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]

[browndog]

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.

Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that, your numbers are worse than mine. My income is now 1/8th of what it was in 2012.

I did write a spite article a year ago after the owner of a site accused me of plagiarism (on an article I wrote before her site even existed). So I looked up her top ranking article and wrote my own article on the same topic. Overnight I was moved to the featured snippet.

[Sally Stitts]

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...]

OMG. Wrong again. HTH do they do it?
Sure glad I didn't make the bet. I would have lost plenty.

There will be a time. I can just never figure out when.
Logic never seems to apply. They serve crud, and make kajillions. Beyond my power to comprehend. I just feel silly.
.

[brodakin]

For our site, which covers various health categories, it gained a great boost in fitness and pets-related domain and lost greatly on food recipe topics. Anyone have the same problem?

[jediviper]

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.

Nope, I dont see this for my market where I have lost many good rankings, but I have a huge drop at the number of pages at "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" only for one market, which is not affected in rankings. But it can be another reason and not because of the update.

For the markets that have been affected, I see no recovery till now.

[sofie77]

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.

I noticed something similiar. Our forum that was hit the most (-80%), had a lot of topics in the top 10. Now we are between page 5-10. This topics shows the page 2 > instead of the page number 1. The page 1 is indexed but doest not rank anymore. I tried already to resubmit some of them in WMT but the pages does not come up again.

I really don't understand, why Google can make updates that look like a penalty on a complete whitehat website.

I wouldn't say anything if other sides were better before us and you lose positions because of it, but it's a complete destruction of our work.

[edited by: sofie77 at 7:49 am (utc) on May 8, 2020]

[mcnotony]

my thoughts are that this is a zero sum game for google. the business model is the same as amazon. google is a middle man, a parasite. you go through it to get what you want and it takes a cut of the sellers profits as you pass through. therefore it only stands to reason that every transaction that takes place as a result of someone using google it should have a cut of. with that in mind the end game is the same as yours - to monetize all visitors to google. the strategy this late in the game is to milk every business that relies on google to stay afloat - the same as amazon, ebay or whoever. end result? less buying traffic for some, less traffic period for others. keep posting that premium content to answer those search queries like a good boy. that's just another way google manipulates businesses to tick it's own boxes. when google needs business to do something for it you'll see a transparent algo update. they won a long time ago and yes, we're all fkd. maybe you won a small victory today, but like any gambling addict will tell you, the house always wins in the end.

[Manana]

Last week was my most profitable week of the last 10 months despite coronavirus and I was hoping that Google wouldn't intervene with an update which they surely did. Just like the June 2019 update, my traffic numbers are up but conversions went down the drain. It's what Samwest and others call "zombie traffic."

It's amazing how accurately their AI skims the profitable traffic and sends the leftover non-converting useless traffic to websites. I feel the pain of people here who lost traffic due to this update but don't fret. I saw an increase in traffic but my sales got obliterated again with yet another Google update.

Google is a monopoly and monopolies are a net loss for society. There are (lax) anti-trust laws in place to prevent the formation of monopolies but they aren't executed because the American government is run by corporations not by the people of America. We are all waiting for Google to go down but even if a search engine dethrones Google, they will be a monopoly too and behave exactly like Google is doing at the moment.

[frostitomik]

For all webmasters that are panicking:

This is not an update but an error that will surely be fixed in few days/weeks

I have about 20 sites in completely different niches with completely different content and SEO, even different platforms and server locations, and all dropped from page 1 to literally deindexed, all at the same date. Not a single website got a boost.

This has never happened to me in the history of the sites (10 years). Every update, some sites went up, some went down. About 100 updates, everytime it went like that.

Therefore, in my opinion this is 100% some kind of error in the SERPs that will be fixed.

Keep calm and continue working on your sites 🙂

[SweetPotato]

On what day did you guys noticed the first DROP exactly?

[sofie77]

@frostitomik

I hope so and we have observed the same. We run a couple of other pages and have a few customers in completly different niches. On previous updates (since 2004) some pages goes down and others went up. With this update every single page goes down. I never saw this before aswell.

