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]

Concerning Google and USA sites, I noticed something very interesting three years ago. I am from the United States and my websites were doing very well, exceptional. Then, I moved to Portugal for three years. About 6 months after I moved to Portugal my websites dropped significantly in Google SERP...losing about 37% of my traffic.

If there is some correlation between location and the SERP, Google must monitor our location when we log into their tools because my server and company location are in the United States.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@RedBar
I do know that the holiday was observed in US and UK, etc. (but as far as I know it's finished). I'm comparing my traffic with latest week. If comparing with the level when my website started dying in November I have -35%. Nothing helps: updating content, prunning old content, just nothing. It looks like my website is filtered somehow.

[worker]

My thinking is that vinyl made a comeback and as mentioned earlier, paper books are making a comeback. So, I've decided to print out the Internet page by page. Eventually, when people are tired of electronically searching, they can just call me (for a fee) and I will find the Internet page they are interested in and read it out to them.

What does everyone think? Good business idea? ;)

[RedBar]

@Cyril TechWebsites

Ah right, so 35% down, that definitely sounds like the steady slope down to the -50/60% over a year, been there, done that and, in all honesty, the only solution I have found is a ground up total rebuild adding more relevant information and images.

The algo seems to have a "freshness" attitude regardless of how good a page / site may be. It really does like plenty of quality info but it also likes titlebar, h1, image and nothing else!

Now depending what you are doing / selling / informing / advising / whatever, it's your decision however one piece of advice, IF you go down the plenty of info and images route then ensure all your pages are similarly updated ... It "seems" to have a knock-on effect.

This, of course, only applies to smallish sites up to maybe 10K pages, multi million page sites I don't have a clue about.

So, I've decided to print out the Internet page by page.

Excellent, however to save you the bother of printing it off could I have mine in .pdf format please? Much easier to carry around:-)

[jediviper]

@RedBar
About USA and English-written websites

What you are describing is not new. I was noticing this for months or years, that for example a website from Australia that is not offering its services to the USA, it can get a lot of impressions (according to the GSC) and traffic (according to the Ahrefs) from USA.

[deepbohra]

Hi everyone,

Hoping you and your families are safe and sound.

I have a question from you. my site<snip> lost major visitors at the beginning of this month and quality drop in Google's search results since May 2020 Core Update.
Q: Why my site disappeared in search result after google core update May 4 2020?

Please provide me some solution and give me an idea of why my sites are disappeared in the search results and how can I recover it.

[edited by: engine at 9:14 am (utc) on May 27, 2020]
[edit reason] please see WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Yesterday Barry posted a new article on Google May Mess update. As I understood, some very authoritive websites like Stackexchange and Moz Q&A were hit with this update. I think that the whole niche Q&A, forums, etc. got hammered, my websites are the same Q&A, but in IT niche, I also loosing traffic. If those big trusted websites tanked, I can't get: WHO GOT ALL THIS TRAFFIC?

On one hand, folks complaining on a lot spammy and scammy websites in the SERPs after Mess Update. On other hand Alphabet lost revenue during pandemia. So who got it? Google or spammy websites? :) Guys from Q&A niches, what do you think on that?

As a theory, I think that those Q&A websites now are used to give the direct answer (instructions) just in Google ecosystem, maybe that's why those websites faced with drops - Google just makes its best to make no sense for users to leave the system using content from websites and giving answers within own interface. I see such things through all my niche.

[edited by: Cyril_TechWebsites at 8:49 am (utc) on May 27, 2020]

[chrisv1963]

Hi everyone,

Hoping you and your families are safe and sound.

I have a question from you. my site lost major visitors at the beginning of this month and quality drop in Google's search results since May 2020 Core Update.
Q: Why my site disappeared in search result after google core update May 4 2020?

Please provide me some solution and give me an idea of why my sites are disappeared in the search results and how can I recover it.

The first thing I notice when I visit your website is that you have a fake (virtual office) address in NYC. Thus, you are "faking" a USA presence of your business with a virtual office address that is maybe also used by hundreds of other businesses.

After doing only two minutes of research on Google I found your company mentioned in an article about Indian companies that sell fake market research reports.

On your homepage you claim that Google (and several other major companies) is one of your clients. I hope this is true.

[edited by: chrisv1963 at 8:53 am (utc) on May 27, 2020]

[christianz]

"WHO GOT ALL THIS TRAFFIC?"

Pinterest. Pinterest is the answer to all of your questions. And if you really really don't like Pinterest, I may give you some YouTube videos.

[RedBar]

What you are describing is not new. I was noticing this for months or years,

Did I say it was new? Where? I wrote:

This all changed in January / February of 2017

And I was referring specifically to one site, it is a well-known fact that localisation had been creeping-in for years, we had many a discussion here about it possibly going back to my previous moniker pre 2013, I've been to sleep since then:-).

It seems that G has introduced a non-US bbusiness entity penalty for its G.US SERPs BUT does not apply the same criteria to a US business in India, UK, Australia, south Africa etc. If they were "best practice" examples of a widget site and provided loads of relevant and unique information I could accept that however, invariably they are not, it is plain and obvious US business promotion at the expense of all other country websites.

What is the most annoying factor with Google doing this is that it is the USA searcher that is the loser when making these searches, they clearly do not get a fuller picture, it's like not having all the global newspapers available when searching for non-US specific information.

From a personal business aspect has it harmed my business? I very much doubt so, we're an international business celebrating our 180th anniversary this year, global widget buyers have been meeting us at trade fairs for at least 50 years therefore they know where to go but what about new businesses trying to make it in the world, they coud be impossible to find no matter how good their product or site?

