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?

[glakes]

Of course Google visitors will be different from ones coming from bing, yahoo or ddg.

Different is one thing, but wouldn't account for Bing/Yahoo producing four times the conversions on just a fraction of Google's traffic. This goes for paid ads as well with identical campaigns running on each search engine.

I don't believe Google could possibly so wildly off with buyer intent queries that is is a "natural" occurrence or error in their AI/algo. Instead, it's just a money funnel. Google ranks junk at the top of organics to steer legitimate businesses to ads to be seen. Then once in their ad ecosystem, wallets are drained leaving advertisers with a poor ROI. At least this is the way I perceive how Google has designed organic and paid search results in my industry.

[Webweeb]

@glakes
I too suspect that there is a reason why they are ranking so much spam a the top. More bounce back to serp, more ads being seen... Especially since now I see more ads at the bottom of SERP pages as well... where you have to go to click through to page 2 and 3 and 4.

A part of me still hopes that Google still cares about the user. But lets be honest, we try to maximize time on page for ad revenue, so can we fault Google for doing it as well?

Also since there is no real competition, why would they care about the user? As long as they are not losing market share.

[glakes]

Also since there is no real competition, why would they care about the user? As long as they are not losing market share.

There is competition for product queries and Google lost a lot of market share for product searches over the past five years. The last piece of data I saw noted search engines only get 15% of first time product searches which is split between all search engines. Advertisers in the travel industry pulled back hard, which I think forced Google to focus more on their shopping ad revenue and is attempting to lure businesses in or back in with the display of free ads. But Google may be too far gone to ever recover. And would paying advertisers compete against those getting free ads? Kind of turns the marketplace of auction ads on its head. Regardless, if Google wants to compete for product searches and keep advertisers they are going to have to do a hell of a lot better then they are doing now.

[Webweeb]

I dont see competition at all.... bing has 3%, but only because it comes packaged with windows and free software... DDG has 1% those are the privacy freaks. And lets not forget that YouTube is also Google... another monopoly and search engine in itself.

Idk. Doesn't look like competition to me. If Germany had won WW2 and owned 92% of the world, the US had 3%, but only because a giant sheet of ice recently broke off of the north pole and they claimed it, we would not call that a fair fight, now would we?

[mosxu]

@Dooku

“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”

How one can prove this?

[glakes]

I dont see competition at all....

For first time product searches, Amazon leads. Amazon has been pulling shoppers away from Google and the other search engines for years. See [civicscience.com...] where they note:

Google may be the de facto search engine for looking up pad thai recipes or for who won the 1982 American League MVP (Robin Yount), but when it comes to searching for products, it’s not even close. Amazon is dominating. In fact, nearly half of Americans start their product searches at Amazon.com while only 22% start at Google – a 122% difference.

[ichthyous]

This is truly ridiculous...a 77% drop in USA traffic this morning. I have more traffic from the UK today than all of my USA traffic in the last 11 hours. There is no way that isn't Google actively trying to destroy small business by removing converting traffic from the business's local market. This pattern is happening over and over now.

[MayankParmar]

I'm not sure what suddenly happened to my US traffic either :/

[mosxu]

@glakes

Interesting article especially the end of it:

“Clearly, Amazon is eating Google’s lunch when it comes to product searches, and there is nothing on the horizon to indicate Google has a way to stem that tide. Particularly worrisome for Google has to be Amazon taking a bigger slice – potentially a much bigger slice – of the ad search revenue market”

[glakes]

@mosxu

In my industry, I think Amazon already ate Google's lunch and is almost done eating Google's dessert. I think Google is running out of time to prove to businesses they are still relevant in ecommerce or there will be a seismic shift of ad revenue leaving Google. Maybe that shift already started and the reason behind Google allowing free shopping ads. Google's traffic is so bad they have to give it away.

[insideout]

Today the traffic still sucks big time ... when all this torture is coming to end ?

[Webweeb]

OK, yes Amazon... the eCommerce monopoly.
Google cant outdo them, Amazon has too much data. They will always easily provide a superior user experience.

Imagine if those 2 merged, they might as well start collecting internet taxes at that point... someone didnt pay their taxes this year... guess where spammy pins will rank next?

[RedBar]

when all this torture is coming to end ?

It may change with the next core update ... then again it may not ... Sometime in September's my guess.

My B2Bs are still doing well for an August however the UK hotel / pub site is almost on fire and heading for a record month but I cannot imagine what's going to happen when the Eat Out to Help Out Govt promotion stops, I assume cliff edge stuff!

