Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2020

[samwest]

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System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5001046.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 3:44 pm on Aug 1, 2020 (utc -5)

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August 1st. Big SERP changes and not a single conversion in the past 48 hours. The number 1 result for several of my test queries is now....drum roll please...a single PINTEREST pin....with no followers. Is this Googles idea of a "quality user expetience" and is EAT out the window or is everything just broken? Again...

With no on site changes...bounce was dropping every day for the last few weeks...now over the last two days bounce is way up so traffic behavior has suddenly changed for the worse....which indicates a large algo change.

Anyone else seeing this?

[MayankParmar]

[semrush.com...]

9.2 and 9.4 :O

It looks like they rolled out an update or broke something on 15th and rolled it back later. This triggered the senors on both days.

[samwest]

Yesterday the 6 hour window of incredible conversions was not associated with any serp change...just the usual low traffic that suddenly started converting like mad....it was "anti-zombie" traffic. Lol

[RedBar]

Early Sunday afternoon for me and, as yet, I'm not seeing any changes across my usual Google.tlds, furthermore I wouldn't have expected a core update until very late this month at the earliest and much more likely in September however that's only a historical experience guess.

[renatovieira]

Now I am having high traffic on two of my sites in the same niche. Zero conversion. It looks like the zombies are back...

Pathetic...

[ichthyous]

Now I am having high traffic on two of my sites in the same niche. Zero conversion

Traffic is higher yesterday and today, but also zero conversions. I had more conversions in the few hours during the glitch, than the entire rest of the week so far since the glitch has been 'fixed'. No idea how google accomplishes that, but my ranking is back to where it was.

Also the unusual traffic pattern where I see traffic from Australia go to zero every other day. Since Australia is almost 4% of my traffic this is highly unusual, but the Australian traffic converts at a much higher rate than USA traffic...is it possible that Google can see and cut down on converting traffic to your site? I have been rewarded with plenty of traffic from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Pakistan though...

[glakes]

Traffic is higher yesterday and today, but also zero conversions.

Same here. Despite a 300% increase in conversions yesterday (Saturday), we had far less conversions then the prior Saturday. On the other hand, our Amazon sales skyrocketed. I had to open the shop yesterday so we could pack/ship all the orders. I'm heading in to work today to do some administrative work to free me up for Monday since sales from Amazon are still on fire.

It would appear this glitch or update has greatly benefited Amazon at the cost of losing sales on our site. This is fine since our product pricing/shipping fees more then offset Amazon's 15% commission on each sale. Google likes shafting the consumer I guess...

[seomotionz]

Different sites are behaving differently. For some its extremely good but for some its the usual bad.

For some sites. Sales have much increased since the last 48 hours. How much increase? About 200% increase.. Although traffic amount is not so good.. Around 20% drop in traffic. But who cares?

Also the unusual traffic pattern where I see traffic from Australia go to zero every other day. Since Australia is almost 4% of my traffic this is highly unusual, but the Australian traffic converts at a much higher rate than USA traffic...is it possible that Google can see and cut down on converting traffic to your site? I have been rewarded with plenty of traffic from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Pakistan though...

But in some cases its been observed that zombie like traffic is back. These sites used to get traffic from EU or NA. But now they are getting traffic from Pak, Bangladesh.

Sadly, I cannot categorize the sites into niches. Its happening all over. People who are getting traffic from AU, Canada, UK or even India are getting the good traffic.

[glakes]

Must not have had enough coffee in me this morning. My statement "Despite a 300% increase in conversions yesterday (Saturday), we had far less conversions then the prior Saturday." should have read "Despite a 300% increase in traffic yesterday (Saturday), we had far less conversions then the prior Saturday."

My apologies!

I'm still seeing the roughly 300% increase in traffic holding, but no conversions. This Google traffic, if even real, is terribly bad. Makes me wonder if Google doesn't have some hidden code in their Chrome web browser to silently visit websites to make it appear their search engine is more widely used then it truly is. I mean how else can Google explain such garbage traffic?

[Webweeb]

People at BHW are also saying that the rolled back updates on the 10th and today made 'all the weird links and pins' go away. And that it made actual websites rank again.

F me dead I hope that is what this next update does.

Maybe Big Brain Google with 9000+ IQ finally noticed that if they rank stupid links and pins, that is exactly what webmasters will work to create.

[immrrobot]

Still seeing Pins in my niche though. It's all over here.

[renatovieira]

Today until 12:00pm large traffic flow. 12:01pm magically everything is gone. Since then zero absolute traffic. Unbelievable...

[glakes]

@renatovieira

Around 4PM EST. we saw a complete shutdown of Google traffic. It looks like Google is attempting to enforce the pre-update daily traffic quota by sending no traffic after 4PM. It doesn't seem to matter anyways since the traffic Google is sending is non-converting garbage.

When we look at these traffic patterns, it's really hard to argue against Google being regulated. Investigations can take years to play out when Google can flip the switch and change to a new improved/different way to abuse their dominance in a matter of seconds. As much as I can't stand Government interference, Amazon, Google, etc. have to much control over the economy to not have Government evaluating/approving their each and every algo change.

[Athedian]

Seems like another update... Conversion here completely died off for a Monday. Oh well.

[MayankParmar]

Hmm... the US traffic has dropped over the weekend.

[mosxu]

@glakes

“Makes me wonder if Google doesn't have some hidden code in their Chrome web browser to silently visit websites to make it appear their search engine is more widely used then it truly is. I mean how else can Google explain such garbage traffic?”

