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]

Backlink profile of a site that copied my content and outranked me earlier today: [imgur.com...]

The site has dropped below me now... but their copied article is still ranking and actually outranking my rivals. Not fair.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar - same with Discover traffic. It's pretty much non-existent after our best ever performing week.

[ichthyous]

I am wondering if anyone who has a lot of 301 redirects in place for their site has seen drops in traffic? I have thousands of redirects going back to 2016 when I redesigned my site, and Google still keeps searching for old urls going back a decade, so I can't drop them.

Hundreds have now been moved to "crawl anomaly - not indexed", even though the redirects work just fine when checked. On top of that, the number of 404 error pages has increased, even though those pages have working redirects, and Google is not crawling or indexing some new pages at all.

I suspect that the high number of 301 redirects is a negative ranking factor now and sites that. have them are being penalized for it and Google crawls them less frequently. Almost all of these redirects could have gone long ago if Google didn't keep requesting them for years on end.

[EditorialGuy]

I am wondering if anyone who has a lot of 301 redirects in place for their site has seen drops in traffic?

We have many hundreds of 301 redirects, for the same reason as you do, and we haven't seen any negative impact. (Every so often, I think about clearing out the older 301 redirects from our .htaccess file, but I've never gotten around to doing it.)

[ichthyous]

@EditorialGuy My site has about 10,000 301 redirects in .htaccess. Most used to be reported as 301 redirect, but about 700 have moved to crawl anomaly now, even though they work just fine. I suspect a high number of redirects may be a negative for any site these days

[Dooku]

"Backlink profile of a site that copied my content and outranked me earlier today: [imgur.com...] "

Even with those very basic stats that would mean of the 5300 backlinks almost 4000 are do-follow......off course that is legit :-)
It goes to show that with every google algo update (especially the last two) google can be fooled very easily..........because those scrapers and spammers are using private networks.

[SweetPotato]

Google gives too much value to links.
This is wrong.
Links are artificially created, bought and sold every day.
They need to find a better way to differentiate a good site than a bad site.
Those "500+" magical factors worth nothing compared to links.

[RedBar]

Google gives too much value to links.

Do you (all) believe so?

Is it possible that Google really doesn't take any notice of many links?

This is a plausible question in case anyone was wondering:-)

[MayankParmar]

Here's my backlink profile: [imgur.com...]

I get links from several sites every week and my site is highly respected and trusted (based on comments and citations from other giant publications), but Google still decided to rank a scraper above me for a few hours (which matters because the topic was hot at that time). I'm now above the scrapper but it's too late lol.

Likewise, if I break a story and get cited everywhere, I would not show up in Top Stories and get outranked by others in Discover.

Some people told me that I can fix it or improve it with @NewsArticle schema and getting more likes/RTs to social media accounts, but it didn't work.

Unlike my rivals or any news site, I have only 5 ads on desktop and 2 on mobile/amp. I've never been called out for poor reporting or clickbait.

I've realized that I have nothing to fix and the problem is with the algorithm, which favours companies. Scrapers rank because they don't care about the small or mid-core publications. I have never seen a scrapper outranking a well-known site which is backed by a company.

I tweeted to John and others but they never get back when I question their algorithm. Google simply doesn't care about small publishers. They'll never tell you WHY you would not rank above a site which links back to you naturally (dofollow) in the first or second para of their article itself. They'll never explain WHY and HOW a scrapper can outrank you but not the sites backed by companies. News Companies also don't file DMCA and their content is scrapped regularly.

DMCA isn't the solution. If they want us to use DMCA, they should give us all content copyright manager employed and paid by Google, and they'll file DMCA on our behalf because it is an EASY task after all.

[EditorialGuy]

Is it possible that Google really doesn't take any notice of many links?

I think many (most?) links are ignored these days. So many links are nothing more than background noise.

One thing that I find interesting is how many of our articles do well in Google with no external backlinks (or at least none that I'm aware of), even for queries that have many competing pages. I'm sure that a link from The New York Times or Die Zeit is helpful, but a hundred links from just-another-autogenerated-content-farm dot com probably don't have much impact on rankings.

[glakes]

Did someone unplug the internet? Update going on?

What a terrible day for traffic and conversions!

[ViktorN]

May 2020 core update seen a drop in SERP.
we saw a little correction, however, since around June 10 seems like no Top stories, no AMP traffic (discover) anymore.
Seems like Google screwed up. Average daily traffic down 60-70% for no reason.
Our page speed score is 86 on mobile, way above our competitors, we don't show any ads on page. Only good unique content.
From 1 million monthly visits in January - April, 60% less in May and now June seems even worse.
I really don't know what's going on

[renatovieira]

@glakes

Also here. In this scenario since yesterday.

