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]

[BoredMeteor]

I'm just sitting over here shell-shocked. I don't mean to rant, but I've lost everything. Keywords I hadn't yet lost yesterday are now gone, as well. Something isn't right. It's so bad that I'm exploring the idea that there's been some kind of error or negative seo done on my website that's caused Google to go "nope!"

This site is going on 9 years old. It is not YMYL. I've always followed Google's guidelines to the letter, as well as their recommendations for SSL, GDPR, and I even use AMP on most pages. I've always written my own content, been extremely conservative with ad placements, and never did any link building (I always just let it happen naturally, and I've been featured/mentioned on some pretty big websites over the years).

For a long time, that worked. It worked great. Now, most of my keywords have been thrown off of page 1 and are hovering around 6-10. Worse, I'm outranked horribly by some of the websites that have plagiarized me over the years, and in some cases by vaguely rewritten versions of my own stuff! Pinterest pages with images from (and links to) my site are now ranked above me. That's just extreme insult to injury.

It's pretty soul-crushing. Every update for the past two years, I've been hit. And each time I've lost a keyword, I've never really been able to recover it...so if that trend continues, unless there's a huge rollback or I find a potential cause, I don't see things turning around.

[mhansen]

I realize this is just anecdotal - but I'll share some rough data from one of our sites seeing big jumps over the last 24-48 hours. (Monday, it had the highest number of single day visits from G search I've ever seen in the month of May. Yesterday was higher, today is going the same way.) This specific site has always been well placed and this latest boost is just frosting.

- US Market, consumer information, lead gen.
- Domain established in 2005. It's an EMD.
- Total of 18 pages in depth. Each page is VERY thorough. Very few images.
- Geared to a very specific, laser focused set of visitors at the utmost bottom of the research funnel.
- Competition in this market is overwhelmingly dominated by Very Big Brands.
- All content is written and maintained by myself, with vast knowledge of this specific industry. No author bio, no linked profiles, etc.
- All lead gen is done within our own site - No iframes, affiliate forms, etc. It's handled through Form > API with a plugin I wrote myself to work with vendor.
- I DO have a registered LLC with our State, and this site is one of 4 others under the same umbrella, in the same vertical. WHOIS shows the LLC ownership.
- WordPress backend, 8-10 various plugins / Home-rolled responsive theme.
- PageSpeed Insights of 99/100 (Mobile/Desktop - Site loads in -1 second)
- SEMR reports it sees around 42,000 monthly visits. (12,000 kw variations, Featured snippet for +1,400) Our data shows around 44k visits and 58k pageviews.

Though we've seen significant increases in traffic over the last few days, today SEMR actually shows a drop of 3% in KW exposure and traffic. After spending a few hours looking at those specific terms, we found we lost a few of the featured snippets and simply moved into 1-3rd positions. Normally, I'd dive right in and reclaim those featured snippets by changing the way the content is presented, but I'm going to let this one fly for a couple weeks and see the results.

[popac]

BoredMeteor - Also checked what is going on and realize that for example, Pinterest surpasses almost all other results in many results... I am amazed by the rudeness ... For one search, all pinterests are thrown out ... pinterest.com, pinterest.ie, pinterest.ca, pinterest.co.uk etc ... which is much, much is ...
First of all, stop posting on Pinterest or other social networks ... Everything eventually becomes the property of Google as well as Pinterest. Google is just pushing its favorites ... easily and efficiently...

[glakes]

Folks, please don't hit the panic button just yet. As is the case with most core updates, it can take days before the SERPS start settling down. Once they do, filters are reactivated and a lot of the junk disappears.

[twitter.com...]

Posted May 4, 2020 at 3:52PM

The May 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.

[koan]

Folks, please don't hit the panic button just yet.

I hope you're right because like BoredMeteor, this update would be devastating to me, -50% to -70% on many web sites. I've had bad updates in the past and some recoveries but I've never see such a brutal change. I checked, no manual penalties. Google Search Console doesn't show much change with keywords average positions.

[jediviper]

The worse Wednesday of the last weeks for my Australia traffic.
But Germany's traffic wasn't affected after all.

