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.

[HereWeGo123]

@MayankParmar - yep, same. I remember I was sitting at a coffee shop meeting early morning (U.S.) when I saw the pre-announcement tweet that the update will begin rolling out soon. I began seeing increases and dances that same evening. The only difference was, last year, when the Sep update came out, it was exactly 3.5 months after that previous June 2019 update. This time, we're already 4.5+ months in and still no update. yep, Everyone I spoke to who follows this stuff is eagarly awaiting the update this week. :) Good luck everyone.

[ViktorN]

@TalkativeEditorial financial news blog, around 500K visits/month. We didn't update AMP4WP for the past year or so (version 1.0.40), because we heard of reported issues. However, we will likely update to the newest version tomorrow. What about you?

@MayankParmar this is exactly what I see. not only US and UK have dropped, but most of Europe. Is there a cause for this bug? did you find anything?

[RedBar]

SERPs seemingly normal but low PVs so far today however that is mainly to do with many 1/2/3 PVs per visitor rather than 10/20/30. This often occurs for me, a trade visitor will be fixed upon 1/2/3 products whereas Joe Public visitors have found the Holy Grail of widget information and view loads of pages.

[MayankParmar]

@ViktorN I'm also using a one-year-old version of AMP4WP and I wouldn't update it until the core update (too risky).

The AMP drop definitely appears to be a Google's bug. I do have traffic from Asia and Africa as before. If I had issues with the site, Discover will drop everywhere, but it's limited to those countries where the glitch was reported.

My theory is that they rolled out the August glitch in the US, UK and a part of Europe, which is why we're seeing Discover drop in those regions only. The glitch is still not fixed for affected Discover publishers :(

[TalkativeEditorial]

@ViktorN using the most recent version of AMP4WP - it has been fine for us - we struggled for a few days after the glitch, then recovered. But now it is exactly the same pattern as for you. Down to non-existent of Discover over the last week.

[samwest]

Well...here we go on the roller coaster ride again. You haven't heard from me for a week or so...because traffic and conversions magically returned last week...actually since my last post.

Now...after a near record week with no apparent changes in the serps..its right back to throttled zombie traffic...again with no serp chages.

Last week was clearly a natural pattern...but Monday it went right back to drip pattern...never more than two at a time. Its so obvious.

High percentage of foreign country traffic.

Something nefarious is at play...somewhere...again.

[MayankParmar]

5.1 Semrush in the US.

[RedBar]

its right back to throttled zombie traffic

I'm not seeing many zombies however lower traffc levels are across ALL my sites even the specialist widget, regional UK ones with seemingly no change in the SERPs.

My SERPs are clean browser searches therefore I have absolutely no idea what's happening to fully-loaded history and cache ones! Nothing like mine I would guess:-)

[BoredMeteor]

Maybe the next update is taking so long because their last one was such an embarrassment. They want to get it right!

lol...wishful thinking.

[MayankParmar]

Indexing issues for anyone? Seems delayed for us.

[RedBar]

It's interesting that whilst G traffic seems slower than usual that DDG had its all-time record yesterday, hmmm.

[BoredMeteor]

Lost another page one keyword to a Pinterest page linking back to my website. Stolen image, copied text. Whatever. Shouldn't be happening.

There is literally nothing I can do right now to improve my situation with Google. I've done everything I can from my end. It's up to Google to decide, on a whim, to maybe stop filtering my website some day.

SEO is pointless when they're intentionally holding you under the water.

[janvitos]

I had a bit of hope since I had an article that got picked up by Discover last Friday. The relatively small influx lasted for around 2 days and then died down, and now I've had almost zero Google News or Discover traffic for the past two days.

If you look at this screenshot, you will see what kind of traffic I had before and what I have now. [imgur.com...]

Since the drop, which started August 28 for me, I had 3 articles that got picked up by Discover with low traffic from categories that very rarely got picked up before. It's like Discover has reclassified my website from its original category to a new category and will now only show articles from that new category. Or maybe it always picked up articles from that new category, just very rarely and I didn't notice, and has simply removed my website from the other, much more popular category, which is also one of the main categories of my website.

[RedBar]

what I have now. [imgur.com...]

Is it just me or is anyone else only seeing plain black screens at imgur?

Bear in mind I access WebmasterWorld with an "older" system!

[TalkativeEditorial]

@janvitos Discover is a never-ending battle for a lot of publishers. Here's our current situation,
Wiped off existence since Sunday after recovering from 10 August glitch which also wiped our existence. There are lots of publishers (including some here) who have never recovered.

@RedBar - no issues with imgur here.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Anyway, I see the sensor tools are spiking somewhat again. SERPS are moving for us a bit, but not that much more than expected.
How is it looking for everyone else?

[MayankParmar]

Semrush spiking again in the UK and Spain. No movements.

Discover remains flat. Is the above Discover graph for the US, UK traffic, @TalkativeEditorial?

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MayankParmar correct, yes. Our pattern has been a bit different to yours. We got hit with the glitch (US/UK vanished). Recovered with US/UK traffic, then vanished against at the start of this week - exact same pattern as ViktorN.

