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]

[cwalker216]

@worker

I'm kind of surprised that my post above about 50% of Google search results on page 1 for a targeted search phrase were scam sites redirecting to completely different sites (than those listed in the search results), many of which were p0rn sites.

50% of results being manipulated on the 1st page of results indicates a fundamental technical problem.

No company providing a service where half the time you got what you expected and half the time you got something completely unrelated could stay in business.

It's like saying please give me food without any peanuts or peanut residue in it and half the time that is what you get. The other half of the time, you have to reach for your EpiPen.

How can this be happening? What has broken at Google that they would allow 50% of results to be manipulated so significantly? Why aren't webmasters here even shocked anymore? LOL. That may be the most telling aspect of all of this.

This has been going on for a lot longer than most people realize. I actually posted a Youtube video showing the exact searches and resulting spam / 404 errors / #*$! site redirects, and even got it in front of Danny Sullivan on Twitter.

He thanked me for the feedback, and assured me that he'd pass it on to the engineers. Here we are, over 2 years later, and not only has it not been addressed, but in some cases it's actually gotten worse.

Here's the vid if you're interested: [youtube.com...]

[worker]

Wow! Google is significantly broken if they deliver so many redirected pages and so many 404 pages. It's a wonder that consumers continue to use them so much.

[NickMNS]

@cwalker216
I'm sure cleaning up the male enhancement niche is a the top of Google's priorities.

[christianz]

For information sites it is 80-90% search traffic and Google takes 95% of those 90%. So its either you rank in google or you are out of business. There are no alternatives. Only way to maintain Internet and WWW as open network of publishers and information is for general population to stop using just one search engine. And since that is impossible and not going to happen in next 10 years, only thing we can do as independent publishers is build spam sites and exploit any weaknesses in Google AI so we can appear in SERPs at all. Which is painful to do when it used to be that you could just build awesome websites that you liked yourself and get rewarded with search traffic at the same time.

[worker]

The tests I've run are on industry sectors that are not 'controversial' (i.e. like 'male enhancement').

The fact that any Google search results have redirected results in them or 404 pages indicate fundamental problems with their system.

They are not 'seeing' the destination page or they are not capable of distinguishing the difference between the false search result and the redirected destination page. 404 pages are a little easier to explain because they could be a result of a chance since the site was last crawled, or a result of the webmaster realizing their site has been hacked and redirects certain pages to different sites (and then they modify the redirecting page to prevent it).

Regardless, Google is fundamentally broken if it has large numbers of redirecting search results and 404 pages appearing within the first few pages of search results. These problems should not be problems that Google should be experiencing. They are easily identified by comparing the originating URL and text with the destination URL and text.

Scammers are clearly ahead of Google in these scenarios. Way ahead if they are able to push fake results to the first page of Google.

[MayankParmar]

Google really takes longer than usual to remove the 404 pages from the index. This was better a few years ago.

[TalkativeEditorial]

This "update" seems to be a non-event. Two days of higher traffic and then it started to taper off and now right back to the old pattern. The same landing pages that were getting much lower traffic in the last month are once again much lower. USA traffic suspiciously low all day, then somehow appears at the end of the day. Right back to the pre-update patterns. This is while my position is rising and my search placement has increased.

Ditto. Seeing the same.

Same pattern of very old and irrelevant content, despite newer and recently posted and indexed versions are available - both from my site and others in the same niche - including some of the 'big/mainstream' sites.

Weird.

[topaz]

I think that weirdness goes back to the theory that the web has gotten too big for Google. Hence all the indexation issues this year.

I feel like whenever they roll out an update...crawling and indexing of fresh content suffers from a lack of resources.....especially for news, which has a life cycle/expiration.

[Athedian]

Google index issue continues. GSC still shows manual indexing button disabled.

Traffic completely died for me today, first time ever after 17 years. It's maddening to see how greedy Google is to a point that they had to manipulate traffic to big brands so that they could satisfy their investors. I've also finally fixed the speed issue for the site, lo and behold, no difference. If anything, it's gotten worse after the Dec Core Update.

And did you notice that Google didn't really specify what kind of Core Update it is this time? It's like they are hiding something.

[christianz]

manipulate traffic to big brands so that they could satisfy their investors

September 2020 Google Core Update in a nutshell.

[Athedian]

Is Analytics reporting messed up right now? Showing real time traffic to have four people viewing four pages yet at the top showing 3 active users.

[mzb44]

And did you notice that Google didn't really specify what kind of Core Update it is this time?

Not that they specified it any of the previous times either.

They never say what a core update actually does apart from "this is a broad update affecting broad things in a broad way" and point to a 2019 blog post from Danny Sullivan that gives some broad (hehe) pointers. Then they say that "there is nothing to fix" and the fact you got hit is normal and is now how your site is supposed to rank.

