Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2020

[jmorgan]

---

System: The following 16 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5008345.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 2:13 pm on Oct 1, 2020 (utc -5)

---

I, personally, am not experiencing any negative effects from all these alleged issues that are being reported. However, the following has been a bugbear of mine:

And John Mueller's over there on Twitter throwing his hands up saying "I'm not aware of any issues. Did you make a thread in the [very, very always useful] help forum?"

I always cringe when he says this. Typically in these forums (such as this) you get a lot of hysterical webmasters frustrated with Google and not really providing much helpful advice. Soliciting advice from them could actually prove more harmful than beneficial.

[lisdaiii]

I think whatever Google made with change alogaritm everyday, they don't have a big effect here. But I still seeing John Mu twitter and youtube to know more about Google

[MayankParmar]

John and Danny are very helpful but of course, they don't know everything about the algo. Regarding the help forum, it's pretty much useless, but it's one way to ping Googlers. If you have a problem and you post it in the forum and drop the link in a tweet to John or in his hangout, you might hear back from him.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

In this year things around that the content is the king was totally vanished within my head. There are so many complains on how unfair and illogical/spammy/low quality the SERPs are. This year is seems like a start of killing the free Internet, where everyone CAN COMPETE. The next step is when all the individual webmasters, authors or small and middle bussiness will finish their Internet bussiness path, those who are white hat and produce high quality content will be totally wiped by spam, trusted domains with a lack of info, scrappers, etc. We won't be having enough money to continue to create those Great content for the web. And it will be very interesting to keep watching Google's problems after achieving this state, they are creating their own problems with their own hands.

[MayankParmar]

Scrapper copying my work and appearing in Top Stories is disgusting! By the time they disappear, I don't get views because the news is outdated.

And spinbot articles are so badly rewritten... but still they're appearing in Top Stories.

This is so frustrating

[SEO2Go]

@MayankParmar I had never even heard of SpinBot until I read about it here. I tried it on a few of my pages and was horrified to see that it was pretty darn close, and there were few words that seemed out of place. I had stopped creating new content a while back due to people copying my pages and ranking above me. Eventually, the bad guys will will and there will be no new content.

The sad thing is I used to enjoy writing, and I am a professional in my field, so I felt I had a lot to offer an Internet I use so frequently to solve my own problems. Oh well, good luck with your issues, as you seem passionate and are obviously a hard worker that deserves to succeed.

[JesterMagic]

I think the majority of content now (not a large majority yet) in Discovery is crap/spam. Webmasters seem to like to create multiple titles and then spin the same content around those titles. Ads are everywhere. A lot of webmasters also seem to be following Googles footsteps by putting widgets of links of other related content above their own content that I originally clicked on to read. Google created Discover, they need to clean it up and remove half the websites from it so actual decent articles get some views. Quality is better than quantity. Even well know websites that I use to read all the time are doing this.

BTW in our niche over the last few days I have notice some ranking changes (up and down) for me and my competitors. Not sure if it is an algo change or if this the index bug people are talking about.

[seomotionz]

Is Adsense working well for you guys? For me, I am only able to see the home page. Couldn't access to any further sub-sections of my account such as the ads, reports, sites etc. Everything is saying "We apologize for the inconvenience,....."

[christianz]

Using "AI" instead of links to determine website rank is just what Google needs to further its mission to kill off Internet. This will be great excuse to push content that people don't want but belongs to one of their approved "high EAT" sources. Just look at how they are pushing "high EAT" content in YouTube, despite the fact that its not what people want.

[RedBar]

Ok, look away now if you do not want to see my metrics for September 2020:

Global B2B Melded Sites September v August 2020 +43.9%

Melded Sites September 2020 v Sites 1+2 September 2019 +543.4%

That is not an error, that is 5.434 times the PVs.

Normally the last 10 days of September is quieter owing to a massive widget trade fair, this year it has been an utter shambles of a "virtual" fair. Horrible to use and very poorly promoted, in fact I think I've seen only one organiser promo email and not a single advert anywhere.

Any significant points for the month?

USA traffic stayed strong and surprisingly consistent.
Indian traffic as a percentage dropped yet still remained strong.
Japanese traffic showing a much better performance.

Overall the melding has improved a much better SERPs performance with many pages now at 1, 2 and 3.

However even though many pages are at #1 it is very, very evident that they do not drive as much traffic as they used to do and that is, I presume, all the ad junk etc surrounding them.

Lastly, do not forget that this has not happened overnight, I started on this a year ago as of now, it was planned and executed methodically, it had to be for a smooth and trouble-free transition.

[RareBit]

Does anyone know when the itunes app store started 'no following' backlinks (to the developers website)? It seems to have happened fairly recently and has had a significant impact on my backlink ratio

[samwest]

Ok, so seeing another weird movement...
The home page that dissappeared two days agon is now back, and the sub page is gone. Previously I enjoyed about 20 years of "domain crowding" on page one for the same term. And yes, if it's your site crowding the SERPs, is prefectly fine...lol.
I prefer the home page anyway, so maybe this update involves a domain crowding fix.

The sub page should have always had it's own term result, but it was as if Gogle was making a personal decision to select the sub page to top the SERPS, simply because it included the word FREE. So, if I now to a serch on the test term and prefix it with FREE, I still get just the home page.

