Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2020

[michaeldhayes]

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System: The following 6 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4986200.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 6:28 am on Apr 1, 2020 (PDT -8)

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Not aimed at anyone in particular, but I've noticed this thread is littered with people complaining about not getting traffic.

It makes the whole thread rather painful to read through.

SEO is about competing. It's not about complaining. If you can't compete, find a niche where you can. Screaming into the ether and lobbying for some sort of cosmic justice for small businesses is not going to get your anywhere, in life or with google.

We don't negotiate with google for a fairer playing field. They are the playing field. So find an area where you can win, and exploit it.

In more pertinent and less rant-y news: I'm seeing +20%, +20%, and +10% week over week. Tech and industrial. Still think it's COVID related, but with all the volatility indexes going crazy, I'm starting to lean toward update. However that's what I thought last week also, so who knows.

[StoneSolid]

woke up today to a total google reshuffle in my niche.. extreme ranking loss and lots of low quality (spam link) sites ranking high

anyone noticing anything similar or is this something that happened before and just caught up to my niche?

[RedBar]

In my experience this happens maybe 3-4 times a year and usually settles down after 2-3 weeks with much of the spam gone. This has been a Google method for years.

I say "usually" because, without doubt, sometimes spam stays and seems to stick around for ages. In my widget world at the moment there is one specific site that is a blatant plagiarisation yet G refuses to do anything about it ... It's just a copy for copy sake, no ads are carried and no purchase can be made, it's simply a "blogger" copying other people's work on ... Yes, on WordPress, the spammers' tool of choice!

[JesterMagic]

Yup seen a few obvious spam sites rising. One link I saw rise out of no where redirects to a #*$! site and if you look at the google cache of the page it is some stolen page with the content words just jumbled (it doesn't make sense anymore). Not sure how Google cannot still detect these types of sites.

Another site that has been ranking over the last 2 years has taken over our niche completely. A quick look at the site and everything seems normal but they employee a lot of grey hat techniques like updating the titles of their pages every month with the latest month and year, including multiple site regions (.com, .co.uk, etc...) with the content (which looks to be written by non English speaking writers) just slightly spun for each region and now they are including made up statistics which they are getting quality links for, which those who know the industry are completely bogus. The Google algorithm still has a long way to go....

[StoneSolid]

..and now, few hours later, my traffic and most of my ranks are back where they were, almost all normal

I don't think I've ever seen such a quick re-shuffle and shuffle back to ordinary.
I was nowhere in top 100 for any of my highest keywords and now strongest ones are back in top 10 as before.

Will be interesting to monitor this further.....

[Cralamarre]

Is anyone else seeing a delay in GA reporting? My real-time stats seem fine but the hourly report looks like it gave up a couple of hours ago.

[samsseo]

@Cralamarre Yes I'm pleased you mentioned this as I was worried we had just fallen off a cliff!

[NickMNS]

Almost had a heart attack as well, GA audience overview is showing that traffic died around 10am (EDT), Real time seems normal. Came here to see if others were seeing the same, and clearly they are. GA be buggin' again.

[StoneSolid]

My issue was much stranger than just a GA fluke...

My real time ga showed 10% of my normal traffic, so I checked all biggest keywords in multiple google variations (my own, via Tor, etc..). My site was nowhere to be found.

However, as stated above, it returned after a few dead hours.

[Cralamarre]

GA stats are still about an hour delayed for me but are recovering. Traffic is looking normal again.

[NickMNS]

Things are looking better on my end, it appears up to date. They also added an extra 10 to 15% in traffic as compared to the same day last week. Let's see if it holds.

[Cralamarre]

My traffic has been slowly but steadily returning to normal over the past few weeks. Google traffic yesterday was actually up 3% from the beginning of March (pre-pandemic) after suffering a 30% drop during the first week of the shutdown. Today is looking even better.

[StupidIntelligent]

@RedBar - "In my experience this happens maybe 3-4 times a year and usually settles down after 2-3 weeks with much of the spam gone. This has been a Google method for years. "

I wonder if that what a core update is?

