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]

[whoa182]

Since 2018, it feels as if Google and the SERPs are going around in circles. My hair website has tanked after recovering since BERT and further recovering with the January Core update. Now in the past few days most of the traffic has gone. Whatever just happened, it feels bigger than the most recent core update for both of my websites.

But as I said... around and around we go. Google: "we love your site, but in a few months we'll hate your site." Repeat over and over.

[DecDub]

@Dooku
I agree with one point you made that people will not get time the hard time back they put into their web content but please don't encourage these people to more or less opt for a spam style future. I've been hit massively by this update but I do think in time it will settle. It has happened before and rectified. Let's give it some time to see how it pans out. My advice is stick with natural good content, avoid spinning style software or any other quick cheat ways to make quick money. This is certainly backfire and have you banned forever.

Stay with it guys and see what happens. Not much comfort but we are all in this together, I've lost 50% from my science website. For those of you who have good quality content and backlinks I feel a rebound is on the way in the coming months. Enjoy the weekend, chin up.

[frostitomik]

Of course there will be a rebound in the near future, and then again and again. It's called retaining customers. Maybe some of you are familiar with MMO games like World of Warcraft or Elder Scrolls Online. Their concept is to intentionally devalue stats of some in-game character classes, while significantly increasing stats of other classes. And this repeats over and over every single new update of the game so people keep actually playing the game, because the goal is to have the best stats possible. Why would they otherwise keep playing if nothing ever changed?

Same goes with Google, that keeps reverting its search algorithm every other update to keep the influx of new customers who are forced to buy their ads to not let their valuable content get disappeared from search. If they didn't do it, and everyone would be happy with their ranking, why would anyone needed to spend money for advertisement?

Also, they pushed sites like YouTube, Amazon and Pinterest, because they are by far their biggest earners and customers. Is it clear now?

We can't do anything about it, but keep playing this game. It's their game after all and we are not forced to play it.

[jediviper]

Guys I think it's all about E-A-T factor.

How many of you that got the big drops of rankings had:
- content from reputable authors
- have full address, contact details
- implemented proper Organisation schema at your websites
- also how many links and mentions do u have from expert/trusted/authoritative pages towards your pages?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

How many of you that got the big drops of rankings had:
- content from reputable authors
- have full address, contact details
- implemented proper Organisation schema at your websites
- also how many links and mentions do u have from expert/trusted/authoritative pages towards your pages?

I'm facing with a traffic drop, but my website is in info niche (I'm giving tutorials in IT for free). I'm pretty doubt some full address, full contact details or organization schema will help me to recover.

P.S. Checked and I do have organizational schema....

[RedBar]

Interesting PV stats comparison for 1-4 June v 4-7 May, both Monday to Thursday.

Global .coms +25% and +33%

Why interesting, because normally at these PV levels I would expect several serious enquiries yet nothing at the moment, unusual, maybe just getting back to work?

[sofie77]

@Cyril

Your chart doesn't look that bad. If it goes deeper, you know that you should have been happy before

Take a look at this:

[imgur.com...]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Sofie77

Well, at least you have a rising trend, you have a hope!)

Really, I hope that news with changing the head of Google's Search will change at least something (and I hope it won't transform organic to ads).

[samwest]

Really, I hope that news with changing the head of Google's Search will change at least something

After 20 years working with Gorg, I highly doubt it will be a positive change.

With the liberal company mantra, you'd think they'd be more open to truth, diversity, less control, more transparency and allowing people to profit from their labors...lol, did I just say that? lol

Anyone remember Larry Page's "Love Letter"? Oddly enough, I searched Google and couldn't find it anywhere.

[sofie77]

@Well, at least you have a rising trend, you have a hope!)

At the moment I have no hope anymore. The trend is clear. Maybe a few small corrections will come up, but it won't be like it was before 2018. UGC is on the descending branch...

In the end I am healty.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

UGC is on the descending branch...

Yeap. I agree with that. Why would you try to make some changes to your website (until you have community and some positions left)? I wish you to find a way to reorganize your website until it has traffic.

[gatormark]

The website that was once the industry leader in my sector (writing communities), for ages, has been devastated by recent algorithm updates like me. This was that website that got me into this industry 15 years ago. 4 years ago that website was making probably $700,000 a year. It’s probably making 1/6 of that now.

[cwalker216]

@Sally Stitts

"I have Googled the livingshlt out of it"

And therein lies your problem...Try Bing or DDG, way more accurate / better results nowadays ;)

[Md Murad Hossain]

Yes, Google update issues develop some domain and also some domain down their traffic.

[christianz]

The endgame for G is routing all traffic to their own properties or properties of large corporations (their friends). I don't doubt one second that LP and SB know the owners of Pinterest.

Before there is no traffic left, we have time for one more push with abusing the shortcomings of Googles AI, which doesn't have much "I" in it, and even I am now starting a borderline spam website utilizing the same data that I have gathered for more than a decade and which doesn't get exposure when presented in a user-oriented layout.

[SweetPotato]

Man for an algorithm that's tweaked every day it sure sucks. Why do I still see spam redirects domains on first page?

[ichthyous]

Traffic is truly abysmal since the May 4th update...it has trended lower (which is also normal for me in summer) but today it's unusually low. GSC and GA do not follow a similar pattern at all, so there is some sort of disconnect there.

I do think that some sort of devaluation of links is in play...if they are trying to get beyond their old algorithm which depended on links and switch to a new one where links play no role then they are going to have to strengthen their AI considerably.

This forum used to be a place where valuable insight could be found regarding improving your site, but now we are all just the blind leading the blind. I am trying anything and everything to get away from Google by forming new brand partnerships.