G used to be awesome however it has seemingly become corrupted by its own success and its vision of how the world of business really works ... The fact is that it does not work in a way they believe and how it is taught in universities ... it really needs to get out there and see just how realworld products are sourced and produced. </end semi mild rant>

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@christianz

You know, it's not funny anymore :)

I don't understand why is this happening. The next step for normal people is to start using Bing in a major way. As I understood, not only webmasters complaining on Google's quality, but also regular users.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld deepbohra

Try endless looping around your index / subscription page!

[frostitomik]

I was just searching for a chair I bought few years ago (ch0748) to find some info about it and all I got is Google sites and Pinterest spam (and outdated Amazon listing) There is zero organic results on the 1st page (on my version of Google) about the chair which was one of the best selling chairs.

[glakes]

The next step for normal people is to start using Bing in a major way.

DDG has been airing a lot of radio ads lately. The ads poke fun at the "creepy" remarketing ads displayed elsewhere after one searches for something in Google's search engine without actually naming Google.

I doubt DDG's ads will have much impact on pulling users away from Google. In general, I believe most consumers of information don't care much about their privacy or even high quality search results.

[RedBar]

Ok, DDG is not anywhere near G's enquiry levels however it is still showing consistently great growth, what do you think?

[duckduckgo.com...]

[gatormark]

Bing and DDG are currently irrelevant. I may get 10% organic traffic from them but only because I still have a lot of high ranking keywords on their SERPs. Google is seamlessly entrenched in the western world’s culture and as their search engine. It’s not going anywhere, any time soon.

[samwest]

Between the ridiculous rash of PINTEREST on page 1 and political bias in both Google Search and Youtube (connect the dots) , IMHO, Google is at their all time lowest point in terms of quality and fair / balanced search results. Do they really think we are so stupid as to not notice?

[southernguy]

Do they really think we are so stupid as to not notice?

Yes, but not everyone, but unfortunately many people are, that is why most still use Google for search. Google has succeeded at dumbing down the general public to the point of accepting Google search as the best search engine.

[seomotionz]

@Cyril TechWebsites Indeed I am wondering the same thing. Who gained traffic actually?

[sofie77]

Who gained traffic actually?

Google gained traffic. This is what the algorithm and KI is looking for.

Max time on site for google with most "acceptable" organic serps. We cant see the hole picture but whatever makes more money for google is good. As long 99% of the default users are happy.

[SteveWrz]

Why pinterest though? Of the few times I've actually clicked on a pinterest result, I found it completely incomprehensible and basically unusable. It makes no sense why it ranks as well as it does.

[ichthyous]

Bing and DDG are currently irrelevant

I would agree...10% is a lot actually. I think all non-google search engines combined are maybe 3-5% of my search traffic. Nobody is running from Google search any time soon

Who benefits?

Youtube is the crown jewel for Google now...they are pulling in huge profits from YouTube ads and that's why you see so many videos in the feed now. I personally don't watch a lot of videos but I have a couple of friends that watch Youtube vids all day and night. What does Google get from Pinterest and FB? That to me is much more of a mystery

[ichthyous]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that GSC has updated and there is a new panel there now "Core Web Vitals"...divided into Mobile and Desktop. Under Mobile my site is showing the majority of pages as "Poor" due to "CLS issue: more than 0.25 (mobile)". I ran a search and there doesn't seem to be much info about this error anywhere. It seems to be something about page elements shifting during use? Desktop results are almost 100 "Good". Anyone else seeing this error now?

[gatormark]

@ichthyous

Yes, Bing, Yahoo, and DDG account for a little over 10% of my organic traffic. Maybe another .3% from other search engines, and the remainder from Google.

[jmorgan]

I think I've pointed out the issues with other search engines trying to compete with Google, which is that even if their search results are better (which is debatable because their results do not ever get scrutinized as much as Google's), their lack of data/integration with other services/information (businesses, weather, news, etc.) lags far, far, far behind Google's.

This is a real problem for any current or would-be competitors. Google would almost have to self-implode for any competitors to get a foothold in this space.

[brodakin]

@Cyril TechWebsites +
I agree. There should be an equal competition in search engine industry. Bing is pumping up its SERP too!

[seomotionz]

Google gained traffic. This is what the algorithm and KI is looking for.

Max time on site for google with most "acceptable" organic serps. We cant see the hole picture but whatever makes more money for google is good. As long 99% of the default users are happy.

@sofie77 I meant apart from them. Which sites, what types & all!?!

[jediviper]

For whoever claims that Google is gaining or gained traffic, think again.
According to some recent study, that I have read, Google has recently lost a lot of traffic.
Plus we see that many social media channels and app stores pushing the rankings at the 1st page.

So, it's very simplistic to say that Google is getting all the traffic. We see new players at the first page and to my surprise FB now has featured snippets, the Play and Apple store are many times ranking at the top 3 positions, so this looks like a totally new world out there.

[christianz]

@ichthyous

I am increasingly tempted to completely ignore the "Core Web Vitals" (formerly just page speed), because I use AdSense all the errors on Core Web Vitals and Page Speed basically are caused by having AdSense ads on your page, and only way to fix them is remove the ads.

[BoredMeteor]

Hmm. Web Vitals might be something to aim for, but...one of the few sites that I noticed actually gained in the May update (about 10%) has a worse pagespeed score than I do (and worse LCP) on both mobile and desktop. Another website, which got hit just like me, has a better score than I do.

I did a test on one of the spammy pages that now outranks me for one of my biggest keywords, and not only is it slower, the very first thing you see on page load on mobile is a giant ad. Such quality.

All of this stuff might seem helpful, but I just don't trust Google not to keep blowing smoke.

All of my "Good" pages are AMP, btw. None poor, at least. That's about as much attention as I'm going to give Google's data for right now, though.