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?

[ichthyous]

My rankings were demolished, but traffic seems normal...Sure seems odd that such a large company can have so many "glitches" which update results worldwide in such a dramatic fashion.

[MayankParmar]

An example of the glitch by Glenn:

[twitter.com...]

Sure, it looks broken but results for my keywords were normal.

I noticed improvements for multiple keywords and results were not glitched in any way. Perhaps it was an update with bugs and it will return again without those issues soon :)

[KaseyM]

We're doing quite well out of this glitch thus far. Entertainment news publisher.

[shadowlight]

Not buying it. It was an old index, even the comments on seroundtable indicate that. - Or rather the old core algo applied to the new index as my data indicates. I have strong evidence for that that I cannot share.

I guess you cant really AB test different core algos, so they had a 'glitch' instead. I hope they got the data they need to make a non-idiotic decision from it.

A glimmer of hope, since it strongly indicates that they are working on 2 core algos and one of them is not complete trash. Sadly its the one they dont currently use.

@Webweeb I think they are working on two algos as well and I'm guessing that one of them is for use in this case >>> [searchengineland.com...]

[faiyu]

glitch was good momentarily. But update come real soon for sure, Brace up!

[StupidIntelligent]

All is well that ends in a revert back.

[Webweeb]

@shadowlight I was thinking more along the lines of the post may core algo being a dead end, since it keeps ranking spam in many niches.

But its an interesting case. On one hand we dont want the algo to be known, since then the game becomes exploiting it. A game I personally hate to play. On the other hand we want it to be fair, since we know its not if Google is not held accountable. So there really is not good solution.

Also since Google is essentially a monopoly, when the algo screws up, it causes actual businesses to go bankrupt unfairly and there is nothing you can do about it. Noone you can call, noone to talk to. Spam reports are never read, simply plugged into machine learning. There might be an actual bug ruining your business, but since there is no real competition and Google doesnt care, you are s out of luck.

[glakes]

Shops are gone, affiliate sites have disappeared, serps are full of Amazon, ebay and news sites.

Sounds like the USA SERPS in my industry that appeared years ago and stayed. Maybe because your in the EU, and the regulators there have a spine, is why you haven't seen them before? In the USA Google is free to prey on small businesses by using predatory SERPS among other techniques.

[RedBar]

Whatever's happening is "not normal" and until the dust settles we know nothing at the moment.

One of my global B2Bs seems to have been unaffected whereas the other only seems to have been affected by actual traffic levels, the rankings appear to be "as before" yet the visitors are not and with it being August it's difficult to determine if B2B 2 has been affected.

It is imortant to note that B2B 1 traditionally has substantially more USA visitors than B2B 2.

[samwest]

Kinda looks like I called this one on August first...broken or glitch, same thing. Late yesterday the flood gates opened again. Lets see how long it lasts this time before the next "glitch".

[NickMNS]

Things went back to normal in the overnight hours, but traffic has been strong since 9am EDT. Not quite to where things were last night, but not too far. I'm not sure this is done yet.

[FullMetalCoat]

Anyone noticing any changes now, I'm based in Europe and seeing new results for my niche, but in the US still the old SERPs, live page stats seem more or less normal (ie. poor since the May update)

[Cralamarre]

Still no changes for me. I wouldn't even know there was an issue if I had not checked Glenn Gabe's Twitter feed yesterday. Note to self... stop checking Twitter.

[MayankParmar]

On Monday we detected an issue with our indexing systems that affected Google search results. Once the issue was identified, it was promptly fixed by our Site Reliability Engineers and by now it has been mitigated.

[twitter.com...]

[Webweeb]

Here a quick guide on how to use the current bad Google results to build your brand and attract customers:
1. Get screen recording software
2. Make a video about 'best XYZ' whatever is relevant to your niche
3. Start out by saying "If you recently Googled for 'best XYZ' you had the following experience"
4. Continue to make fun of all the spammy pins, spam listings, bad ads and spammy google answers, youtube videos, overpriced stuff, google books, irrelevant news articles ect.
5. Tell the viewer to instead Google your brand name and get legitimate product there
6. Automatic perceived authority by being able to confidently point out spam and low quality product
7. Profit + maybe Google will notice and fix your SERP
8. Bonus likes and profit if you manage to make the video funny and shareable

Together we can let Millions of people know how bad the current Google SERPS are and make money in the process.
Ridicule is the best cure for stupidity. So far it works great for me.

Be quick, the bad SERPS may not last forever... >>>But the videos will!<<< Also we all know Google loves to rank YouTube (for some inexplicable reason)

[shadowlight]

Perhaps it was an update with bugs and it will return again without those issues soon :)

I seriously hope the results i seen during this glitch never return. They were absolutely awful from what i seen.

[StupidIntelligent]

Indexing issue shouldn't impact ranking system.

