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]

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial "You haven't added any sections yet" is what I see in Publisher Center. I've not configured the new Google News Publisher Center.

Discover console: [imgur.com...]

Started to drop on 15th June. 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th June are have less than 1000 clicks and it looks same today. This has happened for the first time in a year. Last time my Discover dropped when I was hit by Google Core update last year, but it recovered in next update last year.

@Other news publishers here - Do you see any abnormal drop?

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar

You haven't added any sections yet" EXACTLY my problem. I even contacted Publisher support - they told me there is nothing to worry about if the publication is showing correctly in the app (which it is). But it has never shown that before.

It doesn't help the situation, but I feel much better now knowing I am not going crazy or I haven't broken something. Will just have to sit and wait to see what is brewing.

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial My site is also showing correctly in the news app. Nothing is broken.

People at Android Police had same problem in 2018: [twitter.com...] traffic dropped for a week and returned back, but he was able to get in touch with Danny from Google.

[TalkativeEditorial]

If you get in touch with anyone, please let me know? I will keep you updated if anything changes for us.

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial Sure, I will keep you posted if I get in touch with someone or anything changes.

[RedBar]

So, we're 2/3 the way through June, here are my latest metrics:

1. Global B2B ,coms traffic already at May's level, if it continues like this then the best month in years.

2. Global B2B widget directory, normal traffic.

3. UK only widget specialist - Already surpassed last month's numbers, could be back to normal?

4. UK hotel / bar - already at 20% of pre-Covid level, I'm expecting a big pick-up towards the end of the month with re-opening all but confirmed for 4th July. Actual accommodation bookings are now doing ok.

In general my global widget sector is looking relatively clean except for those Pinterest pages and the random, totally unrelated Google books pages ... those I really, really do not comprehend whatsoever, sometimes it's as though G has tried to search its database yet hardly anything was there so they simply inserted them out of desperation as a filler.

I say this because sometimes I have tested a search which produced a load of Google books a few minutes later and the books were not there!

[samwest]

@redbar...is pinterest polluting your vertical?

[SteveWrz]

According to the NY Times’ profile, Ramaswamy grew disillusioned at Google and ultimately left the company as a result. “The relentless pressure to maintain Google’s growth, he said, had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing.”

Ramaswamy also told the Times that the quality and usefulness of search results on Google has been compromised by the focus on ad revenue. There are many in the industry who would agree. But a “relentless” focus on revenue growth is an inevitable function of being a public company. “It’s a slow drift away from what is the best answer for the user and how do we surface it,” Ramaswamy explained.

This basically confirms what we're all seeing. We have been screwed and will continue to get sacrificed so Google can maintain their growth.

[samwest]

@redbar...is pinterest polluting your vertical?

[RedBar]

@redbar...is pinterest polluting your vertical?

Yep, invariably there are two results on each page however the utterly ironic thing is that they are usually MY old images from about 6-7 years ago linking directly to my site, I even have for one very important keyword term two consecutive results in the top 5/6 usually.

It's nonsensical, all it's doing is driving overal web page views, nothing more, the referrals certainly do not generate any immediate enquiries.

My B2Bs have done well out of this update and I put that down to work I did last October - December and, dare I say it, I expected better rankings and more trraffic because of what I did. I'm continuing doing this with new additional pages and they, too, are doing well, but then of course, there's the odd couple of pages that never seem to get anywhere no matter what I do. Fortunately they are all widgets I am not too concerned about.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar

I've been doing some digging and the only other thing I can find that correlates with the 10 June date is that is roughly when Google Discover introduced Discover Ads. "Likes" have also been rolling out, but ads are pretty much on that date. How or why that would have an impact on publishers, I don't know.

[KaseyM]

Like a switch, our site is now showing up in Google Discover again by the looks of it and back to normal traffic levels.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@KaseyM - Did that happen today? Mind if I ask if you're on WP and AMP and which AMP plugin you are using?

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial Kasey also uses AMPForWP.

Not seeing any improvements on my end yet :( and I doubt Discover ads or like button has anything to do with it

[renatovieira]

It is very clear to me. Something big happened on the 18th.