[ViktorN]

@glakes @renatovieira
what niche is your website? ours is finance/cryptocurrencies

[glakes]

@renatovieira

Yesterday was good for us, but today is absolutely terrible. Looking at some SERP tracking tools, it may be possible a small update started yesterday.

Barry posted about update starting yesterday. Rank Ranger went from cool in the pic Barry posted to hot now. Something is going on...

See Barry's post at: [seroundtable.com...]

Edit: Niche is industrial products with B2B and B2C sales via website.

[renatovieira]

@ViktorN
Niche: live streaming webcams

@glakes
I read this yesterday on the Seroundtable. But I thought it was something specific. I notice that it has continued until today and things are only getting worse.

[glakes]

@renatovieira

I expected sales to slump for a bit on our ecom website since Google applied pandemic vouchers to Google Ads accounts yesterday. But what I'm seeing now, or should I say not seeing (traffic and sales), absolutely horrible. Oh well, not much can be done except observe how this weekend plays out.

[renatovieira]

@glakes

I agree, there is nothing to do, just watch how things are going this weekend.

Usually I have a high volume of traffic on the weekends, and this will be used to assess whether there was an adjustment or a major update...

[samwest]

Seeing the same thing here too glakes...no traffic and of course, no sales.

Stability is right out the window...one minute it can be bangin', then next it drops to zero for 30 mins. I've seen this pattern many times before. I call it the "hand in the cookie jar" move.

The little coming through is all mobile (poor buyers) and all to obscure, old sub pages and even direct hits on old images. The best conversions are coming from social media, and I hate to say it...Pinterest. Maybe I need to spend a few days spamming the daylights out of Pinterest. Whatever works when Google isn't...which is almost always now.

[samwest]

BTW- regarding the apparent "internet unplug-age"...I have been predicting that will be the next global crisis. Internet will go down for months and all communication and online business stopped cold. It's part of the "make them poor, make them desperate" agenda. Glad I'm as old as I am...would not want to be just starting out in this toilet.

[robzilla]

I'm quite a bit annoyed by Google Books taking over the SERPs lately. Sometimes to the extent that something like 8 out of 10 results are from Books, and rarely are they useful books or excerpts. Anyone else notice this? It's so obvious to me that I expected to find some posts or articles about it, but I haven't found anything so far.

[Rageboi]

[moneycontrol.com...]

More updates soon?

[TalkativeEditorial]

So there are three of us who have seen the Discover anomaly on 10 June.
Can we do some deduction to see if there's any correlation?
Do you all use WP?
Which AMP Plugin do you use?

[Digmen1]

I can't be bothered with Google's SEO and algorthtyms and rules etc
My website appears at the top of page 1 on Bing and DuckDuckGo, (where it should be (with no work)
On Google I bounce around between page 7 and page 10.
So I am defunding Google

[widgetized]

Looking at my GSC and I'm really unable to understand what's going on since the last May update, total randomness.

Also, is anyone else noticing high volatility of Core web vitals? It really doesn't make any sense, my website had literally no changes, no updates, no new content in the last couple of months, but I see Core web vitals constantly changing, Good URLs and Poor URLs coming and going... I really hope this won't be a ranking factor because I feel it's tremendously inaccurate now.

[frostitomik]

The term "search engine optimization" is getting more and more irrelevant every year. Calling it Russian roulette would be much more appropriate these days.

Maybe we should all just create 100s of spammy Pinterest pages as this is clearly what Google wants us to do.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Today is very volatile for us again.
Sheesh, Google is like a chameleon on a skittles packet.

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial AMPForWP. No changes were made to the AMP pages or the plugin. Discover suddenly dropped and I have no idea why. SERP ranks unchanged.

Google News has also dropped. I'll reach out to Google News support next week.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar - exact same situation as you - exact same timeline - same Plugin. Also no changes.

Has your Publisher Centre previews been behaving strangely at all?

[samwest]

When COVID hit...my traffic started climbing fast. Hit records not seen for 10 years. On May 1st, the pinterest bug and an apparent punitive update hit and traffic dropped like a rock. Now back below pre COVID traffic levels...even though people should still be using our services in droves.

After dissappointing Q1 results...Google publicly stated they would be increasing their efforts and thay have indeed.

How does it feel...in a pandemic with limited brick and mortar work available...to have Gorg's greedy hand picking your pocket?

For the past 48 hours I've been watching a totally unnatural staccato trickle pattern of on/off traffic. At times 30 mins of zero traffic...when typically father's day weekend is booming. It's disgusting when you have 20 years of data to prove the theft.

I will place a bet right now...Q2 will be >20% profit increase and over 45 BILLION for Google.

Thanks to all this $#!& I enjoyed my first MI earlier this week and I'm serious as a heart attack.

They dont realize the stress they put us all in...or maybe the do. Take it easy out there folks.