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.

[ViktorN]

@renatovieira I really feel the same. We have a financial blog, average traffic of 500K since the start of 2020, but September will finish 300K if we are lucky. What is your site's niche?

[ViktorN]

@MayankParmar - popping up the question - why aren't you updating the WP4AMP plugin?

[ichthyous]

Anyone seeing a daily climb in clicks and impressions in GSC from Sept 13-20, then dropping right back down every day from the 21st-25th? It's as if a very slow and stealthy update is being rolled out in the last week or so...

[MayankParmar]

@ViktorN Too many new features, requirements for a separate schema plugin, potential compatibility issues, and the latest version is a memory hog.

The version that we both use is less cluttered. Although the plugin is outdated, AMP pages are working fine. I'm was also planning to try the official AMP plugin. It's very good now, almost as good as this plugin if you only care about the design. This Discover (issue) is due to a change made on their end - it has been reported by a lot of people on Twitter now.

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My deindexing situation hasn't improved at all. This is very likely to be a bug on Google's end because the Coverage report is not updated and that happened last year too when some reported canonical issues.

However, why they just can't be more transparent about indexing problems? I'm literally in a horrible situation with sleepless nights and I've been starring John's Twitter feed for his response. I'm watching the site die every hour because of their glitch and there's nothing I can do.

Sure, we all have quality issues and they've quality metrics, but nothing advocates for deindexation. They don't even deindex scrappers, adult sites, and other horrible contents.

I don't know what to fix and where to start. I do expect ups and downs after algorithm updates, but unnatural overnight deindexation is unexpectable for a site that has been heavily cited by all big publications and a company that is as big as Google.

[renatovieira]

@ViktorN - My niche: live streaming camera

[ViktorN]

@ichthyous you are describing exactly what I see.. I don't know if this makes me happier or not... but the traffic since Sep 22 is just decreasing.

[ViktorN]

@MayankParmar thanks for your reply. What do you mean separate schema ? I turned on and it takes it from Yoast .
I agree that the Discover issue is not related, but I feel the plugin is too out dated.
By the way, I have tested it in staging mode and everything seems to work well, but still didn't install it on the production.

[MayankParmar]

@ViktorN I think by default the plugin uses its own schema plugin unless you switch to Yoast. However, you're right - enabling Yoast schema should be enough and their schema plugin won't be required. Maybe you can avoid switch in the middle of Google's experiments/bugs/updates.

Also, regarding your traffic drop after 22nd - my deindexation problem started after 22nd too when the coverage report was last reported.

Don't trust the Google console reporting. It could be inaccurate. Manually check the keywords and confirm the positions. In my case, the traffic drop reflected in Console on 25th, but the drop started on 23rd itself.

[ViktorN]

@MayankParmar I witness changes mainly in GA. Regardless, the traffic drop is subject to the news performance which appears on Discover and Top stories. My keyword ranking tool has not seen any significant drop during the past month for the ranked keywords.
However, most of the traffic comes from the daily news, as we are a finance news blog.

[MayankParmar]

Coverage data just got updated

[ViktorN]

@MayankParmar I just discovered something very suspicious, that might be related to your problem.

GSC shows a constant decrease of indexed AMP pages since Sep1.
While our site added around 400 posts since then, the number of valid indexed AMP pages had dropped from 4400, till it's monthly low at 4100 today (instead of showing 4800). Very strange. This definitely relates to AMP, where the missing traffic comes from (Discover and top stories mainly).
In the "regular" coverage I dont see any problems - the number is growing daily like it should.
I still think the fact that we both use an older version of AMP4WP could have relationship.

[KaseyM]

@ViktorN - seeing the same. AMP pages and all sorts of other URLs with query strings attached to the end showing up in indexing.

Webmaster tools is also sometimes using its own incorrect canonical.

Something is busted.

[ichthyous]

AMP pages and all sorts of other URLs with query strings attached to the end showing up in indexing.

KaseyM - My GSC Coverage tab is showing hundreds and thousands of urls with query strings that haven't related to my site for over four years. Google is taking the old query strings from my old site an appending them to urls that never used them. What's more, this didn't start until this year so it's not anything on my site.

