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]

[ichthyous]

Yeah, I can confirm traffic throttling since Monday. From my observations, the only active and converting traffic I got on my website this week, has been a small group of returning customers.

It seems that we are all seeing the same traffic throttling tactics from Google. It's very disturbing to see traffic suddenly turn off at 10-11am every day like clockwork. In my case I can narrow it down to my USA traffic only. I am still getting normal levels of traffic from the rest of the world.

I am also wondering if something is off with GA. My own server stats showed rising traffic this week, while GA showed very low numbers all week. I have noticed that GA is reporting almost no traffic from Russia now, it's 38th on the list of referring countries...while on my own server it shows as 7th. Same with China...GA shows traffic from China in 9th position, while on my server stats has moved up to 4th position. Now it could be that GA is more accurately weeding out the bots than my own stats, but I have a heavy duty amount of blocking going on in my cloudflare firewall so that bot traffic isn't hitting my server to begin with. Anyone else seeing this?

[frostitomik]

Today, the traffic from Google is down by almost 50%. I don't see any significant ranking changes and anylitics seems to be working. Must be the second wave of covid and people panicking again like 2-3 months ago.

[ViktorN]

@frostitomik

seeing also a drop, don't know if 50% but definitely very dry compared to a week ago. Also, saw zero changes in SERP. Most traffic that was lost is from Google News (and specifically AMP)

[ratraceescapeartist]

I suffered a 20+ drop in traffic yesterday.

As if the previous May update wasn't bad enough, Google had to tweak the algorithm even more to make website traffic drop even further to try and get people to pay for adsense.

[mosxu]

@Dooku

“ I am now estimating 90% isn't even human visitors. I have a realtime chat option on two websites and did a very "non-scientific" test :-) Which was to actively harass the visitors by asking if they needed any help BEFORE the normal realtime chat software trigger popped up depending on some rules. With non-G traffic I get at least an answer from the visitor like "no thanks", or "just browsing for now"....and similar. From the G traffic visitors I ALMOST NEVER get ANY response at all. Coincidence?”

Yes very wise way to establish that 90% of visitors are not even human but also probably 90% of humans do not see your ads regardless how high you bid unless they visited your site in the past. This is the trick so you will always see your ads but not the humans.

[frostitomik]

I don't believe such theories. It seems a lot of people here became slightly paranoid.

Zombie traffic? Why would Google be even doing it?

I have almost 20 sites in different niches and there is nothing like bot traffic on any of them. The only problem is Google screwing up the search results and people not finding my websites.

But yes, it is a truth that Bing and Yahoo traffic is of a much higher quality. Probably because more mature and less tech savvy people use them. Thankfully one of my main websites, which was de-indexed on Bing is now back on the index.

[Dooku]

@Frostitomik, "But yes, it is a truth that Bing and Yahoo traffic is of a much higher quality" . You see, you actually already answered your own question about "why would google even do that?".

It's not that all traffic are literally bots but but how it's distributed. Google is the world's expert in BEHAVIORAL technology. It's what their business model is based upon. They control and scrape every bit of useful traffic and steer that to wherever G will make the most profit. The rest of the left over crap is distributed to websites like yours and mine. The main difference between G on the one hand and Bing, Yahoo and others is that those search engines are not doing that, or at least not in the same amount that is very obvious as G does it.

[RedBar]

Is Statcounter down again?

[Dooku]

@Redbar, Yes, statcounter is down again since about 30 hours. This time you can log in but the counters are NOT working. I wonder if all that info is lost or just not displaying for now.

[RedBar]

@Dooku - I've not been down 30 hours, last time I looked and it seemed ok was about 15 hours ago roughly however thanks for confirming zero numbers!

[RedBar]

Just checked and my last Statcounter metrics were about 12.30 - 13.00 BST, 24 hours ago.

[browndog]

Is anybody else noticing domain clustering? I just searched for something and the first results are .id, .com, .com.au, all the same site (apart from domain extension) and topic. I thought that was meant to have stopped.

[Athedian]

Zombie traffic? Why would Google be even doing it?

Why not? They throw a bunch of zombie traffic or horrible, non-related traffic from sources that aren't even going to convert to the sites that they deem as "not profitable", and sending better traffic to the bigger sites that might be spending millions on Google Ads.

Google focuses on revenue now, and even more when this pandemic is going on. Shareholders are more important than their now-dead "do no harm" motto.

[Dooku]

@Redbar, at what time did Statcounter start registering the first visitors again at your location?