[BoredMeteor]

lol. Search console updated so I finally get to see a graph of the damage on Google itself. Down 90% clicks, down about 70% impressions. One of my keywords was already low, lingering around position 10, and it dropped to 80. Never seen the graph like that, and even more has fallen off since then. Sure is exciting!

Of course, I'm keeping my hands off things despite my melancholic rambling above (I can't help it, I gotta vent!). I just like to share my observations. However, in the past, I've never seen things "settle down" after an update where I magically come out ahead, or even back to normal. And this time...whew. I am not optimistic, but we'll see.

On the other hand, one of my larger competitors is also currently getting wrecked. They've fallen in position for their brand name, and I'm seeing the same kind of keyword drops on their end. They're a very well established site in the niche (over a decade, I think, with thousands of pages and several contributors) with a large following and tons of links. Most of what remains in top positions are, you know, your big corporate brands, news sites, etc. YouTube. I hope we're just doing the weird Google dance, and they haven't decided to nuke smaller publishers in certain niches.

Anyway, I think I might check out for awhile and see how things look in a week or so. Good luck to everyone else!

[jediviper]

However, it's strange that Germany had a huge drop in Impressions on the 5/5 according to the GSC, but the clicks remained at good levels. So the CTR got a really good boost for this country, but also for others. Also the traffic from Germany is fine till now.

[jmorgan]

Woah! Just found a new competitor whose website is literally plastered with ads and very little content and yet is shooting up the rankings. Completely bizarre.

[MayankParmar]

Sites with thin contents, more ads, more affiliate links are now ranking better :)

[whoa182]

So far the damage doesn't look as bad as i expected and keywords seem pretty steady right now.

Here's how search console looks: [imgur.com...]

Still lost some profitable keywords to those spammy sites that basically only contain 10 amazon affiliate links and zero original content...

I think it must be about links. They have links from worldbank, guardian, dailymail; massive websites. I'm wondering if the domains were bought by someone and just taking advantage of it. People say they will disappear but they haven't... One of them has been floating in the top 10 for thousands of keywords for over a year.

Another one of them has reached over a million visits a month over a period of 3 months because of these backlinks.

It shows that links are more important than content or is too heavily factored with the health niche imo.

[jmorgan]

I try to convince myself that websites with terrible content will not benefit in the long run. However, there is at least one website which just continues to stay afloat, and in fact rise, even with all the continued updates from Google. It is extremely perplexing to say the least.

Saying that, I can't allow myself to be obsessed with how Google tries to rank their search results. I just need to stay true to my principles, keep my eye on the big picture and pretend that Google doesn't exist.

I think it just goes to show, at least from my point of view, that algorithms, regardless of how sophisticated will never get it 100% right all the time.

[Ecopac]

As the old saying goes, don't build your house on rented land. Which is something, unfortunately, I have done and am now paying the price for it

[joshd2]

If you were effected heavily by this update go to Webmaster Tools -> Coverage and check your Valid pages. They should all have changed to "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap". Google is clearly screwing up the indexing of sites which is causing these massive drops in rankings. Hopefully they fix it soon but the fact that it happened to this level in the first place just goes to show how incompetent they have become.

[Sally Stitts]

Slammed. Clobbered. Blasted. Wiped out.
Google now has its head so far up its colonopolongus, it is simply mind-boggling.
Bring back Brin and Page and Cutts. And Mayor. And ALL the innovators.
Fire ALL the bean counters. Take them out behind the barn, and shoot them.
Unbelievable, that they have sunk to such depths.
Ten thousand employees WERE FAR SUPERIOR to 100 thousand.
Groupthink has RUINED this company.
THE SERPS ARE GARBAGE.
Does anyone actually believe that Google can fix this? NO, they cannot.
I have seen imminent doom before, and I am staring right at it.
Sure wish I could tell you how I REALLY feel.
Words are insufficient.
.

[shashankpandey]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4994799.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 2:35 pm on May 7, 2020 (utc +1)

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After this update, anyone has got some fluctuation in their ranking. Who one has got most down in the ranking?

[StupidIntelligent]

@Sally Stitts - Did this update completely destroy your online business to the point of no return?

[sofie77]

So many webmasters, so much waste of time, so much investments and effort, blowin away like nothing...

