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).

[RedBar]

IMHO in the realworld of company business / manufacturing / supplies /etc, this may make G even more irrelevant to their operations ...The sooner trade shows can re-appear again the better since G is of totally no use for new product lines whatsoever ... Unless one has the lastest electronic fad!

[renatovieira]

Wow traffic is off a cliff today, did wonder what was up, guess it must be this update.. I don't have any product reviews or products on my site though so go figure!

Here too. Yesterday was much worse! My main site is about weather forecast. This update encompasses much more than they said.

[TalkativeEditorial]

I'm sure everyone knows this already, but once this update is fully rolled out it will be a stark indication of how much links matter (despite what Google's been saying).

I'm also curious about how this might affect tech and gaming reviews - both as a niche and sites that, as somebody else mentioned, only have some of their content in that field.

I wonder if this might also be part of what broke the Discover feeds (as in, trying to filter partial reviews/full reviews)....a lot of sites in the tech space reported big drops.

[ichthyous]

Wow traffic is off a cliff today, did wonder what was up, guess it must be this update

Yes, much lower than a typical Friday. USA down 39% and Uk down 45% compared to last four Fridays. And that's already from a much lower level after the Feb 13th and March 15th drops. I have zero product ratings so this update had nothing to do with that.

I'm sure everyone knows this already, but once this update is fully rolled out it will be a stark indication of how much links matter (despite what Google's been saying).

I disagree, in fact I think all of these updates are showing the opposite. I have accumulated a large number of new links from high DA sites and my site was down for all of 2020 after the May update. Then whacked in Feb 2021, March 2021, and again now. I have more and more links and less and less traffic. I will see how well those links start to perform over time as new links tend not to count for much.

[mhansen]

Not sure if it is relevant or not, but we saw a very significant spike in activity on both SEMR and GA (+130% KW in SEMR, +90% traffic increase in GA) leading up to the last week of March. (March 15-30th or so, it was gradual) Much of the new KW's shown on SEMR were of little relevance and very generic to our very targeted content. For example, if we have pages that focus on "widget configuration for specific product", we saw a large increase in the single word "widget" itself. This occurred across hundreds of pages where the generic product term was singular. Our bounce rate went up, time on site dropped, etc.

In the first week of April, all of this reversed direction and we not only lost the "widget" KW placements, but ALSO the "widget configuration for specific product" terms that we had very good relevance and exposure before the March surge.

I don't tend to get too worried about placements on a month by month basis, since we generally see large increases like this, followed by similar corrections as they seem to test the user engagement on the pages, but this time, losing the longtail relevance is a new feature we've not seen before.

[topaz]

Giving an example of how problematic it is when Discover surfaces months and years old news articles in a feed where users have come to expect current news and information.

A while ago, I had a fun and unique news story about a celebrity who's now dead. GA real-time has been showing 1,500 visitors continuously on that story alone and it's all from Discover. It just crossed 100,000 page views today and the confused and angry people in the comments aren't noticing the date stamp.

[mzb44]

I disagree, in fact I think all of these updates are showing the opposite. I have accumulated a large number of new links from high DA sites and my site was down for all of 2020 after the May update. Then whacked in Feb 2021, March 2021, and again now. I have more and more links and less and less traffic. I will see how well those links start to perform over time as new links tend not to count for much.

If you were negatively affected by a core update then typically you won't see any improvement until a subsequent core update removes your demotion. Even if you improved content / acquired a substantial number of HQ links. It won't do anything until you get "un-demoted" by a new core update.

[ichthyous]

If you were negatively affected by a core update then typically you won't see any improvement until a subsequent core update removes your demotion. Even if you improved content / acquired a substantial number of HQ links. It won't do anything until you get "un-demoted" by a new core update.

@mzb44 I think perhaps this is outmoded thinking. From the beginning of January to mid Feb my traffic increased and I had a heck of a lot more good quality leads. Then on Feb 13th I got hit, then again one month later on March 15th. There are no more "core updates", only constant churning and updating which is designed to discourage us all and make us give up and start paying Google for the traffic we have lost. I think the concept of annual or biannual core updates died in 2020....it's been one update after another for a while now.