[lcfc80]

Just posted this elsewhere so thought I'd share it here as well

"This is starting to really make me depressed. One page is a perfect example, before May update it was about top of page 3, I was adding related content to the site with internal links to it. Since then it's been everywhere. dropped to page 7, then 12, then about a week/2 weeks ago back to page 2 or 3. Checked today, been slung back down to page 10. I keep saying it, there must be a filter that is now tripping as surely a page shouldn't drop 8 pages. Again, I haven't really done anything to the site since May and certainly not touch that page or added more content. I also don't think there is a single external link pointing to the page either."

[RedBar]

@Dooku

They've posted a message here which fits my timeframe perfectly:

[statcounter.com...]

The missing traffic data window is from Saturday 11th July 12:30pm to Monday 13th July 6:35am UTC.
The collecting of visitor traffic data resumed on the 13th July 6:35am UTC and stats are in real-time.
Unfortunately this data cannot be restored but we are working on a way to estimate and restore the summary traffic for this period.

[glakes]

Zombie traffic? Why would Google be even doing it?

When Google lowers the traffic quality of organic traffic, it makes their paid ads appear as if they are performing better. Basically, since Google's ads have a poor/negative ROI, the only way Google can pump them up is by making organic traffic look so bad that advertisers have no choice but to spend. The problem for Google is we are spending, just not with Google.

Zombie traffic is not new. This has been happening for years, and as I've noted years ago it is spreading to new industries and websites. Search the forum and you will find many posts on this topic, including those by the late and much respected tedster.

[RedBar]

@Dooku

At the moment Statcounter's current Page Views / Session numbers do not match Visitor Activity and Visitor Path etc by a considerable margiin.

[ichthyous]

Wow, kudos to Google...July 10th, 11th, and 12th I had exactly the same number of visitors each day, and almost the same number of sessions. It's incredible how precisely Google can throttle your traffic these days.

[Dooku]

@Redbar,
I just noticed that also. The numbers on the Project page for the websites do not add up with the ones on each actual website stats page.

I hope they fix this asap, too many hickups lately with statcounter. The problem is there is no real alternative with this much info at a reasonable price range.

[baugs18]

I'm seeing some major MoM shifts in organic traffic that does not match seasonal trends. Drops seem to be across all of our pages, but most heavily blog and international traffic. Page speed isn't the best, so looking into that. Some schema issues, some hreflang issues, some on-page issues - but nothing super blatant. Sites are very reputable and have historically ranked well, so scratching my head a bit on this one...

[RedBar]

@Dooku

I messaged Statcounter about this and now everything seems to be back to normal ... fingers crossed.

[Athedian]

Sad thing is, I have been focusing on both organic and Google Ads (along with a few more) and even with a blatant shift to Google Ads by Google, the conversions were horrible for the last few days. They sent bunch of traffic to the ads, I got lots of clicks, spent a crap load of budget, and then almost no conversions.

I believe Google not only manipulates the traffic to impact organic searches, but they also manipulate the traffic against the Google Ads and only sending relevant traffic to ones that spent millions. After all, why spread out the resources when they can focus on just the few with actual $$$ to waste?

[samwest]

Zombie traffic is not new. This has been happening for years, and as I've noted years ago it is spreading to new industries and websites. Search the forum and you will find many posts on this topic, including those by the late and much respected tedster.

I can tell you the exact date Zombie traffic was first observed. [webmasterworld.com...] Msg# 4147552. I remember that because backdraft7 was my old username.

Perfect example, the day started off awesome, conversions on the hour, but as usual, after noon it turned to all zombies....as usual. I remember the good old days when Gorg didn;t know how to "shape traffic", so would leave you alone all day and night. Now they pick your pocket for half the day, sometimes all day...it's relentless.

[StoneSolid]

Well, I posted a post and a thread here about proof of youtube manipulation but admins were quick to delete it, so I won't repeat it.

However, I will repeat my conclusion on that matter - "..if google/youtube is doing THAT to influence politics, you can only imagine all that they are doing to get $$$ in their pockets".

[BushyTop]

Seeing very weird traffic patterns at the moment. Its almost throttled, high bounce, low dwell. More G bot activity than usual too.

[Dooku]

"Seeing very weird traffic patterns....."
Those "weird" traffic patterns are becoming the norm now.

[samwest]

GART is once again messed up...on page total keeps counting up. SERPs are jumping all over the place the past few days. More churn. Have a great day.

[markseo]

Seeing a lot of movement over the last few days in our area. Lots of stop-start in traffic too - seems like a continuation of whatever happened mid-end of last week. SERPs not really sorted themselves out yet. Not that it is being picked up on Semrush though - volatility looks pretty calm there.

[BushyTop]

@samwest saw the same with GART yesterday.