Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2021

[goodroi]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5028704.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 5:38 am on Apr 1, 2021 (utc -5)

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With Google continuing to evolve its ranking factors and growing the influence of AI influence on the SERPs, the updates seem to be more frequent (due to so many moving parts) but less drastic (due to most parts only being a small cog in the Google machine).

[universenet]

f you were wondering why Google is not in a hurry to fix all these issues. Why we're an extremely small minority who believe that G search is broken and why no one cares that mainstream sites are favoured unfairly.

"Google overall saw a 34% earnings increase year-over-year.

Yes, this is good thinking.. and only logical , it is not nessecery fixing mistake if earning going up

[saladtosser]

>>>>If they want to hit the same numbers and revenue increase percentages in 2021, they absolutely must crack down again hard with some more massive updates. We're probably still riding the effects of the December update. But soon I believe they will have to release another one to boost H2 2021 numbers as well. Probably around June, so they can show growth early H2 2021. Expect it to hit even harder than the December one.<<<


It's not a sustainable business model though, sooner or later it will have to implode.

Google taking more and more money creates a deficit elsewhere, money is not limitless and the more a company earns it has to create a deficit somewhere in the world. So much for the chocolate factory. Not watching the internship again :(

[ichthyous]

Google taking more and more money creates a deficit elsewhere, money is not limitless and the more a company earns it has to create a deficit somewhere in the world.

This is exactly why monopolies are a threat to the entire economy. USA has allowed Google, FB, Amazon to morph into monopolies because the government was thinking in an old way about what a monopoly means. Governments around the world are finally waking up to this fact, but it's already too late. It would take a massive effort and expense to regulate these monopolies now. I read a recent argument for why Google is actually a utility now, and should be regulated like one...it was written by a politician, go figure.

[ichthyous]

Anyone else seeing a massive drop in traffic to their home page, while internal page traffic is increasing? My traffic is trending higher, but traffic to my home page is down 37% yesterday and 50% so far today. Yesterday much higher direct traffic, today it dropped like a stone. My SERPS are dropping again and none of it is converting at all.

[christianz]

It's not a sustainable business model though, sooner or later it will have to implode.

Google can stay "unimploded" longer than you can stay solvent.

Just like with ancient empires, there is usually a long, drawn-out period of decline before the inevitable collapse. It could even be a whole generation lost without realistic chance to make it in the WWW business.

But there is no doubt this is unsustainable.

[mzb44]

It's probably unsustainable but realistically when would this "implosion" happen? 10 years? 15 years? 20 years? - Almost everyone who is an exec at Google at the moment will be long retired by then. They will be remembered as some of the best and most successful executives in history. If the implosion happens it will be blamed on whoever comes after them.

Currently whatever they are doing is absolutely working for them. Revenues are increasing - and not just by a little! - , more users use Google than ever. More users engage with Google properties than ever. Google's brand value is higher than ever.

Clearly at the moment the exact opposite of an implosion is happening. What other already established non-startup company can achieve a massive 32% (!) growth per year? One third. In one year. This number is ridiculously insane if you understand the business world somewhat!

They are absolutely not going to pull back not even a millimeter under any circumstance from what they have been doing in 2020. They are going to double and triple down so hard on all of this in 2021 and beyond we're all going to have sweet memories of 2020 in comparison to what is going to come next.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - It was as I expected. After two days with very high traffic and excellent conversions, the huge drop comes today. On my side, not only on the home page, but on the whole site.

That's what I said before, this was expected :-|

[christianz]

more users use Google than ever. More users engage with Google properties than ever. Google's brand value is higher than ever.

But the signs of decline are evident. Just look at the SERPs.

Also, last year was super duper year for everyone in the online businesses due to the stimmies, work from home, mania in the asset markets etc.

30% revenue growth across all of these companies doesn't mean we got 30% richer or life became 30% better - half of that number was pure inflation.

[yollo03]

Based on today I can see that some of my top competitors in my niche were severely punched down. My suspicion is that it may be related to the core web vitals, neither of them pass. It is only a guess. Usually after semrush shows high volatility it hits me the following day so I really hope nothing major will happen.

[mzb44]

But the signs of decline are evident. Just look at the SERPs.

Evident for us. The general public seems to either not care or even like it. Until the moment the general public is fine with this (and even likes it) we can expect much more of it.

[saladtosser]

I guess this is why Google has decided to push so many youtube videos above organic informational searches, they don't have many (any?) people buying ads for these kinda SERPs but if they can get people onto youtube they can then display ads to every user and monetize the informational SERPs that way.....

