Google Releases Broad Core Update Called: "December 2020 Core Update"

[engine]

Google has just announced a broad core update it's calling "December 2020 Core Update" and we'll be monitoring it and discussing it in our Google Updates and SERP Changes - December 2020 [webmasterworld.com] thread here.

[mobile.twitter.com...]

[browndog]

Does anybody know what this update is about yet? I'm reading speed and/or EAT. Right now, I've been pushed down by slower sites who have regurgitated my content (but they don't cite their sources like I do) or directly used my content which now outranks me.

I don't understand why my site is clearly so on the nose with Google, because it's clearly not my content when they're happy to rank other sites which use it, and it's clearly not speed when I'm faster than my competitors.

[mzb44]

Nobody knows what the update is about. Everything you read or hear is pure speculation even if it comes from known SEO influencers.

Core updates tend to be so much more complex than traditional updates from the old days where it was either a "link update", "duplicate content update", "relevancy update", "keyword stuffing update" (I know I'm simplifying but you get the point).

It could be all of the above and a hundred more factors at the same time, applied differently on a per site basis.

[JS_Harris]

A client's site: 200 well ranked pages - 4 year old site. He kept track of the primary keyword(search console's #1 query for each page) once per week.

- 61% traffic drop from Google in one day
- Every top 3 result went down an average of 3 spots in rank
- Every #4 to #20 result went down by 50% uniformly (7 went to 14, 13 went to 26 etc)
- 61 articles had a featured snippet before, 0 did afterwards. A few retained their "people also ask" snippets but none kept a featured spot
- Backlink profile would be considered light but of quality, ie naturally occuring.

From just the above the drop is too evenly applied to be anything but a sitewide event. The content is of higher quality and good value, it's helpful and, in my opinion, deserved it's previous rankings. The only knock against the site that sticks out at me is that he shuns social media, has zero profiles on Facebook, Twitter et all, and didn't link his author name from articles to any source people could look him up.

Is this an authorship update where site owners either didn't have any or had a negative one perhaps due to other site's they own? Articles without date and author info? Only owner of 200 pages?

One thing this single site suggests it's NOT is a content quality update. It really does look like Google evaluated the owner here(or couldn't in this case) and not just the site. 61 of 200 pages having a featured snippet before and none afterwards means it's a critical change but not likely content related, in my opinion.

[mzb44]

From just the above the drop is too evenly applied to be anything but a sitewide event.

Yeah. This is what happens after core update hits. If you are negatively hit, it will hit the site across the board. It's almost like Google decides it now trusts your site less and applies a -xx% "penalty" on the entire domain.

Another thing you will very soon notice is that your site will appear frozen in time - as in, the rankings and traffic you see now will stay almost exactly as they are regardless of anything you do (less than starting to delete pages) until the next core update.

Is this an authorship update where site owners either didn't have any or had a negative one perhaps due to other site's they own?

No.

Articles without date and author info?

No.

Many sites exactly like the one described by you were hit except they did have author bio + dates.

It's really not as simple as author bio or dates.

I am sorry this happened to you and your client.

[RedBar]

It still seems to be churning away in my widget sector looking at my metrics and felllow tradespeople between whom we regualarly exchange data.

After yesterday's early burst of traffic it has been very quiet, coming up to 14 hours of a Googleday and not even 25% of average PVs.

Two things I have noticed:

1. Lots more single page views than normal.

2. A huge amount of French email spam ! Why that should be so I have no idea however it is very noticeable.

[RedBar]

i forgot to add, for my #1 ketword phrase in G.uk eBay is now at positions 2 and 3, G.com US results, eBay nowhere with its SERPs looking pretty normal.

[tangor]

@Eshunanthony ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

[MayankParmar]

Update is still happening. Wild movements all of a sudden

[jmorgan]

Well, close to zero changes in my niche. This update probably only affected specific sectors that don't include mine.

[saladtosser]

This update reminds me of penguin 1........

[randle]

We got dinged just a bit across the board, (numerous sites in very different niches) by anywhere from 1 to 5 places. Not a big deal, (not like getting nuked to oblivion, Florida, Panda, et. al) but just a handful of places consistently across a variety of sites, with a variety of terms for each.

No sense of cause, or commonality, at this early stage.

It doesn't have an effect on us from a seasonality standpoint, but its always very curious that they make these changes during a time period that does effect quite a few entities that rely heavily on the 4 weeks in December. There has to be a reason, and generally speaking the reason any business does something is monetary gain. Whatever change they made could have just as easily been done in mid-January, so one can only assume they are trying to leverage something. They did not go to this amount of effort (a change of this size must mean all hands on deck), in the middle of the holiday season, just to improve the "user experience".

[aksoni]

Worst update ever. Big eCommerce and garbage sites popping at the top. Is this the new normal?

[tangor]

@aksoni ... Welcome to the new norm... er Welcome to Webmasterworld!

:)

There's some trends beginning to show, but g is not quite ready to ignore all the loyal users for big dollars and easy scrapes. They are just making the "print smaller" so the "paid content/players" show up in the "yellow pages". Dynamics are changing and to me, it is beginning to look like the old AT&T yellow pages from the 1950s, 60s-80s ... and these days there's no more yellow pages.

Anyone get those for their locales any longer? Just curious.

At any rate, looks like moving to "pay to play", THOUGH NOT YET, just dipping the toes...

[Pranshu Sharma]

its a big update started rolling out but in India we didn't felt it yet soon it will crossing the boundaries i am sure

[mosxu]

Zombies all time high

[RedBar]

its a big update started rolling out but in India we didn't felt it yet soon it will crossing the boundaries i am sure

It hit my Indian sites and SERPs a week ago, I'm pretty sure other Indian webmasters will confirm this ... it may depend on your niche.

