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...]

[BushyTop]

I honestly thought that in July last year I'd be in a position where everything pre-June had reverted. Another 8 months down the line and things just keep getting worse. Medic spawned the worst run of results I have ever seen since working in the industry (nearly 10 years now). Worryingly, I just dont have any faith that they are going to get this sorted.

I would love to access whatever their system uses for a version control and just dial it back. The results were cleaner than with no inexplicable drops - they were more granular, and weren't littered with multiple listings from the same domain.

[Nazhahp]

Google has completely removed my website from the SERP for some keywords (TOP 3 keywords) that generate most of the clicks on SERP, on the other hand I have noticed other keywords are climbing the chart to page 1, but traffic reduced by %20. I have no idea what the heck is going on... everything I have been doing is pure white-hat; (guest posting and link insertion in relevant website). Technical and on-page SEO are well optimized. I hope this is just a Flux and not a penalty.

PS: I am receiving more traffic from Bing and yahoo.

[seomotionz]

@Nazhahp Stick to the Bing and Yahoo traffic. Check what optimizations you have made for those pages who are receiving those traffic. And in SERP's your page is climbing doesn't necessarily mean that you will see an increase in traffic.

[southernguy]

I said this a long time ago while there is not as much volume from Bing and Yahoo its better quality and it converts better. Until people stop using Google they will remain the main player, I have not used them for search for almost two years.

The only way to optimize for Google is to spam the crap out of it, spam rules their search engine. If you have money and resources to churn and burn it can still be profitable but if not focus on the other search alternatives and social you will be money ahead.

[samwest]

How is it that traffic for everyone is always getting worse and so many times in lockstep with completely unrelated assets?

This has become the Google SERP misery forum. Site sitting at zero all morning in spite of unchanged page 1 position 1 and 2 listings. WTF?

[jmorgan]

Has Google reversed their update which supposedly prevented a single site from having multiple listings?

Just the other day I literally saw the entire first page (desktop) of the SERPs filled up by one single site despite having inferior content to another website.

[glakes]

@seomotionz

Google definitely has a SERP quality problem, which is observed by not just our bad converting traffic but by the redirects and other nonsense being witnessed in the SERPS. I think this is prompting some of Google's users to go to a different search engine, which has resulted in elevated from other sources (ie. Amazon, Bing, DDG, etc.).

I said this a long time ago while there is not as much volume from Bing and Yahoo its better quality and it converts better.

I definitely agree with you that Bing and Yahoo have much higher quality traffic than Google. At least in my ecommerce industry, I believe Google attracts low quality users. I say this not just because the rare orders coming from Google tend to have lower cart totals, but because Google is the largest data miner in the world. Conscientious people that value their privacy tend to use another search engine, don't use Chrome, avoid Gmail, etc. Why don't so many of Google's users value their privacy? I think many just tune out the news and/or fail to research the matter because they simply don't care, are too lazy, etc. For the products I produce and sell, research goes a long way in saving consumers money. A slightly higher upfront cost on a quality product will save our customers hundreds of dollars over the lifetime of the product versus our Chinese competitors products. Google's users want to be spoon fed whatever Google dishes them, which is supported by the high bounce rate (one page wonders) as compared to other traffic sources. Even Facebook traffic has higher pageviews than Google.

[Shepherd]

... reversed their update which supposedly prevented a single site from having multiple listings?

Seems like it, been seeing domain crowding again for most of the year. Also seeing reduced number of organic results on the first page, many searches only returning 7 organic results with 4 of the results from 2 sites.

[glakes]

Has Google reversed their update which supposedly prevented a single site from having multiple listings?

I thought the update was restricted to the duplicate knowledge panel listing? Except for the knowledge panel, I don't recall seeing any recent news about Google reducing domain crowding. Amazon has for years and still benefits from Google's Amazon crowded SERPS for keywords related to our products. It's like this for most products.

[seomotionz]

The things is Google sends 1000 visits among which 10 actually converts (which is now reduced to 1 or zero to be exact in some cases) .

But Bing, DDG, Yahoo and not to mention Daum. Daum is not exactly English speaking but it serves well English speaking South Korean traffic. All these small search engines (combinedly) gets us traffic around 50 but they convert very good. Way good! How many? Out of 50, 5 definitely converts and the number only rises as the traffic number rises.