If that is the case and authorities doing nothing is very bad.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I envy you, folks. At least you see some changes. My website is filtered and anything can move it from the point for 3 months now...

[jediviper]

There is no official information from Google, SEJ or other official sources, so I guess anyone who thought that there was an Update going on during the weekend was wrong.
Also, the SERP had great volatility only for specific markets like Australia, USA but not for any big EU markets.

[JesterMagic]

@Cyril TechWebsites has happened to me as well. Hang in there. I found that only another big algo change was able to do anything.

Unfortunately 2 or 3 years ago in our niche, Google did a big algo change. It was nothing to do with our site but what it did was raise the rankings of large media companies that forced all the niche sites (except one that uses a LOT of underhanded techniques) below them (to the bottom of the first page or second page). Of course these media companies continue to post fluff content about the topic further pushing us lower for other keywords. Even when the content is old (they never update it) or wrong Google still rewards them.

[Webweeb]

"People also ask" has been moved down on the page for many results in my niche.

Considering how useful it is, it should be entirely removed for many searches. I literally only use it for informational searches. It just shows once more that Google has 0 clues when it comes to user intent.

[ChokenBako]

" Even when the content is old (they never update it) or wrong Google still rewards them."

Google should first start sorting out which content is original and which not. There are so many content scrapers in my niche which get rewarded with high positions.
They have up to 25 Adsense banners on one page. Ridicolous. Everything what Google tells us is not true for these sites. Why?

[MayankParmar]

@Cyril TechWebsites I agree with Jester. My traffic had dropped to almost nothing after June 2019 and it recovered completely in September. You need another Core Algo update to recover. Smaller updates or these glitches may not help.

[Webweeb]

@ChokenBako
Google does not even try to find the original owner of content. In my niche, scrapers are stealing from each other and DMCAing each other right now. They are fake news websites built for SEO only with text that makes no sense, links to mainsteam news that make no sense and more schema markup than text. They will even put 'journalism' or 'news' in the domain name, so Google classifies them as news. - The most obvious Google-pandering I have ever seen.

But I guess when Google only ranks spam and news websites, then you have to pretend to be news to rank. And why write your own stuff if you can just copy someone elses.

[Dooku]

@Jediviper, "There is no official information from Google, SEJ or other official sources"
That is a bit naive really. Google's history is littered with rather big updates that they have never confirmed but were proven by data from webmasters and websites like MOZ. G just does not confirm every update. And this one certainly was not a small update.

@Glakes and Mosxu, regarding "hidden code in chrome web browsers":
Technically it would even be easier for G to do what you think instead of using Chrome browsers of normal users. G has the largest collection of servers in their data centers all over the world. Also you should know that they use a proprietary version of Linux that is closed with their own security, and NOBODY else has their source code. They have been using their own version of Linux ever since they stopped displaying the search terms in whatever analytics software you are using.
For G it would be a very easy to run headless chrome engines browsing websites based of the GA info they have and from the Chrome info of users and use those headless Chromes engines to send traffic to websites. They have the network infrastructure to make sure it would all look legit. I am just saying that technically it's very easy for them, but not sure if they are really doing it. However, the current situation at least makes you wonder?

[samwest]

The past 48 hours has been nearly normal traffic and conversions. Wonder what happened? If the past is any indication of the future... pretty sure of what will happen the next 48.

[BushyTop]

@samwest ?

[samwest]

Everything what Google tells us is not true for these sites. Why?

the simple answer is $$$

The two top sites in my niche are thin content and agregations with massive ad density. 25 plus ads per page...one for evey page scroll.

I've mentioned this in the past and suggested using it as a seo tactic but was admonished by the mods for suggesting something so outlandish. Lol

[edited by: samwest at 12:44 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2020]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@JesterMagic +
@MayankParmar

Absolutely agree with you both - that's why I thought that something will change because of this weekend update, I thought it was Core (my experience tells me that it is almost prepared and should be rolled out in near weeks). I made a lot of changes for the website from technical point of view, from content point of view, but nothing changes. So I'm waiting Core.

[glakes]

@Dooku

I struggle to come to a reason why traffic from Google performs so terribly when compared to Bing/Yahoo. This is why I think there is something more nefarious at play. The quality of the user is a big factor as well. Google defines big data and is one of the biggest collectors of private information. People that use Google tend to care less about privacy and as such likely have different search habits as compared to Bing/Yahoo. I firmly believe consumers that use Google are more likely to accept being spoon fed information (hence Google's creation of the Knowledge Panel) whereas users on other search engines are more likely to spend time to research and formulate their own opinions on any given topic, product or service. But how great the user quality varies from one search engine to another is debatable. Still, I search for a non-nefarious reason why Google's traffic sucks so badly.

[ichthyous]

Hmm...looks like traffic has dropped considerably this morning after being higher this weekend...my USA traffic is way down, and ranking suddenly dropped ~9% overnight as well.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:12 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2020]

[Webweeb]

Of course Google visitors will be different from ones coming from bing, yahoo or ddg. I mean it would be weird if they were not. Just like people that drive a 1985 VW Beatle will probably be much different from people diving a 2012 ford focus.

Anyone that doesnt use the Google monopoly machine probably has their reasons and therefore a halfway working brain. Which is not average at all. I would wager that people that use DDG will on average make about twice or 3x as much as people using Google. Which of course means higher likelihood to convert.

On top of that Google sorts traffic by 'user intent' and while they claim this works well, I do not believe so besides very obvious stuff like buying intent or pr0n ect.

[edited by: Webweeb at 2:00 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2020]