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]

[mzb44]

I get it that it's all AI now rather than pure algos like some years ago. But is it really that hard to add a conditional to that AI to not nuke and completely obliterate sites that aren't obviously spam?

Most of the time these core update hits are so harsh you now rank even below pure-spam.

It's natural that after a core update some sites may end up ranking better than you. But does your site really need to be completely obliterated even though it's neither spammy nor does it break any of google's webmaster guidelines?

[TalkativeEditorial]

SEMRush is all over the place again today.

Slightly confused by how in the winners category in one UK niche, there is a site that has made significant gains....but with the same content served on geo domains.

[browndog]

But does your site really need to be completely obliterated even though it's neither spammy nor does it break any of google's webmaster guidelines?

Apparently yes, I'm down by 43% and devastated that Google took a flamethrower to my site. I work my backside off to create great content and am 100% white hat, but the site has been trashed.

[MayankParmar]

A scam site is now ranking better after this update.. they're 40% up! Traffic is now 700K, 75K backlinks, 50DA as per Semrush.

- Site niche: Software downloads
- EAT: Author name is "Site name Editor". Does not have an about us, contact us page, etc.
- Quality: Keyword stuffing in subheadings, low quality 'product name download for PC' articles. Images and links within the articles are broken.
- Sitemap throws a server error
- Misleading "link ads" placed near the downloads button.

It has fake and illegal content. For example, one topic is on an Android app store for PC. The download link within the article opens the site's article on Android emulator. The article then discusses the features of the non-existent Android app store for PC.

A garbage site, which should be tanked, is now up 40%.

Quality core update, RIGHT?!

[mzb44]

They really need to halt these Machine Learning/AI experiments. It's obvious that it's seriously flawed even after more than two years since they - as far as we know - started these core updates.

The collateral damage they do these days is unprecedented.

[christianz]

75K backlinks, 50DA as per Semrush

I haven't used Semrush but Ahrefs domain rank is worthless and meaningless. I am seeing fake websites with autogenereated content with top notch domain rank. They link to each other. Like PBNs but not even trying to convince anyone that they are legit. Things like scraped image directories etc.

They are linking to my site none stop. Mostly stealing images but content and headings/key phrases too. Google only recently removed most of them from Links section in GSC. Ahrefs don't seem to have the technology yet to filter them out.

[MayankParmar]

"URL is on Google" bug is back again :(

[Chickensalami]

I think I might need an SEO expert’s set of eyes on my site at this point. 300 pieces of content with 500 daily page views for 7 months. Should I throw in the towel? Everything is white hat and more in compliance than others I know in the same niche.

[frostitomik]

Is your site new? Have you written 300 articles in 7 months? If yes, then how long are they? The biggest problem is too much competition. I can see it in my main niche. In the recent 6-12 months, there was probably 100 of new websites created competing against each other and the niche is relatively small. Soon, people will realize it's not worth it and stop creating so many new sites.

[Chickensalami]

The sites about a year and a half old. 120 pieces of content were added from May 2019 to August 2020 and then another 180 was added from August to now. Almost 95% of the articles are after low competition keywords (forums) and the niche isn’t very competitive. Not sure what’s going on. It definitely feels like a unique case. The articles are about 1,500 words long on average against forums.

[Athedian]

Can't even reindex the site now that Google removed the manual index feature. Index issue was NEVER fixed. EVER. Otherwise why is that feature still removed?

[TalkativeEditorial]

@Chickensalami you can DM me the link. I'll have a look to see if I can spot anything obvious.

[mzb44]

So apparently the way core updates allegedly work is they have the manual raters who rate a large number of sites/pages and they use that data to train the AI with.

Then the AI will try to figure it out on its own how to replicate results based on that data and ratings.

And now you end up with a bunch of big mainstream sites ranking for everything even with an irrelevant and generic page.

Why?

Maybe the raters rate the mainstream sites with the maximum / higher rating just because they recognize the sites and are biased in favour of them, while they are more objective when they rate "unknown" sites.

