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]

@ichthyous

I see...do you mean that they appeared as featured snippits at the top of page one, or Google updated the actual page's description with the new sentence?

Google immediately updated the page's description in the search results.

Google disregards my meta desc and title sometimes too...Very annoying. If you shorten the title it tends to help

What's interesting is that my last remaining GOOD highly ranked page is the one with the longest meta-title. It has never dropped off page 1 in 8 years. It's 7 on Google and #1 on Bing, yahoo, and DDG. There seems to be no science to this. I have keywords that I can NEVER break into with better content.

[seomotionz]

What's the point of buying expensive domains and paying for good hosting?

If worthless blogspot sites are going to outrank you, anyway?

[StupidIntelligent]

Some kind of update definitely happened in the past two days. Can't point my finger at it.

[Athedian]

Lost a bunch of traffic two days ago, then got some traffic back, then lost some more today. Seems like another small update is in play again.

[ChokenBako]

Adsense with AMP resulted for me in a decline of revenue for about 30%. That was enough to switch back to Responsive Design.

Beside that:
I compare the actual day with the day the week before.
What I see at the moment is that until noon i get about 5% more visitors per hour than the week before. Suddenly something happens and I get 10% less visitors for each hour. It looks like the algorithm decided that i get too much traffic...
Do you see something similar?

[RedBar]

gatormark mentioned that he /she had seen a fast updating for some pages, I can also confirm that a brand new specialist widget page I uploaded only a couple of weeks ago is already at #12 and the images for this page are top 4/5, very, very unusual for images.

Normally I would expect a minimum 2-4 months for this to happen however I must stress that this seems to be an isolated page, no other new page uploaded in the past month has had similar treatment.

[immrrobot]

@ChokenBako Exactly my point. When it comes to adsense, i'm really skeptical to changes. One time I went for a fast loading customized theme, and the revenue dropped dead. Can't see how AMP is different than that.

[RedBar]

Yesterday, Thursday, I saw a substantial increase in traffic across all global sites from all countries of about 50%. No specific pages / sections were in extra demand, just a general, iverall increase.

So far today and Friday's looking reasonably good as well.

[Upstate8987]

Big drop in organic traffic over past 24 hours. Multi niche.

[joshd2]

@Upstate8987 Google has made a huge mess of this update. My site continues to not be indexed correctly causing a massive drop in rankings.

Whatever error is occurring causes all valid pages in Webmaster Tools to become "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap". When this happens it coincides exactly with my site disappearing from SERPs. It gradually starts to recover as Google again figures out how to index my site, but then Google resets something and it again disappears. It is clearly an issue with the algorithm whenever there is an update. There was extensive discussion about the same issue after the Jan update on the German Google support forum.

[gatormark]

RedBar is correct. There is a fast indexing of certain pages ( assuming you submit them using Google search console). However, other pages that I requested google to index have not been. I’m not sure why it picks some pages to index and update quickly and others not.

Additionally, and I don’t think I’ve seen this noticed before, some mobile search results are displaying completely different text than desktop search results - for the same page. For instance, for one of my pages google used the meta-title as the link in the search results on mobile. They used my heading 1 in the desktop version for the same page.

One more sadly hilarious thing. On one search results page, Google showed 7 different Pinterest results all from different countries. LOL

[edited by: gatormark at 3:27 pm (utc) on May 22, 2020]

[RedBar]

It gradually starts to recover as Google again figures out how to index my site, but then Google resets something and it again disappears.

This sounds more like your problem than Google's, indexing a site should not be a problem, are you referring to ranking?

If you really mean indexing and Google does not understand your site then you need to rectify it.

How are your Bing / DDG / Ecosia rankings?

If I have misunderstood your issue please clarify.

[joshd2]

@gatormark The bottom line is that Google screwed up the way they are indexing big time with this update. They even briefly completely de-indexed LinkedIn. Spam and Pinterest clogging the top spots. There is nothing to be done until they fix this mess... And this update is not "complete" at all like they claim.

[ichthyous]

Yesterday, Thursday, I saw a substantial increase in traffic across all global sites from all countries of about 50%. No specific pages / sections were in extra demand, just a general, iverall increase.

@RedBar I know you think I'm a pessimist, but don't count on it lasting because it won't. I am watching one site that shot up like a rocket for four months take a hard and rapid fall back down all of the sudden. This is a huge, global, well funded brand, not a mom and pop site. I've seen this pattern over and over since 2018.

If you get three months at the new higher level consider yourself very lucky and take full advantage. My site had strongly rising impressions and traffic from end of August 2019 - Jan 9, 2020...then Google worked its magic. Impressions dropped Jan 9th-25th like a stone and then stabilized. Now hit again on May 4th and I'm back to the same level as pre-August 2019. There is no explanation for such huge shifts other than that Google is rotating who is on top.

[EditorialGuy]

Yesterday, our traffic was up about 34 percent over the previous Thursday. (It had been creeping upward for a couple of days before that.) Google traffic was up 16 percent. Mind you, that's starting from a very low baseline, because traffic on our travel-planning site (like most travel sites) has been in the toilet since the coronavirus arrived in Europe. Also, I suspect that the improvement has more to do with searchers' anticipation of countries and cities "opening up" than with anything Google is doing.

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

Yes, I do expect it to last since, basically, it has done since 1993. I've SEO'd for every search engine, I've ranked extremely well and on the rare occasion when I have been hit a thorough investigation revealed why but hey, that was years ago, almost 15 if I remeber correctly.

