Google Updates and SERP Changes - May 2021

(Part 1 of 2)

[sk7411]

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System: The following 21 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5032067.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 9:52 am on May 2, 2021 (utc -5)

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Here we go again ,

Something started brewing yesterday.

[Samsam1978]

@ichthyous check the server for broken pipe and what is going on during that time. Make sure that some users are not getting blank pages when they visit, as this would not be in your GA and is really hard to detect, had that once. Look at the competitor sites outranking you during that time. Are they new sites? Less content / more content? Better or worse? Check your site is not being clocked somewhere.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Something weird is definitely going on. Seeing a lot of publishers on Twitter reporting similarly weird things and massive drops on US traffic in particular. Can't even begin to troubleshoot because it's so random it seems. Although, I will say that Pinterest seems to be the flavour of the SERPs again. Would love to know what RedBar thinks, because that's the bane their existence.

[mzb44]

All of these very frequent changes and apparent updates could just be the AI shifting signals around and adjusting weights on the fly on its own, without people at G necessarily having any manual input.

Could explain why there's seemingly new updates every week now.

Perhaps our notions of Google "updates" are kind of outdated now and it's not always necessary for Google engineers to release manual updates anymore to change or adjust rankings signals.

[TalkativeEditorial]

All of these very frequent changes and apparent updates could just be the AI shifting signals around and adjusting weights on the fly on its own, without people at G necessarily having any manual input.

You make a very valid point and there is almost certainly an element of this. It would also make it much more difficult to spot any problems - whether that relates to indexing or whatever...and since they just ignore it when issues are flagged..... well who'd want to be a webmaster.

[mzb44]

Perhaps that's what core updates are for. They do the manual tweaks then and let the AI do its own thing meanwhile. They can manually step in every time the AI gets something "wrong", they need to let it learn and adjust on its own.

But then again what do I know. This all is just speculation and they aren't really that communicative about how all of this actually works.

[TalkativeEditorial]

You hit the nail on the head with that last point. So tired of being told but good content, but core web bla bla ... and yet.... all the time seeing sites that do absolutely none of that surface all over Search/Discover. And then being told to go use the forums when there is zero assistance on there is just....meh.

[dolcevita]

Duckduckgo, Bing along with Yahoo are patiently waiting for a glitch from Google that will reverse the percentage slightly to their side. At least now those search engines are more realistic than the confused giant Google who thinks he has everything under control.
Let us remember the past and how things change quickly with those who once had a monopoly.

[mzb44]

So tired of being told but good content, but core web bla bla ... and yet.... all the time seeing sites that do absolutely none of that surface all over Search/Discover.

I think Google would do everyone a favour by simply just openly admitting that in most cases when such options are available it prefers displaying big mainstream authoritative sites rather than anything else regardless of any other metrics, even if the smaller sites might happen to be a better or a more relevant fit.

Then at least we'd know for sure it's not really anything about us or our sites or anything we should be doing to "recover". Once we'd see the big news sites moving into our niches we'd know for sure it's over and no point trying to figure out what to do and sink endless resources in a futile attempt to guess what might get us un-demoted.

It's clear it's by far not just about what Sullivan wrote in that core update blog post. You could be an exemplary site that perfectly ticks all points in that blog post and still get core update demoted if some monster-authority news sites decide to get into your niche and start covering the topics you are covering.

At leats they should just admit this is how it all works so we can stop wasting our time and money believing that there's a recovery in sight somewhere down the line if we just do the "right" things.

[McPheeSees]

There is something going on as far as lower traffic, but I'm seeing it across both Google and Bing. When this happens I invariably get a call from my G rep, funny how that works.

[ichthyous]

My USA traffic is off by 30% and Canada off by 36% today...this is not just summer doldrums kicking in, it's a major loss in traffic. My ranking is relatively stable.

[Manana]

I lost 50% of my traffic on December 2020 update. There's no manual penalty showing up on Google Search Console but my website is demoted, probably algorithmically.

