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...]

[ichthyous]

@Dooku I honestly have been thinking about removing GA from my site for a couple of years now. The information is limited and I actually don't use GA that much to make decisions about anything. Also GA and Google tag manager slow down my website load time. Perhaps time to cut the cord. I am sick of Worrying about Google traffic and am turning attention to other things like social media and email, as well as partnering with other brand sites. Google is sending so little actionable traffic it's starting to become irrelevant now. I wish Bing and Yahoo sent more, but they send very little to my site.

[devoo]

Right now on my website: 116 visitors from Google, 1 from Bing, 1 from Yahoo, 2 from Yandex, 66 direct and a bunch of other visitors from blogs, etc.

As much as we complain about updates, drop of traffic, revenue etc, we NEED Google whether you like it or not. Even a mention on a small blog post brings more visitors than Bing although I rank pretty well on many keywords there.

Yahoo became 3 as I was writing this post :)

[glakes]

And the scale, detail and refinement they are now able to do this is, is at a level even Glakes can not imagine in his wildest paranoid dreams :-)

@Dooku

Are you saying I wear the biggest tin foil hat around here yet it is not big enough? :) +1 for that! I think you're right that neither I or others truly know how precise Google is with controlling traffic and conversions. Since I sell on Amazon, I can see the massive manipulation on that platform as well which is much more blatant than Google.

to all people saying “Google does not owe you or your business anything!” I say think again and don’t be so stupefyingly ignorant.

Unfortunately Google, being the cancer they are, will consume as much as they are allowed. With there being little pushback from webmasters and politicians, I don't suspect much will change in the short-term. If anything, the coronavirus public/private partnership illustrates just how cozy these parties are. Regardless, I don't think Google feels like they owe anyone anything. Just like an aggressive cancer, it consumes it's host (economies) until the host has been killed.

[mosxu]

@dooku

Interesting tests but you forgot that all card transactions are reported to google online or offline, I guess this is all spreading of quotas process starts.

The more offline transactions the more valuable the business since more and more online buyers bypass Google makes sense to look for buyers else where, pretending they are still in the race

[ichthyous]

Regardless, I don't think Google feels like they owe anyone anything. Just like an aggressive cancer, it consumes it's host (economies) until the host has been killed.

It's not a cancer, let's keep things in perspective. Google is simply following the well worn path of all monopolies. They created the ballgame and nobody else managed to outcompete them...but once that dominance is established it becomes impossible to resist squeezing like a boa constrictor.

Businesses will simply move away from Google when they find that #1) no amount of work on their sites will bring the organic traffic back and, #2) paying for ads has no ROI whatsoever. Google is already at that point of inflection, and more and more individuals and small businesses are going to give up and stop spending time on Google. The more they diversify away from Google and invest time and money in other methods the less relevant Google will become.

I am buying Google stock on the drop, because monopolies return fantastic profits...but in the long term Google is in a big bind. They will be dependent only on large corporations for their ad income. Perhaps they have already anticipated that and realized that they will make more money selling to them and sacrificing us small fish completely. It's just business as usual, until which point governments step in.

[swright]

Buying Google stock on the cheap could be a good hedge if you are a webmaster. When they do well by screwing you up, your losses get offset by your Google stock rising.

[glakes]

It's not a cancer, let's keep things in perspective. Google is simply following the well worn path of all monopolies.

@ichthyous

+1 for your perspective, but I see things differently. A monopoly will do as you suggest - squeeze as hard as they can. Cancer spreads.

Google (Search) has spread to have the leading web browser (Chrome), email service (Gmail), mobile operating system (Android), online video service (YouTube), etc. It's this spread beyond search, or as I call them mini-monopolies, that I see as cancerous.

As @mosxu noted above, Google has many different data collection points across the web. How this data is collected and used to personalize search results for users, and throttle traffic quality/conversions for websites, is anyone's guess. But I do know I can't even log into my online bank account without first going through a Google point of entry (reCaptcha). Additionally, my website processes credit card transactions through Stripe which is a Google Ventures company. What data is shared with Google as the result of that investment? Is consumer credit information shared with Google as the result of Google Capital's investment in Credit Karma or data collected from surveys with Survey Monkey? My host recently switched to Google Cloud without any advance notice and many website owners were upset because they simply don't trust Google. Oddly enough, some of these webmasters use CloudFlare which they don't even know is part of Google Capital's portfolio.

Considering all the above, plus much more that I did not mention, Alphabet/Google makes all prior monopolies look like entry level businesses. Besides the Alphabet/Google owned companies, take a look at the other companies they are invested in and may collect data from.

Google Ventures: [gv.com...]
Google Capital: [capitalg.com...]

Not surprisingly, conversions on my website from Google are terrible today after a good couple of days. Instead of sales on my website today from Google, Amazon orders keep coming in with a number pending as I speak. Considering I had a really good day yesterday with Google traffic, and I mean really good, I expect Google to direct most/all converting traffic to Amazon for an entire week to a week and a half.

[Athedian]

Conversion totally died last Friday (3/13 - Friday the 13th, anyone?) and went back up on Sat (which was unheard of for us because weekends usually were the worst).

I noticed another update going on as we're losing a lot of keywords again (actually, keywords were being lost since a few days ago). And Google Search Console bug, where it refuses to recrawl URLS that I re-validated as "non-404), continues to be there since Oct 2019.

[jmorgan]

Do people agree it would be heartless if Google pulled out another major update at this time?

