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]

[seomotionz]

Why webmasters tool isn't updating it's data? Is anybody else seeing this?

[ichthyous]

@seomotioz Yes, seeing the same thing...WMT is not updating for about 3-4 days now.

[ichthyous]

Wondering if anyone else sees a disparity between GA reporting of Bing search traffic, and their own server analytics? GA shows Bing as 2% of all search traffic, but my server stats show it as 10%.

[MayankParmar]

Webmasters tool is delayed by 35 hours for me.

[ChokenBako]

If I check my niche I see more and more Scraped sites gaining positions. The method is always the same:

They copy whole websites from one Country for example "USA" and translate that site into spanish, german, french and so on. The domains are expired domains with strong backlinks. Google does not recognize that.

Its very frustrating how easy it is nowadays to get through with scraped content in Google =(

[samwest]

GART is a mess and never jibes with Matomo...which is truly real time. Today is just a parade of tire kicking Zombies again. They dont even convert on Adsense.

[RedBar]

I'm getting to the point of giving-up realworld product manufacturing ... One factory in India shut down compoletely again and another running at 60% worker capacity ... even the open-air production areas which are mostly mechanised are closed.

The first person to ask for a discount will get a very short answer!

[renatovieira]

Significant drop yesterday and today big drop.

Has anyone else noticed strange fluctuations since yesterday?

[RedBar]

No fluctuations whatsoever for me, in fact good PV numbers across all sites holding up well ... There, that should just about kill everything!

[ichthyous]

I'm wondering how many have blocked traffic from China and Russia completely? There is a huge mismatch between the traffic shown from these countries on my own server and in GA. GA Reports a small number of these visits from China and Russia, so I assume that it is classifying the rest as bots. Chinese bots are constantly trying to break into secure parts of my site, while Russian bots try to submit form spam.

[RedBar]

This is a Devil's Advocate conundrum!

Does intentionally blocking CN and RU bots / visitors / etc, intensify their "whatevers" curiosity to return and try until they get an answer?

I "see" their bots regularly yet have no problems from them, why is it that some sites "supposedly" have so many problems ... are they specific widget sites?

Tell us why your sites are so prone to such "interest", please.

Yes, I have been the target of unwanted traffic, 100K hotlinks a day from MySpace for a single image for months on end!

[samwest]

After years of historical traffic and sales data it looks like there is actually a traffic / conversion template that is matching up almost perfectly again this year. I show a slow time for the next few days from last year and its matching without fail. What are the statistical chances if that happening? Pure manipulation. They can try...but we can still easily recognize the unnatural patterns.

[Athedian]

As if SERP and organic traffic sources weren't bad enough, just had a Google Ads representative called in asking if they could offer us advises on improving conversions. Man, such irony.

'Course, I told them that they ain't getting anymore money other than the budget that we've spent. They asked if we've used Analytics to analyze traffic sources. I facepalmed hard.

[immrrobot]

It does feel like G is keeping a ceiling on my websites. When one keyword starts putting their pants up the other one drops down.Like they are saying hey! you can't go much higher than this. Don't expect more buddy

[RedBar]

These little daily "tweaks" G does are quite bizarra at times.

In the UK for my most popular widget keyword I've just dropped from #1 to #14 only to be replaced by eBay, a Pinterest (me) and another Pinterest (also me) plus several other "dubious" listings.

Meanwhile in G.com the first three pages are all extremely good results with all companies well-known and respected mostly with excellent websites.

Meanwhile G.co.in, from where the product originates, the SERPs again are pretty good with me at #7.

Why the very poor SERPs in the UK with such a moveable feast?

[jediviper]

@RedBar it could be that European Google results have a different behavior from the .com and .co.in results.
What you are describing for the UK results is similar to what I see for one of my brands from Germany. Also Australia falls under the same pattern.

[RedBar]

it could be that European Google results have a different behavior from the .com and .co.in results.

I realise and know that, it's simply the disparity of the results for that specific keyword search, in fact to show someone the difference it would be easy to believe they were two completely different search engines generating the SERPs.

When I see localised results, I get it, when I see valid national results, I get it, but when I see two pretty good sets of results and one that is dire then one has to question precisely what and why is G delivering to one country such mediocrity?

