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]

[jmorgan]

Not seeing anything significant on my end. Might have to wait a bit longer.

[HereWeGo123]

Okay, now I am seeing crazy swings. Monitoring KWs in various verticals, and so far, the volatility appears massive. Some major national brands that were rank at the top for very competitive financial KWs dropped 10+ rankings. Seeing massive swings in health as well. This looks big so far.

[jediviper]

No SERP volatility till now is reported by Semrush.
Maybe the May Core Update hasn't been deployed yet?

[HereWeGo123]

Maybe the May Core Update hasn't been deployed yet?

Just my opinion – I'm pretty sure Google hit the “deploy” button on or around the time that they tweeted earlier today that it's live. However, it does take time for people to start taking notice.

[BoredMeteor]

Well, I know it's early going, but I've never seen my traffic just die like this before. Just watching some keywords, blinking in and out, some falling about 10 pages. Traffic has completely flatlined. I mean it's dead. I've never seen anything like this, even during past updates.Usually it's just a kind of gradual slide.

I know my website's been performing poorly for several months, but I was just gaining some ground back and now...wow.

[MayankParmar]

These algo updates are complicated. You may have dropped now, but you could still recover in a few days as the update is still rolling out. Good luck.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm seeing further step in killing my website by Google. Sometimes it rolls back, but as I see from my experience I got another one decrease move with my website from this update.

[sofie77]

@You may have dropped now, but you could still recover in a few days as the update is still rolling out. Good luck.

In my experience its not like that. When the first data center is going down, the rest will follow. One of my site that lost during the medic update 70%, recoverd in January 40%.

With this official May 2020 Core update the site is almost destroyed.with -90% :.( - it looks like more then a penalty instead of an update. From page 1 for many keys to page 5+

[edited by: sofie77 at 8:58 am (utc) on May 5, 2020]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Sofie77

My experience tells me that this won't happen. Fast recoveries are happening quite rare, almost never. So, this is another new normal as Google sees my website. It's just a real demotivation to put such a lot of money last months in my website, updating content with newest, written by experts which sallary is not so small, but... But Google.

[jmorgan]

I suspect when Google says "it may take two weeks to fully roll out", what they actually mean is them monitoring the results and making some minor adjustments or rollbacks within that two-week period.

[browndog]

I stopped adding content 2 months ago, there is just no reason to do so. I've worked my backside off to show my expertise (20 years), to back that up, I have an authority fact-checking my content, I have an author bio, which links to a more detailed author page, my site speed is 85-90, it's not spammy, never-ever engaged in link building, yet another hit. It is brand, brand, brand. Thin content, but global companies. They keep saying 'create original content that adds value', and you do that, but still get outranked by 200 word posts by insurance companies. What is the point?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@browndog Google's fashizm is endless. Don't worry on that.

[RedBar]

Lots of movement in my widget sector, personally my sites are doing well so far although a few surprising drops, my initial impressions are the results look a bit cleaner with not so much spam however we'll see what the next few days bring.

I'll have an in-depth after dog walking:-)

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm in online bussiness from 2015. As I see a picture - Google is just a usual criminal, which is stealing others content and brings it with own ads. They are Naziz of the Internet, they are doing what they want and I can't get why the hell all government authorities just don't care on this (except EU).

[Cralamarre]

No changes so far with my site (education). Traffic was down slightly yesterday from the previous week but it was more of an all-day thing, not something that started after the update was announced.

Everything is still looking normal as of this morning.

[sofie77]

this update is very different then other core updates before.

When you move from page 1 for thousands of keys to page 10 and between page 2 and 9 are NO relevants results, this has to be a penalty or something else. I noticed the comments here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I hope the rankings come back.

[samwest]

Recent history proves the blatant manipulation of the SERPS and traffic shaping Google needs to hit its desired numbers. Ad density seems to be a major factor. User behavior is all over then place. On one day off the next. Un-natural. It should be investigated...but it’s all smoke and mirrors.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Guys, who sees impact: are you facing with site-wide penalty or it is related to some specific pages of content?

[sofie77]

For me it looks like a massive lost of trust or a google error. I have checked 1000 keys and most of them are Page 5+. I think its related to the search volume. For keys with really small search volume the position is still on the first page but for all others the rankings are gone. This is not a normal core udpate adjustment with a drop of some positions.

There is no manual penalty message in the wmt. The site use amp, has a lot of edu links, build in 2006, no linkbuilding, very dezent ads and google liked the page in the last years. I have no idea what google doesnt like on this page since last night.

[samwest]

It's sad when Pinterest is suddenly the #1 result. Interesting finds is back again... and every time it destroys traffic and conversions. SERPs are changing every hour as the AI searches for their best conversions. Pure greed.

[SteveWrz]

I started seeing massive declines about 2 hours ago. I can't find my site for any of the keywords I was tracking that were doing well.

This is real bad and could not have come at a worse time.

[samwest]

Hard clamp in place. Site won't get above 2 consecutive visits. The only thing that has changed is SERP layout and it is cycling by the hour, maybe by the minute. They are moving the 'Interesting Finds' and now the 'Some People Searched for (term)' boxes. This gives them one large position leading to 5 other ad filled results. All zombies. Past ~60 days was like a throwback to 2007. Last Thursday it all came crashing down again. It appears they lightened up their manipulation for about 50 days, but now that some states are re-opening, it's back to the hard clamp again. The Google monster needs to eat to make those >20% quarterly gains...even they admitted efforts to improve revenue in Q2.

It's one thing to suspect someone robbed you, but when you can see clear evidence and stated intent, it's infuriating. No "stimulus check either". Their money grab is going to backfire by killing off their own content creators. They don't care, just fill the holes with Pinterest.

[NickMNS]

I'm down 60% since midnight.

[RedBar]

So far today versus daily average PVs with 8 hours to go B2B global site 1 +200%, site 2 already at 100%

It's sad when Pinterest is suddenly the #1 result.

Seeing a LOT of Pinterest pages especially with my images.

[ichthyous]

Seeing a LOT of Pinterest pages especially with my images.

GSC shows a huge increase of backlinks from Pinterest to my site...that's after Google had dropped showing them last year. Google can't seem to decide what it wants to do with Pinterest

[BoredMeteor]

Drop of I'd say over 75%. My site's no longer ranking #1 for its name. I've lost nearly all of my major page 1 keywords, and most of my small ones (some are strangely untouched). Really does feel more like a penalty than an update. I might be done.

[aristotle]

My site is large in terms of number of pages is in the tens of millions and a large portion of that is indexed. In terms of page views I prefer not to say, other than it could be higher.

According to one old theory, if a large site has a lot of low-value pages, they can drag down the site as a whole, thereby hurting the performance of even the high-value pages. I don't know if this theory is correct, or if it might apply to your site, but just wanted to bring it up as a possibility. There's an old saying that you can improve the health of a tree by cutting off the dead wood.

Also, as another possibility, google originally developed the panda penalty to use against "content farms", very large sites that are designed to get traffic from thousands (or millions) of long-tail keywords. Some version of panda is probably still part of the algorithm.

[EditorialGuy]

From Google: " As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out."

Patience may or may not be a virtue, but it can prevent unnecessary stress.

[Cralamarre]

@BoredMeteor My site was hit by the Panda update back in 2012 but fully recovered a few months later. Then it was hit again in 2017 (by something still unknown) but has recovered again. So as long as your site has value, I wouldn't give up.

Now having said that, my traffic is probably going to fall off a cliff any moment. But so far, no sign of any trouble.

[Cralamarre]

Starting to see an increase in traffic within the past few hours, up 15% from yesterday. Hope it sticks.