[MayankParmar]

Yes, I noticed movements in India, Australia, etc two days after the core update.

[ichthyous]

Big eCommerce and garbage sites popping at the top. Is this the new normal?

This has been the norm for months...I've lost ground across the board to big ecommerce sites with very thin content and no inbound links to their pages.

Traffic seemed to start recovering yesterday, but right back down...USA and UK down 15%, Canada is down 87%, Australia down 100%, most Euro countries down 22-45%. So this holiday season is a bust. It's been a year since the January 2020 update and things haven't improved at all with Google.

[Cristina]

Anyone from finance space here? For us it was a drop of -15% after a drop in may, but ctr went up and average position too- traffic went down the slammed us on big keywords

[browndog]

This has been the norm for months...I've lost ground across the board to big ecommerce sites with very thin content and no inbound links to their pages.

Me too.

[NickMNS]

@Cristina welcome to WebmasterWorld.

For us it was a drop of -15% after a drop in may, but ctr went up and average position too- traffic went down the slammed us on big keywords

I assume this is based on your reports from Google Search Console or GSC for short. This is a common side effect of how numbers are reported in GSC. The thread linked below explains exactly what your are seeing and why.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[tangor]

@Cristina ... Howdy!

This update appears to cross all niches and has yet to "shake out". Personally suspect there will be another 30-45 days turmoil before the next "normal" appears. Meanwhile, income/roi will moved to a lesser point that previous.

This seems to be a "new normal" for any g update.

[waynne]

Here in the UK I'm still seeing shifts on this update. EAT seems to be applied more heavily which is expected as the number of sites increases. Those long tail keywords people relied on are getting harder and harder to get.

I'm seeing priority given to pages that contain a section that deals with the keyphrase. So a small low EAT site with a specific page related to a keyphrase is now being outranked by a large EAT site that mentions the subject within another page.

We also see EAT applying to pages rather than sites in our niche - so pages that are new are dropping ranking but long existing updated pages with constant new links are rising.

Arts/Entertainment Games News Sports and Shopping niches all seem to be the worst hit in this update.

As with all core updates things are tweaked after the initial launch. Changes also appear to be spread over multiple data centres. I suspect ranking quality checks are taking place and see results coming in in regional 3 hour batches.

Thankfully I use multi focussed SEO on different sites and sections, ie some pages focus on say H1 tags and headings, others rely on meta tags and others page content is refined for semantics around a theme. I am seeing different types of optimisation working on different pages at different times as things settle it becomes clear which methods work more than before and which are failing.

It is frustrating to see a high quality often quoted page dropping and other more recent low quality pages outranking it.

Interestingly changes made to SEO methods on pages are likely to drop rankings before picking up again, a period of around 90 days needs to pass before you can determine the effectiveness of a significant SEO tweak, failing to wait seems to flag the page as low quality and it never ranks again.

Core updates seems to push a lot of spam and low quality sites to the top and then the new core ranking features are tweaked with minor changes until these low quality results are removed. Expect oscillations for a month or so whilst this shakes out and things are usually relaxed after Xmas (EAT dial is rolled back mainly).

It does appear that pages designed to rank for a term are being hit hard.

I wish Google did look at bounce rate, returning visits, whether a searcher continues searching for other sites and page durations metrics as these are hard to manipulate and give good indications of quality pages. A report spam button in the Serps would further the fight against low quality spam sites.

Annoyingly we just increased our server specs for another year just as we see a 50% drop in many sites traffic and revenue so will barely break even, how are we supposed to run a business? (My quality sites traffic is only down 10% but revenue is down 30%! go figure that one)

[robzilla]

The rollout has apparently completed: [seroundtable.com...]

[Cristina]

@waynne thanks for deep analysis, this is what I see too, since may and now too our media articles outrank our super in depth pages, I see since may the content only seo no longer works, I mean with the same content in 2017/2018 we would have rocked it, now it no longer suffice - to me this new algorithm is like going back to more link based ranking and I see google understanding worse than before the synonyms and content, they changed something there, but in baaad way for the content understanding perspective

Also older sites got improved rankings and fresh posts I see too have a boost, there is for sure a higher freshness score, higher link score and old domain

Can anyone advise specific actions needed to be taken to improve EAT? I think my site lacks this

[jediviper]

@Cristina

If you want to do it right, have a very good read of this google rater guidelines file:
[static.googleusercontent.com...]

[RedBar]

The rollout has apparently completed: [seroundtable.com...]

Realy, in the UK?

If this sticks, doubtful, all it will do is drive even more to pay to play ... my widget sector has extremely poor quality results, very litttle E.A.T. whatsoever, most niche specialists gone, which the buying public relies upon, leaving a few dubious quality warehouse discounters solely of standard products for which there is very little demand.

Plot ... Lost it G!

[lxtlabel]

I'm disappointed the change!

[mosxu]

Buyer traffic disappeared after this update.

[RedBar]

I have to say that G.US SERPs is so-so, ok, not bad but could do better, clearly for my widgets some sites have not had any human review.

Insofar as G.UK is concerned it's a mish-mash mess, some good and valid listings however also some pointless. garbage sites AND we are still plagued with Ebay and Pinterest rankings.

From what amateur searchers / buyers / shoppers tell me, they have mostly moved on from G and never bother going there.

Obviously this all depends on the search however I am seeing some businesses doing well with very few G referrals.