[yollo03]

Google is now allowing to report indexing issues or poorly ranked pages. I am wondering whether reporting can have an adverse effect where your ranking will drop due to a manual adjustment. Any thoughts? [seroundtable.com...]

[not2easy]

;) That discussion is already here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[TalkativeEditorial]

Like many here, I had to have an internal chuckle at the "Google doesn't suspend sites from Discover" thread that's doing the rounds. Of course they don't. They just break stuff and then ignore reports with evidence that something is wrong and contradict their own content policies.

I feel sorry for webmasters who seemingly haven't realised yet that something with that feed is borked ever since March.

[MayankParmar]

Well... if they stop indexing articles in Discover then it is equal to suspension or shadow ban.

[ichthyous]

I am getting hard to explain spikes in traffic from France, Germany and Spain recently. Upon closer inspection it's multiple (10-12) hits to the same page from IPs all over France (and the Island of Reunion!), or multiple hits to another page from IPs all over Germany, same thing from Spain, etc. The hits are spread out over half a day, but it's still not normal to get that many visits to one page from one country. Some of the hits are coming from images.google.fr, others from google search. Is anyone else seeing this odd behavior? This is causing traffic spikes to interior pages on my site for days now, while my home page is -30%+.

[MayankParmar]

Analytics seems to be down at the moment

[TalkativeEditorial]

they stop indexing articles in Discover then it is equal to suspension or shadow ban.

Unless it is because of a technical error that they either refuse to acknowledge or remain unaware of, of course.

[saladtosser]

Discover came back from nowhere (0 clicks/impressions) for around a month to 120 clicks Wednesday. Just a shame it's not traffic you can rely on week to week, I'm sure it will drop off to nothing in around 6 days which seems to be the pattern for my site, large spikes of traffic for a few days then nothing for weeks. Ironically my traffic is at an all-time high but AdSense earnings are at an all-time low, go figure!

[Rndm]

Also, last year was super duper year for everyone in the online businesses

This doesn't seem to hold true when reading this thread.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Anyone noticing any shifts? Not seen much movement on our sites, but I am in the process of doing some database housekeeping on some sites - so need to sometimes just cross-reference with a google search for some tables....and yet....despite quite obviously being very very very interested in WordPress......the search results have utterly abysmal for some of the most basic queries....so thought I'd ask if anyone is being hammered.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing some very odd patterns...for one search that I rank #1 on for years it showed a google account login page at #1 yesterday (gone today). For another term that I was in the top five for a couple of years, and which I lost completely after the March update, I jumped back to #1 yesterday, and then dropped to 83 today. In the old days that might indicate a penalty of some sort on my site, but these days not so sure.

On top of that there are bizarre surges in traffic from a different European country almost every day...today it was a big surge from Google Netherlands. Also, my home page traffic was down 35-45% from the 26th-29th and today snapped back to normal.

Finally, today my traffic dropped off a cliff at 9am and is still lower.

[christianz]

This doesn't seem to hold true when reading this thread.

My issue is that Google doesn't give good websites fair share of traffic. If these websites could still increase revenue (thanks to "covid boom" or other unrelated factors), that doesn't mean that everything is great and this thread should be nothing but happy webmasters praising Google.

I am in information websites, and Google is hammering me with "people also ask", YouTube spam, big name corporate site spam, instant answers, knowledge panels, Pinterest, scrapers, spinners, image thieves etc etc. All kinds of garbage is ranked above my site(s) and Googles AI doesn't seem to differentiate auto-generated crap from long-lived real websites.

I still had my best year by far in revenue terms in 2020 and many people did, despite these headwinds. It doesn't mean anything. Just think how much more everyone should be making if search was not a rigged monopoly.

[Jori]

If Google is considered in the future as an utility, it will be regulated as such. But, in a global word, it's impossible.
Or, and this, I can imagine, other search engines will emerge.

Baidu in China is a good example. But only because chinese language is special (Google is not a top performer in chinese) and because, of course, Google is blocked in mainland China.

But if a country like, let's say, Germany, feels that the monopoly of an american company on german web is a threat, I hope that Germany will put some mesures. Block Google in Germany. But... what would be the new german search engine champion?

We're blocked with Google. Or, maybe, Baidu start to emerge in this side of the world. I think it's the only real opponent for now....

[topaz]

Anybody's Discover flatlined two days ago? Coincided with the Android 12 update.
[9to5google.com...]

A lot of regular sites I see in my feed have gone missing too. Only very high authority sites remain.

[System]

The following 21 messages were cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/5035502.htm [webmasterworld.com]
9:52 am on May 2, 2021 (utc -5)