Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2020

[RedBar]

The following message was cut out of the April, 2020 thread at:
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4990589.htm [webmasterworld.com]
by robert_charlton - 1:39 am on May 1, 2020 (PDT -8)



A quick review of a few of my sites' this past month:

1. Global trade directory site about -10% but with increasing PVs as the month has gone on.

2. Global B2B widget site, -20% v Jan / Feb however +15% v March and over the past 4 weeks a nice, steady increase with this week probably being the highest of the year.

3. Global B2B widget site that was hardly affected at the start of lockdowns and has shown a steady PVs increase to the extent that April has been it's highest-ever month at +17% v 2020 average and +8% v March. Good quality enquiries continue.

4. UK B2C widget site has seen a dramatic recovery. Overall PVs are still -20% for the month however since Easter PVs have been completely normal. I need to investigate the actual business performance of this site for more details.

5. UK hotel / pub site, understandably still on its back at -90%, all rankings fine, awaiting lockdown to be eased however I do know future accommodation enquiries are consistent.

6. UK urganic meat and bakery site. This has maintained its +400% increase in PVs and its actual business has now gone national rather than just regional. I'm really surprised with this business since its products are NOT low cost!

Several other sites mostly down in varying amounts however they're all brochure / informational sites so that's not a surprise.

Anyone else with interesting stats?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:47 am (utc) on May 1, 2020]
[edit reason] split thread to new month [/edit]

[gatormark]

@Redbar, not only Pinterest listings but YouTube videos cluttering the top of search result pages for seemingly unrelated queries.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@ichthyous

You are pretty wrong, ichthyous. I'm living in such an "undeveloped country". We have a problems with delivering the major part of products from Amazon, for example... and... I know for sure that there are a lot of people who would like to purchase the item, but they can't because it does not ship to a specific "undeveloped" country.

[gatormark]

It's a shame that the recent SERP changes have killed most of the traditional players in my arts and literature category. My SERP visibility has been decimated, but since I have an established community, I am surviving. I never thought I would feel sorry for my competitors who have been equally hurt by this May update.

[samwest]

Sometimes I wonder if this is all Google's doing or some other forces manipulating what Google is trying to index...or even network issues as a contributing factor. It's a battle when you have nefarious forces (other than Google ;) trying to game the system.
I don't believe they are "game proof"...yet.

For the time being, lacking other evidence, I have to go with the precept of Occam's Razor...the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
Money.

I certainly don't think leprechauns are a factor.
:D

[ichthyous]

I have an international business and supply from many countries to even more countries.

@RedBar So do I, but what I sell is far out of the price range of most developing countries. If you sell inexpensive items, or things that are critical purchases that's another story...glad to hear that you can make it work from these countries. I'm not being pessimistic, I'm being realistic. Having Google decimate my viable USA traffic and replace it with traffic from places that will never bring in business is not something to celebrate, and it isn't by chance.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

After analyzing the drop on my website and facing with news from Google’s CEO on corporation’s revenue loss and ad demand from March, I can see such a picture:

For the first, after digging into analytics, I see that I lost traffic from the most profitable countries (US, Canada, UK, Australia) and it was replaced with gains from India, Brazil, Philippines, others. Maybe it could be related, but my thought was Google lost it’s revenue through these pandemia months like mostly all of us, and they need to regain it (for company’s trust, stack holders, own profit, etc.). They took all traffic from profitable countries, used it in featured snippets, surrounded it with own ads in SERPs and/or showing the content from these high-paying countries mostly inside the Google’s ecosystem, and not letting users to leave the system and click on your URL, it’s just not needed. All others receive everything that left after big G’s dinner.

The other strange thing is that there are a lot of REAL garbage in SERP. I have a reason to believe that it would be fixed after few weeks when the algo do its job. That’s the hope for me, because some of my URLs are recovering after drop (but mostly not).

[MayankParmar]

@Cyril The KMS article is definitely not illegal. I have noticed that Google has lately started favouring the old authority sites in our niche (software), so backlink has become extremely important. They also let new sites with poor quality sneak in and middle players like us are suffering.

I was also nuked by Google Core update in 2019 but then I recovered in another Core update last year, so hold tight - you'll be back :)

Google gets many things wrong. I literally get backlinks from authority sites every week but I don't appear in Top Stories or the front page of Google News even for my own exclusive articles :)

Even backlinks, well researched and high cited articles are not enough for Google to rank me where I deserve to be.

Authority sites like Forbes or those with 80-90DA on Ahrefs or 500+ Alexa rank. I hope that explains the type of authority sites I'm talking about.

