Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2020

[ichthyous]

The following 2 messages were cut out of the June 2020 thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4997607.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 5:45 pm on Jul 1, 2020 (PDT -8)

Either that, or my website, is getting a lot of fake bot traffic.

Don't underestimate how much bot traffic and scraping is going on. I spent June creating firewall rules in cloudflare to keep them off my server and yes my traffic reported in GA did drop because of it. Cloudflare doesn't even catch a lot of it. I blocked scans of my server for all kinds of files and URL combinations that don't exist. I don't need the endless bots sucking up my resources. And I still had a brute force attack from China two days ago that CF did not prevent.

I'm wondering if the lower bounce rate and longer time spent on the page from real traffic will benefit me in any way... Doubt it!

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:57 am (utc) on Jul 2, 2020]
[edit reason] split thread to new month [/edit]

[southernguy]

I think Google search has finally reached Yahoo in terms of quality. it is a mess, lots of google books and Pinterest showing and tons of web 2.0 I just don't use it anymore unless I'm looking for KW ideas or search placement. At this point, I don't think it's going to change.

[RedBar]

@southernguy - You've only just got to this point?

You're correct, it's not going to change because it's an APE, Adertising Platform Engine ... Can't think what I can make out of Gorilla yet:-)

GOogle's Ridiculously Inept Language Learning Attempt... please HELP!

[riccarbi]

I never, never, never thought I'd have to say it, in 2020, but: "Bill, please, save us all from Google!". I have to admit that Bing and DDG are much better search engines, and much fairer for publishers and webmasters these days, if compared to the old "do (no) evil" Baphomet. Yet, I feel quite sad and betrayed, since I trusted those two guys - Larry and Sergey -, a long time ago. Terrible mistake and my fault. in the last two weeks, we did our best to comply with Citizen G's guidelines, and spent a lot of time and money to improve our websites' performances, content, and all the like; just to see our ranking plummeting and our organic traffic halving with no apparent reason day after day. As well as to see crappy and spammy websites, stealing content from all over the web, much rewarded by the "guys" in Mountain View (as well as in Wall Street, I suppose). And, believe me, after installing Edge with Bing as the default web search tool today (just because Windows update forced me to do it, I've never done it by myself, honestly), after a few minutes I started to feel much better than at the times I was using Google...
Unbelievable for an old Wintel hater like me...

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Bill, please, save us all from Google!

You mean Bill Gates? If so, you should know that he has no more active part in Microsoft since 2008 ...

[riccarbi]

You mean Bill Gates? If so, you should know that he has no more active part in Microsoft since 2008 ...

It was ironic, obviously. The problem is not who is running Microsoft, or IBM, or Apple, now. Is that we desperately need some alternatives to Google. Steve Jobs once explained why a company that becomes a monopolistic one stops improving its products and enters a creative death spiral which results in increasingly worse products, usually because shareholders, marketing people and finance take full control and expel engineers and designers from the decision-making process.
This is exactly what's happening to Google, I suspect.
The only way for Google to re-start improving its search engine is to break its monopoly. Bing and DDG are not outstanding search engines, honestly. They are marginally better than prehistoric things such as Altavista or Excite, from the user's point of view. Yet, Google has worsened so much and become so unreliable, that they have finally outperformed it by simply standing still.
If other web search engines (especially Bing, which is the more solid among them) improve a little bit and stop imitating Google, they can destroy the monopoly, eventually. That's why I said that "Bill" can save us all. Google is incurable, those who own it has a toxic and predatory mentality. So it's more reasonable for us to stop hoping it will get better by itself, one day, and start looking somewhere else.

[glakes]

This is exactly what's happening to Google

I have my doubts. Our Government wants individual citizen data and Google is a massive collector of that data for Government. If direct collection of data by the Government were not restricted by the Constitution, they would have done it many years ago and Google would have never been allowed to become what they are today - a massive data miner for Government.

On July 4th it was hard not to reflect on how our freedoms and independence are being lost:

We're largely locked up in our homes because of COVID,
Americans are more dependent on Government then ever (ie. enhanced unemployment benefits, Government benefits for employers, etc.).
True unbiased journalism near extinction.
Biased businesses, such as Google and Facebook, controlling the news, speech, information etc. that shapes the opinion of many in the populace.
Amazon, which has become the dominant player in consumer goods, limiting consumer choice to in-stock Chinese made/sold Prime items.

While it may take a monopoly to dethrone another monopoly, Microsoft is not what it once was and they don't have the endorsement of the US Government like Google has. Granted, one branch of Government may go after Google but in the end a more powerful branch of the Government (US DOJ) will prevent the treasure trove of citizen data they have access to from being taken away.

[NeapTide]

If Google Just increase number of results on first page from 10 to 20+ that would be great. Internet has grown tremendously over past two decades and these search engines are still stuck with ancient concept of only displaying 10 results per page. In the mean time, Google may shove its ads in-between organic search results if they increase number of search results per page.

[RedBar]

If Google Just increase number of results on first page from 10 to 20+

You do know that in Settings you can make it up to 100?

[universenet]

You do know that in Settings you can make it up to 100?

Yes, but how many people doing this?

You can change browser to bing or yahoo or ddg too

Yes, but how many people doing this?

[RedBar]

Yes, but how many people doing this?

That wasn't the question!

You can change browser to bing or yahoo or ddg too

Yes, but how many people doing this?

I have for years on every device I have built loaded these alternatives, including mobile where available.

You're arguing with the 10+ years converted, would it surprise you if I said I had been using the Opera browser for 25 years?

[Athedian]

Massive drop in search traffic for this month according to analytics and GSC. Whatever Google's broken update is, it's doing a fine job at screwing people up.

[ViktorN]

@Athedian what is your website about?

