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?

[samanthaphilippe]

For my keyword, major brands are getting ahead, when they were non-existent on the first page. I wonder why Google prioritizes these major brands.

[insideout]

Anyone noticing a significant decrease in traffic today specially in Europe ? another Glitch ? The start of a huge Algo update ?

[glakes]

I wonder why Google prioritizes these major brands.

Trust. A superficial algorithm or AI that is incapable of ranking webpages has a much easier time filling the SERPS with major brands using an over-reliance on trust/brand authority instead of the actual page's topic authority.

[StupidIntelligent]

@insideout- is your traffic high on Sundays?

[insideout]

normally is not that high compared to during the week but It way lower than a normal Sunday. beside, Most of the websites I take care of did not recover yet from the last glitch :(

[Webweeb]

A spammer just popped up at #2 with a spam facebook page with 50k bot likes, leaving 50 comments per post saying 2 exact phrases....
...seems to me that this new algo is extremely easily manipulated by bot armies.

On the other hand I can ruin everything by reporting it. But then I dont have time to report the other 8000 spam posts that are outranking me.

Seems to me that with this update Google was like 'you either become a full time spam reporter or you get outranked'.

[samwest]

Strange stuff. Today I had a lot of converting traffic from Google. Is Google trying to play catch up?

@glakes...no such luck here today. Count your blessings as tomorrow it may fall off the cliff again.
Traffic is usually at the high point every Sunday, but today it's back to an apparent hard clamp and all zombies.
You can't win these days as they control everything right down to the nickel.

[topaz]

Discover traffic gone again for one of my sites...but this time not all of it, just all of the discover traffic from the US.
The site is news-related, on a topic that's popular/originated in a particular country. There's probably about 10 times as many people interested in the topic outside of the country...the majority of which are in the US.

In my checks, the site's articles aren't appearing in the discover feed for a few people I know in the US who previously got them. These people are following several Knowledge Graph entities (people, places, things) that the site writes extensively about. In fact, they aren't getting any articles from those entities from ANY website even though they explicitly follow them in Google News And Google Discover.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic was way off this weekend...all other traffic was fine. It seemed that Google was clamping USA traffic worse on M-F, but now weekends are included. USA traffic down about 12% yesterday and looks like much worse than that today. Also finding an increased number of pages that google has under "Crawled - currently not indexed".

[Treud]

According to GA the organic traffic is stable but the direct traffic is x3 yesterday. That’s not normal. Should back to normal today.

[Athedian]

Conversions died off, traffic though got continuous increase. Seems like the algo is trying to play a balance between the two right now.

[MayankParmar]

@topaz I'm in a similar situation. My US, UK traffic disappeared but I still have clicks from Discover in other regions. When did the drop start for you? It started on August 11 for me.

[samwest]

Welcome to Zombiefest. Suddenly clamped traffic..all non converting.

[ChokenBako]

For many keywords in my niche I search in my local language and get english results. This is funny, because where are a lot of websites which provides better answers that the english one. Do you see something similar within your sector?

Beside that:

If I search for my Imprint, I dont see it on the first page of the serps. Do you think my site is within a sandbox or something?

[glakes]

@samwest

Count your blessings as tomorrow it may fall off the cliff again.

Not quite off a cliff, but sales swung back to Amazon. Today Google must be pushing YouTube videos big time. I'm getting a lot of comments, with some spam, from our YouTube videos. This definitely is not normal.

[Webweeb]

Yes, since may Google has a serious problem with languages. I regularly see french, german, spanish, hindi and unknown languages ranking. Again... Google is a buggy mess right now. I think the May core update is the foundation they want to build on from now on, but its not much more than a foundation. No walls, no roof, no nothing. They released it wayyyyyyy to early. Whole niches are literally bugged....

I get it... optimizing something you wont use a year from now makes no sense. But then releasing something that is bugged to hell during a pandemic is just borderline sadistic.

But honestly, if Google cant nail something as basic as detecting a LANGUAGE... how are we supposed to trust them with actual rankings?

