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).

[vivektank]

This year we started checking our Organic traffic every week. Our team noticed in January Organic traffic Graph was good whilst in Feb. month Organic traffic was not good & the organic keywords ranking also dropped. A similar thing was observed in March month. As compared to Feb month the loss was big.

May I know what's going in Google..?

[universenet]

Vivektank
Best way that you know what is going in google is that you ask direct google, they will give you best answer...

[vivektank]

@universenet
I read the conversation & saw many people having the same issues. So, I asked here directly. BTW, already asked Google's John Mueller on his Twitter but didn't get any response :(

[mzb44]

Just some fun trivia. I doubt it maters anymore though:

Initially Google was doing core updates every 113 days by the clock.
Just check the dates yourself of the June 2019, September 2019, January 2020 and May 2020 updates.

Then they stopped this by skipping a full update cycle and did the next one in December 2020 (7 months later).

But if they would have followed the original schedule it would have meant the next core update would be on:

5 April 2021.

Today.

Just some fun trivia.
I don't think that original "schedule" is valid anymore though. Plus it's also Easter, so I don't think anyone is working there today.

But if the May-December timeline is the new "schedule" now, then that would mean the next core update would be on July 4 2021. It would also mean that 2021 would only have one core update.

But again, I don't think these calculations mean much after they broke the pattern with the December update.

[RedBar]

Sunday pretty much as expected for global site at 41%.

I must mention our UK hotel / pub site which has been gaining visitors every day with Saturday being 90% of pre-lockdown levels, it's busiest day since 3rd November 2020 and it's busiest week since week 44 of 2020.

Accommodation bookings, both business and leisure are going well plus I have continued to work on developing the site throughout shutdown, the only "blip" we foresee at present is the live music scene.

[TalkativeEditorial]

They're more sensitive to stories with good CTR over a period..and so they're showing those more now.

Definitely not the case by our metrics. In fact, as soon as anything goes over 6% CTR after just a few impressions, Discover seems to drop it straight up - even with the so-called evergreen content.

[yollo03]

The recent updates display old coverage errors that took place many years ago and were fixed at the time. They definitely tweaked the algorithm again over Easter. If your impressions keep falling like mine, it won't subside. It will keep falling slowly until at some point it will rebound higher. I doubt I have any control over this.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld gmbseoxx

The complete list of Google algorithm updates and changes.

Are you looking for the chronological sequence and its effects for ALL updates like this from 2005:

[searchenginejournal.com...]

[yollo03]

Because its been going on for some time, I can see googlebots are obsessed with terms and conditions, cookies policy and contact page. I dont know if this is why I am getting hammered. The t&s and privacy policy was made by a lawyer so I dont know what's the issue. I also have settings for GDPR so anyone can optout whenever they want. Is anyone else getting googlebots for these pages?

[RedBar]

The t&s and privacy policy was made by a lawyer

You paid for them?

[yollo03]

Yes, many years ago. It wasn't a large amount of money and I am legally covered.

[Samsam1978]

Seen a significant drop that started on the 29th of March. This is an established, old 14-year-old website. I don't understand it, now spammy pages above me from established "magazine-style huffpost" style sites trying to get traffic anyway possible and not niche. What is going on?

[mzb44]

Seen a significant drop that started on the 29th of March. This is an established, old 14-year-old website. I don't understand it, now spammy pages above me from established "magazine-style huffpost" style sites trying to get traffic anyway possible and not niche. What is going on?

Nothing special is going on.

It's just how Google works now after the last few core updates. Domain authority is now the main ranking signal and can override anything else if strong enough.

Just google for "best online casinos 2021" and "best online poker sites 2021" the top 1-3 ranking sites should be spam and spun-content press releases on prnewswire.com, finance.yahoo.com (repost of the spam prnewswire press release). These are now outranking 20+ year old specialized sites with thousands of white hat links, sites that offer original reporting including having real journalists who go in person to international tournaments and do live interviews. All because the press release site simply has more (MUCH more) strong backlinks in raw numbers. Nothing else matters.

