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]

[renatovieira]

Yesterday, as very unusual movements for a Saturday, it seems that today things have returned to normal, but with a considerable increase in impressions and conversions.

With absolute certainty, yesterday there was a big test or a bug in the reports ...

Today I have a conversion and traffic above normal.

Niche: live streaming cameras

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial It will recover for you too! Might take another week.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Okay wow.... this takes the cake.... a PDF (!) just ranked in the featured snippet for a query [not in my niche, but something I was looking up myself]. I'm sure there's useful info in the PDF but the text is so horrible and small that I can't be bothered to find it.

[ichthyous]

The traffic from the USA is going down since months already, all that is left is non converting bot traffic and probably scrapers and the like. Because traffic from from the rest of the world is remaining quite stable on all my websites and my test websites.

That's what I am seeing too... A big decline in USA traffic since early May, and stable or increasing everywhere else. Traffic had just recovered from march lows and was almost back to normal in April.

[ratraceescapeartist]

Anyone got any ideas on how to recover from this update? My traffic has been destroyed since the May update :(

Should I start getting more backlinks now or something?

[MayankParmar]

Caught another scraper in Top Stories: [imgur.com...] (second one is the scrapper and 1st is original content).

[StupidIntelligent]

@MP - Google doesn't know how to fix this. They don't have the engineering means. It's been like that since this company's inception.

[gwarftron]

If said content has a rel=canonical tag + original content is rankable/indexable = always rank original content before content with rel=canonical tag

[JesterMagic]

@MayankParmar In terms of dealing with scrapers, for years I wonder how stupid Google engineers really are or how impossible it is to move forward with new ideas in the company.

The scraper solution is so obvious (and has been stated by others many times) that I must be missing something. Almost all of us has sitemaps that ping when new articles go online. In most cases Google should visit the original content first and timestamp the visit. They then should find the actual article on the page (structured data will help with this) and do an internal search on several phrases from the article. If nothing is found, mark the page original. If content is found on another site make a record noting that all or part of the content is not original. If the site has too many of these types of records and hasn't earn the right to be "trusted" then demote the site. If the site is trusted then assume the article has just be quoted by the site or by user generated content (I get a lot of users quoting whole articles which I then have to edit and reduce to just the required text).

Google then just has to make sure if a search is done that should return a link to the page with the content, that they return a link to the page with the original authored content before anything else.

[JesterMagic]

By the way... in previous posts a few people talked about when Google started going down hill. I've been building websites for 20 years now and while I have always understood Google is a company and would always look out for themselves first (like any other company). I truly felt they started loosing their way (do no evil) and did not hold either their users or other websites in equal regard when they stopped passing the organic keywords users used for the search.

This was done in the name of privacy which we could argue one way or the other. Google obviously needs the keywords to do the search but they use this information for many other reasons. For some reason it's not okay for us to have the information, but it is perfectly okay for Google to record the information and use it later anyway they want.

[mhansen]

A new Google SERP widget/layout appeared in our sector today. I have seen it in the past, but not in our specific market, and ot layed out in this particular fashion.

Assuming our search phrase is: "Widget Keyword". Previously, various brands of widgets were displayed in the "Featured Snippet" alongside the FS itself, as well as an image.

Previous SERP Layout
Ad
Ad
Ad
Ex: Featured Snippet Box
FS Headline >>> Image
Featured text of snippet
Link
Brand brand brand brand (horizontal slider)
/FS box
Interesting stories
Organic 1
Organic 2
etc

Today, the SERP features a naked featured snippet (no brands or images) however, the brands are in a separate Google widget of their own, on top of everything.

SERP Layout
Brand brand brand brand (horizontal slider, leading another Google page of ads)
Products widget (leading another Google page of ads)
Ad
Ad
Ad
Featured Snippet Box
FS Headline >>> Image
Featured text of snippet
Link
/FS box
Interesting stories/finds.
Organic 1
Organic 2

Basically, Google is walling in it's users, using our content (websites in general) and creating fewer ways for the user to get our of the Google walled garden of ads.

Is what it is...

