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]

[samwest]

Funny how one day can be so completely different from the next, and on no detectable changes in the SERPs. Yesterday was great / natural traffic flow for a few hours, today it's right back to the staccato Zombie pattern.

Huge variation in mobile vs desktop results tho...mobile is two listings in a row with images and site links, but on desktop, although plenty of page real estate available, it's one listing with no images or site links. Looks like more traffic shaping. They certainly don't want our conversions getting ahead of themselves. Totally throttled...again.

[southernguy]

@samwest Yes, I saw the same thing yesterday, one of my sites went gangbusters late yesterday afternoon after almost 0 Google traffic for two weeks, I had conversion after conversion for about 4 hours and then it just died. Now I guess I will have to wait again for another few months for that site to get any love from Google again.

There is no such thing as organic traffic from Google anymore.

[RedBar]

I keep expecting my traffic increases to stop but yet, so far, it's continuing and driving some good international project enquiries for my global sites. The UK sites are also doing much better than I thought they would after lockdown.

[seomotionz]

@samwest @southernguy We received a lot of good traffic yesterday. Forget organic (although it was good), direct traffic was so much and so good that I was starting to think that if this continues then all the losses from the previous months will be covered within a week. Then today it started slow but was going up steadily then all of a sudden very sharp fall in traffic (both organic & direct). So, Google is now controlling direct traffic too.. But how?

[ichthyous]

So, Google is now controlling direct traffic too.. But how?

@seomotionz I have posted this same observation several times now. For me, almost all of the losses in traffic since the May update were Direct traffic. Google Organic search is stable. I can see on GSC that I have lost a massive amount of Google Image impressions (around 40%) since May, in addition to a ~20% decline in web impressions and clicks. All of that looks like it's falling under Direct traffic, not search.

You see, it's much easier for Google to destroy your traffic by hiding it behind Direct traffic where you have no idea what the source is, than removing organic search where you can identify and track them. They are simply hiding their manipulation.

[widgetized]

Converting traffic (= real visitors who make a purchase) has been very intermittent for me, since Monday. But at least I see some real visitors finally. Spam emails follow the same intermittent trend (eg. day with conversions = no spam at all, and vice versa).

Also, it happened twice that orders made by different customers / from different countries (so, totally unrelated) have just 15-30 minutes between each other. Coincidences?

[irenefarber]

Since May, one of my landing pages keeps falling, much more than the rest. GSC shows an average position of 3,6 for the URL for 1000 keywords. But really the impression were 32800 in may and now are about 1450.

SEMrush Position Tracking shows for the most popular keyword the position bouncing from 35 to 27, to 45, triggering alerts continuously.

In the first month it was the coronavirus competing with a similar keyword, but now the search results went back to normal but excluding my page. Instead I can see 4 results for Pinterest in first’s places, one of them using my title and showing my page. This thing of many Pinterest results in Serps is occurring since Google core update in May 2020

What is this, how I can recover? Somebody is affected in the same way?

[samwest]

Since June, traffic has been flat as a pancake. Same pattern every week. When COVID started, we shot straight up, but luckily the AI quickly caught the rise and clamped us back down. Money in Gorgs pocket. They didn't miss a beat. Nice.

[mosxu]

So obvious when machine is trying to distribute the money what ever is still coming through...
At a given time a human looking to buy will only see a set of sites not necessarily including us bidding high enough to show.

Undisclosed reasons,

[MayankParmar]

Semrush sensor suggests a new update is out

[Robert Charlton]

MayankParmar, thanks for the heads up. Barry at SER also notes signs of an update, and he includes this thread as one of his sources of chatter, so there might be some circularity in the observation, though Barry also cites a range of update tools...

Google Search Ranking Update On July 23rd & 24th
Jul 24, 2020 - 7:16 am - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

It seems to be too soon to offer any analysis or further comment.

[RedBar]

Update, really?

Nothing noticeable for me as yet, wouldn't this be a strange time of year to have a significant update?

[ichthyous]

Nothing for me either, I'm slightly up on ranking, but it doesn't correlate with traffic anymore so I don't worry about it. This week saw a highly unusual pattern of traffic decrease in a step pattern every day from the Monday peak, and Sunday through Wednesday saw the first real influx of customers I've had in maybe two weeks. I do think the worsening situation in FL/TX/CA with COVID are all changing traffic patterns somewhat. All three states are big sources of new customers for me and people are distracted now.

