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]

[StupidIntelligent]

@whoa182 - how long did it manage to maintain its ranking in terms of years?

[whoa182]

There were a couple of sites that claimed to use AI to rank a list of 10 affiliate links.

Site A ranked for about 2 years.

Site B ranked for about a 6 months.

It's not an exaggeration to say the sites contained 10s of thousands of auto-generated pages of only a list of affiliate links and nothing else except a generic message that was identical with the exception of the title keyword across all pages.

It's kinda shocking how this passed the "Quality" test for Google algorithm. I can only assume the backlinks that the domains inherited or somehow got may have caused the algorithm to not penalize the sites.

They must've earned 100s of thousands though based on the traffic they got. Even millions, perhaps.

[glakes]

They must've earned 100s of thousands though based on the traffic they got. Even millions, perhaps.

Since Amazon drastically cut the amount they pay affiliates on April 21, I suspect there will be less of a monetary incentive to maintain and/or launch new affiliate websites. Those that do will likely rely even more on auto-generated content to offset the diminished returns from the actual labor/expense it takes to create truly beneficial websites. Hopefully this will eventually translate into less competition in the SERPS for the small businesses that actually manufacture and/or stock the items they present to consumers on their websites.

[immrrobot]

@glakes With G's rigged AI in action, auto-generated content won't probably go anywhere soon. I have seen one of the site that copies my content and even link back to me as the original source and has ranked for various keywords ahead of me. Insane!

[Martin Ice Web]

massiv drops since yesterday, today is even more.

Serps in our vertical look very strange.
#1 targeted webpage ( 99% amazon )
#2 targeted webpage
#3 targeted webpage (same content as #2 )
#4 targeted webpage (same content as #2 and #3)
#5 -> unrelated pages. At least one keyword is ignored ( most amazon silly stuff )

[samwest]

Still waiting on them to fix the Pinterest bug...it's got to be a bug, because a single pin with one follower is now in the #3 position and #2 is a Pinterest board with very few followers...or is this Google's "new normal" for quality?

For some reason, Google seems intent on keeping you from making any sort of living income.

[JesterMagic]

Yeah seeing 5-10% drop over last week. Notice a few keywords dropped a few positions as well so this appears to be a ranking change

[seomotionz]

@samwest A page is for a specific flower's benefits and how natural cooking oil can be produced from it. Now since the flower's name is same as the name of a webcam model. For every search term that model's pinterest posts are showing.:P

[RedBar]

Looks like the spammy website that has thousands of pages of ONLY amazon affiliate links

Why do I never see these pages / sites, are they purely focussed on the US?

Obviously they exist / existed however what are they targetting, anything specific?

[SteveWrz]

Tuesday traffic was 20% lowered than than the previous Tuesday. It was my worst day overall in over 5 years.

[Sissi]

Google Webmasters
✔
@googlewmc
We're currently experiencing indexing issues that may cause stale search results in some cases. We'll update this thread when we can provide more information.

dated Yesterday

[browndog]

Why do I never see these pages / sites, are they purely focussed on the US?

I never see Amazon pages either, but a) I am located in Australia and b) (not sure if this is relevant) NEVER shop at Amazon.

What I do see is leading brands with thin content at the top of the SERPs for non-brand related topics ahead of actual experts.

[gatormark]

@browndog

What I do see is leading brands with thin content at the top of the SERPs for non-brand related topics ahead of actual experts

And really, that is the main problem.

[Portland79]

Fully off today.
Everything is gone, I am over.

After 10+ years of first page, #1 to Snippet then over the last year dropping and dropping to this, nuked.
If I am so unworthy, is Google saying they have been terrible for 10 years?

How is it AI created articles dominated my SERP?
Fake EAT, links to brand new FB pages with ZERO LIKES!
Twiiter accounts with 0 0 0.

Another crazy theory, Google AI is aiding AI set free in the wild to earn affiliate income to fund AI boosting companies via Bitcoin.

I used to make $7,000 a month via a great site and Amazon Affiliates. Now I owe Amazon money from no conversions and returns of last months sales LOLOL

[whoa182]

Actually, no, they're back lol.

The both sites that have thousands of AI-generated affiliate lists are back on #1 and #2.

I just woke up and checked again. This is insane...

[samwest]

All Zombies again...back to the cycle where you couldn't give away gold bars for free to this traffic.

[Athedian]

Probably it's geo targeted that's why some people see problems and others aren't.

I know for one that keywords continued to drop every single day according to Ahref. GSC showing flux for pos. everyday as well, almost no consistency whatsoever to speak of. And the indexing issues will probably never be fixed by G.

Update: are you friggin' kidding me, Google? Using your Dynamic Ads and your system (because we always want to A/B test, yes?), you charged $11k for 5 clicks and there was hardly any impressions. Search terms showing way less being spent. Not to mention Analytics is totally messed up right now, showing only just 2 visitors right now to the site. That NEVER happened before.

It's like they are doing this on purpose now: linking Google Ads to the core updates so that two systems that should be totally separate are now interlinked for G to steal more money.

[glakes]

Fully off today

Actually, no, they're back

All Zombies again

The degree to which Google manipulates the entire digital economy, with impunity, is unbelievable.

I'll join the chorus by saying I'm seeing a hard stop in converting traffic. Totally unnatural and entirely manipulated.

[Martin Ice Web]

If you see the current serps, u have to laugh. All the #*$! about compelling websites.
A new website has come up for some queries that is full of spelling errors nor has it german δόφ vocals.
l

I'll join the chorus by saying I'm seeing a hard stop in converting traffic.

confirmed

But our amazon sales went up after this update.