This is so frustrating...and I know, our sites are very good. Best user experience you can get. For every single key we rank on bing and other engins on pos 1. But google rank pages in front of us, where the keys are not on the page. Unbelievable.

Does google developers read here? If yes, roll back this update please. There is something wrong.

Independently from us, the serps were so much better before 2018.

Take this chart:

[imgur.com...]

[edited by: sofie77 at 2:34 pm (utc) on May 7, 2020]

[joshd2]

Can't help but think this is some sort of technical error on Google's side. For those effected this is not a normal rankings drop from spot #1 to spot #10 for some keywords. It is a complete and utter wiping out of whole domains. Not a big 20% dip in traffic but an 80%+ decimation.

If this is not an error and Google decided to completely destroy many sites for whatever secret algorithmic reason, this should greatly concern everyone whether they are effected by it now or not.

[Sally Stitts]

@Sally Stitts - Did this update completely destroy your online business to the point of no return?

No business, just an info site, with 1 ad on each of 25% of the pages.
I have worked hard over the years to create stuff that you cannot find anywhere else.
I like attacking difficult questions, with a unique presentation style.

From $180,000 in 2013 from AdSense, to $3/day now, and dropping fast.
Google's incessant greed is driving its downfall.
There will be no recovery.
Just continuing garbage.
.

[RedBar]

I have to say that I'm seeing for my widgets a lot of very thin, but relevant, content ranking many using very, very similar templates.

They're not particularly "bad" pages, simply not very informative, not in-depth and definitely not worth bookmarking unless it happens to be in your town and you didn't know about them yet want to.

Nothing disastrous as yet but then again almost absolutely nothing worth getting excited about.

[seomotionz]

@RedBar Since when Google cares about content to be informative or in-depth?!

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS, Have you seen any recovery since your initial drop?

It would not be unrealistic to think that there was some sort of technical glitch with this update, seeing as how it was released during a global pandemic. I read that LinkedIn was temporarily de-indexed.

[NickMNS]

@Cralamarre
I have not seen any meaningful recovery, my stats are trending upwards marginally, but not in manner that would suggest a roll-back, just normal variation. My guess would be that the next chance of a rollback will be next October. The last time I got hit so hard it took 2 years to recover, and the recovery lasted a scant 4 month.

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS, I'm sorry to hear that. I seem to have avoided disaster with this latest update, but I'm certainly no stranger to being devastated by them.
I'm just glad that in those times when I suddenly lost most of my traffic, I kept going. Of course, I had no choice, so that made the decision easier.

[RedBar]

Since when Google cares about content to be informative or in-depth?!

It used to, obviously not much these days.

[RedBar]

I've just been looking at some keyword phrases for my widget industry and especially so the Pinterest results which I would normally completely ignore.

They are unbelievably atrocious, every result was keyword targeted with the page having one image of the keyword and on the rest of the page loads of other different keyword images absolutely nothing to do with the query.

Are all Pinterest pages like this?

Truly shocking Google, this is a new low for you!

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm trying to be honest when watching at SERPS... but they are really awful. First spot on the keyword I was looking for is filled with website that proposed me to install gambling software after visiting it and taking few actions on page... That's pretty miserable results, I don't think it's related to user's experience. As I see - the only thing that Google cares nowadays is money. I'm really hope that Googlers will take action on the sh...t with SERPS they did with this update.

[Sally Stitts]

I am told that Google ABC reports its quarterly results in about an hour from now.
I am wondering, if a few hours later, I will be kicking myself for
NOT BUYING 500 PUTS at market price on ABC, yesterday.
I don't have long to wait.

I have always been premature on my bets in the past - right about direction, but always premature. ALWAYS.
Which translates to WRONG, for big, short-term bets.
Is the timing right for today?
I hear it won't be good. Ad sales reportedly are down. Now that SERPs are unfathomable, ...

Wanna guess before the hammer drops?

For you market folks, ever hear the term "W bottoms"? How about "M tops"?
.

[RedBar]

I'm confused Sally Stitts, are you referring to these results?

Alphabet Q1 2020 Revenues $41.16 billion, Up 13pct Y-o-Y

[webmasterworld.com...]