At first I thought, what if we do one single error on all our pages and thats the reason for the penaltys...?! Your post gave me a bit of hope...but to be honest, I dont think google will do a rollback or a fix.

Google doesn't want to disappoint the shareholders in / after Corona and that's why the lemon is squeezed out...maybe Its an emergency update for google.

I hope so much that I am wrong, because it feels like the end for us.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@frostitomik

I wish you were right and your real name is Larry Page or Sergey Brin... But I doubt that something will roll back.

[RedBar]

Therefore, in my opinion this is 100% some kind of error in the SERPs that will be fixed.

Don't hold your breath since it won't happen.

These core updates are launched after rigorous testing and they are giving the results G wants!

IIRC there has only ever been one update reversion, a few years ago, and that was before they became known as the "core updates".

I said last week before the update, don't panic, don't do anything since no one is informed enough as yet to understand what G has / has not done and in any case whatever you do may do will not have any effect on any affected site at present.

Yes, it's damned frustrating however leave everything alone towards the end of next week or w/c 18th May, let's see where the dust settles.

[samwest]

Pinterest pages are suddenly in all the top positions in my vertical. I've been pushed down 3 positions and well below the fold. The effect is devastating. Pinterest leads to more ad pages I guess.

This is no bug...this is exactly what Gorg stated they will do starting Q2...because they experienced a drop in Q1...they will make bank...global pandemic and starving webmasters be damned.

Zero traffic on site right now. They are doing everything to take back any gains you may have seen in recent weeks.

When comparing ‘live’ stats...Matomo is real time...whereas GART shows live visits long after visitor has left. Fake stats in my book.

Any remaining trust in Google is eroding fast.

[RedBar]

G has realised that industry / manufacturers / major importers & exporters / wholesalers have left its building, G's former influence in the late nineties and nougties when bulk purchasers and producers were seeking out new suppliers and customers etc have gone.

New alliances, where applicable, have been made and life goes on only to leave G to try and influence the retail market and grab a piece of its action where and when it possibly can.

Heavens knows what they expect to derive from all this Pinterest garbage, I just pass on by when I see it.

Honestly, I'm trying to think of the last time I actually searched for anything to purchase on G, I know what I'm buying and from where and its results do not affect or influence me, likewise I know of ardent eBay and Amazon shoppers, they never, ever go to G, why would they?

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this respect, am I?

[MayankParmar]

A UK publisher had dropped last year. Any update on their recovery? The name starts with D....

[immrrobot]

@samwest I'm seeing same stuff in my verticals as well. pinterest as well as few Facebook pages which is hilarious. What's more surprising is that even thin content with no more than 100 words are ranking well. Like WTH. So all these years what we were preached about relevant in-depth content has gone to dust?

[samwest]

@immr.. yeah, the SERPS in my vertical look like a "diversity lottery"...authority winds up at the bottom and the top is lined with whatever Google's AI decides to throw at the wall to see what sticks (ie: converts on page ads). I think they are forcing visitors to dig into page 2, 3 and beyond to find what they need...to get maximum ad exposure. This Pinterest obsession needs to be tamped way down or moved to the images tab.

[sofie77]

there was a long comment on [seroundtable.com...] .Written in the last few hours. I think it was the latest comment. Its already deleted. Did someone made a copy?

[RedBar]

As much as none of us trust it, check the Alexa ranking for Pinterest, traffic down but not like some sites I know of but what I found interesting, IF Alexa is correct:

United States 31.9%
India 18.3%
Brazil 5.8%

No Canada, no European country, more G manipulation in favour of a US company?

[engine]

There's one type of search I make each week, manually, for a limited number of search terms. The terms are slightly different each week, but pretty much on a topic.

This week the SERPs look terribly cluttered with youtube thumbnails, and other visual distractions. What I was looking for was a bluelink some way down in amongst the clutter.

[MayankParmar]

Is this a link related update?

[sofie77]

Is this a link related update?

I dont think so. Our health pages are really clean. No linkbuilding at all. 100% natural growing linkprofile since 2000. A lot of links from high trust pages (newspapers, books, Dr., universities)

When this is a link related update, then links does not count that much anymore. When google is looking only for the links, we would be most of time nr. 1 how we are on bing for every single query.