[samwest]

Half the day gone and my prediction from earlier today is spot on, Gorg is so easy to predict, they give a little and immediately take it back. Carrot and stick to tempt you into their now useless ad system. Back to two-at-a-time trickle after a decent past two days.

[glakes]

@Webweeb

If Amazon and Google merged, I could see them hand picking all politicians to create an even more favorable environment. Imagine the merged company using the US Military to force countries to outlaw competing companies in other countries. It's a crazy thought I know, but both politicians and regulators here in the USA are not working in the best interest of competition and the overall economy.

Bad day for Google traffic and not one conversion from them either. Pathetic...

[StupidIntelligent]

@glakes - your Amazon traffic is dead today?

[glakes]

@StupIntelligent

Yes, Amazon is dead as well.

[Dooku]

@MOSXU:

"“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”

How one can prove this? "

Off course there is no way to prove this, unless you can physically check their data centers and servers. I was just stating what technically is possible and it's quite easy actually. The best we can hope for is maybe an ex G employee whistleblower finally is struck by some moral principals and maybe tells the story of G?

[glakes]

@StupidIntelligent

Do you sell on Amazon as well? How are your sales? Even if you don't sell on Amazon, do you have any theories?

I just checked our products on Amazon and noticed a spike in product reviews (they were positive). That's unexpected since Amazon makes it more difficult for buyers to leave product reviews for those items sold by sellers that ship themselves.

What is selling good for me today are mostly items that nobody else in the world makes.

[StupidIntelligent]

@glakes - all theories lead to a very long and arduous road tolled by G.

[StupidIntelligent]

In other words, I'm as blind as the rest of the passengers on this boat riding the rough sea.

[aristotle]

Different is one thing, but wouldn't account for Bing/Yahoo producing four times the conversions on just a fraction of Google's traffic.

For most sites, a higher percentage of Bing/Yahoo traffic comes from desktop users. Traffic from google search includes a higher percentage of phone and tablet users. Note that I'm referring to percentages, not absolute numbers.

For informational sites, phone users may be looking for one small tidbit of information, whereas desktop users probably want more detailed information.

Phones and tablets tend to be used more for recreation and entertainment than are desktops.

If I buy something from the web, I always use a desktop to place the order. I would suspect that many other people do the same. As I said, people coming from Bing/Yahoo are more likely to be on desktops. This could explain why they are more likely to place an order.

[westcoast]

Well our traffic has just been destroyed the past few months. Every week is just a steady, slow grind lower. This from a 25 year old website that remains top in its niche.

I just don't know if there's anything that can be done. No change, it seems, makes any difference. It's just lower, lower, lower.... lower....

[ichthyous]

Well our traffic has just been destroyed the past few months

Just over the last few months? May 4th update was bad, but so was the January update, and all the slimy tactics Google has pulled since 2018.

[topaz]

Appears they fixed discover today. Both my 20-year-old and a 9-month-old news sites are getting a huge surge in traffic again after huge losses around aug 5-7. The sites get a lot of organic traffic without discover, but WITH it ..there's 70% more organic traffic for the first one, and 93% for the second. I try not to rely on it .....but it sure hurts when it's gone.

It almost seemed as though they had problems with indexing, and as well as matching stories to people's interests.

[Athedian]

Traffic has been increasing steadily for me for the past few days since that "glitch" G had. But is it "good, converting traffic"? I don't think so. Conversions are poor, just lots of traffic surging to the site.

I did see bounce rate dropping significantly but again, does that lead to better conversions? Not at the moment. Really seems like another storm is brewing. What in the world is Google doing right now for the last four days?

[Webweeb]

LOL the spam is getting worse. 1 moth ago, there were still actual websites ranking on page 1s in my niche. Mostly scrapers, but still they were ranking and they were not obvious spam.

Now I see almost no websites at all ranking on page 1, only 1 scraper is still ranking.

Now its all spam google sites, spam pins, spam company profiles, spam t shirts, spam youtube videos, spam crowd funding profiles, spam PDFs.
Spammers money sites are not ranking at all, which is impressive, but their spammy backlinks are.

This does not feel real. This is too funny to be real.

I think my niche is so spammy that Google trained its algo to not rank websites at all. So now all that ranks is spam on authority websites, since they are too authoritative to get filtered.

[Athedian]

Wow... bots are going crazy on my site right now, 73% jump in traffic right now. Something's definitely going on with Google.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I'm so tired because all of this. Google keeps its endless insanity for almost a year now for me. I can't be sure in anything with such policies - how can I produce a great content in such an enviroment? Just trying to keep my efforts, but that's becomes trully painful and non-efficient.

[MayankParmar]

Still waiting for the core update.