Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2020

[jmorgan]

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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)

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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.

[RedBar]

Absolutely no idea whatsoever however everything's so "quiet" nothing would surprise me !

[gabmorelli]

Same here: very poor traffic with little interaction, could also be related to:

1 - traffic post Prime Day
2 - traffic pre Black Friday
3 - end of the month: not a lot of money
4 - filter dials?

[samwest]

@gab - or distraction / uncertainty surrounding the upcoming US election.
Great excuse to have a few drinks... [youtu.be...]

[gabmorelli]

@samwest yeah, thats also possible for the US. My traffic comes mainly from Italy, and its really weird how in the last 2-3 days the interactions have been very low. November will be an interesting month for SEOs and in general for webmasters.

[samwest]

Clamped and quota'd for 50 straight hours so far...wth happened? Hasn't been this bad in over 8 months.

[samwest]

I get the feeling that the next few weeks will be he11 for all of us as traffic and SERPs are twisted for a particular agenda...and once again, we will be the collateral damage. Hang on tight.

[MayankParmar]

Semrush sensors are stable for two days in all regions. Looks like they've restored the URLs.

[TalkativeEditorial]

The SERPS aren't great though. Showing lots of old and irrelevant results (from our site!) in one of our niches. Despite the fact that there are more recent, more relevant pieces.

[RedBar]

My SERPs are seemingly as expected however traffic is lower than usual mostly becaue of so many single page views, must delve further.

What is noticeable in the past few days is the reduction in French email spam I had been getting to zero today so far.

[TalkativeEditorial]

It's really exhausting having to constantly figure out whether there is a Google bug (again) or whether something is technically wrong on our side. Even if Google had a bug every single day on the scale of the indexing issue which took them weeks to even acknowledge nevermind the fact that they didn't even notice it themselves...it would really help if there was just some better comms from them

[MayankParmar]

Semrush is again yellow in the U.S lol :)

[RedBar]

Is yellow good, bad, indifferent ... I don't follow speculation :-)

[jmorgan]

I think SEMrush made a change a couple of months ago where their average volatility ratings were bumped up, maybe with a different algorithm.

So a volatility rating of 6 today would probably be equivalent to a volatility rating of 3 or 4, compared to, say, 3 months ago.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Pretty dire state of affairs. Little change to site rankings, but Discover traffic has all but vanished again and the SERPS are a mess. Even though we continue to rank highly (1-3) for most KWs we target, the pages that are being ranked are out of date - DESPITE more relevant pages recently ranking in the same position.

[ViktorN]

Discover traffic - anyone also suffering from this kind of problem since Sep.10?

99% of the very low discover traffic is coming from Africa. We were used to get 50K average daily number of impressions and US and UK as leading in clicks.

Since September 10 the discover chart looks like an EKG line of a dead man, >100 daily clicks, and only from continues like Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Cameroon, Mexico, Philippines, and Indonesia.

Very frustrating. Anyone else having that?

[not2easy]

Discover traffic - anyone also suffering from this kind of problem...

@ViktorN - it has been noticed by a good number of others, the September Google Updates [webmasterworld.com] and SERP Changes thread is riddled with complaints about it. There are a few other split off discussions: [webmasterworld.com...]
and
[webmasterworld.com...]

Our Site Search (on the right side of the top menu bar) can help you find more ;)

[MayankParmar]

@TalkativeEditorial Discover has been doing terrible for the last three days. It's picking up a bit today though. They're now showing one old story after ignoring it completely for the last three days. Weird.

Also, Google Discover throttles traffic. I just can't go above the monthly average :)

[RedBar]

Once again my SERPs do not seem to have changed yet traffic is down:

1. Lots more single PVs than usual.

2. A big increase in Ms Azure single PVs,

3. Even being #1 is not enough for widget keywords when surrounded by so much GAG (Google Advertising Garbage)

4. Probably my biggest widget keyword has 18 results in G's carouse alonel!

5. It's no longer SERPs 1-10 v 6-8 ads, it's v 30+ GAGs.

Fortunately I have buyers and specifiers prepared to trawl through the non-essential stuff (insofar as they are concerned) however it is defintely becoming more challenging to sort one's wheat fom the chaff.

[System]

The following 11 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at: google/5015296.htm [webmasterworld.com]
6:45 am on Nov 2, 2020 (PDT -8)