Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2021

[MayankParmar]

The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5025541.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 1:12 am on Mar 1, 2021- (PDT -8)


Web vital update is expected to live in May and there should be a core update too. They might be testing something for the next core update...

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:19 am (utc) on Mar 1, 2021]
[edit reason] cleanup after thread split [/edit]

[MayankParmar]

Having Google News indexing issues right now

[christianz]

Google PR:

Google Search sends more traffic to the open web every year

In absolute terms, maybe this is true. But it is irrelevant. In relative terms the portion of traffic stolen from the "open web" and redirected to ads and Google's own properties is growing every year.

[mzb44]

Yeah, pretty awful blog post by Google. Pure gaslighting.

It's now a concrete and tangible evidence that Google is more than willing to distort facts and present false narratives.

"In reality, Google Search sends billions of clicks to websites every day, and we’ve sent more traffic to the open web every year since Google was first created."

Umm, yeah. Because the web has grown significantly since then. There are more websites and more internet users. But this doesn't refute that Google is stealing clicks and traffic. Both can be true at the same time. The actual implication is that websites would be receiving even more clicks today, if Google weren't stealing clicks.

But the way this is phrased it tries to refute Rand's arguments that Google is stealing traffic. Look at the wording: "In reality [...]".

Very low. Very very low.

And with this now we have an actual concrete and written proof that Google is willing to intentionally mislead, misdirect and intentionally construct false narratives and misrepresent data in a malicious way to further its interests.

I mean, we knew this before but we now have written proof.

[lammert]

Giving searchers the answers they look for the fastest way possible without clicking through to other websites is in line with Google's objectives and can (from a searchers point of view) hardly called misleading. The problem is website owners who provide such a shallow service to their visitors that the essence of their content can be condensed in a snippet line.

By readjusting your view of the market, you can still be present in the SERPs but cause a click-through, instead of a SERPs view only. You have to understand the mindset of the searcher though and make your snippets and main content of your pages not an answer, but an incentive to the searcher which they can't resist. Rather than having a business model where visitors can SEE something, change your business model where visitors can DO something. That is much harder for Google to copy in a small piece of condensed text in the SERPs.

[mzb44]

Giving searchers the answers they look for the fastest way possible without clicking through to other websites is in line with Google's objectives and can (from a searchers point of view) hardly called misleading. The problem is website owners who provide such a shallow service to their visitors that the essence of their content can be condensed in a snippet line.

Your two sentences directly contradict each other.

So, is giving searchers answers in a simple and fastest way possible a good experience or is it shallow? Or does it depend on who does it?

[gatormark]

@mzb44

You beat me to it.

[lammert]

Simple answers are a good experience for the searchers, if they are searching for it. But if your business model focuses on providing simple answers to simple questions it is now flawed because Google is your biggest competitor.

A shallow website by itself is not bad, a shallow website making accessible through Google is now a bad idea because Google copies the content and displays it themselves.

[saladtosser]

>>>Giving searchers the answers they look for the fastest way possible without clicking through to other websites is in line with Google's objectives and can (from a searchers point of view) hardly called misleading.<<<

The biggest problem with this is Google is breaking the symbiotic relationship with webmasters/publishers in the name of improving the "user experience" (saving them that all too tiring "click"). Here's the problem, Google NEEDS publishers *AS MUCH* as Google needs users... Without publishers where will the content their "users" are looking for be coming from? Also what content will they wrap their ads around? No publishers no Google advertising correct?!.

Here's the rub.... By increasingly eating into publishers traffic/revenue to increase Googles revenue (sorry I mean help the "user") the incentive (and ability) to publish new content, invest in better sites/servers and innovate in general diminishes with the publishers return on investment.

I would argue that with increased traffic removal from the publisher, it will be more damaging to the "user" than the users having to "tap their finger to click onto a website". (I'm playing the worlds smallest violin)

Why? Because reduced monetisation for publishers = reduced incentive/ability to produce new, accurate high-quality content hosted on expensive servers, having a knock-on effect for Google and the Google "user". (Unless google goes full-on AI content generation removing the NEED for publishers, which I believe is the end game)

Google isn't "helping" the "users" by removing the publisher from the equation, they are doing the opposite. By c*** blocking the publisher's ability to effectively monetise their content, they are reducing the ability/amount the publisher can then reinvest back into their platforms to create new and improved content for Googles "users" to consume.

