Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2021

[JesterMagic]

The following 2 messages were cut out of the January 2021 thread at:
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5022136.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 10:19 am on Feb 1, 2021 - PDT -8)



Notice Google Bot has been extremely active our our site yesterday and today. Probably about 3-4 times the visits compared to a normal day.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:25 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2021]
[edit reason] cleanup after thread split [/edit]

[MayankParmar]

Discover returned and it's pushing one or two stories while ignoring all other stories. It looks like they changed the Discover algorithm in the first week of this month.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Discover was somewhat more stable than usual from the start of the month, but hit a wall around 18 Feb and things have been very inconsistent since. Some pieces are being picked up, but as has happened before, doesn't seem to be driven by the CTR. On the bright side: at least it's not old and outdated content that's being picked up like previous dips of this nature.

My personal Discover feed has had a slight facelift in terms of layout and look so that might or might not be related.

[RedBar]

Without a doubt my highest weekend PVs in several years with valid-looking traffic from many countries.

Strangely one of my products which was very popular umtil about 9 years ago has had a revival this month ... not at all sure why, I constantly rank top 3 for it. If it were solely one country then loads of companies vying to quote for "a project", but no, from all over.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Ouch, spoke too soon. Today has been veeeery quiet. I do note a slight wobble on the sensors over the last few days though.
Been a decent month overall, though, and the dips haven't lasted as long as they sometimes did before, so I'll stay hopeful for a little while yet.

[RedBar]

I've just been checking and comparing stats.

The first week or so of January is always quiet however in the next 24 hours I expect to exceed January's numbers and hopefully on-target to match October's which I would consider to be very, very good ... For me ... it's been a similar cycle for 25+ years.

[mzb44]

The February 17 update seems to have resulted in around -20% or so decrease across the board.

May 2020 and December 2020 core update affected site.

Despite massive improvements it seems there is an upper hard cap the site is unable to breach no matter what but apparently lower is always possible.

[Athedian]

Big decrease in traffic for me by up to 40% and continues to drop ever since Feb 8 update. Feb 17 drove the dagger deeper into my heart with page ranking drop and click rate drop as well.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Definitely feeling the squeeze since 17 Feb. Can't see that much of a change in terms of rankings. There was actually a brief ranking improvement a day or two after 17 Feb, but been very volatile since then. Ouch.

[Chickensalami]

Experiencing the same exact thing everyone else is. Very solid and climbing traffic all of January and then a decent decline most of February. Beyond fed up with the bi-polar serps. No stability whatsoever.

[RedBar]

Experiencing the same exact thing everyone else

Sorry, you are experiencing similar to others reporting here, not everyone else.

I saw an interesting stat this morning. As my February PVs rolled past January's my uniques were 7 different, yes seven different, less in case you were wondering.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Oh, and spoke too soon on Discover no longer showing outdated and irrelevant content when there's something better available. Back to that nonsense as of this morning.

And, to be clear, PVs for Feb are UP overall vs Jan...but the wobbles have been more notable and somewhat more drastic compared to Jan.

[RedBar]

One thing I have learnt over the past 27 years of traffic data with multi-millions of PVs is the consistency of the inconsistency, or is it the other way round?

For me it is the quality of the enquiries I can drive, not the volume / quantity.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Sure @RedBar. Bit more of a challenge for those who don't sell anything....well, you know, technically selling content to Google to monetize, I guess.

[renatovieira]

Has anyone noticed drop since the 18/feb? Since then my traffic has only been dropping.

[RedBar]

selling content to Google to monetize

I used to do that and I made $10+K a month until they stole all my image traffic 11 years ago which kicked my up my a$$ and made me focus more on what to do with all the information I had given away quite freely.

I was trying to educate people, G didn't really want that!

[TalkativeEditorial]

Lol. Now Analytics is broken again in what has become a frequent occurrence - showing a real time total that's waaaaaaaaay wrong.
Sigh,

[Chickensalami]

@mzb44 I feel like I’m experiencing the same thing to a T. Tons of improvements and content added yet I can’t seem to pass the traffic ceiling that my site is experiencing.

Don’t get me wrong it has grown very slightly over the past few months but considering the volume of articles I have up that growth just doesn’t match up. It’s like ever since the May update hit the site’s been screwed. Before that it was growing just fine. Sucks for sure.

[gatormark]

This year is looking very similar to 2018 for me. Adsense revenue is up 60+ percent. 2019 and 2020 were down years. 2020 horrible. My high-ranking primary keywords have all been wiped out by Google SERP updates over the past 2 years. None of them are on page 1 anymore. So, I focused on the secondary keywords and that seems to have stabilized my traffic and revenue.

[samrazzy]

Is anyone facing an indexing issue? It's been 24 hours, my post still not showing up in Google.

[JasonBlaze]

Google Analytics seems to be broken for me, as real time is showing way off. No other changes at the moment.

[strummer19]

A major impact for my 4 european websites (news). Discover out since 48 hours and massive loss in SERP - Worst update since 5 years

[mosxu]

Big problem is the quality of traffic

[TalkativeEditorial]

Instability and volatility continue here. As soon as it looks like there are signs of recovery, there is another wobble.
And Google Analytics remains unstable, too - showing quite obviously incorrect real time totals quite often.

[ichthyous]

A seeming recovery in the last few days...traffic is slowly creeping back, however UK traffic that held up fairly well before is down 55% this morning. USA traffic is back to normal, China and UAE traffic up 1000+%, Australia up almost 500%. This traffic must not be great quality, as my bounce rate is higher, time spent on the site is much lower, and it's not resulting in any new conversions...just spam.

[kanetom]

Update of google can hurt you or support you but in most of the cases it hurts. Although only the things you can take care that you have to update and clean your site weekly basis or daily.

[renatovieira]

Massive drop today. Apparently it will be a long day.

[yollo03]

For all those that are not sure there is an update, there is one, my personal score in semrush is 9.4 the biggest score since the core update. This is the 4th time google is toying with my website like this, I hope that this time I will get my keywords back.

[MayankParmar]

Search console reporting is delayed.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Here we go again, SERPS ranking only content (from our site) that's dated and nearly irrelevant, despite more recent and updated content being available. This usually means something is afoot.

[topaz]

^ Same.