Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2020

[gatormark]

The following 13 messages were cut out of the May, 2020 thread at:
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4994037.htm [webmasterworld.com]
by robert_charlton - 4:31 pm on Jun 1, 2020 (PDT -8)



I just don't know anymore. There is no rhyme to these rankings. I tested the speed of one of the top pages that replaced mine and it has a page speed of 3 for mobile and 23 for desktop. THREE FOR MOBILE! How the heck is that possible and they're in position #2? Google disregards all their recommendations. I am at a complete loss these days. Up is down, Right is wrong.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:44 am (utc) on Jun 2, 2020]
[edit reason] split thread to new month [/edit]

[RedBar]

@gatormark

Do you have anyone to report to or is this solely your business?

[gatormark]

@RedBar

This is my business, but what do you mean by "anyone to report to"?

[RedBar]

"anyone to report to"?

Just wondering if you have to try and justify G's inabilities right now and how the customer was taking it?

Business is difficult enough as it is without having to contend with a fickle but dominant search engine.

I don't know whether it's my social /age group, however whenever I try to discuss search engines etc, yep, my friends know what's coming, I do find most of these days tend to say they do not use them whatsoever since they, in general, know what they want and where to get it, mostly 50+ but a few in their 30/40s and a surprising amount of ebay /Gumtree users.

[Abaros]

@gatormark

There is a common misconception that Google will value your site more if you follow certain recommendations...

No, if your site is fast, has good content, etc. etc. What Google says is that users will come back and your site will become popular, and then, when it is popular Google will value it. You can also buy ads from Google and the process will be faster.

The google AI is unable to recognize quality content, the day that happens... there will also be an AI capable of generating quality content and we will all be lost.

[samwest]

Google will value it

...right, then harvest it's content or devalue it to force your hand into poor to no ROI advertising.

[StupidIntelligent]

@Abaros - Your last sentence says it all.

[gatormark]

@RedBar

Just wondering if you have to try and justify G's inabilities right now and how the customer was taking it?

Oh, I see. I own web communities and educational resources. Once I get people to my site and they become members, they are typically members for life. So, I do not sell anything other than advanced memberships. The community and paid memberships are what’s keeping me going right now. The money I made from people searching for these particular resources, has dried up because of plummeting page rankings. I’ve been in this business for 15+ years and I’ve never seen anything like the degradation of search results quality in this may update.

[SteveWrz]

If any of you want to feel sick, pull up Pinterest in SEMrush's organic research tool and look at the gains they made in May.

I checked some of my keywords and sure enough, Pinterest is dominating the top spots. The pages are such crap too. How does some random board with 9 pictures pinned to it (and they ALL link back to Google's image search) outrank my researched and well written pages?

[joshd2]

So it seems like a lot of the sites that got completely wiped out by this May update are older websites? Mine is 13 years old and had a tremendous backlink profile, and has only been increasing in traffic over the years. Now Google has almost completely wiped it from the SERPs.

[gatormark]

I wonder if technology used to plays a role. My websites for ASP.net sites in C-sharp. Does anyone know of a breakdown of page ranking shifts based on the web technology used?

[RedBar]

So it seems like a lot of the sites that got completely wiped out by this May update are older websites?

Why do you say that?

All mine are between 15-27 years old and untouched by the update.

[dethfire]

holy $hit, adsense just clawed back 50% of May citing invalid traffic. I'd never had more than 10%. I'm about done with adsense.

[gatormark]

@dethfire
14% clawback here. Worst month since 2011 and a big clawback (sigh).

[Athedian]

Looks like another update ~might~ be happening again. Rankings tanked not just myself but also my competitors as well.

[StupidIntelligent]

High crawl activity on a few sites. Could be another update in the making...

[immrrobot]

Sites relying on pinterest for traffic must be killing it with this update. Probably should join the bandwagon as well.

[Ahtesham08]

The current drop in traffic could be related to the Riots happening in the US right now if your sites depend on US traffic.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Ahtesham08

The riots could influence the traffic, but the sad thing that algo keeps killing my website if I take a look at Semrush. I'm just shocked on what's happening. Last 6 months I updated a lot of content and keeping adding new posts since November update. But every single month from that time I' seeing further drop.

[MayankParmar]

Possible

[BoredMeteor]

I can't believe I've lost even more keywords. My competitors, too. Google traffic is still falling, somehow, and not just because of all these crises going on in the real world.

I'm going to try to stay motivated this month, but...

[SteveWrz]

semrush shows massive declines in keywords and traffic for me. There is barely anything left.

[RedBar]

I'm seeing the usual daily / weekly minor fluctuations but nothing drastic and bear in mind that G does "stuff" every day therefore one has to expect movements otherwise no one would ever get promoted / demoted / relegated / oenalised / destroyed!

The next core update should not be due until September time, maybe early October but no later, that should be your target IF you're fixated on holiday / Xmas sales, realistically for Xmas organic improvements you need to be sorted no later than end July / August.

Think of it this way, for those in the popular FMCG sectors you should be working the seasons just like the corporate buyers do if you want to try and rank naturally ... this does not apply to ad buyers with fat wallets:-)

[mhansen]

Seeing a ton of same-domain stuffing in the top 10 serps. ie: Same website, multiple pages on similar topic:

Featured snippet, Website 1
Organic spot 1 - Website 1
Organic spot 2 - Website 1, similar page
Organic spot 3 - Website 2
Organic spot 4 - Website 2, similar page
Etc...

[MayankParmar]

Widespread indexing issues right now.

[RedBar]

Seeing a ton of same-domain stuffing in the top 10 serps

I've been seeing that ever since the update plus some very old, like 8 years in one case, of eBay pages with only one 1 star comment at #1 .!.!.!

[Pjman]

Yeah, definitely seeing a ton of same domain issues. Some against me, some for me. But either way only one of those results is valid for the query, the other result is loosely related, at best.

[browndog]

Quora, Quora, Quora all over the SERPs.

[Cralamarre]

Google Analytics is showing a considerable drop in traffic last hour, but it seems to be recovering. Not sure if it's a glitch, the indexing issue, protests, covid-19... who knows anymore.

Edit: Looks like traffic has recovered and is back to normal.

[whoa182]

Looks like the spammy website that has thousands of pages of ONLY amazon affiliate links (yet ranked #1 for thousands of profitable keywords) is gone from Google. Insane that it was able to escape Google algorithm for so long while having practically zero original content and only contained lists of affiliate links. I wonder if it got away with it for so long due to somehow having powerful backlinks from world bank and such.