[ichthyous]

Those of you who think that a lot of this traffic loss and perpetual turmoil with Google are due to the hiccups of poorly implemented AI are being rather naive. Google has decided to sacrifice organic search in the name of profits, plain and simple. In order to monetize sites that were ranking just fine and weren't paying they are implementing a whole host of new strategies. All of it adds up to less organic traffic for everyone. They are hoping to throw everyone off center, shake you up, make trying to rank naturally pointless so you give up and pay them.

Yesterday I sat and watched a friend run a google search on his phone and freak out when he got one full page of ads, and then had to go to second page to find the site he was thinking of. This is a trillion dollar company, nothing they do is unintentional, or poorly implemented AI...that's just the smokescreen for the true intent. What they couldn't due to get rid of sites with great content, great design, and and great link profiles they will now accomplish by simply throttling your traffic to death and making sure you get only the least converting traffic to your site.

[Webweeb]

Do you think they released this update on May the 4th because it was ready or because it was funny?

You guessed correctly. I think the date itself is extremely good evidence that it is a buggy mess without all the actual field data. But yes, of course Google will chose profits if there is no downside. They are not a charity after all.

[mosxu]

The search box is suggesting only one company and even a major commercial keyword is replaced by that company in the search box:

It is “singularity” only one company being suggested when there are at least 10 competitors offering better prices and better service.

[jmorgan]

Still getting spikes for search impressions for a competitive query, before it goes straight back to zero again the next day on my SC. Wonder what's going on there.

[samwest]

@jmorgan - the more I see of Google algo or AI updates, the more it seems they work like this... [youtu.be...]

Horrible traffic this morning, ad filled garbage remains at the top. Foreign traffic and full on zombies. Yesterday had a few morning hours of conversion that turned ON and then OFF. Even had two conversions in the same minute. HTAF does that happen, followed by zero conversions the rest of the day? Fully throttled traffic....again.

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been quite a bit higher yesterday and today so far. USA traffic has been climbing, UK traffic very strong...and a big surge in traffic from South Korea, which I am seeing more often these days. No conversions whatsoever, and my bounce rate is back to 70%.

Checking GSC...on exactly May 4th my image search impressions and click started to fall off a cliff and settled 50% lower by early June. It has never recovered. Did anyone else see a huge loss of traffic from Google Images on May 4th?

[MayankParmar]

SERPs relatively stable since the glitches.

[freyahenry]

There was nothing amiss with the picture search. Google either totally changed how pictures rank or are simply utilizing GI as another club to hit us over the head with. Beginning from May fourth all the pictures I had positioning for short tail look dropped off. I am just positioning for quite a certain long-tail look through at this point. It took about a month of a consistent day by day decay to lose 66%.

<no links please>

[edited by: not2easy at 7:09 pm (utc) on Aug 25, 2020]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[ichthyous]

@freyahenry So you are seeing the same thing I am. I think they are just ranking an entirely different set of images now...probably because the pages the images were located on also lost rank, or they just totally devalued the links pointing to the images. I have seen minimal improvement in image search clicks and impressions since it hit rock bottom, so at this point it would need to double in order to recover.

[samwest]

The only common denominator I can find in my vertical is that heavily adsense monetized sites moved up. Monetized videos moved up. Images that lead to heavily monetized site moved up. Pretty obvious goal of this series of "glitches" and "updates".

[RedBar]

I can't actually believe I'm typing this in an August! As of today ALL sites under my control have exceded July's metrics.

The UK pub / hotel site has already had more PVs than March, April, May and June combined and they're still piling in.

Historical data suggests an uptick in September, really?

[samwest]

@RedBar - apparently you're doing something right

Pretty clear I'm not. [youtu.be...]

[NickMNS]

@samwest
You are not seeing things correctly.
You are one of the people in the line of cars following nicely, and Redbar is Jack going in the opposite direction, but pretty soon* he will run into Annette, (Google) who will put it him back into his rightful place at the back of the line.

* Soon, meaning next update.

[MayankParmar]

Well even update is not required... they can pull anyone down on a random day and call it a glitch.