People are already enough on edge with the whole CV crisis.

[RedBar]

It's coming up to half of a Googleday for me and whilst my global supply sites are slightly below average traffic levels my dedicated UK sites (90+% UK traffic) either have very low traffic levels (not even 10%) or completely zero, and I know I'm not the only one seeing similar.

[Dooku]

@Glakes, your reply to ichthyous is EXACTLY what I mean how Google is now woven so deeply into many aspects of society. For some reason people are just plain blind to this or suffer from cognitive dissonance at a mind boggling scale.
Most people can easily walk away from the Google eco system and save their business from these algo changes. Yet they have some firm belief that they "NEED" Google (as someone wrote a few posts back). To him and others I say; you need Google the same way you "need" cancer.

I have seen many fellow entrepreneurs who were laughing and thinking this is not going to happen to me because "I know" how to work the system.......until Google crushed each and every one of them. It's just a matter of time as Google finds ways to squeeze more and more different "types" of websites and "industries" to make sure the majority of their income flows to Google instead.

There is a reason there are so many algo changes nowadays. Personally I think there are several thousand per year now. And the majority of those have NOTHING to do with Google trying to improve their search engine. Instead they have everything to do with fine tuning to improve traffic control and increasing their own profit.

[MayankParmar]

Google should stop pushing out algo changes during this pandemic.

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar What you and I can do regarding this?Nothing!

And Google is trying to corner the market for years. They are probably thinking now that it might be the time for them to make some drastic changes as they always have wanted, when nobody is looking.

[seowinning]

isn't this a bug, when the first page is showing only 9 results and second page 10 results?

[BoredMeteor]

One of my biggest keywords now brings in only 25% of the Google traffic it used to, despite remaining in the same "organic" position. That's the fun impact of all these featured snippets and boxes. Overall traffic is down to what it was ~6-7 years ago.

The landscape has just changed (and continues to change), and there's nothing much to do but adapt to it.

[seowinning]

This is very noticeable that Domain Authority is a big factor now and spammers good with expired domains is very quiet and enjoying this new google era. Good job google. Index is full of spam and big sites with useless thin content.

[glakes]

Personally I think there are several thousand per year now. And the majority of those have NOTHING to do with Google trying to improve their search engine. Instead they have everything to do with fine tuning to improve traffic control and increasing their own profit.

@Dooku

I agree. I also believe Google is pulling data from a variety of sources, including those not disclosed, to achieve their goals. As an example, if I remove Google Analytics from my site, Google is still getting some data from Chrome browsers and conversion data from confirmation emails being sent to Gmail. Since Google is an investor in Stripe, my online credit card processor, they may get data from them as well. While this may not be permitted by certain laws, we all know Google does not care and sees fines as the cost of doing business. And who really knows what these businesses have to hand over to Google in return for tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

isn't this a bug, when the first page is showing only 9 results and second page 10 results?

@seowinning

No bug. I've seen desktop queries in my industry produce 1st page results with 6 organic results and 7 text ads (4 at the top and 3 at bottom) along with a shopping block on the top of the page. Combined with the info box, what others asked box, video results, etc., this buyer intent search term has been rendered utterly useless. This is similar to what @BoredMeteor noted a couple posts above mine. There's simply too much crap in Google's search results which has depressed the value/usefulness of their search engine. IMO, organic results will continue to shrink and be used only as filler material when no paid options exist.

[RedBar]

I can't find an article to it however during the lunchtime news the BBC correspondent said that traffic to its "online" website was up 36% this last week beating all previous records so if you're wondering where traffic is going this is one destination.

What he meant by "online" website I'm not sure!

[deriklogov]

I do see some recovery after huge thursday/friday drop, but i was still down about 10-15% yesterday VS same day 2 weeks ago (because last sunday was short due to summer time, so no point comparing to it)

[deriklogov]

but today doesnt look promising, i think its going to be same as thursday/friday 25-30% drop

[RedBar]

A couple of hours further on and my UK sites are still at 10% and 0%

[deriklogov]

Its too bad we dont have general traffic overview similar to Ezoic Adrevenue index or Semrush sensor. I know similarweb collect data but its showing only on monthly bases so no way to see recent impacts

[Cralamarre]

Today is a disaster. Traffic is down to what it usually is between Christmas and New Years (the slowest time of year).

[BushyTop]

We've seen a small increase in rank, but a massive drop in traffic... Thinking it must be corona related

[lostshootingstar]

Yes, traffic levels are real bad in our corner of the world this morning. Also rumors of some of our service provider partners shutting down. Definitely a rough few weeks ahead.

[Cralamarre]

I keep wanting to fix something to get my traffic back. But other than finding a cure for the coronavirus ,which is beyond my pay grade, there's nothing I can do except wait it out.

[NickMNS]

Traffic down here too. Off by >20%.

[ichthyous]

My traffic is off 40%...I realized the schools are all out so maybe has a lot to do with it. We have a curfew in place here, people will be forced to sit home now as they weren't getting the message.

[southernguy]

Yes, traffic has tanked for me as well, I keep doing more and seem to be losing ground. That's it I'm done! I'm gonna go out and get me some Corona and let things be for a few days and quit stressing over these up and down rankings.

[EditorialGuy]

Google should stop pushing out algo changes during this pandemic.

One could argue that this is the perfect time for algo changes, because any unexpected fallout is likely to be less disruptive than it would be under normal circumstances. (At the moment, Google rankings are having far less impact on many of us than the pandemic is.)