was it in December 2014?

I just checked my backlinks and there are loads of new ones I have never heard of and the ones that were disavowed years ago are back.

I have no access or log ins to change the links because I did not add them, they are linking to me with no anchor text.

All I can do is add every flipping one of them to a new disavow file.

[StupidAI]

@StupidAI - Did you do anything stupid like bad link building or copying stuff from other websites - over many years, say around 5 or more? Be honest.

If you didn't, then I wouldn't worry about it at all. In fact, just wait it out, and you will return to your former glory.

i won't say i didn't, everyone in the game i'm pretty sure buying backlinks. But i can tell you i didn't do any shady tactics or blackhat.

For now i will be patient and just wait. Hope the big G just fked up and fix it.

Google is amazing, surprising, never boring with google
StupidAI May I ask you? Do you sell something on your website, some products?

ikr, but look at the search result now, all non irrelevant pages shows up.
i'm on gambling niche.

[edited by: StupidAI at 8:00 pm (utc) on Feb 18, 2020]

[universenet]

StupidAI May I ask you? Do you sell something on your website, some products?

[StupidAI]

StupidAI May I ask you? Do you sell something on your website, some products?

i am selling products.

[TeresaD]

That was ridiculous and took ages, the links were all 404 not secure,

to be fair I did add my site to loads of directories 7 or 8 years ago then was left in the wilderness for a whole 12 months after penguin. I did clean them up after that but now they are back?

my site is down so much money on last year and only 2 conversions this week so far, I really regret adding to those directories!

[universenet]

i am selling products.

This is problem
You can go retired if you think of traffic from google in future, ok yes but with advertising

[TeresaD]

why can't Google just deindex all 404 pages when they find them? It would clean up the internet

[glakes]

Two days of conversion rates above 2% for organic traffic, now I'm back down to .75% today. What a mess. What manufacturer, with employees/equipment/materials/finished product, finds these whipsaw changes acceptable? Does it build trust in Google's paid advertising when such volatility is occurring? Of course not. Google's excessive volatility leaves decision makers to draw their own conclusions, which I'm sure many believe is not in the best interest of (a) users, (b) website owners and (c) advertisers.

Today's total traffic to our website remains consistent, though traffic quality is poor as compared to the prior two days. I see Barry talking about a local update, though I don't see anything in my industry. However, my company's GMB page never did get much traffic anyway.

[NickMNS]

why can't Google just deindex all 404 pages

Because 404 errors are not considered permanent, they can be permanent but they may occur if there is problem with a server or for some other reason. If a webmaster wants to signal that a page is gone permanently they should return a 410 response code.

from the http spec: [tools.ietf.org...]

6.5.4. 404 Not Found
The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did
not find a current representation for the target resource or is not
willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not
indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or
permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the
origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that
the condition is likely to be permanent.

[TeresaD]

Thanks NickMNS after all these years I did not know that, now to try and figure out if I can get it into my CMS.

[StupidAI]

This is problem
You can go retired if you think of traffic from google in future, ok yes but with advertising

Why i have to pay when i can make tons of traffic without spending a penny on advertising ?

[universenet]

Why i have to pay when i can make tons of traffic without spending a penny on advertising ?

Because google want that you pay, google like when you pay
google is incredible

[Paperchaser]

@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...

[Dimitri]

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.

[NickMNS]

@Dimitry

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.

What evidence do you have to substantiate such a claim? More so that you also claim:

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

If Google is competing against you then it may be this action which is pushing you down, so then how do you differentiate between these?

[worker]

Information from one guy reviewing changes in SERPS:

With any big change in Google, everyone tries to determine what has changed. Is something in particular now more important? Is it content, speed, ad %, ad placement, backlinks, bought links, bad traffic, etc.

I have been reviewing a number of search phrases for my business focus and they are generally two or three word phrases that describe specific types of sites.

While I do not know the reason for what I'm seeing (i.e. why Google is doing what I'm seeing done), I do have a guess.