The Google image theft, nothing I could do about that but learn to never, ever, ever rely on G for anything ever again.

Some of the "ups and downs" I have had mostly to do with G preferring scrapers and plagiarists and when some pages started to lose out to competitors I scrutinised then carefully and went forward and got my high rankings back.

I'm in a competitive, expensive product marketplace however I have one huge advantage over all my potential competitors old and new and that is both deep industry knowledge and SEO experience.

Some things still surprise me like G's fascination with Pinterest right now which is, in fact, driving me traffic, but that won't last and Joe Public will only click on a few of those pages before realising it is either what they want or of absolutely no use to them whatsoever.

The thing is, believe this or not, I actually concentrate on my business and what I would expect from a website in my industry, I don't do anything by anyone else's rules since they don't really exist insofar as I am concerned.

[samwest]

Just got a search result of ALL Pinterest and one organic. No words.

[gatormark]

@EditorialGuy
Thanks for the context. One thing many of us are not doing is indicating our niche. Yours is travel so there are so many other factors (COVID-19, etc) involved search in trends as you suggested.

[SteveWrz]

This Thursday compared to last Thursday:

YMYL (took the biggest hit in May): Down 1%
Travel (big wins): Up 25%
Widget (May wins, but also least amount of traffic): Down 6%

If the traffic charts from the past two weeks of the YMYL site were laid on top of each other, it would look like one line. Curious how there has been absolutely no movement there when it is my biggest site.

[nomis5]

@RedBar I know you think I'm a pessimist, but don't count on it lasting because it won't. I am watching one site that shot up like a rocket for four months take a hard and rapid fall back down all of the sudden. This is a huge, global, well funded brand, not a mom and pop site. I've seen this pattern over and over since 2018.

So the one site you mention that went up and down.

Allow others their hope for the future.

If you continue to search for sites going down, you will find plenty of them. When you see those sites, work out what they are doing wrong.

If you search for sites going up, you will also find plenty of them. When you see those sites, work out what they are doing correctly.

Take a look at sites for gardening, running, cycling, cooking etc. - all those sites that don't involve discretionary purchases. In these times, those are the sites that doing well. And I believe this will stick for at least a year or so.

Good news is never going to be news, it never has. Maybe that's why the good news is not posted here, only the bad news. But that good news is out there.

All depends on what you are searching for.

[Londo]

This latest update has basically destroyed my website, keywords that were previously on page 1 have now been relegated to page 5 or beyond, despite the fact I have always prided myself on having having high quality content on my pages, and I have seen no bounce back in the past few weeks, it's gotten so bad I'm now considering removing my 10 year old website from the web.

In my spare time I also make game mods, the top ranking website in this field according to Google is one that literally steals everyone's work, uploading files to a website they gain money for each download. It's an extremely dodgy website who's host you can't even contact. It just shows that there is nothing scientific about what Google do, nothing to do with promoting high quality responsible websites, it's down to ulterior motives or just shot in the dark nonsense.

[aristotle]

Mind you, that's starting from a very low baseline, because traffic on our travel-planning site (like most travel sites) has been in the toilet since the coronavirus arrived in Europe.

Well if a site's traffic is already so low that it can hardly go any lower, then even a small numerical rise would look like a big increase percentage-wise.

[BoredMeteor]

Google is just the perfect search engine for thieves. Had one #1 keyword taken by Pinterest, as I mentioned earlier, which links to stolen content on Blogspot. Another one has been replaced by a site that took two pages from other websites (one being mine) and cobbled them together. Both have been more or less abandoned for at least 5 years each.

I don't know why I'm even looking, anymore, because it's just frustrating and there's nothing I can do about it (I mean, I could play whack-a-mole with DMCA, but I'd like to know WHY they favor scrapers and spam so much). I just wish people would drop Google.

I also updated one page (just a tweak, not FOR Google) and it dropped another 9 pages. It's a joke.

[gatormark]

@BoredMeteor

One thing I’ve learned is never rewrite a page that is ranking on Google’s first 3 pages if it has heavy competition. Only add content or a new paragraph, but rewrites are dangerous.

[ChokenBako]

I just did a search for a keyword term and my site was listed two times. At the end of page 1 and in the middle of page 2. It´s the same page.

[glakes]

I'm still seeing flux, so I don't know how some can think this latest update is done and their positions are stable. Even today (Saturday the 23rd), SERP tools are picking up on some volatility.

[seomotionz]

@RedBar A newly published page is ranking for every keywords in its tags. But not the page itself. The page itself is nowhere to be found.

[whoa182]

Google confirmed that the core update was done. It seems like there is a new update.

[gatormark]

If the core update is done then Google must have incorporated into the update fluctuations in the rankings. My rankings are still being adjusted and Google is using different descriptions for some of my pages at different times of the day.

[EditorialGuy]

Well if a site's traffic is already so low that it can hardly go any lower, then even a small numerical rise would look like a big increase percentage-wise.

Yes, that's why I mentioned that the arrival of the coronavirus in Europe had lowered our baseline drastically. Still, the increase has held for several days now, so it's looking like a new plateau and not a daily blip.

Side note: Search behavior (the main reason for our increase, IMO) may be driven by user interest, but external factors can also play a role. International travel is a good example: If there are no transoceanic flights from Widgetland to Whatsitville, people who live in Widgetland won't spend as much time researching where to stay, what do do, how to get around, etc. in Whatsitville as they would if they could actually make the trip.