[glakes]

As if SERP and organic traffic sources weren't bad enough, just had a Google Ads representative called in asking if they could offer us advises on improving conversions. Man, such irony.

Our ad rep normally calls IMMEDIATELY after logging into our Ads account. Talk about a creepy greed driven company stalking their advertisers. Good news is I've been logging into my Ads account just to lower bids. I have a couple products in a shopping campaign set at a bid of 0.01, which I did not think was even possible. Maybe bids of 0 are now possible with the changes Google made to include product ads in the SERPS for free? Dunno, but I hope to find out as I move more bids lower and lower.

My sales/conversions are strong across the board. Manufacturing quality products here in the USA has its advantages in the current environment. Word of mouth (conversions from direct visits) is strong and thankfully bypasses Google's corrupt SERPS. The only problem is I think we will be facing another shutdown order soon because of the virus. Sooner or later people will run out of money and the USA Fed will run out of imported ink from China to print more stimulus checks.

[RedBar]

the USA Fed will run out of imported ink from China to print more stimulus checks.

Now there is something I never even considered, lol:-)

[StupidIntelligent]

@Glakes. Google has turned into a boiler room operation.

[NickMNS]

I just came across a new features in Google search, I saw it on desktop. Now on the SERPS page if you click into an empty search field at the top of the page, Google shows you "trending searches" drop down menu. Here is a screen cap.
[imgur.com...]

Note that this is not obvious as the search that you submitted to get to the SERP page is displayed in the search box, so you need to delete it from the field to see this new feature. Typically in the past autosuggest would kick once you start typing, but this now appears before typing anything.

I don't think this changes much in the whole grand scheme of things.

But one thing is clear from the suggestions, click bait still rules the internet.

[ichthyous]

@redbar My UK, Canada, Australia and other non-USA traffic hasn't been affected one bit by the May update...still going strong. USA traffic (both web and especially image) has declined perhaps 20% for web and 40% for images since May.



<snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 5:22 pm (utc) on Jul 15, 2020]
[edit reason] Please stick to the topic here. [/edit]

[samwest]

GART is waaaay out of whack today. I am running Matomo side by side and when Gorg says there are 10 people on the site, Matomo says 1. They have the dwell time turned up so high it's ridiculous and misleading. It's NOT real time. They seem to be artificially making it look like we have more visitors and for a longer time than reality. This way, we tend to not complain so much when in reality they are sucking all the traffic away from us....and it makes Zombies look like longer visits, when they are here and gone in under 5 seconds. IMHO, more smoke and mirrors.

[ichthyous]

36% drop in visits from Google.com today compared to yesterday at this time. Anyone else seeing a big drop in USA traffic today?

[Whome]

After a surge of traffic and and all time high daily revenue, 38% drop in US traffic here.

[Athedian]

@glakes - I was lowering our bids further as well and that's when Google started to panic and forced their reps (third-party) to start calling the clients. I don't put all the eggs into one basket and just focused on the Ads anymore as the previous team had done. I now also focused on other sources and as much as it's controversial, Facebook ads performed nicely for us.

Slowly fixing up on the titles of the articles on our site right now, though I doubt it'll make any difference on the SERP as Google is doing all the harm as much as possible.

[KaseyM]

Hi Digital_star welcome to Webmaster World!

Seen a fairly big drop on my site (entertainment niche) with traffic levels being around just before COVID-19 levels (January/February)

[ichthyous]

My rankings have improved steadily and I gained about 5 top three spots this week, but USA traffic fell off a cliff yesterday and today after a jump up on Tuesday. It seems that ranking and traffic are no longer strongly correlated.

Non-USA traffic is at normal levels and hasn't dropped even when compared to last summer. Let's see if this holds for people outside of the USA, or if they see drops in traffic from their own local markets. It could be a new strategy by Google to hit people where it hurts, in their local market.

[RedBar]

All my sites have been above average and if it continues will have record months plus they've been generating some interesting B2B enquiries too.

[BoredMeteor]

Yeah, I'm breakin' records over here, too.

They ain't good ones.