Then they move on to publicly contradict each other, like that time when JM said you can absolutely recover from a core update hit before a new update, while Dany Sullivan's official blog post about these updates explicitly says you cannot.

No one knows what these updates really do. That's why every single advice about them - even from leading SEO influencers - is extremely vague and generic.

[Athedian]

@mzb44 - Well said.

Seems like their advices are just pure crap right now. SEO is almost non-existent.

[RedBar]

You've just got to wonder who dreams up these ranking algos?

For me a firmly ecsconced and utterly pointless eBay page remains at #2 however what surprised me was a Pinterest site one place ahead of me.

My titlebar, my on-page text, even my image and I knew I hadn't posted it therefore off I went for an investigation and sure enough it was ALL mine including my URL and relevant links copied ad verbatim by a Houzz blogger.

Awesome stuff G, these plagiarists don't even have to plagiarise now to outrank the original, simply copy and paste into Pinterest as-is, job done .!.!.!

[BushyTop]

Seeing one page disappear from SERPs for certain terms... Anyone else seeing this?

[richardwfs]

I don't post here much and only do when I have something to share.

My story: I haven't been hit hard like many who usually drop 20%, 40% with any Google updates. However, my traffic has reduced gradually over many months after each update.
Same with December 2020 updates. Nothing really noticeable, until I switched my WordPress theme on 12/7. Boy oh boy. My traffic began going up noticeably after 2 hours.

Since then 20% so far. WOW!

With the new theme, I improved my CLS to 0.01, FID 4ms and improvement with speed and more.

Previous theme didn't give me anything close. So, I believe Google is incorporating Core Web Vitals assessment.

Thanks,

[MayankParmar]

I might be wrong.. but Google takes at least one or two weeks to process bigger changes to the site (such as theme upgrade?)

[ichthyous]

@richardwfs I recently upgraded my WP theme after quite some time. I saw the thousand+ CLS errors go away, only to return inexplicably a few weeks later. Now I can't get them to go away again no matter what I do. When I run live tests there are no CLS issues, it's green...so not sure why Google has all these 1000+ pages as red again. Just curious which theme you use...could you send me a private message with the name?

[NickMNS]

Barry @ SEroundtable is reporting about Google testing SERP with no results. The example shown is a query for something like 156+8 which returns a calculator.
[seroundtable.com...]
He states that he can't reproduce the results.

The fact that Google is at a point where they don't even bother supplying links to non-Google sites is not really surprising. But what really struck me was when I tried to see if I could reproduce it. I searched for 365/12, which seems like a math operation that would be pretty common, the average days in a month. I was expecting to see the calculator, and then some links about days in a month or something to that effect. No!

First position after the calculator was....

If you guessed "Pinterest" you're wrong.

If you guessed "Amazon" you are correct! 2 out of 10 results were for Amazon, and there was nothing about calendars or math, just shopping links to products with 365 in the name.

Now clearly Google couldn't determine the searchers intent hence the crappy results, but I'm curious will the results be the same in January or is there a shopping bias because of the time of year.

[RedBar]

16 hours into my Googleday and I'm already at my daily PV's average.

Off to check logs.

[ichthyous]

I am also seeing wild swings...yesterday traffic was -9%. Today by 11am EST it's +34%. UK is +99%, Canada +58%, New Zealand up 1000%! USA -12%, but that will end up positive by day's end. The day to day swings are becoming wider.

[christianz]

For me a firmly ecsconced and utterly pointless eBay page remains at #2 however what surprised me was a Pinterest site one place ahead of me.

My titlebar, my on-page text, even my image and I knew I hadn't posted it therefore off I went for an investigation and sure enough it was ALL mine including my URL and relevant links copied ad verbatim by a Houzz blogger.

Awesome stuff G, these plagiarists don't even have to plagiarise now to outrank the original, simply copy and paste into Pinterest as-is, job done .!.!.!

Spammers are no stupid. They see how much Google hates independent websites and prioritizes ANY content (copied, thin or straight garbage) on big tech domains.

The only stupid ones are us who still want to produce content, instead of producing elaborate spam engines.

[cwalker216]

@NickMNS

I'm sure cleaning up the male enhancement niche is a the top of Google's priorities.

I wish I could say it was isolated to that particular niche, check this out:

Google kobe bryant crash airlinepilotforums in an incog window - Airline Pilot Forums is a major aviation website for pilots, and there are dozens of threads about the Kobe Bryant crash, so it's not like there's a lack of results for this particular query.

Check out the last 4 results in the top 10. The last 1 redirects to a different site every time you click it, how is that even possible?

I could bore you with the dozens of other examples I've collected over the last 2 years, but I would think you get the point.

[cwalker216]

@worker

The tests I've run are on industry sectors that are not 'controversial' (i.e. like 'male enhancement').