My own profile is also good - I have been mentioned with my name on big publications/companies and I have been interviewed by one of the largest tech companies as well. Is that not enough for author expertise? Apparently not for Google :)

Apart from improving your content, you really do nothing. For another Core update and it might recover if Google made a mistake on their end.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@MayankParmar It was so sad to read your message, but I can't find the place where I disagree with you. You are right, I see this for last 12 months, high quality content won't enough right now. I have articles (of course, not all) which contain great content for sure, but Google killling it. I cleared all errors from Search Console (amp, indexing, duplicated content, speed, etc) few years ago, right now I can't find nothing to do better in terms of technical issues. The only thing I left is content. And purchasing links; but it's pretty useles in informational niche like mine, it's too expensive, so I don't do it (quality links cost XXXXUSD, and those links for 200$ are a garbage).

And a question: how long did it take your website to recover? In months? What have you been trying to do and did? Will be very appreciated.

[mhansen]

I saw something completely new in Goog SERP's today, is this new to show all details about events?

I was searching for information about a live sporting event going on Sunday in a town not too far from me. The search was simple, "townname eventtype schedule". The top of the result page was a new (to me) widget slider, showing ALL events in that town for the next 30 days. It literally dominated the top of the page over 4 rows down and 4 columns wide, before any of the other widgets started.

SERP Layout: (The arrows are the slider control)

Event name | event name | event name | event name >>
Event details| Event details | Event details| Event details
Event name | event name | event name | event name >>
Event details| Event details | Event details| Event details
Event name | event name | event name | event name >>
Event details| Event details | Event details| Event details
Event name | event name | event name | event name >>
Event details| Event details | Event details| Event details

Interesting Stories Widget Slider
Featured panel about the town the events are in.
Organic listings

When I clicked on the event I was interested in, it continued showing ALL events, but changed the rest of the results to include ads, news, stories, etc about this specific event.

New, or am I just slow to this new thing?

[MayankParmar]

@Cyril TechWebsites I was hit by June Core Update and recovered in late September when Google released September Core Update, so that's around three months.

I followed suggestions from the amazing Glenn Gabe - removed header ad, nuked some thin articles, updated some old articles. I did all these three things in the first week of June itself, but the traffic drop was so disheartening that I ultimately stopped working on improving existing articles after two weeks of the June update because it's practically impossible to review the 8000+ old articles again. And then in late September, the site recovered 100%.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@MayankParmar
Have you been adding new content all this time?

[MayankParmar]

@Cyril Yes.

[ichthyous]

For the first, after digging into analytics, I see that I lost traffic from the most profitable countries (US, Canada, UK, Australia) and it was replaced with gains from India, Brazil, Philippines, others.

@Cyril...Exactly what did I just said in my post.

[ChokenBako]

@Myank: Have you been hit by this update again?

[hopepro]

Just to share, I have discussed with an computer engineer which is a friend of mine since high school. Told him what happened to the wrecked search result and he asked me when did this happen?

Mine happened on Nov 7 2019 last year it was the period that google implemented AI (If i'm not mistaken) and apparently he followed google news about AI too.

He said, AI will usually stupid at first year, AI takes years to learn. He raised an example of 2 AI could play together as long as 1,000 years to get clever

From story told, Do you guys think that this is possible for google AI is taking its lessons on the SERP? and it might take years to learn?

While posting this content, I'm still seeing the largest social media platform in my country went from 138M users a month down to 70M a month starting from Nov 2019 up until Apr 2020. The social media site is somewhat quora and it is the most trusted site in the country

The biggest site for price comparison with 7M a month before NOV 2019 is now down to 1.2M per month

From my side, I'm seeing improvement starting from May, but not that what I hoped for.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

He raised an example of 2 AI could play together as long as 1,000 years to get clever

In the movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, it didn't take that long.

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

but what I sell is far out of the price range of most developing countries

I don't know which bubble you are living in however it is plainly obvious you do not have a clue what's going on in the world.

Mine are extremely expensive products being used and imported and exported globally. The markets for these products is far larger than the USA alone, there is not a single continent we have not exported to and this includes Antartica.

I have been doing this for 50+ years, I have helped, developed and watched countries grow their economies, I have assisted several UN agencies in several countries and seen them create strong economies of their own.

Ignore these entrepreneurs and economies at your peril since, I can assure you, they're not going to wait for you to catch up.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Redbar

Agree with every your word. Any "undeveloped" country has a 2-10% market which consist of people who have a great sallary, revenue, income, etc. They DO EXIST in any "undeveloped" country and they can buy. Do believe me they are able to purchase expensive cars, big houses, trip to Switzerland or US, eat at the most expensive restaurants, etc. It's a mistake to think you can't sell your products globally even if they are roughly expensive.