The very annoying thing is, that the converting traffic just stopped 2 days after the rolling out was complete.

[samwest]

@glakes ...yes completely unnatural and I'd say this level of manipulation is criminal. Google only did 13% in Q1 so they telegraphed their Q2 intent to "up their efforts" in the Q1 revenue statement. I mean really, how obvious could they be? Google operates with such impunity that it's like a bank robber glibly saying "I'm going to rob a bank this month"...then doing it and actually getting away with it.

Sitting at zero visitors this morning and less than 1/4 of the previous week conversions. They dont just want a little..they want it all and I hope this turns around and bites them hard one day soon. We ARE taking notes.

[sofie77]

I said it multiple times since 2018. The KI is trying to understand the user intent. I wrote synonmys but I meant the same. To give the KI more power, they reduced the weight of backlinks. Our site alway doing great, when google give more power to the backlinks, because our links are awesome and the members love our site.

March 2019 Core Update and January 2020 Core Upate was only a rollback. On this dates they gave the backlinks the power back and reduced the influence of the KI.


The problem what I see is, that they adjust the KI step by step with every update. This means if google is happy anytime whith the result of the KI, there will be no rollback anymore. Even if they rollback again on the next core update, don't be too happy.

I am still objective and when I see a competitor that are doing good, I fully respect the work. In our health niche, the results are worse. The Serps are full with sites without the search query. The users have to click to page 2-5 to find the relevant pages. I hope google log this and stop this KI but like I said, this is the future.

[edited by: sofie77 at 3:17 pm (utc) on Jun 4, 2020]

[MayankParmar]

Another YouTube video is on the featured snippet and the video is factually wrong.

The SERP is currently:

- Featured Snippet of Youtube link.
- Top Stories carousel
- Me
- YouTube carousel with the same video and two others.

This is an example of how our traffic would decline even when we are ranking #1.

[KaseyM]

I'm pretty sure we've been hit but it could just be coinciding with our audience getting beaten up by police in the US or going back to work after COVID.

Good times.

[Sally Stitts]

@sofie77

Would it be OK to just say what "KI" refers to, in words?
I have Googled the livingshlt out of it, and can find NOTHING! 20 freaking minutes!@!@!@!@!@!

Please, just once, for us dummies?
I promise to jam it straight into my glossary (quite extensive). Unless it is gibberish.
.

[StupidIntelligent]

She meant AI as in artificial intelligence.

[Sally Stitts]

Oh. Thank you. Stymied me real good. There I go being too literal again.
Always expecting things to make sense. My retraining continues.
.

[immrrobot]

Lol can't believe a pinterest post about my post is ranking higher than my original post. It's hilarious

[Cyril TechWebsites]

It's so hard to watch how Google is destroying everything from your hard work for last 6 years. Great community, many thanks in comments for the tutorials my team shared, updated content, every week adding new content from great IT pros, etc. But since November Google doesn't care on this, on its own words about creating the great content (that is bull**it, because I see what kind of mess there is in the SERPS and what kind of websites are on the first spots).

Here, take a look at what they are doing. Nothing helps, the website is filtered entirely:
[imgur.com...]

[Dooku]

First, seeing too many bad stories in my own circle of website owners and online at other communities and off course here at Webmasterworld.
For those encountering bad times now, I really hope things will get better, but maybe it's something that is in our own hands?:

For all those website owners doing it out of some "passion" and providing the best content and experience "for their readers"........
I am not saying your doing things the wrong way but maybe it's time to reevaluate your priorities as to what your actually doing?
I mean, your giving away the most valuable asset in your life to "some cause"(website)......which is TIME.
You will never ever get that time back, time you could have been together with people you love, travel to places, help other people who are worse off or just simply enjoy life the way you see fit.
Because "other people"(like G and their shareholders) are sure doing it!

Maybe it's time to use G the way they abuse all website owners? They are certainly not here to help us. As Glakes said, G actually has their hand in your wallet and is actively stealing YOUR income just because they simply can, and they are greedy enough and without any morals.
And G does this all the while laughing in our faces.

I am not saying go all out black-hat and spam the sh|t out of the internet. But why would you waste your time if you don't get any ROI on your most valuable asset?
Because currently a lot of people are working for FREE for G AND on top of that are paying "google tax" through adwords.
That is some very very weird pschychology that normal people would never accept in "real life".

As you can clearly see from the serp results, G is not that smart, and their AI is just ridiculous. But at the same time it's very clear what DOES work for other websites to get ranked.
Why not implement the same (shady?) strategies and at least take back some or even most of any possible income you can make by NOT following all the G recommendations regarding SEO?

The playing field is not level and the game is rigged by G. So there is no moral issue if you fix the playing field as much as possible using methods that work. And I know those methods don't need to be completely black-hat. Let's be real here ANY seo actions you do are actually already "black-hat" in some form or another because they are NOT natural occurrences. So instead of getting angry and suffer the results of these G algo updates......get even!

In the end your still providing the same service/product/knowledge or whatever it is that you do for your website visitors/customers. The only difference being you quit playing nice and no more being manhandled by G.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Dooku

That's the way I'm starting to think. To start black-hat bussiness. Why should I play their rules if they are trying to f*ck me everytime? Why should I do this? The concept "create the best content" is not working for some long time, it's obvious. So why the hell I should respect Google rules?