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]

[Markedd]

@mzb44 I am actually surprised that his website is being affected since the type of articles that he writes are what Google seems to currently prefer. I actually switched to this model since last year and it seems to kind of work (in my case, there are some other aspects that Google doesn't like).

[RedBar]

building any content no longer seems like viable long term strategy, considering the trajectory Google is taking in past couple of years.

Whilst I understand that statement it really does depend on one's widgets.

RealWorld producers and sellers have several different routes to market their products and the vast majority can still do this with or without Google ... That is something G is accutely aware of with its massive failure to get the corporate world to engage in its BS rhetoric.

However it one is focussed on blatant consumerism, then G probably has you by the short and curlies since Joe Public seems to be obsessed by its culture. Those requiring in-depth or non-socially promoted articles / products can still do well.

Here's an example of blatant, panic-buying consumerism.

It's coming up to Easter, a traditional time for many in the UK to consider sprucing-up their gardens for Spring and Summer however there is a shortage of garden furnture, hence a buying panic.

Why is this? Two reasons:

1. The UK is starting to come out of lockdown and gardens are one of the places people will be able to meet.

2. You can believe this or not and I can ssure you this is true. Probably the UK's largest garden centre chain has 16 container loads of garden furntiure stuck on that container ship in the Suez canal ... Good grief, it had a mention on the national news and JP went panic-mad buying every piece they could find.

And now probably the UK's largest online retail chain has had to advise this shortage ... Toilet rolls anyone?.?.?

[mzb44]

@mzb44 I am actually surprised that his website is being affected since the type of articles that he writes are what Google seems to currently prefer. I actually switched to this model since last year and it seems to kind of work (in my case, there are some other aspects that Google doesn't like).

Yeah. I'm actually looking at a site right now that's in the exact same space as his site and even has an extremely similar name (starts with the same word). I'm sure Mayank will immediately know which one I talk about. What they are doing is near identical to Mayank except they have less original reporting and more shallow articles (like, a lot more - i.e. 300-400 words ones).

They are killing it. Like, Mayank's traffic x 10 at least. Up every single core update, no exception.

The only difference I can see is that site looks more like a real publisher/business and Mayank's like a one man personal blog. But I'm unsure if this even matters and if it's even detectable by Google in the first place. It's just a personal impression; that other one looks more "official" or "serious" if this makes sense.

Shows again how schizophrenic Google is the last couple of years.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Building content mostly for Discover doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy.

Nobody is doing this. There is no way to "optimise" for Discover either, despite what all those articles try to tell you. The point of consternation for MP and many others (myself included) is that despite following what Google says is "best practice" - things seemingly work completley randomly and several articles that do not comply with their "best practice" frequently appear in the feeds.

Which ties in with your other point that building content for Google is not viable. It certainly does seem that way. The thing that stings is that for many of us, building content was a way to survive when the pandemic hit (and some of us lost our jobs so the site hustle [pun intended] became our only jobs. Naive as it might be, there had been enough signs that "following best practice" would indeed be rewarded so growing additional avenues was on the strategy list, but when you are just trying to survive, it's hard to work on that when you are also being routinely bashed against the rocks by Google.

[MayankParmar]

The site with a similar name is actually operated by a big British media company (starts with letter "F") and they run nearly all popular tech sites ( acquired more sites in the past few years).

Sites operated by that British media company frequently link back to my stories, almost every week. And yeah, I get outranked (most of the time).

Is it really difficult for Google to identify the original source when every other report on the topic has linked back to me? In one case, the meta description picked by Google for one big tech site starts with my site name (XXXXXX XXXXX reported that the...) and they're ranking #1 while I am swinging between first and second page.

Similarly, printing issues were widely reported earlier this month and nearly all tech sites linked back to me (because I was the original source). That article barely fetched 10K impressions in Google Discover because Google picked the same topic from bigger publishers.

I have brought this to Google's attention... but nothing changed. And I don't think it will get "fixed". They don't care.

[lammert]

Just a reminder: WebmasterWorld is everything but a private chat room and in the more competitive niches, chances are significant that competitors are lurking here. Being able to link messages on this board to sites may help them find the weaknesses of competitors, as well as strengths in their own SEO approach. This is one of the reasons why citing specifics which may identify sites of members is not encouraged.

[Markedd]

@mzb44 If we're looking at the same competitor, then the guy is putting more than two articles a day (even though very small) and from what I have seen the last couple of years, Google seems to care more about quantity than quality. That is ignoring the major filter which is authority. I have a semi-competitor that creates two articles a day and they're complete and utter non-sense. Written in English, but the writer has no idea what he's talking about (when I want to lighten my mood, I read his articles), but the website only grows every core update.
@MayankParmar If you have direct competitors that are that big, I really have no advice to give. Google will ignore everything, even non-ethical practices and will put the corporations above the honest worker.

[DivineDex]

@NewsPublishers

I'm a silent reader but I had to sign up today.

Discover crashed for our clients on 2/3 March. It's down to 20 clicks from 40-80K a say.

They're authority in the niche (but not operated by media companies).

Google is clearly favouring bigger publishers (they're mainstream political sites) in Discover feed for reasons. We're also redesigning one of the sites, but we're not sure if that'll help.

My clients niche: mobile operating systems and sports

[MayankParmar]

@Markedd Fortunately, they're not direct competitors (they don't post as frequently as I do) and things were better before the March update. Also, I used to have fillers, but then I heard quality/original reporting > quantity and I changed my approach. I'll add more posts for a month to see if that will make a difference in Discover traffic.

