Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2020

[RedBar]

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System: The following 5 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5004404.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 6:16 pm on Sep 1, 2020 (utc -5)

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I know some of you are not going to like this however here are my metrics for August 2020:

Global B2B Site 1 PVs v July +27.7%, v August 2019 +332%

Global B2B Site 2 PVs v July 22.9%, v August 2019 +299%

UK Hotel / pub PVs v July 60.3%, v August 2019 +40.25%

All other sites have shown excellent traffic increases, several with their busiest month ever for instance:

UK Specialist widget site v August 2019 +212.2%

The B2B sites ought to continue to show growth as I add more specialist widgets, the interesting thing will be my melding of 90% of Site 2 into Site 1 as from today, 1st September.

Realistically I cannot see the hotel / pub site doing more simply because we're not adding any more information plus the live music scene is still not happening other than selected outdoor acoustic sessions and with the end of the Government's Eat Out to Help Out promotion we expect the food service to drop considerably.

All-in-all, for an August, a quite unexpected traffic month plus all the respective businesses are reporting good enquiries and real sales which is the real test insofar as I am concerned.

[samwest]

@redBar - Congratulations...enjoy it while it lasts...
I had a similar bump in early March, but it was all taken back...then moved even lower and then flattened out.
It's a total zombie fest today.


Mods note: StickyMail spammer turned off. Thanks.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:54 am (utc) on Sep 2, 2020]
[edit reason] Removed note re StickyMail spammer [/edit]

[glakes]

@RedBar

Congrats. Good to see some positive news for once. Question though... Has the increased traffic produced increased revenues?

[RedBar]

Has the increased traffic produced increased revenues?

Absolutely for all businesses.

I'm quite surprised for my widgets since we do a lot of large project work such as malls, hotels, office blocks etc and with so much working from home and less holidaying etc I did expect that to really slow down but it hasn't. Having written that I have to say that ALL the big enquiries are not from the traditional Western countries.

With the big UK Govt Eat Out promotion the hotel / pub expected to be busy however it has been quite extraorfinary with the restaurants performing incredibly, quite often 3 X covers in a day and reservations only.

Fingers crossed it keeps up!

[jmorgan]

Noticed a drop in traffic yesterday compared to the week before. Not really sure what it's related to.

Anyone else notice anything?

[Webweeb]

Its calm right now. I hope the next core is incoming and fixes this mess.

4 months of runaway spam. Love it.

The best thing is I know only an update can make me rank again, since all they rank right now is actual spam. There is literally nothing I can do to rank, since I am not a .edu PDF or some parasite spam page on google sites or similar, which is literally the only thing that ranks page 1 anymore.

[MayankParmar]

I hope they dedicate one core update to spam sites problem.

[shadowlight]

August 2020 for me, traffic up 30% compared to August 2019. Steady conversions. Not a bad month.

This is despite the odd days where traffic was down, bounce rate shot up and conversions were rubbish.

2020 has definitely taught me how to manage stress levels, been a bit of a roller coaster to say the least lol

[BushyTop]

Also noticing a drop in organic despite a marginal bump in visibility. Update finally on its way?

[glakes]

@RedBar

Let's hope your new traffic highs become the new floor which is built upon and can improve further. Your positive results give hope to many.

For me, I can't seem to win with Google. When I get more traffic from them, the quality of the traffic drops and offsets any expected increase in revenue. Despite this, I've been able to grow without much help from Google. July sales were 60% better than 2019 and August sales 30% better. I'm in the very early stages of negotiating terms for our products to be stocked in a national store. The deal, if it pans out, could easily be worth a high 7 to low 8 figures. If I close this, I'll tell both Amazon and Google to go to hell and focus on what I do best - producing innovative and high quality products instead of worrying how the big two are going to shake me down next...

[RedBar]

Let's hope your new traffic highs become the new floor

Hopefully I can consolidate my own sites at this level for a while because, being totally honest, my Indian factory and supply chain is struggling to cope with demand owing to Covid with many workers simply not turning up even though we don't have a Covid problem.

Our Chinese and Italian production facilities are both back in full production therefore I shall be promoting their widgets more over the next few months.

[Webweeb]

The spam algorithm does not stop ranking more spam either.

MIddle of May my average position was 22 down from under 10, now 4 Months later its 32. Week by week more spam PDFs, more google sites, more parasite spam pages, more spam pins...

If this spam ranking algo continues, I will literally be deindexed and replaced entirely with spam. - How Google is not noticing this is miraculous to me.