First, here is what I'm seeing. Before the changes over the last month, beginning roughly around January 14th, when I ran searches for the phrases I watch periodically, I would see on the first page of Google:

ONLY sites that matched what any reasonable interpretation of the search phrases would lead one to want to see

What I see now:

Approx. half of the sites one would expect to see mixed among new links and blog links and directory links referencing the types or written about the types of sites one would expect to see

So it appears that the logic that interpreted the goal of the searcher changed from assuming if you typed in Blue Sites that you actually wanted to see Blue Sites. Instead, it seems like the new logic interprets Blue Sites as 'Oh, you want information on Blue Sites'. And so Google is now delivering Blue Sites and press releases about Blue Sites and in news articles (some even 3 years old) about Blue Sites, all on that precious first page.

This has pushed actual Blue Sites search results to the second and third pages due to the new search results having Blue Site Information mixed in much much more than previously. (I have noticed that the News category of Semrush has been one of the ones that has been in flux much more than other categories and at higher levels than other categories.)

So, my theory is that one of the big changes that took place in the last month is a change in the code that tries to interpret 'intent'. While biased, I believe the previous version of their code better interpreted intent from short search term phrases and the new iteration is either confused (if they are trying to have AI watch and learn what is clicked on) or the new iteration is just a fundamental change in what Google thinks people want when they type in very short search phrases.

Typing in Blue Sites no longer means you want to see results for Blue Sites, but instead it now seems to mean that you want information on Blue Sites.

I'm sure there are many other factors that fold into the changes we are all seeing but can anyone else confirm or refute what I just described? Or do you have any other ideas on what is part of the changes we are seeing in the SERPS?

[glakes]

I'm sure there are many other factors that fold into the changes we are all seeing but can anyone else confirm or refute what I just described? Or do you have any other ideas on what is part of the changes we are seeing in the SERPS?

I think you are correct with some of the flux we are seeing being the result of interpretation tweaks. I think some of these changes are related to Bert, which was released the end of October. Keep in mind Bert was "pre-trained" using Wikipedia with further training possibly contributing to volatility. Pre-training is referenced at: [ai.googleblog.com...]

Google started breaking out earnings from YouTube recently. So it's no surprise Google is filling featured snippets with YouTube videos. I'm seeing more videos being displayed across a wider variety of "how to" queries where the entire above the fold area is consumed by YouTube videos and ads in some queries.



This is just another way Google uses their dominance in search to consume valuable real estate in the SERPS with other properties they own. Those that are service providers, or run info sites describing how to fix, change, correct, etc. things, then these large featured snippet videos are going to hurt big time. Regardless, the videos provide Google another opportunity to present ads to users who do not click on them in the SERPS.

[Robert Charlton]

@Robert Charlton - I think you're confusing me with someone else. I'm not Bill.

But, it's also true, that I'm a #*$! nobody. If you don't want nostradamus-styled posts, it's fine. Fair call.

StupidIntelligent... you don't have to be "Bill" when you use the same trolling techniques. To clarify, we allow... no crystal balls, no tea leaves, no prophetic software. no ghosts of friends who once delivered pizza to Larry Page.

If you see specific signs, like an old index reappearing in the serps, or mozcast turning somersaults, that's something we can discuss here... as long as you're not coy about it; that you're around to support it with intelligent professional-level discussion; and it's otherwise in compliance with our ToS and our forum Charter.

We're not here for you to call attention to special gifts that do not exist.

Note that there is still a provision in our Charter under REASONS for EDITS that I'll quote here...

"When is the next update?" questions. Only Google knows, and these days Google updates their algo in some way almost every day - and PR or backlinks are changed on no predictable schedule.

We've relaxed that a bit, since it's mostly what's discussed in this Updates and SERP changes thread now... but when your comments have gotten the entire thread asking about nothing else but the update you've predicted, then figure you've crossed a line.

Google SEO News forum Charter here... [webmasterworld.com...] ...It's worth a read. Check up on Google Noise in the Charter as well.

[Athedian]

@Kendo: I've seen that happening too, old links that were long gone appearing for no reason. There seems to be another update going on, traffic is dying again, conversions are disappearing even for Google Ads. Organic conversions, yeah they're gone.