[edited by: saladtosser at 1:48 pm (utc) on Mar 25, 2021]

[mzb44]

Featured snippets are just a small aspect of the problem.

Google is implementing more and more search features aimed at intentionally preventing users from clicking on organic results.

A good example for this is the "People also ask" box, which nowadays appears even directly below the 4 Google Ads results, clearly with the intention to push organic results further down. This is an extremely insidious feature; clicking on one question will generate additional 3-4 questions generating a near infinite loop if you keep clicking them. All endlessly pushing organic further down.

There is no objective reason to include the "People also asked" box before any organic result. It's a feature that would help one to refine their question/search in case no satisfactory result is found. Therefore, it's something that from a UX perspective makes sense to have at the bottom of the SERP.

It's obvious this exists to suppress organic clicks and searchers scrolling below ads or the first 1-2 organic results.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Well it was nice to have had a day of surfacing in Discover. And great to know that content that's essentially a press release just slightly re-written is the kind of stuff Google wants to see in Discover instead of the extended, original content on the same subject that followed the press release. Awesome.

SERPS have been really strange on mobile. Rankings (as ever) remain decent but it is very old content that is being ranked despite newer content (from our site too) having ranked better than it recently. What fun.

[christianz]

A good example for this is the "People also ask" box, which nowadays appears even directly below the 4 Google Ads results, clearly with the intention to push organic results further down. This is an extremely insidious feature

I just entered terms "largest optical fiber companies" and got:

1. AD
2. AD
3. AD
4. AD
5. Very tall featured snipped from a mainstream site (owned by Verizon)
6. People also ask

(now I have scrolled 10 nautical miles from the top of the page)

7. first organic result
8. second organic result.
9. etc

[NickMNS]

@lammert what you say makes sense and I would agree that generally it's good advice, but it applies mostly to informational sites. If you sell a product you are somewhat limited in what you can do. Sure you can create some widget that better display's your product or whatever, but in the end customers just want to buy the product. If Google put's its chain across the river with Google shopping, you are forced to pay or loose all potential customer's.

But even if you come up with a great value added website, if there is enough money in the niche Google will still move in on your turf. Take job postings, a website like Indeed offers service which cannot be displayed in a one liner, but now it must compete directly with Google. Other examples are, travel, comparison shopping sites, and more. The list is relatively short for now, but as time goes on and Google's rents-seeking kills more and more innovation, Google will need to stretch it's chain across more and more niches. And Google will continue to innovate, not in new services and products, but in means to extract rent from it's river.

[mzb44]

Sullivan is now doubling down on the bull***ting and shifting of the narrative. He really seems to be taking this way too personally. Perhaps Google should rethink whether they hired the right person for this job.

[twitter.com...]

"Zero-click Google searches rose but causes no loss to creator traffic"

Absolutely condescending. Does he think we are just stupid and don't grasp basic logic?

The number of organic clicks may not have decreased simply because there's now a higher number of searches performed. So, you get the same number of clicks even with a lower share of clicks.

But the fact that both the total search volume and percentage of "zero-click" searches increased, while the number of organic clicks remained the same, clearly shows that in reality the organic results have lost out. 4th grade arithmetic.

I am still trying to understand what actually goes through his head when he makes these kinds of statements. Does he genuinely believe his own bs or he just thinks we're all just some idiots who can be manipulated with such low effort bs statements.

[saladtosser]

>>>Perhaps Google should rethink whether they hired the right person for this job.<<<

If the webmaster community had a vote I suspect we could probably all agree that Barry SER would have been the man for the job, Barry is a likeable, calm character many of us can relate to, I don't think Barry is someone who would compromise his character and morals/opinion for a cash grab so he probably wouldn't last long at google though tbh...

[superclown2]

Something's happening here in the UK. I mentioned a day or two ago that there was movement for some big money terms but the long tail was set in stone. This afternoon I'm seeing major changes in both. Relevancy seems to more rewarded than before. Hope it carries on like this!

[TalkativeEditorial]

Hmmm, it's not visible on the sensors but like somebody else has mentioned before - seeing a lot of very old and outdated content ranking in the SERPS (from our site and others). Also seeing very old stuff - three weeks or a month in Discover - and NOT showing up as "in case you missed it".