M

[ichthyous]

Moderate jumps up in traffic Saturday and Sunday for me. But I am seeing a disturbing pattern now. I wake up, check analytics on my server and statcounter and I have decent traffic overnight. Then usually around 10-11am Eastern Standard Time it comes to a complete halt and I have reduced traffic for the entire middle of the day. In the evening it starts to pick up steam again. This is the opposite of my usual traffic pattern for the last 17 years.

I have noticed a big decline in USA traffic since around April 17th, and it continued all through May and stayed lower in June with no recovery. My non-USA traffic did not drop. Traffic is being highly throttled by Google hour by hour it would seem.

[Martin Ice Web]

Very big traffic loss since last friday.


statistic since last friday:

google shopping ads sales 0
google shopping ads costs ~60 EUR

ebay sales +89
ebay costs ~44 EUR

amazon sales + 250
amazon costs 35 EUR/month

organic sales google ~ 5
organics sales bing/duckduck ~50

again amazon is the big big winner with this update and apparently amazon is the most valueable distribution channel so far.

[glakes]

amazon is the big big winner with this update

Amazon seems to have benefited from this update in our industry as well, which is usually the case with each and every Google update.

It's possible that Google demoted Amazon during the pandemic (some industries) since Amazon was incapable of fulfilling orders of non-essential goods. Amazon also paused advertising as well which has since returned. Amazon's ads, along with domain crowding in Google's SERPS, leaves little real estate for competing offers to be seen.

It should be interesting to see how Google's social justice inspired SERPS react to/ignore protesters calling for Amazon to be abolished. These protesters placed a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos' home yesterday. See [newsweek.com...]

[Dooku]

Amazon employees are on strike in the distribution warehouses in Germany right now. Not the first time either, atrocious working conditions from what I have seen in a documentary.

Most people just don't seem to understand HOW a company like Amazon, Uber and similar can come into existence.
In Europe you better be making profit within 1 or 2 years at the most or the financiers will pull the plug.
However, companies like Amazon ( who started this system), find banks and financiers to back them up not 1, 2 or 3 years but UNTIL they make a profit like 7, 8 or 9 years further down the line.

And all the while when they are growing they make sure to buy up (and kill) competitors or use unethical methods like selling some of their stock at a loss so all major competitors go bust. But amazon won't go bust because they have their financial backers keeping them afloat UNTIL they make a profit. And once most competitors are gone, they rake in the BIG money. It took amazon 10 years to break even........and the losses were in the billions.
Any economy student can explain this is NOT a healthy, normal and moral way of conducting business.

This is NOT capitalism but outright theft and criminal behaviour no different than the maffia. Seeing that Newsweek article and that Twitter thread it seems more and more people are beginning to think the same?

[samwest]

Well, it finally happened, Pinterest has now taken the lead in the #1 and #2 positions, pushing all other organics down. What a mess. One is a single pin with no followers.

[RedBar]

I'm still seeing EBay in 3rd and 4th positions with Pinterest at 6th for our #1 product.

My metrics are interesting for June:

1. 2 x Global B2B specialist widget sites traffic both 30+%
2. UK retail specialist widget traffic back to average.
3. UK hotel / pub 3X April traffic, 2X May traffic however still 1/3 of pre-lockdown, we do not expect traffic to return to pre-lockdown levels until live music is permitted again.
4. Global B2B specialised widget directory, unchanged all year.

[EditorialGuy]

Our European travel-planning site's traffic (including Google traffic) is climbing after several months in the COVID-19 doldrums. Ad revenue is also increasing, with affiliate bookings edging up.

I suspect that has more to do with new travel regulations in the EU than with anything Google is doing. (Sometimes, whether people are searching on your topics matters more than whether you're ranked 1, 2, or 3 for a query.)

[StupidIntelligent]

Google doesn't promote Amazon in organic on purpose. Most Americans use Google to search for Amazon products, and this in itself the strongest signal for the shopping category. All algos start and end at the "Google search bar."

[gatormark]

Something is wrong with Google Analytics. Very weird and high traffic numbers that aren't right. Either that, or my website, is getting a lot of fake bot traffic.

[edited by: gatormark at 3:28 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2020]

[seomotionz]

@gatormark You are not alone. I believe its a bug in GA. Today many sites received good amount of traffic but according to GA its different.

[System]

The following 2 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/5001046.htm [webmasterworld.com]
5:45 pm on Jul 1, 2020 (PDT -8)