The sub page seem to have been deep sixed...for now. That would be a big change and torpedo the little traffic I have left.

It seems more and more, Google is omitting search for all long tail to the specific pages that would produce the best result for the query, instead they just send you to the top, or the home page.

As current results would indicate, it would be more advantageous to create one huge, long winded ad filled page to represent your entire site, as that is what is currently dominating my vertical. It's low quality aggregations and back to super wordy "Richard Thalheimer-esque" webspam.

After we were advised by the WST to cut on-page kewords back and exercise brevity, it seems on-page word count now matters more than ever...Thanks Matt.

It seems that well thought out main menu structures are now essential as all queries are being sent to the home or root page.
It's a long tail killer for sure, but something that has been evolving and implemented for years.

Pintertest "bug" still not fixed.

@REDBAR - want to share reciprocal links? we are in somewhat related niches. Cheers! ;)

[edited by: not2easy at 2:28 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2020]
[edit reason] consensus typo [/edit]

[MayankParmar]

Semrush sensor is still high. Canonical issues are still not fixed and more users are reporting the indexing/deindexing issue. But scrappers and big sites are doing fine. GG

[HereWeGo123]

Some of our URLs are continuing to get deindexed. Once I resubmit them manually in GSC, they appear back normally within minutes, as if nothing happened. Anyone else still noticing the same?

[insideout]

This CRAP is GETTING WORSE !

[MayankParmar]

Indeed. One post is indexed, another is not indexed due to "Discovered," Crawled" unhelpful messages, and deindexed posts are still deindexed. You guys have the problem for only two days, but I have it for 8 days and there's no fix!

[NickMNS]

I just identified a bug, that appears to be related to a security update for iOS 14. The bug appends query parameters to the URL which includes the keyword used in Google search. It doesn't apply to all iOS 14 users only a subset. In my case this applies to less than 1% of my total page views. Assuming one as sufficiently high volume of traffic, this bug will reveal a statistically representative sample of keywords used to land your website. Essentially you will see the keywords that perform best for your website. There is more details in the this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[ichthyous]

Nothing changed here...USA traffic was normal yesterday but sharply down again today. The trend tends to be that the USA traffic comes late in the day now, and I can't figure out why. It makes no sense to get a good amount of my USA traffic after 6pm EST. I think that the looming election is taking a big toll on any non-essential expenses now. People just aren't thinking about purchases, they are watching the spectacle.

[glakes]

It sure took them long enough to acknowledge the problems...

Google needs to be more responsive to the many complaints they received. With Google's dominance, and all the money they have, there is no excuse for not having adequate support channels or even paid employees monitor forums, blogs, etc. for even the slightest hint of a problem. Regardless, the lack of support begs for Google to be regulated like a utility and forced to support their product.

[janvitos]

It would be nice if Google acknowledged the Discover problem as well that saw tons of publishers getting kicked out overnight, including me. I am seeing a bit of traffic from Discover here and there, but it's absolutely nothing compared to what it was before August 28th.

To put things in perspective, I have seen a -84% Discover traffic drop between September and August, which is atrocious if you ask me. There have been month-to-month traffic fluctuations in the past with Discover, ranging from -10% to -20%, but nothing even remotely close to -84%.

[MayankParmar]

Hello,

8 days stressful battle is over - My articles are returning back to the index and I am still ranking well! Top pages are also back. Thank you all for your support :)

[TalkativeEditorial]

8 days stressful battle is over - My articles are returning back to the index and I am still ranking well! Top pages are also back. Thank you all for your support :)

So happy for you, MP! Let us know if your Discover Traffic also reappears.

[TalkativeEditorial]

It would be nice if Google acknowledged the Discover problem as well that saw tons of publishers getting kicked out overnight.

Same here. Biggest drop came somewhere around 15-19 September when the sensors first started to flutter.
Discover impressions down over 70%, and traffic from there down a substantial amount too as a result.

Of course the flux is natural but it's so visceral and so many others have hit on the same dates.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Something I have just noticed about the Discover issue for us......it seems like the last article that Discover surfaced and which performed really well is still the same article it keeps surfacing. Like it got stuck on it on 12 September.

Is this or something like this happening for anyone else affected by the issue?

[RedBar]

After several consecutive record PV days I am now seeing SERPs movement in my sector or, at least a shuffling around of my widgets.

Some are a slight movement, some are big movements of 5-10 places up / down, in / out of the first page however utterly pointless ebay pages are still there.

At the moment Pinterest is much less evident however big money search terms are having only 7 results.

Anyone else?

[TalkativeEditorial]

No more or less movement that usual.

Question about Pinterest though - is it mostly mobile or desktop in your niche?
It does happen in ours, but not nearly as much in others, so I am curious

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial Nothing with Discover. I do have traffic from Discover, but it's still dead in the US and UK. At this point, we might see recovery only when the next core update/normal update/new bug is out.

[deriklogov]

Looks like usa traffic declined after Trump debates, anybody else ?

[mehmethasana]

In a new project, words enter the order and disappear. I am not ranking in the main words right now. What could be the reason for this?

[seomotionz]

@MayankParmar Good luck with Discover.

@deriklogov Decline? It's more like US traffic just stopped.

And also traffic from Asian countries have declined this week. Overall traffic was bad since Monday but it became worse since Wednesday. Compared to last week around 20-25% traffic is down in most sites.