This is what it looked like during the 2020 mobile indexing issues in September.....

[HereWeGo123]

Not sure if everyone is seeing it or maybe it’s unique to my own set of KWs that I’m manually checking but I’m seeing a lot of dancing in the serps. More unusual activity than normal. We just launched a new website a few months ago so I’m guessing a lot of volatility is to be expected in the earlier months.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@HereWeGo123 been the same here all month pretty much (for manual checks) - especially with high ranking terms. they can change on the hour on some days.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Traffic has gone off a cliff again today. On course to not even reach half of Feb's total (which only had 28 days!).
Abysmal. Will be lowest month traffic wise since July 2020 in all likelihood. This hurts, badly.

[RedBar]

Something's happened / happening with average traffic flows but not at all sure what as yet, my average daily PVs for the past week have been:

Friday 19th 103%
Saturday 73% Normal
Sunday 79% Normal
Monday 103%
Tuesday 75%
Wednesday 94%
Thursdaty 64%
Friday today so far 44%

Yesterday was my lowest weekday PVs since the first week of March and before that mid January ... Strange

[ichthyous]

Traffic indeed has gone off a cliff...I'm down on average every day this week, but today is extreme. I have noticed that Fridays seem to be the day that traffic tanks badly these days, but it sometimes turns around very quickly in the second half of the day.

I recently ended a partnership with a very powerful site in my niche and am losing 825 links from their content pages, so my case the swings may be extreme for a while and it may take weeks to stabilize. What I am noticing is that the SERPs seem stable, I am not losing ground recently, although I have lost about twenty #4-#10 ranked terms compared to early January. The traffic is just gone but the SERPS are not bouncing around much.

I did notice that all of the sudden ads are being placed for my name (my brand), so competitor sites are coming up above my own trying to grab the clicks. Also many more ads on the page now on mobile...Google searches are just a joke of competing ads now.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:58 pm (utc) on Mar 26, 2021]

[RedBar]

Oh noooo ... The dreaded multiple Pinterest pages have returned for some of my widgets!

[Neohippy]

Indexing malarkey still seems to be going on (new page: SC says indexed; but can't find it on search, even using site: operator)

[MayankParmar]

I'm still having Google News slow indexing problem. It looks like I'll need to contact their support staff now. I honestly don't understand why this always happens to me...

[TalkativeEditorial]

Something is / has been up all month and it's all just a bit.....odd.

With the site on course for its lowest month since July 2020 (which actually comes as a shock even though I knew things were bad), I compared some GSC data from the last 25 days to 1-25 December (because the trajectory range matched quite a bit)...

Here's where things get strange....but perhaps this is significant in terms of the recent kerfuffle about no-click searches (I will drill down a bit more over the coming days)

More impressions this month so far vs the December date.
More clicks...but......lower CTR overall. Now sure, there are many reasons why this might be the case. However, is still a near 30% decrease between March vs Dec 2020.

[MayankParmar]

Discover traffic for the past few days: [imgur.com...]

It used to be 500K-700K impressions. I have removed ads from AMP pages to see if that will make a difference.

I know Discover is volatile.. but it's completely unfair right now - those linking back to my stories are in Discover while I am nowhere. I should at least get rewarded for my original reporting.

I am changing my approach/reducing dependence on Discover/News.. but this still sucks.

[edited by: MayankParmar at 7:25 pm (utc) on Mar 26, 2021]

[TalkativeEditorial]

@MP that's horrible. Sorry that's happening to you. We had a mini spike this week, but back to nearly non existent again. It would not be so frustrating if the feeds didn't contradict what Google insists is part of its policy

[saladtosser]

Sorry MayankParmar, you don't deserver that :(

[christianz]

I have never got single click or impression from discover for ~400 articles over 15 years. Not that I care - I get maybe 1% of Google traffic because of my articles and most of them are kind of s**t quality anyway, if I am honest.

If I was a news site this would be big deal from me. But even as is, I feel (like most of us) overly dependent on Google and its tantrums. If I was dependent one one specific widget of already volatile Google, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Building content mostly for Discover doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy. Having said that, building any content no longer seems like viable long term strategy, considering the trajectory Google is taking in past couple of years.

[mzb44]

Mayank, is your site the one that is named after an operating system and a word denoting something that happened recently?

If yes, you deserve better.