[edited by: sofie77 at 4:30 pm (utc) on May 8, 2020]

[RedBar]

Is this a link related update?

Insofar as I can tell, no, however my widget sector is not heavily into linking therefore I may be completely wrong.

[capulkit]

When social networks appear on top for any query, we are using wrong search engine. Pinterest images for queries on top is a blunder.

[ichthyous]

Is this a link related update?

I think it might be a big factor. I built a large number of new links from highly trusted sites in February and March. The anchor text was clearly pushing the limits and I knew it. Also the number of links added per page...but since the sites have a very high Trust factor you can get away with it up to a point. This is the second or third time I've gone on a link building binge adding hundreds of new links, mostly with targeted anchor text. I find that what happens is there is first a strong dampening effect when the links are new. You take a bit of a hit when you add a lot of links all at the same time, but as the links age and stay in place that converts to a big boost. I don.t have time on my hands to sit every day adding links...when business is slow I devote time to that. The more links you have from the same domain the less valuable each one becomes incrementally I believe. You get a much bigger boost from new links from a wide selection of domains..but that is almost impossible to get in numbers.

I am seeing one competitor with the thinnest of content blowing everyone else out of the water. They have taken over hundreds or thousands of top three spots with pages that have almost no text and are just an infinite scroll of images. Since they give away the images for free they accumulate massive links and everything ranks, despite not including any text.

I also think that lots of competitors are using negative link spamming to drop the competition. I have an endlessly increasing number of spammy links linking to my content...they come and go and long after they site is gone google still counts the links. Disavowing them doesn't do anything, or is so slow that it's not really perceptible.

When social networks appear on top for any query, we are using wrong search engine. Pinterest images for queries on top is a blunder.

Something is up...my number of backlinks from Pinterest reported in GSC is exploding. Google removed most of them a few years back. I am getting a lot more referral traffic from Pinterest too.

[Upstate8987]

"This week the SERPs look terribly cluttered with youtube thumbnails, and other visual distractions. What I was looking for was a bluelink some way down in amongst the clutter."

@engine - I've got hard data to back this up. Looking in Search Console, I'm seeing one of my sites with virtually no change (and even positive change) in average ranking over the past week, but a MAJOR decrease in impressions and, therefore, clicks. This would indicate that I'm ranking the same, but the actual physical position on the page has dropped because of YT thumbnails and ads at the top.

[worker]

In the first 5 pages of search results for a number of searches, I'm seeing:
-links to broken pages (literally broken pages)
-links to 404 pages
-links to Pinterest pages that are built to match the search phrase, but contain only a link the promoting site and images
-links to completely unrelated pages, as if the Google did not understand the meaning of the search phrase(s)
-links to results that look like they are correct, with appropriate text displayed, but when clicked they redirect to P0RN sites
-missing links to sites that I know should be on the first 3 pages because I've run the same searches for years
Basically, the current results are horrendous.

[samwest]

Looking in Search Console, I'm seeing one of my sites with virtually no change (and even positive change) in average ranking over the past week, but a MAJOR decrease in impressions and, therefore, clicks.

Yes, exactly. I have been on a decent run since last May. This week the bottom is dropping out, with any changes to site...so that is all SERP change related. It's easy to figure out if you read the Q1 revenue post here at WebmasterWorld. Here's my trend over 16 months. Notice the varying gap between impressions and clicks over time. [imgur.com...]

[baugs18]

Pretty quiet over here. PVs are up ~3% WoW - so negligible for me. Indexed pages look normal. I've seen ranking drops on the 50+ side of things - but looking through those keywords and am totally fine with that. Top 3 rankings are seeing small improvements WoW/MoM.

Update doesn't seem to have impacted us much. I have seen a massive increase in crappy backlinks (not my doing) - that will be fun to look at.

[EditorialGuy]

It may be early days yet, but as far as I can tell, we gained a bit for some queries and lost a bit for others. On balance, the update appears to have been positive for us so far, but not by a significant margin.