[StupidIntelligent]

@seomotionz - Thank your holy stars that you still end up getting 15 sales a day. There are members in this thread, who cannot make that number in a month.

[RedBar]

Regarding a global observation, traffic levels especially from Asia, have not returmed to anywhere near normal levels since the Chinese New Year ended.

Normally I expect 20-30 contacts a day from China alone, for the past few weeks it's been averaging 1-2 per day, I've had nothing from S. Korea in weeks.

Realistically all areas are down and we expect this to continue for several months and G has absolutely no part to play in this ... Unless they suddenly create a working vaccine:-)

[worker]

My traffic is almost exclusively U.S. traffic and the changes in Google over the last 2 months has lead to a 70% reduction in traffic and revenue (on non-eCommerce content sites that are over 10 years old and that are constantly updated with new content.)

Something is horribly broken in the Google search results system as evidenced by multi-year-old one-page news articles referencing search terms appearing above the sites that the search terms perfectly describe. Add to that multiple 'fake results' where the link and the text look like a good result but that redirects to a p0rn site attempting malicious redirects. How can Google list sites that attempt to harm the visitor? They used to have a tool that would identify and warn people of things like this. Nothing about their recent changes make any sense, and from what I can tell based on comments here, the problem is widespread across all industries and all types of sites.

Has anyone identified (through testing) anything that is likely to be a large component in the recent changes? Something big changed and negatively affected a vast number of websites. What are the things that changed? We need to begin posting whatever testing we are doing to try to figure out what Google did so we can fix whatever the problems are.

[RedBar]

as evidenced by multi-year-old one-page news articles

This is very concerting, in my widget industry, I am seeing many single pages with only the titlebar and a poor image and maybe one keyword description on the actual page ... and that's it, nothing else. Great if one is looking for a crap image of the widget otherwise nothing else of any value whatsoever ... oh, should I mention links to 7-10 year old product out-of-stock ebay pages ranking at #1?

[worker]

I've also seen links to forum posts (on 1st and 2nd results pages) that lead to forums that have been closed for almost a year.

To be clear, you do not reach the old forum post when you click the link with a restriction from entering a new one.

Instead, Google shows a snippet of text from the old forum post (that Google must have in its database) and you land on a page that says 'These forums are no longer active.'.

Why is Google ranking the equivalent of a 404 page (in that there is no content there) on the 1st and 2nd pages of search results for forums that have been closed down almost a year?

Is Googlebot not updating the Google search database? Is it not crawling as frequently? Does their tool that watches user behavior not pick up on the fact that people click through and immediately leave since the page they have listed isn't valid? What could be broken here to cause this type of error? (Again, this isn't a week old inactive page, it is from almost a year ago, yet it still ranks highly in Google?) Nothing makes sense.

[BoredMeteor]

Well, at least others are seeing what I'm seeing. It's good to not be alone, I guess.

I wonder if there are just some niches Google doesn't care about. Maybe for certain keywords they lack quality control? I just find it so odd that they're constantly going on about different quality issues and trustworthiness and thin content, etc...and it just doesn't mesh with what I see when I actually use their search engine. You can't get much thinner than a blank page.

They're not worth listening to.

The other major problem I have is that no one rewards content spinners quite like Google. They seem to really love slightly rewritten articles that are maybe just a bit longer than the original. "Webmaster guidelines." Ha.

Today will be yet another new and exciting low for me. I keep waiting to see the bottom, but it ain't here, yet.

Edit: Speaking of trustworthiness, I've been wondering lately if my Author/About pages have been up to snuff, what with "EAT" and all that...well, I just checked one of the pages that's now outranking me for a keyword, and their Author page, which they link to in every post, goes to a 404. Their "contact us" page is also empty. Much trustworthy! Such EAT!

It's all a joke.

[edited by: BoredMeteor at 6:25 pm (utc) on Mar 3, 2020]

[glakes]

Something is horribly broken in the Google search results system as evidenced by multi-year-old one-page news articles referencing search terms appearing above the sites that the search terms perfectly describe.

Yet Google isn't apparently doing anything to fix it. Outside of some minor blips reported by SERP trackers, which may not even be updates, Google hasn't done much to the algo since mid-February.