[JesterMagic]

If Google Just increase number of results on first page from 10 to 20+ that would be great.

Not really, it would just mean they would stuff more of their own useless search widgets and probably throw in some extra ads.

You can click endlessly in Google search and go around and around in circles without every leaving.

Its impossible at this point for any company to beat out Google in search. The only way to fix this is to break the beast up.

[aristotle]

Biased businesses, such as Google and Facebook, controlling the news, speech, information etc. that shapes the opinion of many in the populace.

Enormous amounts of money have been spent, and are still being spent, by certain political interests, to try to influence/manipulate google's search results. In my opinion google has done a good job, far better than facebook, in protecting its users from these outside attempts at influence and manipulation.

The fact that google has done a good job in protecting its results explains why these particular political interests complain so much more about google than they do about facebook.

Also, the use of the word "control" is misleading, at least in google's case, because it's the users themselves who provide many of the signals that google's algorithm uses to determine its search results. In other words, the users themselves have a significant amount of "control" over the results through their behavior, although this isn't their main purpose in using google.

[RedBar]

Some around here are going to hate me or wonder what I'm looking at however I actually believe G's results are improving. Over the weekend and today I've used Google for some specific searches and they came up with what I was looking for first time and there was no garbage whatsoever.

Specifically I was searching for council recycling in my area and other such things.

When / if G does get stuff right we need to tell them so they know they're on the right track, continually being negative will never improve the Gorg's manners:-)

[universenet]

You're arguing with the 10+ years converted, would it surprise you if I said I had been using the Opera browser for 25 years?

Redbar
I used opera few years too and was good for that time
And netscape and firefox, and few more

[RedBar]

I must admit I'm not so keen on Opera / Vivaldi / whatever these days, Firefox is my default with ad blocker on PC / laptop and definitely the DDG browser on an iPhone. Edge seems a bit pointless when it's based upon Chrome, which I do not use except for testing purposes simply because it's G!

Various other browsers clutter my desktop for testing ... I've tried several alternative mobile browsers and some are horrendous.

[StupidIntelligent]

Can confirm small movement on 6th July.

[RedBar]

When you say small, how small? I see movements every day up and down of maybe 3-4 places outside of the top 3, that's been normal for years.

[RedBar]

Yep, there's been quite a substantial movement in my widget sector. In their US .com SERPs, all the usual preferiti are back where they were before the May update with all but one non-US company gone from the top 20 however Pinterest seems to have also gone for the moment.

In their UK SERPs eBay and Pinterest are still there but not as bad as before however all the progress made with removing some of the totally unable to supply US companies are back again. Surely the eBay ones are the worst for G, why bother paying G for ads when you can easily get an eBay listing?

I find the most bizarre thing is that I am ranking extremely well for the most expensive and highest profit margin widgets whereas the lower cost widgets with the lowest profit margins everyone else is fighting for!

[renatovieira]

6th july was terrible. Today is even worse.

G sends me the user, but does not move.

[Athedian]

@ViktorN

Education sector~

Seems like something else is brewing for Google, all my competitors are getting hit as well.

@renatovieira

Seeing the same thing here. Well, it's more of a drop of traffic and increase of clicks but no one's converting. Either it's seasonality thing or something else is happening slowly.

[lcfc80]

to the person who said 6th July little movement. I have 2 sites, 1 got completely wiped out at the beginning of Feb with an unconfirmed update. The other has had numerous drops since May update.
The first one actually reappeared for a couple of weeks for a couple of KW's after May UD but crashed again but reappeared Monday. I haven't touched that site since Feb
The 2nd site is slowly dropping from May, main KW gone from page 1 to 3, and that keeps bouncing to page 7-9 as well. Other phrases have dropped between 4-10 pages since May. Seems to be triggering some sort of filter but can find enough info anywhere as people just start moaning about google and ranting about how bad they are treated.
Worth saying as well the 2nd site completely drops out the SERPS for some KW's to appear again the next day. All very frustrating, worrying and confusing at the same time and I have no answers at all

[markseo]

Looking like a change in traffic today. Bounce rate has shot up with no change in rankings. Familiar signs that something is up.

[StupidIntelligent]

@Redbar - Losing or gaining a few keywords. That is usually a sign up an update, at least for a small nobody like myself.

[glakes]

Looking like a change in traffic today.

Seeing the same and SEMRush notes SERP changes.

Bounce rate has shot up with no change in rankings.

Maybe a result of Alphabet's project to beam internet access to people in Kenya? LOL That went live [cnbc.com...] and I suspect the reason they are doing this is to get more humans on board to click more ads so Google can give their ad click bots a break. But it may need to rain Chromebooks in Africa to make any real difference. To me it will likely result in another group of IP ranges to block....

[widgetized]

Woah... since Monday, things have been really bad. A lot of spammy emails, daily conversions dropped to 0, and the usual small growth in "average position" in GSC. When traffic is up, conversions are down (and my inbox gets full of spam), and vice versa. This rule seems to be the only thing to remain unchanging.

[RedBar]

But it may need to rain Chromebooks in Africa to make any real difference.

When targeting Africa or Asia sites had better be mobile-friendly, some 80+% of my visitors from those regions are on mobile with a very good proportion of them being smartphones.

If one does not do or not want to do business there then block them, otherwise ensure your site works properly under most browsers, I say most since a couple of them, few downloads, are simply diabolical.

[RedBar]

Is anybody else having visitors viewing more pages than they used to?

For me, it is very noticeable across several sectors visitors are looking at more pages other than their landing page. This is only the last few weeks.

[renatovieira]

These past few days the movements are quite strange.

I noticed traffic spikes for a few moments followed by total traffic stagnation, analyzed by G Real Time.

It seems that the G opens and closes the tap for different periods.