I identified the possible reasons for the demotion and I took the necessary measures to remedy them but nothing I do seems to work with Google. I continue to gain traffic from other search engines but Google is refusing to budge. I am still losing traffic even.

Here's the list of what I did to recover my traffic to no avail:

1. I hadn't been adding new content to my website since July 2020 due to a book project I was busy with. I suspect Google demoted my site due to not publishing new content for 6 months. --> I started regularly publishing content since mid-February 2021 but the penalty isn't lifted in the slightest.

2. Up until December 2020, I used to serve the sales pages for my books on individual sites I created for each of my books. For my new book, I created a sales page within my site in October 2020. I suspected Google detected there's a sales page within my site and doled out a penalty. --> I separated the sales page from my site and moved it to an individual site I created for the book but this didn't work either.

3. My sites were kind of slow since I used to have them hosted on shared hosting. --> I moved all of my sites to VPS hosting and the speed dramatically increased. This massive speed improvement didn't have the slightest effect on Google traffic either.

4. I hadn't uploaded a disavow file since May 2019. I never bother with link building but toxic links keep piling up somehow. I suspect negative SEO attacks but maybe I am paranoid. --> I ran a backlink audit using Semrush and Ahrefs and I disavowed all the potentially toxic links. It's been about 2 months since I uploaded the disavow file to Google but nothing's changing.

I ran out of possible reasons for demotion. I read a lot of articles about E-A-T or YMYL but I had never been hit this hard in the core updates prior to December 2020 although talks about E-A-T and YMYL have been around for a longer time.

What do you all think? Can there be something I'm missing?

[yollo03]

I got hit today by the update that was run yesterday or a new one that is currently rolling. Big drop in keywords.

[mzb44]

What do you all think? Can there be something I'm missing?

No one knows other than Google. It may be that your demotion had not even anything to do with the issues you identified and fixed.

You can find examples to justify any scenario.

1. I hadn't been adding new content to my website since July 2020

I can show you sites that are publishing expert content on a daily basis by a real staff of specialists but lost -80% in the December update.

I can show you sites not updated since 2018 getting a 200% boost in the December update.

I suspected Google detected there's a sales page within my site and doled out a penalty.

I can show you purely informational sites with quality content completely nuked by the December update.

I can also show you heavy affiliate / sales-focused sites receiving a significant boost by the December update.

3. My sites were kind of slow since I used to have them hosted on shared hosting

Should I even? - Yeah, I can show you examples of slow/fast sites receiving a boost/demotion.

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Truth is we don't know what why and how cores updates actually do and work in most cases.

Always important to keep in mind that Google's default advice for core updates is that in most cases there is nothing necessarily you need to fix. If you were demoted then these are now your "real" rankings and traffic. You did not break Google's webmaster guidelines and this is not a penalty.

It's great that you fixed all the things you mentioned - provided they genuinely were real problems and not just something you felt needed to be done to guess what might satisfy Google.

^ This is exactly what I meant in my last comment that currently due to poor communication Google is wasting peoples' time and money having them guess what to do and having them "fix" issues that may not even be real issues.

[mzb44]

I got hit today by the update that was run yesterday or a new one that is currently rolling. Big drop in keywords.

Yes, me too.

I've been following your comments and seems like you also received a slight boost last week-ish. Also core update demoted site like mine.

Yesterday/today I seem to have been hit again and now all these gains are reversed. (like I said they would when I commented about the boost. This all is getting very predictable now.)

Seems like exact same pattern as your site. Very interesting. Too bad we aren't allowed to show sites here, would be very interesting to compare sites/notes.

Edit: And yes, it does seem something significant is going on again. For me it started late yesterday.

[Manana]

Thank you mzb44. I think all problems boil down to Google's monopoly power. The small guy will keep getting screwed as long as the monopoly goes on.