So now the AI is biased too because it was trained with that data.

[RedBar]

So far this update reminds me of a fidgety child, it doesn't have a clue what it wants to do therefore keeps moving about, chopping and changing every hour, sometimes more often, sometimes less.

For the most important keyword phrase in my widget sector,good quality sites are bouncing up and down, in and out of the first two pages BUT, BUT, the worst eBay page ever remains firmly STUCK to the #2 position ... it goes NOWHERE, it stays there regardless of what the algo does.

Absolutely nothing suspicious whatsoever there!

[whoa182]

My two websites have been decimated by this core update. Everything was great since BERT was introduced, but it looks like I have a 60% hit to my traffic. Basically earning nothing from it now.

It doesn't really hurt anymore though. Lost count how many times this has happened since over 2 years ago. Up and down like a yo-yo. Although, both sites were really stable for a year and that was a record since all this started happening from August 2018.

It's just insane how Google likes my site one minute and then hates it.

[MayankParmar]

Interesting data from Glenn on traffic reversal [twitter.com...]

In some rare cases, it looks like you can gain and drop later during the rolling out of this update. Or the opposite :)

[Soulofmonk]

Completely agree with the reversal. Traffic was up by 15% for 4 consecutive days and now it's back to the figure as it was before they announce the update. They did again(as they did earlier on August 10th). So far 4 good days of December + 2 hours of 10th August since May update.

[ichthyous]

Unfortunately it does look like a complete reversal. My traffic was tapering off from the surge on the 4th but USA traffic was still up and UK traffic was zooming. Yesterday UK traffic fell off a cliff, and today search and direct traffic is way down for USA and UK. I lost 9 top three ranking terms overnight. The interesting thing is that the pages and terms affected seem to be rotating...one day way down, the next day up.

Interestingly...this also comes as my Core Web Vitals reversed and went from Yellow back to red for mobile, and from green to yellow for desktop. On top of that my link count dropped by almost 1000 backlinks in GSC....I'm hoping they are weeding out the spammy scraper sites.

[christianz]

Website building is no longer a viable profession, certainly after this December disaster "upgrade". I will stop work on my main site until I see some sense in googles algo. Otherwise its just waste of time.

See you all in May/June/July 2021.

[Chickensalami]

I’m right there with ya, but I’m going to keep pushing forward a little longer. So tired of hearing the “ just create good content and be patient “ regurgitation. I’ve been patient for 7 months. Sorry for those who took major hits during the update.

[StickyPaul]

Wow has anybody noticed Bing and Yahoo results in Google search?

[NickMNS]

“ just create good content and be patient “

I agree, I have gotten to a point where I must concede "Good content" or "high quality content" is neither necessary nor sufficient. One can create a website using all the best practices in terms of content creation and webdesign, truly have a "perfect: website and it would not count for much. One can create a site that documents the growth of your lawn throughout the seasons, with a web-cam, images, statistics, and blog documenting the growth, all perfect, state of the art. But I guarantee, no success. Why?

The secret is "valuable" content. Contrary to "quality content", valuable content is relative, relative to what is available and relative to the user's perception of your content. Take celebrity website, you provide images that load fast, well written long form articles and on and on and fundamentally nobody cares, because you are one of thousands that provide the same content. Post one image of a celebrity in some controversial situation, an image that only you have. I guarantee, your page can be slow as ... your page could be styled with tables from 1995 and copy can be written by my 8 year old, and despite all that you will rank on page 1. If Google doesn't push you to the top than Facebook, Twitter, et al will and Google will follow.

And I know what the comments will be, "my content is valuable but I still don't rank." You don't decide what is or isn't valuable, the market does, your users. And you may be right, Google hasn't surfaced your content yet, this is possible, don't wait buy a few ads. Truly valuable content should be able to rise above the ads making the short term invest payoff. If it doesn't, well you need to increase the value provided.

