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]

My News/Discover traffic dropped on August 5 and there's no sign of recovery yet. Usually, I drop or rise during a core update. For the first time, I got hit by an unknown update :(

[FullMetalCoat]

What may have looked like a rollback for some during the Aug 10 glitch, was to me something more than that as we saw ranking changes too beyond the scope of the rollback. Yesterday as well we saw numerous ranking changes, which have now gone back to how they were a few days previous so it looks to me like something is being tested and prepared.

[widgetized]

After noticing a negative spike on 4th August in GSC, I'm left with no conversions on my website. Wondering what is Google up to now...

[RedBar]

Following the "test glitch" traffic across all sites is back to their new higher averages and substantially higher than a "normal" August.

All businesses are also reporting much better business than they would traditionally have during this holiday month.

What September will bring with English and Welsh schools going back and the suggested lockdown of pubs etc to emable this is mere speculation.

[Dooku]

@Webweeb, " the 'glitch' was a 2-3h rollback of the May 4th Update for me. "
Exactly! And possible disabling of the AI for a few hours?
Because when I checked my keyword rankings during that glitch I noticed they were (almost) ALL at the exact same ranking location as on May 1, 2 and 3, just before that May core update.

Obviously G knows the serps are garbage and probably the probems are bigger than they care to admit. They would do such a "revert" test for a few hours ONLY if they did not have a better solution at hand as a test.

[glakes]

I woke up this AM to an abnormally high number of Amazon orders.

If the glitch is fixed, then why are SERP tools showing a lot of volatility? Another algo update or a continuation of Google trying to recover from the bug? Maybe Google's wreck it Ralph engineers will come to the rescue or they did by fixing one problem and creating a dozen others.

[RedBar]

" the 'glitch' was a 2-3h rollback of the May 4th Update for me. "

Definitely not for me, I was seeing sites I had never, ever seen before interspersed with bizarre eBay / Alibaba and the ilk results not normally ranked, really messy and mixed-up for my sector.

The ads looked completely normal, of course.

[Dooku]

If anyone is interested in checking the serp flux in all 6 major flux checkers like MOZ, SemRus, SerpMetrics...etc...etc than create a new Notepad text file and change the file extension to cmd. Give it any name you like.
Open that new cmd file in Notepad and copy paste the text below in that file:

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
start "Firefox!" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -url "https://moz.com/mozcast/" -url "https://www.advancedwebranking.com/google-algorithm-changes/" -url "https://algoroo.com/" -url "https://www.rankranger.com/rank-risk-index" -url "https://serpmetrics.com/flux/" -url "https://www.semrush.com/sensor/"


Than save that file to your desktop, doubleclick that cmd file and it will open all serp flux check websites in one go in Firefox. It's interesting to see the difference between the serp flux checking websites, some pick up volatility faster.

[samwest]

Wondering why mobile results include thumbnail images yet not on desktop...desktop and laptop results are bland text with plenty of wasted real estate. Desktop results look pretty much like they did 20 years ago. Boring.

My guess is that images make organics more enticing...but Gorg would much rather you click on their ads.

GART is locked up this morning...so looking like the 'glitches' continue. All Zombie.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is normal, and multiple conversions back to back since yesterday. However my ranking is still quite a bit lower on average than before this "glitch".

Hopefully on next update of my tracking app it will show that everything has returned to normal with regards to my ranking, which was heading steadily upward over the last month. These days ranking and actual traffic don't correlate very strongly for me though. But higher traffic almost always means more conversions...I don't seem to have the Zombie problem others see.

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:14 pm (utc) on Aug 12, 2020]

[Webweeb]

@RedBar
Exactly the opposite here. My SERPS are usually parasite spam that constantly gets replaced as sites delete it and Google removes it, the glitch/rollback solved it for a few hours it seems. In practice it was a rollback of the May Core Update for me.

However, it was probably just that the feature that makes spam rank in my niche since may got disabled. Whatever weird AI it might be that determines that the users are looking for thin, keyword-stuffed content with multiple bitly links and links to deindexed sites aka spam,

Or an alternative theory is that the may core update made certain anti-spam rules obsolete, since it may have changed the basics the anti-spam filters were built on, allowing obvious automated spam to rank again. Either way it cant be fun to be the Google WebSpam Team right now.

[JesterMagic]

Our site didn't see anything from the Glitch on Monday August 10th but we did see for 9 hours on the morning of August 11 an increase of 40-50% in traffic. GA registered it as direct traffic but looking through our own logs the extra traffic doesn't appear to be bots and was just a general increase in traffic spread out over the entire site. Our popular pages received more traffic than the not so popular ones but the percentage increase of each page was somewhat the same. Reminded me of what happens when a Google update affects our site in a positive way.

[KaseyM]

Having done quite well over the past few days, our traffic has now dropped off a cliff.

[ichthyous]

I woke up this AM to an abnormally high number of Amazon orders.

I saw the same thing direct to my site, not through amazon...whenever Google has an update (or apparently a glitch) my traffic zooms and conversions get stronger...just like the old days before Google throttled the sh!t out of everyone's traffic and skimmed all the converting traffic off the top. It just really puts into sharp focus how much Google is intervening to ensure that we all do not get any benefit from ranking well in organic search anymore.

[RedBar]

@samwest

I wonder what percentage of mobile users perform "serious" research? Sure, I use mobile search however only usually in the pub in the evening when we're discussing things, usually music-related, however for serious research I only use desktop since I prefer the screen space and using a mouse plus keyboard.

@Webweeb

In which general secor are you? You've probably mentioned it before:-)

As much as I have berated G over the years in my sector, specialised construction products, I have seen an improvement over the last 12 months to the point whereby I do sometimes use G instead of DDG / Ecosia.

