Google Updates and SERP Changes - December 2020

[jacobjack]

Though there is not change in SERPs, traffic is down due to holiday season. Looks like in December, it will go down more.

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Previous Monthly Thread [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: goodroi at 10:55 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2020]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[RedBar]

November 2020 was better than I expected.

Global B2B Melded Sites November v October 2020 -17.8%

Melded Sites November 2020 v Sites 1+2 November 2019 +354%

My December traffic traditionally takes a bit of a dive therefore anything better than -25% would be fine by me.

My sites' major updates started taking effect last November with traffic increasing month on month therefore 2021 will be interesting!

The only thing I shall mention about the hotel / restaurant / live music venue is thank heavens it has zero borrowing. It's in Tier 3 with ALL staff furloughed until mid-January we reckon, possibly February.

We have a description for Lockdown 3 ... Hospitality Retribution 3.0 :-(

[Hfzai]

Update: we were planning to migrate to a better server before the sudden huge traffic drop that happened on 24-28november. And when the update happened and finished, traffic seems to have improved.

Our traffic were down by more than 50%. But now we’re about 80% the traffic we had before november 24. At this time, we’re investigating because we have the slightest idea of what’s going on.

Fyi, core vitals were fine. No uptick in crawl errors either.

[MayankParmar]

Based on the update history (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/) they don't do the core updates in December. They have rolled out BERT and other improvements around the holiday season, but not the official core updates.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@Mayank Parmar
Even if they are going to make the update, they won't tell you about that and will roll out it silently. <snip>

[edited by: goodroi at 3:06 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2020]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to stay on topic :) [/edit]

[Rageboi]

There was a noticeable drop in traffic to my information site on 30th November. Was there an update? Indexing issue seems to be solved, at least for my site. The newest post appeared on SERPs in a day and this time it did not disappear.

[ArthurMR]

Traffic to my website (Arts and Entertainment) has increased since 27 Nov.
I think there was no core update. It might have been one of those little updates they keep making. And the most important thing that affect all the traffic changes that we see is Thanksgiving in the context of the COVID pandemic.

[insideout]

HUGE Drop in traffic today in Europe !

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld ArthurMR

HUGE Drop in traffic today in Europe !

So far I'm seeing a global drop in traffic today, strange, no SERPs change I think!

[EditorialGuy]

We've continued to see daily increases for our European travel-planning site. Cabin fever + vaccine reports are a powerful mix! (Mind you, we still have a long way to go before we'll be back at the level where we were before the pandemic.)

[NickMNS]

I've had a few short burst of traffic today, at 2pm EST I was up >100% then down -10% at 4pm, back up >40% at 5pm. No real sign of anything special on my website, just the normal mix of users. This looks similar to a short burst I had on Nov 25 around 5am, with one notable difference 100% of 2pm traffic in a lot more user than 100% burst of 5am traffic.

[ichthyous]

25% drop in USA traffic today...Canada -20%, Australia -6%, UK +22%. I've gained new top three and top ten terms today, so why such a huge USA drop is mystifying.

[MayankParmar]

Semrush and Rank Ranger are reporting movements

[MayankParmar]

And indexing issues are back.

[ViktorN]

I also encounter indexing issues over the past hours. Is there anything to do about it after Google removed that button in SC?
Also, anyone else notice it?

[Subhodip]

I am a regular follower of seroundtable. As I have checked that from November 23rd, there have been some signals that Google was pushing out another Google search algorithm ranking update. But the chatter is almost non-existent while some of the tools show big changes. But keep in mind quality content will always play a big role. So keep updating your content and create quality backlink.

[seomotionz]

@Subhodip

So keep updating your content

Means nothing to Google. They will do whatever they wanna do anyway. I just saw a site only a few weeks old outrank one of my biggest site by only few copied (and/or re-written) content & with just two backlinks (which are from forum btw).

[RedBar]

FWIW I am seeing movementt in my sector which look more like a roll-back than anything however a simple tweak could do that!

At the moment it is definitely not an improvement, I have pages that have not simply been demoted from #1 to
#7/8/9 but have also disappeared altogether.

Shake-up or shake-out?

[RedBar]

Has anyone else seen a big increase in French language spam emails this week?

[renatovieira]

Things here have remained quite calm since thanksgiving. Barry says an update is possible today. I don't see anything relevant here...

Live streaming, Global

[ichthyous]

Barry says an update is possible today. I don't see anything relevant here...

Traffic down 25% overall again today, with many of my main pages down from 18-60% USA -30%, Canada -18%, France -50%, UK -13%, Australia -100%. I'd say it's fairly huge. This is while I have gained seven top three ranking terms since Monday....so I am hoping it's a temporary shakeup. New inquiries are very few and far between, it seems that people have slowed on spending on big ticket items again.

[RedBar]

I saw a strange shuffling around for a few hours but now it seems to have reverted to where it was!

[Cryogen]

I see a big drop today, around 25%. It's much bigger than the drop I experienced in May this year. Although Search Console doesn't show anything yet, if I manually check the keywords for which I rank (by searching them myself), many of them have dropped in ranking significantly. I see that the better ranking sites now mostly belong to bigger sites, such as tubes although many of them do not actually contain the content that is searched with the keywords involved. It seems G thinks that a site is more relevant if it is bigger and (perhaps) if it has longer time on site than if it actually contains the searched keywords.

I just hope this is a temporary movement and that G will revert it in a few days.

[Athedian]

So keep updating your content and create quality backlink.

This tip doesn't work anymore. Not with what Google's pulling right now.

Another big ranking drop in GSC on Dec 1 for me after three days of increase. Heart rate monitor-type stats continue with Google. So tired of the non-stop flux of traffic and ranking.

[christianz]

Quality backlinks probably still work, but quality content - I am not sure. Too often I see these Made For Google (MFG) type articles with repetitive subtitles stuffed with keyword phrases and tons of long winded intro text just to create "quality" in the eyes of clueless Google AI.

But to be honest - I still prefer this type of #*$!ty content over increasing push of mainstream/big tech properties in top results. Especially YouTube and Pinterest.

[Chickensalami]

No matter what updates hit, my traffic never seems to go under 500 or past 600 views a day. It’s been like this for a while despite site improvements and large investment (thousands) into this particular site. I am seeing a bit of a dip today, but it’s still occurring within the parameters of those two numbers. For those who are upset with the constant fluctuations without good reason, I sincerely feel your pain.

[strummer19]

An enormous drop today (morning in Europe). Worst than 2 weeks ago. Yesterday was not so bad.

[MayankParmar]

I'm seeing movements again

[ViktorN]

after an amazing month of NOV (the best since July) , yesterday and today we witness a huge delay in indexing our news and huge drop (20-30% in traffic)
something is going on for sure. at least I'm not alone...

[sansanotsansha]

Directory of commercial products.

Starting on Monday 30.11.2020 in the morning a drop of 10-18% (10% on Monday, 18% on Wednesday) with respect to the past week.

I had seen historically a drop of traffic starting in early December, but this one is higher :-/