[edited by: MayankParmar at 8:08 pm (utc) on Mar 27, 2021]

[teokolo]

Seeing some fluctuations since 24h, site heavily impacted by may2020 update, improved E-A-T one month ago. First good signal after almost one year of decline.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Just this morning in my personal Discover Feed..... an article copy and wasted from a wire service and two articles with only "Staff Writer" as a byline.

Cool.

[TalkativeEditorial]

There is an interesting thread on reddit about how messy Discover Feeds are for a lot of people (not webmasters in most cases). Nevermind, I'm sure everything is fine and it's just that sites aren't focusing on content properly.

[url]source: [reddit.com...]

[MayankParmar]

I am also getting recommendations for old posts from January and December. Unrelated topics. They're even showing enterprise documentation, Github commits, forum pages, and job listing sites in Discover.

[RedBar]

Friday's traffic was 105%
Saturday 60% - that's really low for me
Today so far 28%

Country by visitor still the same but search traffic source up some 10%

[ichthyous]

@RedBar Something is going on. When I see my traffic for last 90 days it was a nice surge from the end of December or begin Jan until Feb 13th. This resulted in a bonanza of sales for me, I couldn't keep up. Then off the cliff on February 13th to a new much lower plateau until March 15th...then a huge plunge in traffic which is continuing downward, but Friday and Saturday were particularly bad. Friday was a 30% drop in USA and UK traffic, Saturday was 18% and 20% respectively and today is 34% and 29% down, but it's too early to tell.

I attribute my drop around March 15th to shutting down a partnership with a very high authority site which was costing me dearly but producing no sales. I lost 825 links over the last ten days or so. I knew that I was going to get hammered but I've lost ranking completely on some high traffic terms. Nothing I can do but rebuild on other platforms, but I doubt the traffic will recover fully

[TalkativeEditorial]

@ichthyous The dates you mention match a lot of the flux's everyone is seeing through. I wouldn't put all of it down to the loss of the links you mention.

Personally saw a dip on 11 Feb, with a recovery on 13 Feb. The off a cliff 3 March abysmal plunge 15 March and have largely remained on the low-level baseline. It's very disconcerting.

[superclown2]

I attribute my drop around March 15th to shutting down a partnership with a very high authority site which was costing me dearly but producing no sales. I lost 825 links over the last ten days or so.

Losing links is bad news. G likes to see a steady increase ideally.

I put up a new site two days ago and 301'd an old one to it. The reason for the change was a domain name that no longer represented the site content. Within less than a day the new site was in the SERPs and getting clicks. Without the links from the 301 it would be nowhere.

A few weeks ago I 301'd another site with plenty of backlinks to another in a different vertical. It tanked for it's targeted keywords a couple of days later. Reason? IMO Irrelevant backlinks.

Conclusion? despite Google's much vaunted AI, backlinks from relevant pages still rule. Can you do a deal and re-capture those links that you've lost?

[Dooku]

Seeing as how G is reacting to the no-clicks article we should all chip in and have a nice big statue erected of Rand Fishkin across the street of the main G office!

"Shows again how schizophrenic Google is the last couple of years."
You think? :-) I wonder if by now there are still members actually putting faith in what G says and still believe their gospel?

[TalkativeEditorial]

I'm actually busy doing a bit of deep data diving to calculate exactly how much the no click searches has "cost" the site. Historical featured snippet tracking is a bit of a challenge though. Any advice on the most efficient way to do this much appreciated

[insideout]

Same pattern as @RedBar

[MayankParmar]

Google Discover issues:
[reddit.com...]
[support.google.com...]
[support.google.com...]
[reddit.com...]

[ichthyous]

Conclusion? despite Google's much vaunted AI, backlinks from relevant pages still rule. Can you do a deal and re-capture those links that you've lost?

@superclown2 Of course it's not ideal to lose that many links at one time, but I decided to end the partnership with the platform after two years of really feeling shortchanged and not getting anything for my money. I knew I was going to take a huge hit, but it felt great to cut the cord. I have one month to return and they can turn all the content back on, so I will see if I have to do that...the clock is ticking. In the meantime I have been busy migrating the content (and new links) to other platforms (in the same vertical as mine) as quickly as possible.

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:37 am (utc) on Mar 29, 2021]

[topaz]

lol..that last one describes what I've been seeing regarding food and recipes in Discover. Once you search anything food-related..the feed gets completely inundated with the subject. The same does not happen for other searches.

[TalkativeEditorial]

For me personally, the same thing is happening with other searches. It's not as heavy as with recipes, it's pretty bad.
It's like somebody turned the dials of "give people stuff they search about on every subject which even vaguely matches" up all the way.

Nevermind though, I'm sure everything is fine and we'll get one of those answers those "product experts" loooooooooooove to copy and paste on the "community help forums"

[yollo03]

Something happened over the weekend, took another deep dive in impressions and clicks (-50%). It just doesn't stop getting worse...

[RedBar]

They've done something again!

Yesterday was looking very poor until the last few hours of my Googleday with a sudden influx of visitors across all sites resulting in normal Sunday numbers with my global .com at 72%.

This seems to have continued into this morning, where will they end up?

[yollo03]

Im noticing an unusual amount of visits from googlebots. Perhaps something is happening...

[insideout]

Traffic is abnormally down since last Friday. Definitely, Google is preparing for something BIG :(

[MayankParmar]

News articles on Discover algorithm change:

[chromeunboxed.com...]
[9to5google.com...]

[TalkativeEditorial]

Indexing on mobile is completely broken for me. URL will show indexed on GSC (and it definitely was before) but SERPS show oooooooooooooooooooooold and irrelevant stuff (for our site and others on certain terms)