But I guess the sad reality is. It came with core update, it can only be solved by a core update. So maybe soon, maybe another 4 months, maybe 8 months, maybe a year. Never? I doubt that. - It just sucks to get screwed like that because some nerds in California wanted to push an unfinished and buggy update to live on may the 4th.

Or maybe this update was just a troll by the old head of search that wanted to make life as difficult as possible for his successor. Seen that kind of thing in many workplaces.

[RedBar]

Well, the next core update which could be in the next 3 weeks should be the old "Xmas" update and that ought to be it until the post-Xmas / early New Year update.

Just supposing the next update does not improve your situation, what will all of you do who've been struggling / Google slapped?

Wait another 4 monhs, making 8 months, to see what happens, or try and do something about it?

New site, retire, find a job elsewhere, give up altogether?

Surely you can't continue without some sort of significant improvement(s)?

[StupidIntelligent]

@RedBar - Pack it up and fill up the McDonald's job application.

[MayankParmar]

Indexing issues are back :/

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar there's a Twitter thread about that. Are you affected?

Discover is still AWOL for us. Indexing seems OK, but haven't checked very far back. Wonder if these are linked (old content showing because it is delayed indexed?)

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial I'm affected - indexing is delayed by almost six hours.

Discover remains flat in the US/UK/CA and it's doing OK in other regions but CTR has dropped to 3% because Discover appears to be surfacing the same content for straight two-three days.

Day 1 - Article published - CTR 6
Day 2 - The same article remains live on Discover - CTR 4.9
Day 3 - Again same article on Discover - CTR 3.6

I wish Discover was more like Apple News. An option to promote articles of your choice would have been great.

[RedBar]

Is the majority of Discover traffic from Joe Public outside of regular work hours?

I never use it since I'm never logged-in to Google therefore I have NEVER seen it however unlike regular news stuff surely the total traffic must be a lot less than regular web traffic?

I have no idea, are there actually any statistics available for Discover traffic volumes by hours / country / device / etc?

[TalkativeEditorial]

Time varies depending on niche.

But if your niche is topical, then it can often be significantly more than regular web traffic - even if you have solid rankings.

There are no benchmark statistics, which is part of the problem - there is not even a dedicated support forum and Google's official line on the ranking factors seem to contradict what Discover does most of the time, which makes it hard to measure consistently.

However, if you're not getting any traction from there after a good run, you sure will notice it.

[jmorgan]

Nothing really confirmed about the alleged indexing issues, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions about that.

[MayankParmar]

Discover is huge. It was driving 60% of my Google traffic. 40% organic.

Indexing issue affecting news publishers appears to be fixed now.

[EditorialGuy]

Pretty much same old, same old for our Europe-focused editorial travel-planning site.

We had our usual summer peak in July, although it was a far lower peak than usual due to COVID-19. (Right now the problem isn't Google, it's the fact that a major source market--the U.S.--isn't sending travelers to Europe.)

[aristotle]

For years and years and years, one member of this forum would repeatedly report a 90% loss of google traffic. Wouldn't a long series of consecutive 90% losses make it hard for the site to survive? But after reading the recent posts in this thread, I'm starting to think my memory must be fuzzy

[topaz]

Still 0 discover traffic from US/Europe. But Canada returned today. It is weird.

[jmorgan]

Not really sure what's going on with my GA. Shows that users are noticeably down from last week, but sessions about the same, and pageviews are up.

On GSC, it says my impressions and clicks are up. And my ad impressions are also up on last week too.

So the only anomaly is users on GA.

[StupidIntelligent]

@aristotle - is this a reference to Redbar or Samwest. Sorry, I'm confused.

[MayankParmar]

@topaz Yeah. Still zero here as well.

[TalkativeEditorial]

also still 0 on Discover for all locations.
despite content showing up in the top stories section on the news carousel.

[RedBar]

@aristotle - is this a reference to Redbar or Samwest. Sorry, I'm confused.

Personally I did complain about a 90% loss in traffic over the ensuing months after the grand Google image theft of 10 years ago likewise so did many other image-intensive site owners at that time. I certainly have not complained about further traffic losses since then, AdSense earnings for sure, but not actual PVs.

Since those days I completely reconstructed my specialised widget sites to include lots more relevant trade information and further images plus videos.

Like many Internet projects, the job is never finished and even after 27 years of doing it there is always new stuff to learn and add.

That's the major difference between DIY sites and enploying developers, DIYers can always see room for additional improvements whereas developers generally work to a fixed brief, schedule and cost.

[Webweeb]

Well if you have enough sites / clients, you might lose 90% a few times and still be good to go.