[StupidIntelligent]

Or at least the time period of two to three weeks before they launch a core algo update. ^^^

[StoneSolid]

@StupidIntelligent

If I'm reading you right, and if I yesterday stumbled on "update test", that means I'm royally screwed when the actual update comes :P

[RedBar]

Or at least the time period of two to three weeks before they launch a core algo update. ^^^

I feel, insofar as I experience it, this is precisely what happens, a state of turmoil and disarray, the shuffling of positions, flotsam, as in spam / garbage, rising to the top with G attempting to skim it off, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

I worked with G on the algo in the early days and we had no such thing simply because there was not the volume of garbage that there is now however if I were to be involved with trying to remove this stuff this would certainly be one of the routes I would consider amongst others.

[RedBar]

that means I'm royally screwed when the actual update comes :P

Not necessarily so, G tries all kinds of tests when doing this and sites can fly in and out of its SERPs on every search re-fresh, the important thing NOT to do at such a time is not to panic and rapidly start re-writing webpages, that will achieve absolutely nothing.

The best course of action, yes I know clients will not want to wait however there is no other choice unless they simply want to give you money for the sake of it, is to wait and see what has happened, if you've dropped substantially then examine those sites which have risen to the top and see if there is anything you can see / learn what they are doing and you are not.

And probably the best piece of advice is that sometimes, for whatever reason, G's algo simply does not like / appreciate your style / structure, I've had that believe me, and if this is the case then get someone else experienced enough to critically review it and then make the appropriate adjustments.

For example I have on one site about a dozen pages that do not rank for a totally inexplicable reason. They use the same template, the same structure, the same everything except for the critical text and images.

Why? I haven't a clue, they are ALL low volume / low importance widgets, it simply does not make sense yet the algo will not rank them v garbage!

I have a 95+% success rate with all my others, I ain't going to worry:-)

[StoneSolid]

I'm not worried really, mostly because I had so many major ups and downs over 10+ years that I can't even begin to explain. I'm kind of used to it by now :)

That THING from yesterday was a shocker though, because it initially felt like some kind of penalty - my site totally vanished for a few hours, deleted from serps all together.

I already wrote a lot about it, a year ago or so.. that is also the big problem with google - there is no more real time ranking at all.
Good content, backlinks, whatever you do - nothing can help you rank over time as you put in work and effort.

You practically do your stuff and then hope for the best when the "rank recalculation" (aka core update) happens, and chances are that impact will be so drastic that you won't ever know if you're doing GOOD or BAD work on your site, or google is just being random with re-ranking you.

[StoneSolid]

Just checked analytics stats for yesterday, that THING from yesterday lasted approximately 5 hours and my google traffic is 20% lower than day before because of it.

Everything normal since then.

[joshd2]

The same thing happened to my site last night. Google tanked the rankings for nearly all search terms. Feels like the whole domain has been punished for some random reason. Unfortunately it has not recovered rankings yet like StoneSolid's did. Depressing.

[RedBar]

because I had so many major ups and downs over 10+ years

Obviously I have absolutely no knowledge of your site whatsoever but if you have seen so many promotions and demotions over 10 years then I would venture to suggest that there is something fundamently wrong / missing / whatever with the site.

Even evergreen sites need regular checking and updating if possible, for instance my images change for better ones as I do them, therefore what is it that your competitors are doing that you are not?

Honestly, it can seem to be the silliest little thing that can make a huge difference.

[StoneSolid]

@RedBar
I agree, checking, updating, it is all important.

However, analyzing any site would be much simpler if rankings were normal and in real time.
Current AI ranking scheme is broken in so many ways and probably easier to manipulate more than back in 200X.

Optimistic and unreal example would be:
- you lose 3 ranks for "red widget" keyword
- you analyze and discover that 2 sites wrote a wonderful article about red widgets and 1 site was featured in big newspaper
- you try to do it better than them

However, with google in last 3-4 years, situation is more like:
- day of massive recalculation happens (aka core update)
- you vanished from serps all together, after years of good or at least solid ranks
- you discover 3254235 brand new pure spam sites
- you discover all those sites built 135423523 backlinks with spam tools
- you discover those new sites don't even have the real content, pure keyword spamming


My key conclusions about it....
There is no way that analyzing their stuff will make you any wiser, because if you run a proper site and make good content over long period of time - YOUR SITE IS BETTER THAN THEIRS, period.
Only thing worth analyzing is what backlink scheme they got going on and should you do the same, because that is obviously becoming 99% of the whole seo game.

[southernguy]

@StoneSolid IAgreed, backlinks are the only thing that makes a difference it seems, unless you have or promote a niche with almost no competition. I have a couple of those sites and they rarely see fluctuations.