[RedBar]

I seriously hope the results i seen during this glitch never return.

However what kind of "glitch" could deliver such results?

Dear Algo ... Instead of showing relevant results show utter garbage!

What kind of "glitch" is that?

Or is it a not-to-subtle hint to everyone, "look how easily and quickly we can completely screw-up the SERPs with one little piece of code"?

Throw us your ad money or else . . .

[shadowlight]

Throw us your ad money or else . . .

Yep thats exactly what it looked like. One search term i checked there were only 10 results. The rest were ommited completely, including a government site which is the epitome of EAT (but doesent buy ads). Very strange

[renatovieira]

Traffic is gone again. Has anyone noticed any fluctuation?

[OldFaces]

For us it was like we were back in 2015 again (in a good way) and saw a sizable lift in traffic for a few hours during the "Google Glitch". Google says it was an indexing issue..which I could understand would impact SERPs as there are more/less pages indexed.

For our unique case, we saw a traffic lift back to our levels that we enjoyed for about a 2 year period when most of our website was indexed. The vast majority of our pages have not been indexed since approx. 2016. This begs the question...for those pages that Google does not have indexed, they must have a table that stores all urls that are marked as 'do not index and show in search results' that temporarily were included in the indexed table?

[Webweeb]

OK, the webmaster tools data is in and I can confirm with extremely high certainty that the 'glitch' was a 2-3h rollback of the May 4th Update for me.

Not only the traffic numbers are an exact match, but also the rankings were back... the numbers in Webmaster Tools are exactly what I would expect for rankings being back for 10-15% of the day.

My current theory is that it was actually a test that caused glitches in SERPS that were not supposed to be tested. Hoping to see those rankings in the wild soon and not be outranked by spun parasite spam content. After 3000+ spam reports I am extremely tired of doing captchas and Google just keeps ranking the spam quicker than i can even report it.

[edited by: Webweeb at 12:13 am (utc) on Aug 12, 2020]

[ichthyous]

Recovered most of the ranking from last night, but still down 17% on top 3 rank terms and down 15% of 4-10 rank terms...not good. Let's hope by tomorrow all gone. Traffic is so far today is down 5% from yesterday

[OldFaces]

Interesting because for us at least, the May 4th update was positive. And yesterday's 'glitch' was also positive. So signs from our end show that it was not a rollback of the May 4th Update for us.

[Webweeb]

Well this is mostly well-informed speculation, but I believe that it is the 'Searcher Intent AI' that is ranking spun content and obvious spam in some niches. Some terms clearly get it extremely confused.

In my niche it is extreme to the point where it will literally rank pages that are 80% keyword-stuffing if they are on a authority domain. - Leading to funny stuff like deleted PDFs on university websites ranking. Literally empty pages ranking on page 1.

I suspect the test was disabling the AI. So unless your niche is one of the ones affected, you might not see a rollback, you might just see a slight increase / decrease in traffic. So the more this particular AI is influencing your niche, the more of a change you will see. Not sure if I should call it the 'Searcher Intent AI' or 'COVID AI', because it desperately tries to rank 'autorities' like universities for terms that universities have no business ranking for. Its extremely weird.

[edited by: Webweeb at 12:53 am (utc) on Aug 12, 2020]

[BoredMeteor]

Okay, so I checked Webmaster Tools and there was a definite spike for me yesterday that would seem to align with what everyone is talking about. I didn't know about the "glitch" as it was happening, so I didn't notice any real-time results (I'm taking a break from this stuff, anyway...dealing with Google is basically emotional abuse at this point).

I will say, I checked a certain keyword that I've been monitoring. No one searches for it, but it's one where I'm outranked by a blog that copy/pasted my content and linked back (and by "outranked" I mean I don't even show up). I keep tabs on some keywords like that as a sort of canary in the coal mine, instead of just DMCAing everything. Anyway, yesterday the other blog was gone and I was in its place, where I should be, being the original and all (and the fact that I happened to check during a "glitch" must've just been chance). Now today, things are back to their miserable normal.

I figure I'm under an algorithmic penalty or filter of some kind, and yesterday, for at least a while, that wasn't in place.

[glakes]

I figure I'm under an algorithmic penalty

Scrapers won't pay for traffic, but original sources will. The end user won't know the difference, but Google's wallet will which is why I believe they rank scraped content above the originals.

[Athedian]

Checked this morning, still seeing an influx of traffic so far. Somehow, I have a feeling another update is brewing. It's like the calm before the storm.

Oh, it's not like my site is doing any better. The traffic and everything will fall off the cliff once whatever update has come and gone.

[luongngocanh]

Everything has gone to normal :D

[samwest]

Traffic returned somewhat, but other than a short window this morning, it's all zombies...again. Lost of mobile, very little desktop.