We are back in time in the early 2000s.

Also, there is no indication of this changing or being a "bug", as it has been like this for some years now. In fact, it seems every core update is amplifying the importance of domain authority even more.

[mzb44]

established "magazine-style huffpost" style sites trying to get traffic anyway possible and not niche

To address this as well: Yes. - That is exactly what's happening.

A lot of big and established publications, especially news sites, have figured out that this is how Google works now and are mass producing huge amounts of content attempting to rank for as many money terms as possible (especially "best X", "X review" type of content).

Example of known major sites doing this are: The Guardian, latimes, CNN, etc. - there are much more.

Generally, the quality of these pages is very low and shallow and not done by actual newspaper staff but rather by cheap Upwork freelancers. Their goal is to get in the gold rush as quick as possible, knowing they can immediately rank top 3 on major money keywords even with an extremely shallow and generic page.

The problem with this approach is that even if you are the biggest, most authoritative and most respected site in your niche, you will always have much less authoritative links than these major news publications. Simply because you operate in a narrow niche, while they are generalist mainstream news sites.

But Google thinks this is fine, so there's not much else we can do.

I have seen someone giving someone advice in the March thread that if you are seeing major news sites moving into your niche and starting to post content (regardless of quality, relevancy) it's time for you to pack up and leave. I believe this is useful advice.

[Markedd]

@mzb44 Sometimes, I manage to throw these huge publications underneath my small website, but after months of work which includes multiple relevant updates, serious expertise added and creating 'satellite' articles that aren't competing with these #*$!s. But, if they update once (and only change a word), I am back underneath them in less than 5 minutes and then I have to start over. It has been happening since last year a lot more than before, at least for me. <snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 1:18 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2021]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Samsam1978]

Thanks for pointing this all out. Yes, these spammy news sites with lots of authority and terrible content that is not even researched are ranking above me. Hope Google listen to this forum and give some weight to the niche websites rather than supporting such a strategy. For example I was looking for oils <snip> and my old niche sites I use to read have gone. These sites started as a niche (love site) and now just spam spam spam articles with no background. It is not a good move for the web.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:30 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2021]
[edit reason] See Charter [/edit]

[not2easy]

Please avoid discussing actual sites. It might help to become familiar with the Charter: [webmasterworld.com...]

Think of how you might feel if you come here and find folks talking about your site. ;)

[RedBar]

Easter Monday and a surprising 82% for my global site and 100% for the UK hotel / pub, very surprised.

I was checking my G US SERPs last night and they're very "messy", some genuinely good results however for the first time in ages a couple of scraper sites which had scraped the best bits from the genuine sites and simply listed them one after the other ... G obviously loves this since they've appeared from nowhere to the first page.

[TalkativeEditorial]

According to GSC data, we've had a rapid climb for a few key terms since end of March.
Google Discover, however, remains dead - and my own personal feed is still buggy/sometimes doesn't load.

Guess that's just the way it's gonna be from now.

[yollo03]

I see a few keywords that improved their rankings but the price is much less impressions for these keywords...

[ichthyous]

It seemed like a small recovery was happening yesterday, but this morning at 9am my traffic dropped off a cliff again. My UK traffic had held up through both the Feb 13th and March 15th drops, but it has now vanished...down 40% some days, and better other days. USA traffic still down 25% on average after the March 15th fiasco. I haven't had a single email or call in one week, so this is going to destroy my business this entire year. The first six weeks of the year were roaring with business, so this just really burns me. It's not the economy, it's 100% Google at this point.

[westcoast]

Big traffic losses here over the past 2 weeks too. Our semrush rankings for over a hundred keywords look mostly unchanged over the time.

At a loss as to what's going on. How can we remain at the same place in the SERPs but lose 30% of our traffic?

I mean... what?