[MayankParmar]

If Discover issues were not enough, scrappers enjoying Top Stories is ridiculous! I just published one article, scrapper scrapped it instantly and is in Top Stories while I'm not! The article has been rewritten using Spinbot. What scrappers are getting right that I'm not?

There's a great thread on Twitter highlighting the very same problem: [twitter.com...]

[BushyTop]

Seeing some shifts this morning, particularly on mobile.

[MayankParmar]

I'm seeing odd and unrelated results for some queries :/

[TalkativeEditorial]

I'm seeing odd and unrelated results for some queries

Same here. More unrelated and strange than usual, too. Also seeing complaints about Search Console being down.

[TalkativeEditorial]

And there goes SEMRush off the charts again for the US SERPs.

[Webweeb]

Maybe the next update is taking so long because their last one was such an embarrassment. They want to get it right!

lol...wishful thinking.

New head of search... bugs... covid... What a lovely time to release such a buggy update. Looks like a last screw you by the old head of search to me.

I would not be surprised if the next update is 'the rise of skywalker' update, undoing most of whe may one.

[learnseo81]

Posting after a long time. :)

The last update was a mess for us also and we lost nearly 60% of organic traffic overnight. After May 2020 update, our site is going down and down. We lost all featured snippets (had more than 100). Once the website drops in a core update, Google's algo applies an invisible penalty (or say a ranking suppression) to the whole domain, and even the highest quality stuff can't rank. It really doesn't matter what is the content quality or what is the authority. Google internally updates the "site's score" in such a way that it can't go beyond a certain traffic point.

We have made many changes to the website in the meantime, but the website won't move an inch. We are also waiting for the core update to see if it makes any difference. In our niche, spammers are ranking on the top, having almost zero content on the pages. If a good page outranks us, that is perfectly fine, but when the scrappers rank high, it hurts us a lot. My thoughts on the core update:

1. Core updates are more or less, judging / creating / modifying the profile of a particular website.
2. Google creates an internal profile of a particular website based on those so-called signals like relevance, content, backlinks, topical authority etc.... They also maintain the core update scores of a particular website internally (may sound funny, but my theory).
3. When the core update rolls out, google UPDATES the authority profile of that website.
4. Depending on the new score, the website can drop or rise in multiple core updates subsequently. The gains or losses will apply to the entire domain (sudomains treated as a separate domain).
5. When the next core update rolls out, the google turns dials on the various signals and even withdraws some of them. That's why websites can recover without changing anything.

We dropped in September 2019 core update and then gained all our rankings back (more than double of what we had in September) in January 2020 core update and then lost all the gains in May 2020 core update and sliding down and down. More or less, we are at the level of September 2019 level and an invisible penalty is applied on the website.

From January 2020 to May 2020, we could update a page and the ranking will soar very naturally and even rank in featured snipped in less than 2-3 days. That because the algorithmic suppression was not in place. Now, if we do the same thing (add more quality content), we drop even more. There is a ranking suppression in place and the website's profile DOESN'T meet with Google's profiling of authority.

That's why sites impacted by a core update can't recover before another update rolls out (In most cases). Just my thoughts and we hope the next update brings in some good news for all of us. Google knows that they have taken some wrong signals into account and that's why taking more time to roll out the next update. Just my positive thought.

Sorry for any funny stuff but this is what I think about the core update. The core updates are more or less a piece of software and certainly there is a huge room for the error. It is my strong belief that next update will correct many problems and each iteration will have some false positives. We are just trying to create the best content in our niche and waiting for good things to happen.

[jediviper]

@learnseo81
How is your EAT implementation?

[learnseo81]

@jediviper We run an e-commerce website and EAT is less important for us. In our niche, even the top 10 ranking sites don't have any kind of EAT implementation. Our content is trustworthy for sure because it is written by a person having 15 years of first hand real experience. No website has that kind of content, real insights, stories and actual helpful custom made videos.

I track some medical websites (just because I want to learn), and saw that even after proper EAT implementation, the websites drop and surge like a Yo Yo in every core update. In my purview, EAT is important but not to the extent one may think.

[RedBar]

I have seen a significant movement for my #1 term in its top 10, I have moved from 3 > 1, they have gone from 1 > 5, a useless ebay listing is at #2, at #4 is a Pinterest listing referencing me, the remainder are shuffled around a bit.

The former #1 has been there for at least 2 years therefore I would normally say this is a very significant move however with current traffic levels, I doubt it!

[southernguy]

Over the last several months my Google traffic has tanked across several sites, it has been this way for months. on a positive note, my Bing and DDG traffic keeps increasing slowly but surely which is at least allowing me to cover expenses. The biggest traffic increase has been over the last two months, if it keeps up like this I am optimistic conversions will improve as more people continue to switch, it seems some people are finally noticing that Google sucks.

[MayankParmar]

Massive movements//odd results. SEPRs look partially different for some queries :O

[edited by: MayankParmar at 2:15 pm (utc) on Sep 23, 2020]