[samwest]

Don't see an update, but I do see major clamping and throttling in the past 48 hours. When I see this, I am only left to wonder...is it Google or is it some other network anomaly? If I then compare to other properties and the many corroborating reports here and on other forums, all available evidence points to Gorg.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence is my Adsense conversion rates vs. my product conversion rates, When my product is converting well, adsense is abysmally low. When the Zombies are thick, my adsense conversion rate goes way up. Pretty obvious. Drive traffic to ads, then let up for a very short period of time to cover, then rinse and repeat at random and nobody is the wiser...or so they think.

Google appears to handle traffic in a PWM (pulse width modulation) method, chop it up and take the spoils.

[glakes]

wouldn't this be a strange time of year to have a significant update?

Not necessarily. Look to Google's recent announcements [webmasterworld.com...] regarding Shopping. A lot of news coming out of Google lately has been retail related. I suspect its sinking in the travel industry will be impacted by COVID-19 for a while. While revenue from travel related ads are substantially down, Google is likely trying to bolster their Shopping ads to eventually compensate for ad revenue losses elsewhere.

For Google to be successful, they will need to make it worthwhile for independent retailers to compete and get sales. This will only happen if Google finally tackles all the Amazon crowding in the SERPS so that consumers can be sent directly to independent websites. Bottom line: Google needs to show me converting traffic before I pry open my wallet. And I think that's precisely what they intend to do in the short-term...

[ichthyous]

@samwest Of course it's throttling...If you start out the week strong you are guaranteed to have your traffic levels decrease day by day. Is it normal to have every day drop lower from Monday to Friday? For the last 17 years my busiest days were Wed/Thu, with Mon/Tues/Fri within a close range, followed by Sunday and Saturday the lowest. Now Thursdays and Fridays are always unusually low. There is no way around this, Google has been clamping traffic and loading search pages since Sept 2018...it's just gotten worse and worse until January of this year, which was awful, followed by May which was so bad that I am now trying to find a post-Google business model. We may have a few blips of recovery but it will never be what it was.

[mhansen]

I mentioned this previously, but it's worth repeating. Rankings for us have not changed hardly at all, though traffic is down 15-20% over the last 5-6 weeks. The BIGGEST difference, is that almost ALL queries now prompt a widget above ads, above listings, above all results, with keyword based buttons in a horizonatl slider to bring the user to another page of Google results. It's like they (Google) took the "People also searched for" list at the bottom of most results, pared it down the the related keyphrases related to the term you searched for, and put them atop everything else in serps.

Ex: If you searched for: Brand [autopart] replacement

The top of search results will be: (Letting you drill into your choice)
[Ford] [Mustang] [Chevrolet] [Camaro] [Dodge] [Charger] [etc... horizontal scroller]

When you click on any of these, it brings up another page of ads, related phrases on top, etc again.

Google has essentially found the best way to stop users from leaving it's engine via organic results, and getting ads in front of users for nearly every query.

Last month, I saw this on some queries, this month... it's on nearly ALL queries in our neck of the results.

[StupidIntelligent]

Never underestimate the power of shareholders over ethics.

Redbar said it right. The way to outsmart Google is to be an industry that it cannot manipulate, or isn't interested in.

[ichthyous]

The way to outsmart Google is to be an industry that it cannot manipulate, or isn't interested in.

Is there such a thing? Since all businesses need to get found, and the way to get found is through search then it follows that all industries will be affected. The January update affected me because Google simply decided that half the terms I used to rank on now pertain to something else...all the top spots now occupied by articles and not e-commerce oriented sites. I can't argue with the logic, except that many people must have been looking to buy instead of read a how-to article since my traffic dropped considerably, as did my competitors who were also no longer ranking. A whole new set of informational sites and blog posts took over...perhaps because they are running adsense and we weren't? And we can be squeezed to pay for ads now to sell our products instead of getting a free ride.

But I do not see how any industry can escape this...can you give an example?

[samwest]

@ichthyous - if you can probably tell, I'm moving away from direct statements and claims to simply making observations using words like "seems" and "appears", which is all you can do when dealing with a black box. Hopefully Google sees this and knows we are not that stupid.

As far as an industry that is tough to manipulate, I have a local meat market client that sees the exact same weekly pattern you describe. They don't seem to go up or down much and consistently do very well. Apparently, Google can't make you more or less hungry...yet.

I stand corrected, they can make us more hungry...or more appropriately, starving...but that's a whole other situation.

Oh, and as a correction, this apparent throttling pattern (for me at least) started exactly in May of 2010 during the "MayDay" update. Coincidentally two years after the "Google friendly" administration took office. Make of that what you will.