There are a lot of such people. The problem is that US, Europe (world) and, as example, my "undeveloped" country's financial systems are purely conected (for example, I can't receive payments through PayPal, I can't order most of the products from Amazon (even UK Amazon despite it's near me georaphically), I can't participate in many business things, and a lot of other in every part of life, it's the result of former Soviet economics). But do believe me we WANT to get connected, but mostly have no ability to do this. But we live here, don't be in a bubble, people aren't walking the streets hand by hand with bears and not shooting everyone with a gun (maybe in some of the darkest countries in Africa).

[MayankParmar]

@ChokenBako No, not this time :)

[whoa182]

The Google Roller Coaster over the pat 16 months. It doesn't show the drop in August 2018 as well... :)

Search Consoles Impressions:

[imgur.com...]

You can see where the core updates were done...

[edited by: whoa182 at 11:12 am (utc) on May 16, 2020]

[immrrobot]

@mayank how many ads do you have right now in the site you were nuked. I currently have 4. So was thinking of removing few. Don't know the ideal number though. So any sort of info would be great

[samwest]

@immm.. in my vertical, the two content farms ranking above me have no less than 10 google ads on each page....this does not count the long ubiquitous click me article links at the bottom of those pages.

[immrrobot]

@samwest That's insane. So where does this 10 ads count in relation to Google's quest to delivering best User experience. Might just throw UX outta window.

[Kash1111]

Just checked our other site which is was not affected but now it's dropping last two days. The site that was affected has lost its rich snippets, a lot of the keywords drop down a few positions. traffic is down 30 percent.

I am now checking an article that is still ranking number 1, but impressions and clicks have dropped significantly.

[MayankParmar]

@immrrobot 5 ads on desktop and 2 mobile. My competitors have 10-20 ads lol. Their websites are literally unable on low-end hardware without adblocker.

[ichthyous]

Agree with every your word. Any "undeveloped" country has a 2-10% market which consist of people who have a great sallary, revenue, income, etc. They DO EXIST in any "undeveloped" country and they can buy. Do believe me they are able to purchase expensive cars, big houses, trip to Switzerland or US, eat at the most expensive restaurants, etc. It's a mistake to think you can't sell your products globally even if they are roughly expensive.

@Cyril "underdeveloped" not "undeveloped"...but perhaps the better term is "developing". Of course there are wealthy everywhere, however distribution of wealth in poorer countries is limited to a few extremely wealthy haves and a massive number of have-nots. The wealthy in poor countries are like gods, and they can afford very expensive luxury items. In North America, Europe, UK, Australia you have much broader distribution of wealth and a much larger client base of well off but not necessarily super wealthy people. The USA has "well off" to moderately wealthy people in every community, and in large numbers.

[ichthyous]

I don't know which bubble you are living in however it is plainly obvious you do not have a clue what's going on in the world.

@RedBar Sorry but I think you just want to pontificate now. I sell art, and have been doing so since 2003 quite successfully. Literally nobody in India or Indonesia or the Philippines is going to import expensive framed artwork from the USA. The online art market is difficult even in the richest countries, let alone in poor countries where they have a much more traditional attitude toward art purchases, and where import duties are astronomical and crating and shipping costs of large heavy artwork on top of that. I have customers flying here from South America to purchase here in order to avoid their own import tariffs. It's cheaper than importing it and they can get all their other shopping done here. I have to send artwork to the UK, Australia or to France to have it framed locally in order to get around import duties. Do not assume that you can apply your own experience to every type of product and sale. I'm glad that whatever you sell works for you, but the art market is another universe...nobody needs art, it's a completely discretionary purchase.

[gatormark]

LOL, why are people arguing over different markets and audiences? Both cases can be true.

[samwest]

Today's search results:
#1 - Content Farm ad filled aggregation.
#2 - Content farm, ad loaded super long article. An ad after every scroll.
#3 - A Pinterest page with 39 pins and 192 followers.
#4 - A Pinterest pin...just a single pin with 1 comment and 1 follower.
#5 - site x sub page
#6 - site x home page

When you click the randomly positioned "suggest" or "people also ask" blocks, being sent to even more Pinterest loaded pages.
I can't imagine this messing up anything at all.

quality at it's finest

[hopepro]

#1 - Content Farm ad filled aggregation.
#2 - Content farm, ad loaded super long article. An ad after every scroll.

I'm seeing 10+ sites like this targeting high traffic keywords and they rank so well. massive ads filled every 2 paragraph

Some keywords : 1 e-commerce site conquer 50 rankings on all 5 pages - as if we do the search on site:websitename.com