@RedBar used to believe that updating would make a difference, I tried it on a couple of authority sites that ranked for years, I tried just about everything and they just seemed to fall further. Yes, it is good to see what the competition is doing which is what I do. Now I do what my competitors are doing which is putting my effort into throwing up new sites periodically (churn and burn) they are good for about 6 months then rinse and repeat using the old content, it's pretty easy now because it seems Google's algorithm cant do a very good job at distinguishing duplicate content anymore.

In my niche this is what Google likes, it is a lot of effort, the amazing thing to me is that in spite of the sites being what I consider to be of low quality they convert well, go figure.

I'm hoping their algorithm will eventually change back one day and favor quality over spammy sites, maybe then I will begin to use Google for search but currently for my needs its useless.

[samwest]

In my niche this is what Google likes, it is a lot of effort

Same here, but the rewards for efforts are very short lived. So, posts get a temporary bump while evergreen content pages continue to die on the vine or remain totally de-ranked, blocked or otherwise penalized. I can prove this by doing a side by side comparison with Bing or DP.

This week started hot, and without any on page changes, has dropped like a rock with zombies coming right back, starting half way through yesterday. Last Saturday had the best single day of traffic and conversions since week 12 of 2014.

Enjoy it while it lasts, because it never lasts...unless you are a big brand content farm with little takeaway, but lots of properly place 'words', and a fat back link profile.
SMH

[StoneSolid]

@joshd2
Did it bounce back?
If your sites are still effected by the last night drop, that would mean it wasn't just an update test but something more serious.
Please keep me posted, I'm still puzzled about the whole event.

[StoneSolid]

@southernguy

I'm hoping their algorithm will eventually change back one day and favor quality over spammy sites, maybe then I will begin to use Google for search but currently for my needs its useless.

Same here.
I wrote extensively about it 1-2 years ago and then I simply gave up, since some people were even attacking me because of it.

Currently, google has issues with even most basic searches, since it doesn't honor even the common sense rule - "make sure that result contains all keywords".
If someone doesn't understand what I mean: if you google a "specific problem with red widget", you'll most likely get commercial sites that want to sell you red widgets, with no mention of your specific problem.

Which leads to an even bigger problem....
Internet is becoming a cesspool of crap because of it.

People (sites) with expertise in any field are impossible to be found or "heard" online, because they are outranked by black/grey hatters, whose only job is to exploit and game the google mechanics.
Experts write good content but their content serves no purpose other than to be stolen, modified and republished, to serve a quick money agenda of exploiters.

[RedBar]

Devil's Advocate

Do you feel that Google doesn't even care about the SERPs these days since, is it 50+%, of users only want to see YouTube results?

Observation

In my B2B global widget industry the vast majority of all the major producers haven't updated their sites in 5 years, many in 10 years. They really don't care about search engine results since they are significant industry players and they know for bulk purchases that they will most probably receive an enquiry anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of competition and especially so from B2B wholesalers and B2C retail widget suppliers in every country.

[southernguy]

@RedBarI would agree that Youtube probably consumes a lot of the search queries but I have seen that even when searching Youtube the results deliver the same crap. The other day it took me 15 minutes and I had to dig deep to find a Youtube video for an issue I was having with my car. Lots of crap videos but only one from 2011 that was spot on, all the rest were current but irrelevant. Looking for info on 98 civic and Google kept giving me results for newer models and a different problem.

At first, I thought mmm... maybe not much info out there on my car, there was, but Youtube just couldn't deliver. This is my same feeling with regular Google search, lots of info but most of it is irrelevant.

[StoneSolid]

At first, I thought mmm... maybe not much info out there on my car, there was, but Youtube just couldn't deliver. This is my same feeling with regular Google search, lots of info but most of it is irrelevant.

Exactly, and nice example.

Like I said, biggest issue is with google not honoring the main principle of showing results that contain all keywords.

I remember back in the day using google for some most complex problems ever, flawlessly:
- something.dll missing error 543443 graphic card nvidia
- code code code how to fix blabla

Everything was spot on, exact problem solutions would appear in results.

Now.. completely useless for any search containing more than two words.

[joshd2]

@StoneSolid It has not bounced back yet. Even having trouble ranking for my own domain name. Did you have this issue as well?

[StoneSolid]

No, after the sudden vanish, I was checking keywords and brand name - I was still there (first) in sitename query.

Checked for any manual penalty in google console?
Your issue seems to have happened on the same day as mine but could be a totally different matter.