[samwest]

@RC - that's funny how SEO Roundtable is quoting us as the SEO observational authority.
So now we are getting reports of a suspected update based upon our own observations.
It's like the inmates running the asylum. LOL.

Guess that means the plex is watching too....and laughing...all the way to the bank. ;)

[rustybrick]

chasing my own tail 🐕

[KaseyM]

In fairness to RB, what other metrics can he take?

I have to admit too I only post here when I see declines. Posting about gains feels a bit braggy.

[RedBar]

But I do not see how any industry can escape this...can you give an example?

It's not so much escape more than the low volumes, or non high visibility cum demand, widget sectors.

G's only interested in one thing, a big bucks turnover as fast as possible, it likes the constant change of consumer-led products.

I supply high-value specialised construction products for hotels, shopping malls, office blocks, public works, specialised industrial testing plus several other sectors and also for the retail trade. That retail sector is the only time you'll ever see my widgets advertised on Google, our industry is highly-regulated globally for product safety's sake.

Does G want to become involved in industries that take months and years to decide on the specifications let alone the raw product sourcing, primary, secondary and tertiary production? Nope, these are industries that have been going for many years, my own family business is 180 years old and it is by a long, long way nowhere near the oldest.

There are many industries similar to mine that really depend on very highly-skilled specialst suppliers and we all meet regularly at international fairs whereby we can discuss openly "what's happening". The overall volume of business annually runs into trillions of Dollars yet there is not one single dominant supplier, sure some governments have thrown vasts sums of money at various sectors, installed amateurs, sat back and watched their investments fail ... they thought they could buy market share, it simply doesn't work like that.

There are many non-household industrial names that G will most likely avoid because they can't be manipulated by their data and one thing is for sure, most G employees wouldn't know a hard day's work other than their gym and cafe!

[samwest]

Posting about gains feels a bit braggy.

I'd love to hear more bragging!
As it is, these SEO forums sound more and more like this > : [youtu.be...]
(showing my advance age again) :D

[ichthyous]

that's funny how SEO Roundtable is quoting us as the SEO observational authority.
So now we are getting reports of a suspected update based upon our own observations.

I think that Google has effectively killed off SEO, and all the SEO experts along with it. When there is no pattern to decipher and the changes keep happening at such a rapid pace without rhyme or reason then nobody can claim to have an effective recovery strategy to sell you. We're all just fumbling around in the dark here, and anyone who hasn't been hit yet will be soon enough because Google is determined to take it all.

This was always the risk of building a business on someone else's platform, and it took Google much longer than FB to shut us all out actually. The problem is the lack of alternatives. If the market had more viable competition then no one platform could hurt your business so badly...unless they all collude.

[RedBar]

Statcounter not down however seemingly very inaccurate reporting for me this morning, ever since about UK midnight last night.

Anyone else?

Inaccurate to the extent of some sites showing zero visitors and PVs yet my logs tell me a completely different story.

I really would be loathe to remove it however what's the point of paying for inaccurate information?

[JesterMagic]

I think that Google has effectively killed off SEO

I disagree. There is still a need for general SEO for websites. Now days though there are no quick SEO tricks that will get your site ranking on the first page quickly unless you use black hat techniques. Competition is also much greater (more web pages) than it was a decade ago and the rise of mobile has diluted traffic. Sure there is more traffic but a lot of it is just bored people on their phones with nothing else much to do than scroll through their news and social feeds.

[glakes]

But I do not see how any industry can escape this...can you give an example?

@ichthyous

I don't see any escape from Google's grasp as it pertains to their SERPS. What I see are businesses that are better positioned to not be as dependent on search engines as others. And I think RB's comment made this point.

There are many industries similar to mine that really depend on very highly-skilled specialst suppliers and we all meet regularly at international fairs whereby we can discuss openly "what's happening".

This single statement can be dissected. (1) "highly-skilled specialist" which I interpret to be a business with a lot of knowledge in a market with relatively little competition or skilled competition. (2) "we all meet regularly at international fairs" which I interpret as a large networking opportunity that likely produces a substantial number of lead generating referrals.

No two businesses are alike, and I assume many posting in this thread simply don't have the same opportunities as RB or won't put forth the effort to continually build upon their expertise and/or aggressively pursue networking opportunities.

I think the days of ranking good in any search engine with well written titles, good keyword density, etc. have been gone for a while. Businesses need to have unique products, services and/or information that separates them from the pack. For many webmasters I think taking a look at how they can differ from their competition, and pursuing those changes, may yield better SEO results then trying to emulate their competitors as many do.

[ichthyous]

Is anyone else seeing a big drop yesterday and today? My USA traffic is down considerably this weekend