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?

[Webweeb]

Runaway spam situation in my niche got much worse after the 'glitch' on the 15th.

I honestly struggle to believe it. I guess Google has just given up on my part of the internet. After 4 Months, I honestly don't have much hope left. It almost feels like some kind of inside job honestly. 4 pages of solid spam. Most of it gets deleted on a regular basis and replaced with new spam. 20+% of the results are deleted pages.

I never thought this kind of thing could happen. - I'm just so glad that at Google no humans with common sense ever look at the SERPs.

[MayankParmar]

Things with Google were OK for me until August 11 glitch happened and my entire Discover traffic disappeared over night! What sucks, even more, is that I am the only one affected.

[samwest]

A ridiculously and obviously throttled day today. single file traffic all day.

[MayankParmar]

Sweet Analytics bug just tripped my real-time!

Real time is currently broken :)

[hsingh]

Also back-links of my websites decreased on 1st August 2020. total 1391 back-links decreased. I don't know what happens with the links.

[samwest]

Worst week of the year so far....yet serps appear unchanged. 80% traffic drop. WTAF is going on?
Q3 numbers must be way down.

[insideout]

It looks like something very BIG is coming .. unusual traffic today. .

[glakes]

unusual traffic today. .

Strange traffic from Google yesterday too. They actually sent converting traffic...

[samwest]

@glakes - Looks like we are on opposite sides of the coin today. Poor traffic and zero conversions for the past 4 days. This follows a rather good prior week. Whatever is going on, I can feel it's going to be big. So far it's really upset our apple cart through very unusual traffic behavior and apparent clamping. I'm waiting for my "ketchup" day.

[glakes]

@samwest

There must have been some sort of slight update yesterday. In the last half of the day I saw traffic quality from Google improve. So far that quality is sticking, but we both know how that goes.

[NickMNS]

I saw an increase in traffic yesterday starting mostly around 2pm EDT, not huge up 16% from the previous week, but also more than after the august 11 "glitch".

[renatovieira]

Nothing unusual here. In my niche everything is calm...

Otherwise the same routine every day. At 12pm/4pm G turns off the keys.

FU**

[seomotionz]

Sweet Analytics bug just tripped my real-time!

Real time is currently broken :)

@MayankParmar In one of our site no matter how many visitors there were present on the site. It only showed 1.

Nothing unusual here. In my niche everything is calm...

Otherwise the same routine every day. At 12pm/4pm G turns off the keys.

FU**

@renatovieira Google throttles traffic every now and then. It's an usual phenomenon these days.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

@renatovieira Google throttles traffic every now and then. It's an usual phenomenon these days.

For the last 15 years (at least), traffic throttling and glass ceiling has been complained about.

[System]

The following 2 messages were cut out to new thread at: AMP 2.0 update for WordPress [webmasterworld.com]
7:51 pm on Aug 27, 2020 (utc -5)

Let's be careful to stay on topic.

[edited by: goodroi at 12:57 am (utc) on Aug 28, 2020]

[ichthyous]

With regards to Google Images traffic, an entirely new set of images is being ranked after the May update. Whereas before I had a lot of images ranking from my own site pages, now I've lost 50% of the image traffic to my own site and my images are regularly ranking on other websites where I have profiles or partnerships. Those profiles and partner pages all link back to the original image page on my site, so there are on-page signals to point Google back to the original source, but some of these pages on my own site are now appearing under "Crawled, not indexed". So the links pointing back to my pages have definitely become much less important in the algorithm after the May update. One can only hope that Google restores some balance, but it may also be that Google realizes that links are the past, and they intend to phase them out over time and depend solely on AI or whatever other ranking factors replace links.

[MayankParmar]

You can recover from images drop with the next core update. I have personally seen sites that almost died in a core update recovered without making changes in the next cor update.

I'm also waiting for the next core update before giving up on this mess.

[Webweeb]

@MayankParmar
True. Which shows how bad Google is at providing merit-based rankings.

You cant be the 'best' in the niche for 10 years, then be pushed to page 5 in one day. Then go back to being the best in another day.

What I have learned from this is that you always need reserves. You must be able to go with 0 earnings for at least 1 year at all times. Or you diversify your business, which is what I will have to do. I dont want to, but I have to.

Thats the reality of working for a monopoly. If the monopoly screws up, you are screwed.