Going back to ichthyous's post:

Alphabet's quarterly profits have increased steadily under this CEO, that's all that matters to them. They are free to crap up the quality of search all they want, as a monopoly there's no where else to go in most people's minds.

Maybe the broken results we see are precisely what Google wanted to achieve with their latest updates? Google has been so ingrained into the minds of consumers that many can't even conceive of using an alternative search engine. If Google serves up crap on a spoon, many of Google's spoon fed users will just open up and swallow. IMO, Google has not served quality results in a few years. Quality continues to erode at Google, but these latest updates are a real humdinger.

I know it's crazy to think Google wants these SERPS, but I believe their inaction since mid-February speaks volumes. Regardless, I hope some of the fine folks here seeing SERPS with p0rn redirects, old posts with no actual content, 404 pages, closed forums, etc. are using the "send feedback" option on the bottom of the SERP page. With all his happening under Sundar Pichai's watch, who knows if anything will be "corrected" since the chain of command that once existed at Alphabet (Brin and Page) are no more. The buck stops with Sundar Pichai, and I'd say he is off to a very shaky start.

[UpOnOne]

@BoredMeteor From what I have seen, it's more than just "some niches". I have been doing some research with local results in the US. "Category in Los Angeles", "Business Name in New York", etc. Since the Google local update of November 2019, I have seen some really poor results. SOME of the usual suspects are in the SERPs (Yelp,YellowPages) but I am shocked at the number of cloaked pages and spammy redirects. Sites like Superpages or CitySearch have been replaced in many circumstances with unrelated results. I know GMB rich snippets and listings are taking over but the actual SEPR results where ALOT better before the updates IMO.

[BettyA]

Is there any effect for SERP rankings?

[MayankParmar]

2 weeks since I applied for reconsideration. Google outbound link penalty not revoked yet.

[JesterMagic]

Anyone notice any changes starting around last Friday. We have seen a traffic drop of about 5%+ since then for some reason. This time of year we shouldn't have been seeing it. My main keywords haven't really changed position much so am wondering if it is more long tail stuff.

[seomotionz]

2 weeks since I applied for reconsideration. Google outbound link penalty not revoked yet.

@MayankParmar It can take months. Beside what actions did you have taken?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Such an interesting thing - last week I used Google for web search and these searches wasn't even related to my bussiness, I was just looking for some info. 2 times I faced with a "dangerous" website on the TOP5 of SERPS (I mean, that I saw a notification that this website can do a harm to your computer).

I have a doubt if these people can keep saying they are fighting for user's satisfaction for the answer they get in Google's SERPS...

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@MayankParmar

I don't want to make you sad, but I'm waiting for 3 months despite the fact I removed all toxic outbound links...((

[samwest]

Not go off the misery topic, but anyone using WP and Rankmath know the effect on Google SERPs of marking pages as cornerstone content?

[MayankParmar]

@seomotionz I removed the links and I made no other changes.

@Cyril TechWebsites Did your traffic drop?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@MayankParmar

I have 2 websites that are similar to yours (niche). From one of those I used to sold some links (guest posts). On this website the traffic not just dropped, Google killed it by -70% during November 8 update. Since then no good news for me (I cleaned all guest posts).

But my second absolutely White website with great content facing little drop and no positive dynamic for last 4 months (since November 8 update too). I updated a lot of content, cleaned the outbound link profile (deleted some of them, mostly nofollowed links). After NY I saw some slow increasing and it was last until the recent update 3 weeks ago.

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar Did you specifically removed some of the links? If you have specifically removed them then it will take time. In some cases from what I have seen it can take upto 6 months. I already have suggested you the quickest method so I am assuming you know, in order to get rid of the penalty.

[RedBar]

2 times I faced with a "dangerous" website on the TOP5 of SERPS (I mean, that I saw a notification that this website can do a harm to your computer).

I've seen that several times recently using Firefox and I clicked through using its "exception".

All the sites were bona fide trade widget sites and all of them were NOT on https.

When I write bona fide they are trade sites I have been using for 20+ years.

[universenet]

I do not understand what is SERP, what that mean and where this exist? On moon? Saturn? Jupiter?