Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2020

[Shepherd]

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System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4982115.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 12:19 pm on Mar 1, 2020 (utc -5)

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If you're in ecommerce this twitter thread is a good read, albeit a bit scary.

[twitter.com...]

[Paperchaser]

Hard days ahead, still trying to recover from last November updates and im still going down lol, Google going to hard lately imo... Would think entertainment would have a new sky high with everyone staying at home. Oh well time to move on different venue.
[imgur.com...] =/

Stay positive and stay safe guys!

[Paperchaser]

To me it came down to how long im holding my keyword position during the rush time that google decides to give me, if I get rank 1 keyword from 12pm to 1pm i got 1hour to squeeze maximum i can get from that time periods... The consistency during the day went non existant on my side. There nothing I can do regarding this either since their algo decides how long a site stays on for keywords. I dont see having more great backlinks, user experience ect.. To be able to improve this as well. Maybe some got the same issue.

[mosxu]

AI is not afraid of God even in time of crisis still do what they do best...

[samwest]

Posted a new article about 3 days ago. Searched on the title, which is different than anything out there and uses no controversial wording or topic. Google result?= nowhere/ algo censored. Dogpile result= #1. You just can't gain a footing in Google...at all.

[Cralamarre]

Traffic was up 10% yesterday from the same day last week. Looks to be continuing today.

[jmorgan]

@Cralamarre Don't know what niche you're in, but I'm not even going to bother checking my traffic stats until this Coronavirus fiasco is over.

[aristotle]

Is it my imagination, or has the internet been generally slowing down.

Many of the sites I visit everyday seem to be taking longer to load. Has anyone else noticed this?

If people stay at home to avoid the virus, then they might be spending more time on the web, thereby slowing everything down. I'm not saying that it's a big slowdown, but it seems to be big enough to notice.

[thekita]

Seeing a nice increase in rankings today. Haven't seen anything like this in a long time. Anyone else seeing fluctuations?

[samwest]

Is it my imagination, or has the internet been generally slowing down.

I woke up to a server slow down, so ran gtmetrix and found WP emoji's suddenly slowing site down, killed them off and back to normal. Decent traffic levels likely due to captive audience. Seeing some much needed surges and marginally better conversions. Unless the algo let up, it will be gone tomorrow.

[seomotionz]

I woke up to a server slow down, so ran gtmetrix and found WP emoji's suddenly slowing site down, killed them off and back to normal. Decent traffic levels likely due to captive audience. Seeing some much needed surges and marginally better conversions. Unless the algo let up, it will be gone tomorrow.

@samwest We are seeing it too. People are stuck at their homes so they are surfing. Even I am in self-isolation. And our city is under lockdown.

[RedBar]

Is it my imagination, or has the internet been generally slowing down.

My sites are fine but some sites are noticeably slower however consider this for extra traffic demand.

My daughter rang me yesterday to ask if I had the film Contagion, yes, and I asked why and she said that there had been such a huge Netflix demand for this film that Netflix was restricting / whatever usage of this film.

Just how true this is I do not know however when I WhatsApped several friends that I had it in divx and HD I had several visitors with dongles!

Unexpected extra beers are now in my fridge:-)

[BushyTop]

we're seeing lots of change again this morning, UK

[Tashi]

I'm seeing a 10% traffic increase compared to the previous months, starting on Saturday...

[RedBar]

Coming up to mid-day for me with a couple of sites still on zero this morning and one on 2% and the remainder on 5% but I am not surprised, none are ecommerce.

Seeing some SERPs movements with the inevitable garbage plagiarised WP and Pinterest sites gaining.

Realworld regular product enquiries and orders holding steady however project enquiries are noticeably down which is unusual even at "comparable" time.

But this does not surprise me, aren't there enough empty shopping properties, holiday resorts, is there going to be a resurgence in hotel demands and travel post-covid? This is going to affect all sectors in an unexpected way, winners / losers, keep your eye on the trends.

As a very large business in our global widget sector we shall be consolidating for at least the next 2-3 years with any considered expansion plans put on hold until we've assessed the shake-out.

[Cralamarre]

Well, after a weekend of traffic improving 10-15% over the previous weekend, today has started out slower than last week. Oh well. At least I had a little hope for a couple of days.

[samwest]

Yep, monday morning, very few working yet zero traffic today. Total clamp since yesterday...yet SERPS 'appear' unchanged

[deriklogov]

I did see tiny improvement of 5-7% yesterday compared to same day last week, but this is so low comparing to drop that i feel like those traffic levels are new standard for next couple month/years.

[Cralamarre]

@deriklogov I don't even bother comparing my traffic to pre-pandemic numbers anymore. That was another life. My only concern now is whether my traffic will continue to drop. So far, things seem to have stabilized at 25-30% less traffic compared to what was once "normal".

[BushyTop]

@cralamarra we're 47% less than Weekend on Weekend.

[MayankParmar]

Payment still not released :/

[Cralamarre]

@MayankParmar My Adsense payment arrived today.

[RedBar]

Back on topic:-)

I was just checking my SERPs and found myself ranking 6th for a widget that was 301d to another site some 3 weeks ago ... it's cache date was 12th February ... so much for updates!

[NickMNS]

Just an update. On Thursday evening I was stating that there must have been an update rolling out. Clearly having been the only one seeing it means that it wasn't update but simply a positive boost specific to my website. Well the weekend came and went, Friday, I reached a new all time record in traffic blowing past my previous records by a large margin, I was up 110% from the previous week. Saturday, I was only up 40%, yesterday less than 1% and today I'm trending around 10%. What ever it was seems to have been short lived.

[Cralamarre]

After a slow morning, my traffic is back to being around 10% higher today than last Monday. Most of the increase is from US traffic. Very surprising considering my site is education-based.

[RedBar]

Very surprising considering my site is education-based.

I would have thought this a great time for an education site or is it not student targeted?

[samsseo]

Same here @Cralamarre, started off very badly between 6:00 - 13:00, but picked up in the afternoon so should finish on a high.

[Cralamarre]

@RedBar My site is student targeted, so my hope is that as school systems get their online education plans sorted out, I will see an increase in traffic.

[topaz]

News site. Lost -40% in March 2019. Looks like I regained it this month and then some....exactly one year later. This is from search, from top stories and Discover combined.

[Athedian]

Google is pathetic...Search Console is detecting all these errors and after I fixed all of them, not not a single one is being validated by them. This is like a permanently broken system that they have.

[System]

Please stay on topic & limit your comments to Google Updates and SERP changes.

If you want to discuss Adwords, COVID, changes to e-commerce, pandemic user behavior, working from home, etc please start a separate thread.

[edited by: goodroi at 11:24 am (utc) on Mar 24, 2020]