The good thing is that if your site is actually the best, at least reality is on your side and the hope is that Google will catch up.

[MayankParmar]

@Webweeb Right.

Like every other software, Google is also far from perfect, but the problem with Google is that there's no way for us users or webmasters to reach out and flag a problem. The lack of transparency is totally unacceptable. My Discover traffic dropped overnight and there's no explanation. I checked on webmasters forum and found similar complaints where users reported a 100% drop in news traffic without a core update.

When a UK publisher dropped in 2018/2019, they reached out to Google and their traffic eventually recovered without fixing a single thing on the website.

How a scrapper is able to outrank me, but the same scrapper is unable to outrank a UK clickbait publisher (easy guess)? - it's so apparent that they treat publishers differently and their advocates still brag that Google cares only about original content or backlinks.

Truth is when Google's algorithm starts disliking a site, it would continue to do so. Links, good content won't help. You need another update to recover and you can drop again. This is a never ending rollercoaster ride that needs to be regulated, but it won't be regulated because top publishers are happy.

[Fabinho]

"I am the only one affected."

Hello @MayankParmar!

You are not the only one, but I see that we are rare cases.

It happened with me in the May 4 core update, completely removed from discovery. In News, Images and Conventional Search we were swept from the first pages of results.

Sad situation.

[Treud]

I see a reversion since the update 3 weeks ago. My keywords are back to where they are, traffic as well.

It’s a shift from position 120+ to 10th for some KW.

Last time I had this was 2 weeks ago for 2 days ....

[Webweeb]

@MayankParmar
Yep. Nothing one can do. Back in the day they still manually reviewed spam reports. Now they officially only use them in machine learning. So 0 ways to tell them about serious problems. My niche is clearly bugged with deleted spam ranking and Google can just live in blissful ignorance. No human will ever see it.

When it comes to spam and scrapers... at this point we don't even know if they are doing something to rank or if Google just ranks them.

If I was you I would still keep sending spam reports. Being persistent may pay off. Ill keep sending them as long as there is spam in my serps. All you can do is try.

[Webweeb]

@Treud
Yes, there was a glitch on the 10th / 15th of Aug. For some of us rankings went back to before the 4th of May for a few hours.

We dont know what it was exactly, but we of course hope it will soon be shipped to a Google near you.

[Treud]

@Webweeb
Today’s trend seems more normal. Yeah Google is preparing something. As usual :)

[Martin Ice Web]

Today’s trend seems more normal. Yeah Google is preparing something. As usual :)

Not here. Worst day since first panda release, And this update feels like a new panda run.
But wait it is a quality update.

So far this week is worst for google conversions but ever best on amazon. Poeple seem to move faster to amazon than before.

Danny Sullivan

His job is to help Google be more transparent and communicate better with the public at a time when it’s facing increased public scrutiny.

I realy can´t see this....

[Kash1111]

Where do I report all the pinterest spam? It seems a lot of the niches are taken over by pinterest, especially long tail keywords.

[glakes]

Where do I report all the pinterest spam?

Use the "send feedback" link at the bottom of Google's search results. But your feedback likely goes to a trash can. Amazon has feedback options for sellers as well, and I believe those also go right to the rubbish. There comes a point where businesses get so big and dominant that they become tone deaf, and I believe Google has been there for years.

If anyone has an example of where these reports genuinely produced any action from Google, I'd love to see it. I think these feedback options are simply designed to make webmasters feel as if they have some control over the entity that seeks to control and monetize them.

[MayankParmar]

Lol they ignore all the feedback and tweets. They're aware of Pinterest 'spam' but they just don't care. Or if they care, we'll never find out because of the lack of transparency. Bizarre company.

[Gautam1983]

Thanks for all the info guys. We're working on building up 'trust' with our content creation.

Fingers crossed we can get back up in search soon.

Any tips on how to become more trusted by google?

[Gautam1983]

@Gautam1983
Did you completely get Zeroed?

That usually means something else is wrong. I got a doorway penalty once that zeroed me.

Are you still indexed? Check your Webmaster tools.

March 17th was the COVID update... so medical related. I assume they wanted to get rid of any untrustworthy medical info, so authority and EAT was probably weighted more.
[edited by: Webweeb at 3:03 pm (utc) on Aug 26, 2020]

No, not completely zeroe'd - just fell on all our key terms simultaneously.