[TalkativeEditorial]

@topaz oh man, that's horrible. do you have any idea if it was tagged as "In case you missed it" ?

Worst part about those mess ups is that the site will get punished by negative feedback/reporting content and Google will just shrug.

[southernguy]

I know I complained about ranking drops on two of my sites, I just noticed after doing some research both of the ones affected have been scraped to hell and back (plagiarized). I thought I had secured them pretty well but I must have overlooked something, never had this happen before so just now researching if this is going to a long-term issue. I have already reported them to the hosting company to see if they can do anything.

[sebastovar]

After the apparent Google algo update last week, pages that we had dominating core terms for years are nowhere to be seen on desktop for those same terms. While it seems they are maintaining their rankings on mobile devices. I wonder if anybody else has had similar issues for this past week? what do you think might be going on? what suggestions do you have?

There doesn´t seem to be a real pattern for the pages that were completely lost for some terms and those still doing fine. The closest thing I can think of is Core Web Vitals, specifically CLS. Our CLS is better for mobile than desktop, and the pages that are now ranking above us on desktop also have lower CLS metrics. Any thoughts?

[Markedd]

I see a 24% drop from January and the keywords continue to drop (although I am not entirely sure how reliable is Semrush at this point). The Discover traffic still exists, which is better than last year after May and I have improved the core web vitals, but Google is very lazy in its search console, so I will have to wait a lot before actually seeing the improvements in the graphs. Semrush showed a 7.5 activity score yesterday, so I wait for the new mythical algorithm to go into action...
@sebastovar I am not an expert in these matters (there are far more knowledgeable people here than me), but I don't think it has anything to do with CLS, it seems to be more about backlinks. A lot more than before, think of the level of 10-years ago.

[superclown2]

A definite update in my UK vertical yesterday. More of the usual with links looking like the only metric that really counts.

One of my sites has jumped up considerably! It's a spammy one that I use just for testing and I fired a stack of completely irrelevant links at it last month. Google rewards quality content? Yeah, right.

[yollo03]

My personal semrush score yesterday was 7.3 yesterday, today it's 9.1. You cant tell whether this is the product review algo or something else. Since the December every update like this only makes things worse.

[RedBar]

I consider my traffic to have been higher than expected this week considering it is generally lower immediately after Easter, this resulted at 92.8%

All predictions for next week for me will mostl likely be wrong!

[ichthyous]

A definite update in my UK vertical yesterday. More of the usual with links looking like the only metric that really counts.

@superclown My UK traffic has been down massively since the March 15th update. UK was the one country that held steady across every update, generally faring better than my US traffic. It has reduced 79% since 3/15...meaning that Uk went from being one of my largest sources of traffic for the last 18 years to a negligible amount of traffic now. Every day worse and worse over the last three weeks until no more traffic. It seems like a penalty of some sort to me, but I haven't been notified of any penalty.

[Markedd]

The good news is that the keyword bleed has stopped for one of my direct competitors and that's also the bad news :) It doesn't seem like he has done anything in particular, the core vitals aren't great, but not horrendous, the articles are well written and the post intensity is once every 2-3 days. I don't know if it matters for Google or not, but he is from the US and has excellent EAT. All this applies to my website as well, minus the location, but the keyword bleed continues like crazy. I also see that he has more comments and more engagement, maybe I will have to work on that more since with my system it's more difficult to comment.

[Markedd]

As a quick update, it seems that a lot of other websites are seeing improvements (well, except for me, fml).

[Markedd]

Sorry for these short comments, but I noticed another strange occurrence. More than half of the websites on the first page have wrong snippets, like the bots don't know which part is relevant or not. It's either that the bots are messed up or that there is something that Google didn't account for yet and only the websites that it deems 'clear enough' to index properly get the top spot. Google should just write a big Maintenance page and close the Google search engine for a few days and fix its problems. Seriously, nobody is going to miss them.

[mzb44]

I am noticing an improvement that started before the review content update. Around April 5 or 6.

I don't think it relates to anything at all done from our end (even though we continuously work on substantial improvements), as it appears a lot of the sites negatively affected during the Feb-March shuffle are moving slightly back up (even those who did nothing).

We are at the mercy of the algos, no matter what we do or change on our sites.

