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]

[Kash1111]

Google is ranking our fb page when I search for our brand name normally our website would show first, when did social media become so relevant?

There is a big thread on Reddit about why google search has become so s**t lately.

[MayankParmar]

I have noticed that many big publications in my niche dropped after May Core Update, according to Semrush. Interesting.

[frostitomik]

Yes, Facebook pages that have literally zero content only a nofollow link to websites now replaced the actual websites in the search results.

Still waiting for this mess to be fixed...

[worker]

Apparently the (low) quality of Google's search results and problems with Google's ad system are becoming significant enough that the masses are beginning to notice.

An article about a scam within the ad system was written recently:
[news.yahoo.com...]

And the Reddit discussion on how bad the search results are is here:
[reddit.com...]
(There is an older archived Reddit discussion that touches on many of the same issues, showing how slowly problems are being fixed.)

The fact that this is being discussed outside of our webmaster bubble is incredibly significant. It's like when one person calls you to complain about your product or service. What that means is that there are MANY more that didn't like your product or service, but couldn't be bothered to complain.

The fact that Google's search results are now being seen by a large number of people on Reddit as BAD validates what we have been saying within these forums. At least we are not misreading what is happening. Objectively, Google search results are getting worse and they have been for quite some time based on the information referenced.

[Kash1111]

@worker Thanks man, here is another reddit thread. [reddit.com...]

[StupidIntelligent]

I see Google books everywhere. The update is still on-going?

[RedBar]

The update is still on-going?

Nope, I don't believe so however I have noticed two main things, one of them started with the January update but is more noticeable now:

1. The SERPs is in a constant state of shuffle / flux, positions are changing ever so slightly up and down within the top 20 and I have even seen movement for my widgets in the top 2 and 3 places over this weekend. I expcect this to continue so that no one "owns" the top spot(s).

2. Some pages are being re-freshed / updated and re-ranked faster than before.

I have to assume that once most people have tried the Pinterest pages that they simply ignore them unless that's the sort of thing they're actually looking for however I have also seen a couple of blogs attempting a Pinterest-style and actually working ... Come on G, do we need any more of this type of plagiarisation?

[immrrobot]

Isn't it blatantly obvious with G's priority to pinterest, that it wants to fill up its revenue tank. Publishers earn very little from the adsense when the traffic comes from Pinterest whereas organic traffic usually counts for higher revenue. Do they charge the advertisers differently when the traffic comes from different sources? Highly unlikely

[Athedian]

I know for one that the validation in GSC is still broken and some 404 URL's take as much as up to 4 months for them to be recrawled and validated. 90% of the remaining fixed URL's are still not recrawled/validated for almost 8 months now (I still gotta say the 404 issue was not caused by me but by a previous team of unprofessional "SEO specialists" that had no idea what they were doing, I still hate them till this day).

But if it's taking Google this long to validate and recrawl "errors" that I've fixed months ago, what's the point of even telling me in the first place? Ranking continued to fluctuate and still on the declining trend.

In my industry, my top three competitors are seeing massive drops in ranking according to Ahref. On average, everyone lost 2k-3k visitors. Keywords were obliterated and thrown to the abyss.

[RedBar]

Keywords were obliterated and thrown to the abyss.

This I am not seeing whatsoever in my sector in fact I am seeing perfectly optimised pages with all the ketwords in all the right positions but with only ONE on-page mention and absolutely no keyword product information nor image(s).

Likewise with Pinterest, keywords in several of the "correct" places yet when visiting the page usually (99%) only one very poor image at the top of the page, the remainder of images and information have absolutely nothing to do with the keywords whatsoever ... in my widget world anyway.

And what is it with all these Pinterest different country tlds?

And purely from a personal point of view, what the heck is the interest in this site? It's simply a site full of stolen images created by bored people with nothing else to do! It is awful.

[StupidIntelligent]

It looks as if a good number of people do click for images, which is why the core algo was altered to make room for them directly in organic listings. Same is the case for videos.
Text may not be that relevant in the next 10 years.
Kind of like what happened to Kodak or plain paper books. The market would still exist, but nowhere close to say videos.

[RedBar]

plain paper books.

UK sales of books are up substantially according to reports!

Text may not be that relevant in the next 10 years.

Well, not a lot will be built or manufactured without valuable technical specifications, in my global industry we work to these, have done for generations and even more so these days with blame culture about ... just in case.

[EditorialGuy]

It looks as if a good number of people do click for images, which is why the core algo was altered to make room for them directly in organic listings. Same is the case for videos.

Unless I'm mistaken, SERP layout is determined by the UX team, not the search ranking team.

[nishadhiman]

Overall, traffic has reduced by % on an average. However, I managed to boost up Bounce Rate, Page/Sessions and Avg. Session Duration, improved by 11.63%, 10.64%, 151.24% respectively.
I am still not sure whether this the effect of the pandemic that I lost the traffic or is it something else.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld nishadhiman howeverI haven't a clue what % rates you are referring to!

Are these GSC?

If so, I don't use it.

[gatormark]

Does Google even factor in page speed anymore? I've spent a lot of time optimizing my pages. I've even removed sources of ad revenue to increase the speed of my pages. However, now I see extremely slow pages ahead of mine. These pages are much slower than mine, even if I ad back the extra ad revenue sources. I'm thinking about adding that "money" back because it looks like the speed of pages doesn't matter.