[edited by: ichthyous at 6:18 pm (utc) on Jun 5, 2020]

[gatormark]

Plummeting pageviews as a result of SERP changes and Google devaluing my 50% UGC site.

Thurs. June 8, 2017 - 226,000 pageviews
Thurs. June 7, 2018 - 145,266 pageviews
Thurs. June 6, 2019 - 114,063 pageviews
Thurs. June 4, 2020 - 63,812 pageviews

[samwest]

Traffic acquisition is now over 50% from social media sites.

[edited by: samwest at 7:06 pm (utc) on Jun 5, 2020]

[koan]

My sites that have been affected lately are also UGC sites, and their traffic charts look like the one provided by sofie77, a sharp ~70% drop in one day. I think UGC may be just for big corporations now. And with Adsense's earlier changes about not displaying ads on pages with little traffic, it's probably not worth it anymore for Joe public.

[browndog]

The website that was once the industry leader in my sector (writing communities), for ages, has been devastated by recent algorithm updates like me. This was that website that got me into this industry 15 years ago. 4 years ago that website was making probably $700,000 a year. It’s probably making 1/6 of that now.

That's my story too. Started 20 years ago and ranked in the top three for almost everything, but despite adding hundreds of new articles, traffic continues to decline. I had to take on part-time work 3 years ago because of the loss of revenue and am now looking for full time work. I will keep the site, but no longer maintain it.

[seomotionz]

@DecDub We have been waiting since the last couple of years waiting to Google to have a epiphany.

So far no luck. Only its getting worse every single day.

Such optimism doesn't pay the bills.

[Harry]

I barely have time to check stats anymore as I don't rely on the old site for much but overnight on May 21st, I lost 2/3rd of my traffic. This is an old site (close to 20 years) that survived most other updates and is as clean as possible. In fact, everyone steals from us.

Meh, everything is already screwed up anyway...

[JesterMagic]

This forum used to be a place where valuable insight could be found regarding improving your site, but now we are all just the blind leading the blind.

How true. We all have good intentions but Google just repeats the same mantra of good content meanwhile it is anything but in the search results. Sure a lot of the sites that rank may structurally be designed well, but the content is poorly written, factual wrong, full of repeating ads, and old. I also find that a lot of the websites on the first page are owned by only a couple of companies. They have either bought out their competitors or just spun a similar sites to take another ranking position.


This "AI" that Google supposedly uses is such a joke and I find the results worse now than I did 5 or even 10 years ago. (all the other Google widgets, etc.. mixed in now doesn't help)

It also doesn't help that Google feature's snippets essentially steals content from webmasters forcing them to display even more ads on their site trying to make up for lost income which in most cases Google gets a cut in as well thanks to AdSense.

It's the same with "People also ask" which displays the same stolen content from the same sites in an endless loop.

You then have Google pushing all their own products that tracks us all to feed the beast whether it is Gmail, Chrome Browser, YouTube, Chromebooks, Android Devices, Google Analytics, AdSense, reCaptcha, Google Docs, and the list goes on.

Then there is the double standard where the SERPs are so full of ads which is okay for Google to do, but they tell everyone else this is not a good user experience for their own websites.

Things are not going to get better, Google will just slowly steal more traffic from organics until something drastic happens like the Government steps in and breaks them up. Of course Google has deep pockets to pay for lobby groups so who knows if that will ever come.

Can anyone tell I am grumpy today ;-)

[samwest]

@Jester...we understand. We are all in the same boat. What really grinds my gears is that we can see the common, lockstep effects across many, many websites yet we are told that warm water over our heads is rain. It will never get better until some regulations are in place against the monopoly and the brazen theft of your content for their own profit.

[System]

One off-topic message moved to new thread
by robert_charlton. New thread at:

States leaning toward push to break up Google’s ad tech business
https://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/4998281.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:05 am (utc) on Jun 7, 2020]
[edit reason] cleanup after split to new thread [/edit]

[browndog]

How true. We all have good intentions but Google just repeats the same mantra of good content meanwhile it is anything but in the search results.

This frustrates me no end. Yesterday I was searching for 'best widgets for xyz' (widget not being a brand or product but an animal), and the third result was a brand site which just had 8-10 photos of widgets with a link to each widget.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:35 am (utc) on Jun 7, 2020]
[edit reason] cleanup after moving preceding post [/edit]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I was thought on the situation and found that I think that new man for Search Team in Google is a sign. As I understand the situation for myself, updates stopped right now, I don't see some complaints on fluctiations here on forum, etc. New man should prepare the New update. And depending on the result of this next update, webmasters should make a decision.

If the update will continue devastating SERPs with spam, max ad revenue and 90% of spots filled with Adsense , I think we should start to think to find ourselves in some other niche, nor Internet. The things will be only getting worse and worse in such case, and will finish after some years with rough regulation from government authorities on Google's monopoly, and maybe dissapearing of Google itself (from year to year they will lose their positions on the market in such scenario, some other search engine as DDG or Bing will take their place).

If the update will make SERPs at least more fair, that could be a sign that something will change and webmasters can keep on doing great content for Internet.

How do you think what will happen? :) Will the new Head of search will take Google to another way? Nor suicidal?

[ichthyous]

As it turns out some of the drop in my traffic is because I cracked down on bot and spam traffic on my site by adding firewall rules in cloudflare. Those are no longer hitting my site, and it appears that analytics was not excluding some of those visits. Still, numbers are low and I do think that the better summer weather, and the protests here in US have something to do with it.

[samwest]

After weeks of near perfect traffic, just like that, back to zero traffic or conversions. So close to just quitting, starting to realizing my life's work should be spent spotlighting Google's greed and manipulation on a much larger scale.