Yeah I mean, I created that vid 2 years ago because that's what I was seeing 2 years ago. It was also a niche I was heavily involved in. (key word: was)

Fast forward 2 years, and those exact same types of problems I was seeing in that niche have made their way into other, 'less controversial' niches.

I wish there was a way we could create a thread here on WebmasterWorld that is solely dedicated to reporting these types of issues.

I'm talking, 'Go to Google incog window, type in xyz search phrase, and look at the sh$@ty results'.

Is that allowed here?

[mzb44]

The only stupid ones are us who still want to produce content, instead of producing elaborate spam engines.

This sounds very cynical but there is a grain of truth to it.

Before all these core updates started one of the safest and most secure strategies if you were a non-big name publisher was to build pure white-hat websites always following Google's webmaster guidelines as well as producing genuinely high-quality content and narrowly focusing on the particular expertise you or your team had.

You never became an industry leader but that was fine. You didn't mind the big brands ranking for all the high-volume kw's because you still got a piece of the pie if you were useful. You didn't become rich from it but it was enough to support the site and maybe even generate a decent revenue incentivizing you to continue producing quality content.

I genuinely think that these specialized niche sites are extremely beneficial to the web ecosystem. No one can be an expert in everything. Not even the big sites and big industry publications can be an expert and authority in absolutely every aspect of their niche. It's not possible. So, these smaller sites that focus on a small specific aspect of a larger niche and then expand on every detail of that subject in an exhaustive way can offer exert insight in places where larger organizations focusing on more broad and general things would not be able to (or would not find it worthwhile).

But apparently Google disagrees and for at least 2 years now is heavily on a campaign to demote small niche sites in favour or large brands and major publishers.

You are an expert in Android app privacy and cybersecurity and launch a site reviewing various Android apps for their privacy settings and offer general privacy and security guides? - That's too bad. An Upwork freelancer working for Techradar just wrote a 500 word article and mentioned "Android privacy" once and now outranks every single of your keywords and pages.

Oh, and seems like you are a niche site and not a "brand"? - Here come dat core update with a -80% ranking and traffic reduction across the board on your entire site. Every page. Every keyword. Broadly (like the update itself ;-) ).

And the general advice is "there is nothing you should do" because "nothing is wrong with your site".

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Now, the question is, why should you even bother making these kinds of sites anymore? - At least before you knew that provided you didn't break Google's webmaster guidelines and genuinely produced useful content, you were never going to be affected by an update reducing your traffic by -40%-80% just like that.

That stuff was supposed to be reserved for the spammers, scrappers and link scheme guys.

Now all these people outrank you with their expired domain 301 redirect and Fiverr articles just because of their link authority.

Now you suddenly ask why you shouldn't start to spam yourself. Sure, you will get penalized eventually but so will you with your "white hat" site anyway at one point, and making a spam site is so much cheaper and simpler than a legit one. Why not just start making 10?

And now the web is a poorer place because you can't find genuinely expert content anymore in narrow fields that aren't covered by the big brands and mainstream sites. And full of even more spammers.

[RedBar]

16 hours into my Googleday and I'm already at my daily PV's average.

And the last 3 hours has seen my traffic come to a grinding halt ... oh well.

[RedBar]

@mzb44

Are you a specific widget trade expert or solely a website constructor?

[EditorialGuy]

And now the web is a poorer place because you can't find genuinely expert content anymore in narrow fields that aren't covered by the big brands and mainstream sites.

Sure, you can. I do it all the time.

[Athedian]

This is just pure stupidity. Not only is SEO totally messed up on Google's part with all these horrible updates, now it's saying that one of my ads has mentioned "tobacco"? There's not a single word on the ad that mentioned anything even close to tobacco nor does the landing page mention anything about tobacco! Google is just plain retarded right now.

[Hfzai]

COVID-19, work from home policy, less people at the office and more remote workers.

Since early in the pandemic, Google has said on some of its products that inquiries can take longer before they are addressed.

Applications for Adsense for example, was delayed. Then for sites that provide news updates on time sensitive topics, including about COVID-19, are particularly on Google’s crosshair.

And again, because Google has more of its employees working remotely, meaning that work efficiency is down.

So perhaps, this particular December core update is to make sure that bigger brands get bigger attention because they have bigger influence that Google trust them more?

Rather than betting its algorithms to surface and rank high authentic content and legitimate sources from small websites, knowing that smaller sites may have bad UX UI, less safe, scam and so forth, Google would rather play safe by surfacing bigger websites that are generally safer, and more trustworthy?

If this is true, it’s certainly unfair for the most of us here.

It seems that Google is only making sure the survival of its brand in the eyes of end users, amid this ongoing pandemic, and not longevity of the diverse creators of contents that populate its SERP in the first place.