Another option is to not show ads for google crawler IP addresses, but that would be a hassle to verify Googlebot.

[hopepro]

@gatormark, same here, google marked my site with slow page 99% of them, but when I tested, it loaded less than 2 secs. I had to remove all ads and it is still slow from their point of view. When I did search on the 1st ranking with low contents, unknown site, the load time is 20 secs, but it is still there.

[immrrobot]

@gatormark I might have a controversial take on this. Although this update has certainly f***d up, UX and speed is certainly correlated to ranking mechanism. I tested on few posts of mine by adding amp and removing above the fold ads. I saw positive flux of improvements. one of my post climbed from 28 to 8 directly by just doing two changes. However, it's too early to call as it has been just a week.

[whoa182]

"Does Google even factor in page speed anymore? "

Idk, because I know people who run a website that has a score of 2 out of 100 on the page speed insights from Google but they rank extremely well for one word keywords in the medical area. Their stats are horrendous but they rank perfectly well.

They have a bunch of PhD's on board and very well networked so they keep getting powerful links.

[widgetized]

About speed: I spent months on a new restyling of my website, and now all the most important pages of my site are ranking over 90 (both mobile and desktop) on their page speed insights test. I noticed those improvements started reflecting on the speed stats in GSC as well, but after the update, the number of slow links started going up again... how is that possible I don't know.

[RedBar]

Does Google even factor in page speed anymore?

It certainly would not seem so however I use Firefox and DDG with built-in ad blockers therefore do not really care:-)

What does annoy me are ranking pages that simply do not exist and generate a 404 or absolutely nothing at all. How the heck do they rank so well? And these are not occasionally, this is a very regullar occurrence.

[RedBar]

Yesterday I decided to test the G.USA SERPs which I have not done since the core update.

For those of you outside of the USA and being a non-USA business then you had better check them out, in my widget sector foreign sites are almost non-existent and bearing in mind that 95+% of my industry's products are imported in the US then trying to locate a new global supplier means a lot of trawling through the USA SERPs or specifically searching non-G.us results.

The last couple of years it has been overtly noticeable G's manipulation for its US results however this is another level altogether, an almost expulsion of all "foreign" sites ... in my sector.

Are other sectors seeing similar?

Needless to say G still ranks US sites in all English language SERPs even when they cannot supply!

Are you non-US, have you lost a load of traffic and no longer to be found, if so this "may be" your answer.

[Kash1111]

Speed does play a factor in ranking, we did some tests with a 100/mobile and 100/desktop. Sometimes before the update page speed validations were disabled, you can't take advantage of it, Google does not want you to.

[RedBar]

@Kash1111

I don't understand your testing method, what is / was it?

[gwarftron]

I don't see exactly how Google would deprioritise my content and website from not 'being' US based site, but I would be interested in finding out more if this could be relevant and in effect. If the content is written in English, targeting primarily US based audience combined with a general global audience how is exactly Google separating my site from 'US' sites?

Based on my hosting company? Based on my server location? Based on what? Curious to know if and how sites are geographically 'tagged'?

[RedBar]

@gwarftron

This has been going on for several years and is known by some yet refuted by others however I have had personal experience with several sites of them being demoted for evidently not being a US business.

Unfortunately I have seen a trademarked and registered product with an exact match domain featuring my own products treated precisely in this manner. For many years, about 15, it ranked #1 on every Google for its keyword terms, and so it should, it is the Coca Cola of my industry.

This all changed in January / February of 2017 with the site beginning a gradual decline and within one year had lost 66% of its traffic where it remained until I decided to meld that site into another one.

Watching the SERPs throughout that period I saw US sites copying my information and images to the point where the site no longer ranked in the top 100.

If you don't want to believe G favours US sites in its US SERPs, fine, however I suggest you check other Google English language SERPs and view those results and the prominence some US sites get even when they do not even supply those markets nor even infer they do.

[nomis5]

Text may not be that relevant in the next 10 years.
Kind of like what happened to Kodak or plain paper books. The market would still exist, but nowhere close to say videos.

Paper books are doing just fine, don't doubt it. And the difference between Kindle type books and hard copy books is really not relevant - they are both text.

People will always read. Yes there is a section of the population which just watch videos, but my money for the future is on people who can and do read.

Remember cinemas? When TV came along they were predicted to be obsolete. The reality is quite different. Some forms of TV are now failing badly. Cinema is going from strength to strength.

[whoa182]

one of the most annoying things about the direction Google has gone in lately is that when I type something in, it IGNORES my keywords.

I specifically ask for something and it gives me what I don't want.

I.e Keywords + forum

It ignores the word "forum" in favor of established and high authority medical sites that clearly are not forums.

Other search engines don't have this problem.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Another -5% decrease this week... It's especially annoying when you are faicng with this when the websites above your in the SERP are even not opening (I had such an experience yesterday when I was looking something not even related to SEO, it was just a search that was related to my usual life...).

[RedBar]

when I type something in, it IGNORES my keywords.

Yep, that has become more and more prevalent the last couple of years or so and just as annoying is their correction of which they consider to be a mis-spelt word and showing the answers for THEIR search.

Another -5% decrease this week..

It's Tuesday and even I know it was a holiday in the USA on Monday, did you mean last week?

To be fair 5% is well within my average range, 10% and I may start to wonder.

So 5%, when are you comparing that against, weeks, months, give us a clue ... and yes you may have mentioned it in a previous post however I don't remember:-)