[TalkativeEditorial]

@westcoast - do you get any traffic from Google Discover? Something's borked with that so if you had decent traction from Discover, it could be what's missing.

[westcoast]

@TalkativeEditorial Nope! Our traffic from there got completely destroyed ages ago.

[ichthyous]

@westcoast I lost one third of my top three ranking terms between 2/13 and now, with most of that coming after 3/15. In my case I do see the loss in terms and also the 50%+ loss in impressions in GSC. It sounds like you are losing traffic from Google loading more items on the page. There are more ads than ever, and also videos, tweets, images, article carousels, etc. Check the actual terms and see how much is loaded on the page vs. before. SEMrush is useless at telling you that info, so I canceled my subscription.

[mzb44]

Thanks for pointing this all out. Yes, these spammy news sites with lots of authority and terrible content that is not even researched are ranking above me. Hope Google listen to this forum and give some weight to the niche websites rather than supporting such a strategy.

I still hope the same but honestly I do not see this happening in the near future.

This now clearly seems to be the direction Google is consistently taking and gradually implementing after every core update.

I honestly just don't see them suddenly deciding to do away with this out of the blue. It would make no sense.

[mzb44]

What I'm actually not getting is why this subject is almost never discussed by almost any mainstream or "famous" SEO at all.

I mean, it's pretty obvious that this is real and is happening. It's talked about on all the SEO forums, Facebook groups, Reddit threads (even non-SEOs have noticed this), on Twitter by non-"famous" SEOs. Examples are provided of irrelevant news sites with shallow pages outranking expert sites all the time, press release spam outranking legit sites, etc.

The subject of - topically irrelevant - mainstream news sites and high domain authority sites outranking virtually everyone even with borderline spam is everywhere.

Yet, almost zero "big name" SEOs talk about it. What you get from them daily is always "write high-quality content", "Google can detect content expertise based on language", "links are actually less relevant". Which is clearly against every day real world observations.

Where do these people get these things from?

Are they just afraid to say anything negative about Google fearing that they won't be liked anymore by JM etc.? Are they afraid that if they admit that in some cases there is simply nothing you can do then they will get fewer clients? Are they all working for those big mainstream news sites and just want to keep this subject out of public view? - Like, really, what is it? I'd like to know.

This is clearly a subject everyone absolutely is aware of and talks about, except the "famous" SEOs. It's like they collectively have a media blackout on this subject.

[Samsam1978]

@westcoast = my SEMrush score has increased but my traffic taken a nose dive. It does not add up.

@mzb44 = yes, no-one is discussing that these news sites are outranking a more authoritative source. Very strange.

[yollo03]

Lets say you rank for a certain keyword is not good after the updates. If your position for that keyword are the following:

US - Number 30
AU - Number 14
CA - 40
NZ - 5
UK - 2

Now if US ranking is completely removed your ranking for that keyword will improve but you no are no longer showing in the US so you lose impressions and traffic.

I think this is what's going on. Why? No clue.

[RedBar]

I think this is what's going on. Why? No clue.

If you have little or no presence in Google US then your PVs will be fewer however do you actually sell / supply to all these countries or are you simply wanting PVs for the sake of them?

It is important to note that for a non-US business not located in the USA that it is much more difficult to rank in the Google US SERPs primarily for a couple of reasons:

1. Google US does tend to favour listing US sites.

2. Google also likes to list local results where it can.

If you're not local then there is not a lot you can do about it except getting a local presence and local hosting.

In general, for a non-US company to be listed highly in the US SERPs you will usually need to be a well-established international widget brand with a genuine history.

There is absolutely no reason for G to display a result of it is not deemed to be relevant ... To G! And that's also why G can be so annoying when it displays US companies in non-US SERPs.

PLUS, this is important, in general Joe Public never clears their cache nor history, the results G serves can be very heavily influenced by the garbage already existing on the searcher's device and heaven's knows what they see if they are ALWAYS logged-in to their G account.