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.

[BoredMeteor]

Maybe an update. I was going to post yesterday that I've been seeing a slight general increase in Google traffic the last few days. That seems to have evaporated overnight. Their filters might have been off for a while. Or not. I'll have to wait and see.

Speaking of filters, while I don't see too many rank changes right now, I did lose a small one. Was ranked on page 1, but now replaced by a .ro 404 page (at position 4). Looking at the cache, it had previously copy-pasted parts of one of my articles, jumbled up with snippets of other articles and random keywords. Gibberish, really. The original has now fallen to page 4.

So Google would rather show a literal scraper 404 than my page. They must really hate me.

One other thing that I've never seen before, might not be new: A timeline appearing under a ranked YouTube video. So now that can take up even more real estate on page one. Rejoice!

[renatovieira]

High and abnormal traffic for a wednesday morning. Has anyone else noticed anything different today?

[ChokenBako]

On my end nothing unusual... Tech related websites

[MayankParmar]

Nothing unusual yet.

[westcoast]

Large entertainment / education site: nothing obvious or unusual yet. We got hit extremely hard in the last major "pinterest and garbage results" update.

I'm hoping, praying, begging that this update returns us back to our normal traffic........

[TalkativeEditorial]

We usually suspect there is something happening when the results for (somewhat) time-sensitive phrases across niches throw up out-dated content. That's happening for a few kws (not in our niche) right now. Some changes to KW positions, but nothing that seems to fit what the off-the-charts SEM Rush and other monitoring tools are suggesting. Curious.

[RedBar]

It all looks unusually stable in my sector, in fact the results are pretty clean across the dozen or so phrases I just checked.

A G core and an Apple major update at the same time? Fun and frolics everywhere:-)

[MayankParmar]

Revisited old algorithm threads and similar chatter was observed several hours before the core update.

Also, I'm now seeing shopping pages in Google News. Very odd. A new low or result of today's changes lol.

[MayankParmar]

Welp, Glenn Gabe says Google pushed something that impacted site links, which resulted in volatility

[twitter.com...]

[glakes]

I'm now seeing shopping pages in Google News. Very odd.

Since shoppers are going straight to Amazon, Walmart and other big retailers instead of Google, I expect Google shopping and text ads to start appearing in a variety of strange places. Google's efforts to drive more clicks, by displaying ads in strange places, will continue to erode the ROI for advertisers unless they can opt-out of their ads displaying in such places.

[Webweeb]

No change. Still 95% spam ever since may update. T shirt spam, deleted .edu and .gov PDFs, spam directory listings, even spam chrome extensions and indian/spanish/potugese results are ranking now. and of course google sites spam. Spammers are making mad money.

I've stopped the spam reports. Google clearly has no interest in solving this problem. I guess the US elections are more important than people not getting scammed or good results.

[renatovieira]

Semrush sensor is high. My main site continues to have high traffic since morning.

Analyzing by day and time, it is not common. Something is going on.

niche: live streaming, global

[ChokenBako]

@Mayank

I read that you also have problems with scrapers. I have one copy scraper which scraped about 4000 articles and some of them are just before mine in Google SERPS. Ist so frustrating. I mailed the webservice, but they are unwilling to help...
So any ideas what to do?

[MayankParmar]

@ChokenBako Scrappers sometime appear in Top Stories with my content but I usually don't get outranked by them in SERPs. And they disappear from Top Stories after a few hours. It's Google's fault and nothing can be done to be honest. Started after May 2020 update.

[Athedian]

Conversions definitely increased a lot yesterday when the Google filter was off during this update. But I'm seeing a massive drop in conversion again. So it's like the filter's on and off at random points in time right now.

[MayankParmar]

Sensors are still high

[ChokenBako]

Seeing some upshifts. 40% up compared to last week... Hope it will remain like this.

@Mayank

Thanks for your answer! Scrapers are very frustrating...

[TalkativeEditorial]

Those who have publisher sites - are you seeing a notable downturn in AMP pieces in top stories? Yours or others. Certainly fits with what some of the tools are showing. Been running a few queries and AMP seemingly vanished from results.

[ViktorN]

@TalkativeEditorial , running a 500K visits/month finance news site. AMP decreased to almost zero since the beginning of September. Really sucks.
We are using AMP4WP old version, dont know if it's something there.
SC doesn't show any errors regarding AMP.

[TalkativeEditorial]

running a 500K visits/month finance news site. AMP decreased to almost zero since the beginning of September.

Sorry to hear that. Is your structured data plugin up to date?

But I mean that none of the results I am getting for anything on mobile has the AMP bolt right now. It's weird.

[MayankParmar]

The way they're handling the whole Discover problem is depressing.

Lack of transparency and their Google webmaster forum totally sucks.. and I honestly don't see the point of Search Liason Twitter handle when they're not going to acknowledge reports/problems for more than a month.

They broke Google on August 10/11, said it has been fixed, but the truth is it's STILL broken. Today it is Discover, tomorrow they'll do this with their other products, and we can do nothing but rant here.

[edited by: MayankParmar at 11:53 am (utc) on Sep 17, 2020]

[ViktorN]

@TalkativeEditorial we are using Yoast for structured data. How can I tell if there's a problem?

[MayankParmar]

You'll see errors in console, but it has nothing to do with your AMP pages or Yoast or AMP4WP. It's Google's bug. I do have traffic from some regions while the US/UK etc are flat.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Lack of transparency and their Google webmaster forum totally sucks

Yup. Pretty much the biggest gripe with the Discover glitches (and there are many) is the lack of transparency. With core/algo updates, at least there is a reasonable way to assess potential problems (even with some of the more inconsistently applied guidelines).

[ChokenBako]

My 40% uptick was only for a short period of time. Google suddenly pushed in and was flattening the curve. From 40% up you can see clearly now that the visitor stream is adjusted to the same amount as previous week...

[RedBar]

@TalkativeEditorial

I'm not being pedantic here however what do you mean by this?

Those who have publisher sites -

Do I assume you mean solely news sites?

All evident sites are published and any site that is updated is published, even evergreen sites were originally published.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Not solely news, no.
Sites approved in Google Publisher. Which can these days does not have to be hard news.
But the old school definition of "publisher" might also refer to the publication of newspapers, books, magazines or journals.

[seomotionz]

Around 20-30% increase in traffic in many sites. I don't know what Google is doing but it seems that it's working positively for many websites.

[BoredMeteor]

Yeah, definitely not an update just yet, but I've been seeing more consistent Google traffic over the past week or so (knock on wood). I feel like I tend to experience a slight boost right before the big one hits.

Yesterday morning things dipped pretty low. But my issue with the outranking scraper did resolve itself, so there's that.

[KaseyM]

Entertainment niche about -15% down week on week for yesterday.

Today looks abysmal too.