Measuring the effect of anything we're doing is not possible anymore. But perhaps this was exactly the intention.

[superclown2]

@ichthyous Conversions in the UK in my niche are pathetic despite SERPs positions which used to bring a good income. I suspect that @redbar is right; the G cookie is messing up what the searcher is seeing.

Right now things are very unsettled here now with slight movement in my niche by the hour. This is not over yet.

@Markedd: You said: Seriously, nobody is going to miss them. I certainly wouldn't. Now we have to show everyone else that there are real search engines out there. G is a lost cause.

@mxb44: G has been confusing us for years now and yes it is deliberate. If their algo was easy to crack we would all exploit it.

As an aside I have noticed a site which has languished for a while doing well. They have been advertising heavily outside the web so I'm wondering: are typed-in URLs a higher ranking factor now? It would seem logical.

[christianz]

I am noticing an improvement that started before the review content update. Around April 5 or 6.

I had improvement around that same time, but it was gone on the April 9th volatility spike. Traffic has been disappointing since Friday.

I don't have review sites. This looks more like a core update they say is not core update. Much like Jerome Powell calls QE "not-QE".

[yollo03]

I got some of my lost keywords back but very, very few. The update is still running, I'll see what happens in a few days. Even the keywords I did get back are ranked very bad, above +60 and not where they used to be. It might normalize, might not.

[RedBar]

A high level of PVs for me today, Sunday, I'm already at my usual weekend high.

They're mostly multiple PVs, some way over 100, from varying countries as usual, altogether a surprisingly busy Easter week.

[mzb44]

I had improvement around that same time, but it was gone on the April 9th volatility spike. Traffic has been disappointing since Friday.

Yes, that date seems to be accurate. Also seems to pulled back the slight April 5-6 gains after around the 9th.

They seemed to have been experimenting with something which they pulled back.

[ichthyous]

A high level of PVs for me today, Sunday, I'm already at my usual weekend high.

I had a strong reversal of my USA and UK traffic loss this morning and it was way above the previous two weeks and seemingly back to normal. That was until about noon, when suddenly traffic across the board fell off a cliff again. It seems that we are seeing sharp half day traffic patterns now.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - Here too. After noon, huge drop. Right now everything is unbelievably dead.

[RedBar]

I'm just about to finish with almost 2.5 hours of my Googleday remaining and I'm at 116% which, without confirming, is unheard of for me on a Sunday plus visitors are still multiple page viewing ... bizarre!

[mzb44]

So Google was found manipulating part of its Adwords platform to gain an unfair advantage over their own customers (ad buyers).

[appleinsider.com...]

This is pretty big.

The ads part of the business was always treated more seriously for obvious reasons (including legal), so if they are willing to manipulate ads to screw over paying advertisers, it's very obvious they likely do this for organic as well (other than the stuff we can openly see). Suddenly the reports of "bot traffic" or "low converting traffic" being sent to organic don't sound like conspiracies anymore.

"It is believed the Bernanke name stems from Ben Bernanke, the chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 until 2014."

They named their ads manipulation project Bernanke - making a reference to creating money out of thin air. :)

They knew exactly what they were doing was shady and were even being cocky about it.

[superclown2]

So Google was found manipulating part of its Adwords platform to gain an unfair advantage over their own customers

<sarcasm>Now there's a shock </sarcasm>

I've been in this business for more than 20 years. Although I seem to have many search terms in high positions in G SERPs I have never had such a low number of clicks on my sites as I am getting now.

Manipulation? Surely not. But something is seriously wrong somewhere.

I tried adwords a short while ago. The conversion rate was a fraction of that from the organic SERPs. I pointed out to G that a huge number of clicks were coming from a certain type of IP range. The result was indifference, they charged me for them anyway, and I gave up paying for clicks.

Movements is still continuing this morning. I'm noticing more benefit from the website titles and exact match phrases in the domain names; several sites that were in the doldrums have risen for certain terms quite substantially seemingly on the back of these. I'm not seeing a similar benefit from URL titles though.

I'm also seeing more difference between desktop and mobile results than usual despite clearing cookies on both. In all cases I have been using wifi so it won't be a service provider/geographical issue.