Oh and don't forget there is competition, once you have risen to the top competitors will be around to eat your lunch. Selling a great product that everyone wants, don't worry Amazon will find a Chinese knock-off and sell it at half the price (and 1/4 the quality). That one celeb-picture you posted, don't worry it will appear on all the big media sites. Value is dynamic ever changing.

Nobody said it would easy.

This industry has almost no barriers to entry, any idiot and his grand mother can create a website, WordPress, Shopify, Wix, GoDaddy...

The beauty of these updates is that makes us re-evaluate what we have done and where we are headed, IMO that re-evaluation is a good thing.

[superclown2]

I'm looking now at specialist service providers I'm interested in. Their websites are first class and packed with many pages of information about their products.

The major search terms are, since this latest update, dominated by price comparison sites which just pass enquiries on to these specialists; at a price of course. They offer just a bit of plain vanilla copy. These companies are big spenders on Google ads - no doubt a coincidence.

Is this really a great user experience? Pushing commission charging intermediaries in front of providers like this can only increase costs for consumers.

I am wondering how long it will be before the public see - or are informed of - just how far a once great search engine has descended into an advertising agency, which uses search as secondary to it's own commercial advantage. Only a company with a monopoly can get away with this - but not for ever.

Google is facing litigation from numerous directions. Is this their attempt to squeeze as much as possible from the golden goose before it is taken away from them?

I hope not. At their best Google can be way ahead of the competition but taking away the livelihoods of so many hardworking small business people is not the way to stay ahead long term. When serious competitors arrive - and they will - they will need friends.

In the meanwhile - I really thought that this update would change because the results were so poor from a user point of view. I am now seeing them get worse day by day so I can only assume that, yes, these results are what Google intended them to be. Any claims to providing the best experience and search results for the consumer are clearly false.

[RedBar]

Website building is no longer a viable profession,

For who?

All businesses, informational / evergreen sites or those trying to be the classic middleman?

[mzb44]

It doesn't appear to be a reversal. It seems more like a tweak.

My site was affected around -40% on December 3 and this time (so far) nothing happened.

There seem to be examples for every scenario, reversal of downturn, reversal of upturn, further downturn after the December 3 downturn, second upturn, no change, etc.

So it seems it's a tweak/adjustment of the first one last week.

This kind of does mean that they pretty much can re-launch the core update any time or at least make tweaks to it any time. I just wonder why they left the May one untouched for 7 months while everyone knew how terrible it was. Or why they generally don't re-process the same update more frequently to give a chance for the affected sites to recover. Is it really reasonable to wait 7+ months every time?

[mzb44]

And I know what the comments will be, "my content is valuable but I still don't rank." You don't decide what is or isn't valuable, the market does, your users.

Truly valuable content should be able to rise above the ads making the short term invest payoff. If it doesn't, well you need to increase the value provided.

The beauty of these updates is that makes us re-evaluate what we have done and where we are headed, IMO that re-evaluation is a good thing.

This is very naive in the context of what is actually happening after these core updates.

If it were like you described it it would be great. But it's obvious it's absolutely not the case.

[ichthyous]

Today by 4:30pm EST my USA traffic is -20% and my UK traffic is down -41%, Canada -29%...searches are down 30% today. I would say that this is a big reversal! My traffic is lower now than before the upswing started!

[jmorgan]

Expect traffic to get gradually lower as we head towards Christmas/New Year. It's normal and not necessarily related to SERPs.

[renatovieira]

It's amazing how G sends me users every other day. It seems that everything is scheduled, users are interested in my content on even days. On odd days, traffic simply evaporates.

Since may, everything goes up on even days, everything goes down on odd days.

It's pathetic and funny at the same time. :-)

[JesterMagic]

Yeah I am also seeing the little gains I did receive over the past week has been removed yesterday. Big keywords don't seem much different so it must be long tail and I also see UGC has taken a bit of a hit.

@NickMNS - Agree it's not just Quality Content but more about Valuable Content. A large part of SEO is to simulate Valuable content signals (for example by creating backlinks)