[Webweeb]

WOW how spammers manage to somehow constantly upload PDFs to .gov and .edu websites and rank that stuff page 1 even after its deleted is a mystery to me.

Anyone else seeing this?
I just saw 3 deleted PDFs ranking page 1.

@RedBar
Im in one of the most spammy niches there are. The rules here are quite different. Google had it under control until May 4th, now the floodgates of spam are open. I'm sure the algo works for most SERPS just fine, else they would not have pushed it to live. But over here it is not working at all.
Glad you are doing fine. I guess thats the job we chose. Good times, bad times all riding on the decisions of one company.

[edited by: Webweeb at 1:30 pm (utc) on Aug 12, 2020]

[ichthyous]

I wonder what percentage of mobile users perform "serious" research?

@Redbar You're showing your age. I also do not use the phone for serious research, but most younger people use phones for everything. Almost half my inquiries now are from mobile...and my site loads well, but doesn't get great mobile ratings in PageSpeed

[insideout]

google's mess is still going on... crappy SERP.. traffic didn't go back to normal....

[RedBar]

You're showing your age.

Am I?

Daughter 32, grandson 11, both use their mobiles like I do, both do serious stuff on their laptops, they have done this naturally, not through me teaching them.

Almost half my inquiries now are from mobile

Yep however many of my enquiries are from countries where their only access is by mobile, I've actually completed multi-million Dollar deals solely by WhatsApp.

I don't feel is it simply an "age" thing, I see many of our 20-30 year olds reverting to PCs and laptops to really scrutinise invoices, shipping documents etc ... and then there are older eyes!.!.!

I used to have a Lumia 1520 and 950XL using Continuum on a a big HD screen ... that was awesome.

[renatovieira]

@insideout - For sure! Today things here are horrible again... :-(

Apparently it was not a glitch, but something big and programmed.

[Willi pazuti]

Aqui também começou a bagunça novamente, afff !

[renatovieira]

@Willi pazuti - Escreva em inglês...

[Willi pazuti]

Here the mess started again, afff!

[ichthyous]

Traffic levels seem normal enough, but what isn't normal is the composition of the traffic. Google has taken away USA traffic and replaced it with traffic from Iran, Moldova, Cambodia, Egypt, Romania etc.

Highly converting Australia and UK traffic is now alternating...I either get one or the other. UK traffic has been 7-10% of my total traffic for 15+ years, but now some days down to almost zero. Other days my Australia traffic (4% of total) is zero. That just started in the last ten days.

It strikes me that Google is able to see which visitors actually convert on your site and removes that traffic. Could just be paranoid thinking on my part, but the altered traffic pattern is plain as day. Google has all the data about your site and is looking to inflict maximum pain on your business by taking away what works and leaving the rest.

[EditorialGuy]

The glitch didn't affect us, as far as I can tell. Yesterday's Google traffic was up about 4.6 percent over the previous Tuesday, which is in line with our recent trend (a trend that owes more to the reopening of European domestic tourism than to Google). Maybe certain types of sites or queries were affected more than others?

[RedBar]

Here the mess started again, afff!

Yep, I'm seeing a shake-up in G.com with non-USA companies being hit plus several almost duplicate consecutive pages ... the big winner at the moment seems to be Home Depot in my sector who just so happen to be supplied by the #1 result!

Off to check other g.tlds

[Webweeb]

The August 10th 'glitch' shows they can turn the thing that makes spam rank off, but they are simply not doing it.

Their loss... I will make fun of the bad results until they are gone and the videos will stick around for decades to come. I will make sure of that. - Might even record some footage for future use.

Its actually a really good way to show your authoritativeness before a sales pitch.

[Fabinho]

Hello,

I am new here. I arrived at the forum after searching the web a lot looking for cases similar to our portal, because here in Brazil I found few in the same drastic situation. We were affected by the May core update. Our domain has authority in our niche (entertainment news) which we are pioneers in our country with 20 years of activities. After a true record of hits in April and early May, we saw our organic traffic turn to dust from May 5th onwards. If the effects of the pandemic and the economy weren't enough, we were drawn by the algorithm's lottery, which unreasonably removed our articles completely from Discover cards (Results carousel and Articles suggested in Apps), in addition to an overwhelming drop in Google News, Search for images and search terms for our niche on Serp. In these cases our articles will only be shown close to normal if the terms are searched through the filter by date.

After three months of suffering seeing our organic search traffic go all the way to competitors and to sites that clone our content, on August 10 for a few hours we realized that the search results where we appeared before May, partially returned on Google News and Serp (although the traffic from discover remained zero). But the joy lasted only a few hours.

Once again this was felt only through our portal, among dozens of Brazilian publishers with whom we are in contact. I launched a movement here with big websites and affected portals where we discussed the issues and we are looking to launch some action together to get answers about such errors / updates. But I still feel like a separate case because none of these publishers were affected as our portal, which today only has 10% of traffic from before.

I see some cases similar to ours in the international community, French and Italian sites. I don't know why I was chosen in Brazil. Although our data center is in France, I don't know if this can be an influencing factor.

I hope here in the forum, in addition to finding information, collaborating and discussing possible solutions to our serious problem. Count on me and my best wishes to all those affected!

[edited by: Fabinho at 5:20 pm (utc) on Aug 12, 2020]

[renatovieira]

@Fabinho

I am also from Brazil, but my main sites operate in the US and UK.

I don't know how the updates are in Brazil, but my sites suffer daily with these small updates and tests that the G does continuously.

It's an insane roller coaster. I never know what the next day will be like.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Fabinho

Why do you host in France?

Are you using a .com.br?