Usually Saturday is my best day of the week. Today the situation is terrible ... Traffic and conversion extremely low.

[gatormark]

I don’t notice anything different today, although my Saturday numbers are slightly, slightly better than COVID-19 normal.

[glakes]

Something big happened on the 18th.

I believe this as well. Went from a steady 2-3% conversion rate to < .5% two days in a row on lower traffic. That's a statistically huge decline in conversions.

My hunch is Google is trying to quickly burn through the free ad vouchers they gave to advertisers. With poor results like this, I wonder how many advertisers will move on to greener pastures?

[Webweeb]

Seeing some changes in the SERPS. My niche is still bugged with parasite blackhat backlink pages ranking.

Pinterest CCTLD admitted bug still not fixed. So I expect the black hats will continue to make millions thanks to Google being asleep at the wheel.

I guess we are just out of luck until India goes back to work and checks SERPS again manually. I would have never guessed that COVID could find a way to screw the SERPS, but apparently it did. I guess the SERPS really do not work without human review... Because every time the AI screws up and misinterprets a search or a cluster of similar searches, if there is no Human with common sense to tell it that its wrong, the SERP is just bugged.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I would bet a lot of money that much more of the SERPS is driven by human review than we know.
Why else would the SERPS suddenly be much worse after India goes into lockdown?

I guess Google realized that AI would never reach the intellect of a 2 year old human and simply uses it as a tool to scale up human review now. Wise decision, as long as India is not on lockdown I guess.

[TalkativeEditorial]

No change on the Discover front for us still. Competitor's using wire / agency copy showing up in Discover ahead of us.
Tough.

[topaz]

Discover has indeed been tripping. Also seeing new probs with scrappers ranking above in SERPs.

Here's discover for my two sites:

DA 20, online since December 2019
[imgur.com...]

DA 70, online since 97 is more stable.
[imgur.com...]

[ViktorN]

@TalkativeEditorial @MayankParmar
Using AMPforWP as well, version 1.4.9, I wonder if someone had seen that drop and not using that plugin.

keep in mind, the current version has a canonical bug (the tag is gone in the AMP version of the page), hence, I didn't update to 1.5.2 yet.
However, I've seen that same severe discover/AMP traffic drop around June 10 as well.
My site used to have over 1 million visits during each month Jan - Apr 2020, and May around 600K, June will be disaster.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@ViktorN

Is your Publisher Centre also saying "there are no sections yet" - despite the sections being live?
Another weird thing we have noticed is that our articles that are still showing up in top stories (weridly) are NOT showing up with the AMP bolt (competitors do). But when we flick across to the normal "news" tab - it has it.

And yes - would like to know if anyone with a Discover drop doesn't use AMPforWP?
Is it worth the risk to disable it and switch across to the WP amp plugin to troubleshoot?

[MayankParmar]

Day 6. No improvements. Discover and News traffic remains dead: [imgur.com...]

[MayankParmar]

@ViktorN @TalkativeEditorial

I've AMPForWP version 1.0.12, which was released almost a year ago. So in my case, I am not even updating the plugin.

[TalkativeEditorial]

I'm on the latest AMPForWP version (updated yesterday).
For me the problem in Publisher Centre tells me there is something wrong somewhere - especially if everyone else who sees the dip is having the same problem.

[MayankParmar]

My publisher Centre: [imgur.com...]

It has been like this since last year or whenever they rolled out the new Publisher Centre. We both have to configure it but it's not necessary as the site shows up correctly in the News app.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Do any of you use a caching plugin?
Which one?

[MayankParmar]

I have Kinsta and Sucuri caching enabled.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Ok, I use Litespeed, so probably nothing related there.

This is so frustrating. In the news stories, even illegal streaming sites that go to a 404 is outranking not just us, but some prominent publications who are some of our competitors).

[MayankParmar]

It is extremely frustrating. Two English sites from China scrapped my article and they were in stories for you section when I opened my Google News app.

Scrappers always scrap the content but because of the Discover and News bug I wouldn't rank or show up and scrappers have the opportunity.