I have employed 301 redirects to clear them up in bulk via htaccess, but the count is not declining. Also, lots of urls showing under Coverage with the word "effect", "widget", "core", "mouse", "button" or "position" appended to the end....by the hundreds. I used 301s to clean that up too. Is this part of some blackhat attempt to get urls indexed that don't appear on the site?

[KaseyM]

It's not blackhat but it does indicate a huge bug right now. All the problems being presented over the past week are usually solved by canonicals. Google seems to be ignoring them hence this massive uptick.

Have you seen a decline in traffic this past week too?

[SnowMan68]

In our niche, we’ve seen a significant decrease in the use of answer boxes. Anyone else seeing the same?

[ViktorN]

our AMP pages URL is this format: domain.com/post_title/?amp , while the canonical is the domain.com/post_title/ URL
when inspecting such a page it points it to the original URL, which should be normal.
However, since September 1, the number of valid indexed AMP pages had decreased by 10% (while AMP pages actually gained 10%, so in total there are now 20% missing).

Running a manual search, I couldn't find so far any post which is not indexed. Is there a way to do it in a more auto way?

@KaseyM - GSC doesn't show any errors relating to AMP. is this what you're seeing as well? are you using AMP4WP Wordpress plugin?

[MayankParmar]

It could console reporting problem or Google might be experimenting with AMP pages (A/B tests where the AMP will appear and disappear next day)

[MayankParmar]

I see more and more users report canonicals issue. Still nothing from Google :(

[TalkativeEditorial]

Not sure if we should expect them to reply or respond at this point.

[BoredMeteor]

Is nothing working anymore this year? Google? Statcounter? Anybody?

Everything is a complete mess.

[MayankParmar]

The September 23rd Google ranking algorithm changes might be due to an unconfirmed canonical bug issue with Google Search [seroundtable.com...]

[RedBar]

The September 23rd Google ranking algorithm

So, did we have an update as predicted howevr it's gone pear-shaped?

[MayankParmar]

Well, now I REALLY hope they don't do a core update. I don't think they released an update last week. It all could be due to the canonical problem.

If I do get out of this canonicalization problem, I'll definitely create more sites, use push notifications, and other ways to keep the site alive when Google is going bonkers. They literally don't care what happens to a small site even if it's their fault.

[Athedian]

@ViktorN - Oh god, Yoast, don't even mention that horrible plugin. From my experience, that's the bane of my existence and the root cause of all the problems on my site, which I'm STILL trying to fix. Then again, it's the previous team that screwed up the site and built the entire coding structure around Yaost.

I'd advise to stay away from any "SEO plugins" and just do it yourself. It'll only be better and not worse plus you won't get locked in and trapped by those plugins down the road.

[MayankParmar]

Search quality is horrible lately. I searched for "drone ideas" and there are at least two extremely unhelpful Pinterest results on the frontpage.

[TalkativeEditorial]

I don't think they released an update last week. It all could be due to the canonical problem.

Agree, definitely do not think there was an update. Suspect much like in August when the sensors went mad, something broke on their side. Could be that the usual small updates were running at the same time too, but definitely no huge update.

I really hope that they acknowledge something is broken

[ViktorN]

@Athedian so far Yoast works well on our side. What were your problems with them on your end?

@MayankParmar - please check PM

[Athedian]

@ViktorN - Had horrible experience with it since the first day I came aboard and took over the dept. Basically, it's slowing down the entire site along with other plugins (tested them all and checked out all the CSS and one of the speed issues definitely came from Yoast). It locked our sitemap; it wasn't able to properly add new pages to the sitemap and when I tried to disable this plugin, every page on our site turned blank.

Basically the previous team built the site on Yoast. And I can't do any of the manual customization nor the flexibility that I needed to improve the site further.

[ViktorN]

@Athedian - For us so far sitemap (using News plugin) works well, and it seems like the problems are not coming from Yoast. Maybe building the next website will consider the manual option.
Thanks for sharing

[MayankParmar]

@Athedian I had issues with Yoast too. Attachment files were indexed, but they acknowledged and fix it later. The last update version 14 broke a lot of sites, including my staging.

Whenever I want to update plugins or improve the design of the site, there's always chatter of Google updates :)