[superclown2]

"And so to address that [misinformation ranking] we have developed algorithms that recognise that a bad event is taking place and that we should increase our notions of ‘authority’, increase the weight of ‘authority’ in our ranking so that we surface high quality content rather than misinformation in this critical time here.”

You may have hit on something here. Sadly they don't seem to be having as much success increasing the 'authority' of those they accept advertising money from. They may well trap billions of dodgy ads every year but the ones that get through can cause untold damage to the victims of their crooked advertisers.

A major consumer advice programme here in the UK this morning highlighted a problem of people being ripped off by scammers who they came across via Google ads. One guy was close to suicide after losing his life savings because he trusted Google. The advice from a financial expert was never to trust Google ads for anything since their vetting system is all automated; and he suggested that there was no substitute for a real human to vet these ads, and that it was time that G was regulated by our Financial Conduct Authority. If that ever comes to pass it will cause G major trauma.

Where does that leave the latest SERPs updates?

Google is attempting to automate everything; including using AI to decide on how the SRRPs are produced. At this stage of the development of AI it is like a surgeon doing brain surgery with an axe rather than a scalpel. They are no doubt doing their best and they probably have lots of human reviewers checking their results but using new technology like this was always a 'brave' step.

Is it ever going to work? Maybe, but it will probably take a very long time to get back to the quality standards they used to be capable of. In the meanwhile massive lawsuits loom and competitors; who may be years behind Google in terms of technology, but who can still produce vastly superior search results; are waiting in the wings. And after this morning's programme a lot of people in Britain are going to be that bit more careful about how they view Google's search results. How that will affect those of us trying to make a living online is unpredictable.

A little better news though; I mentioned some movement in the UK SERPs a couple of days ago and this seems to have stuck, with a slight increase in relevancy. Googlespam seems have decreased for less important search terms but for the big money ones it is massive, at least in my financial vertical.

[nikkimc]

I've had a rollercoaster for one of our main keywords and it's corresponding product page.

it finally made it to the front page from 8th April (around product reviews update), then it vanished around May 1st. Then a generic category page was being found for the keyword.

Then our 'how to' guide started ranking for the keyword instead of the product or category. Then a very old short blog post was chosen to rank instead of the product/category/guide.

This morning a search for this keyword brings up the right page back on page one, and on mobile some new enhancements to the result (extra images shown underneath) so it's taking up a nice amount of space.

Let's see how long this lasts...

Edit : This is UK based

[RedBar]

Fungers crossed,, a nice cross-section of gobal traffic Thursday when I posted this:

Monday 65.8%
Tuesday 71.4%
Wednesday 77.4%

Thursday 97.6%

US traffic v long term still -26%

Main UK sites all solid and well above average every day and trading better than anticipated. None of them are ecommerce.

[yollo03]

So most of my competitors benefited from this update aside me, what a joke. I have ecommerce website, no ads. We could be competing in the same niche mzb44 lol.

I honestly do not know what this update is affecting. I can only think about site structure, the more pages you have the more screwed you are, especially for old sites. I did see websites with low authority ranking well. What they all have in common is that they are all small websites with very few pages. If you have a lot of pages something in the site structure must have greater impact on ranking than in the past. Just a guess.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar My UK traffic is perpetually up, but USA is lower than ever. It's gotten to the point where UK traffic is 50% of USA traffic on a daily basis...it used to be 10-15% for years. My ranking is slightly higher this week, but USA traffic is off 25-30% on a daily basis. If I look at my CTR at GSC it's half of what it was last year this time, and one quarter of what it was in 2018/2019. My CTR for web is now at the same pathetically low rate that it used to be for images. So whatever google is doing in the USA market, it's making sure that no traffic reaches us.

[RedBar]

Six hours to go for my Googleday and traffic down across the board except for the UK hotel / pub.

[ichthyous]

USA is down 40% from a normal Friday...Nigeria is my third largest referrer of traffic today. The traffic spikes from EU countries is over and almost no visits from Canada or Australia the entire day. Only UK traffic is steady. Totally abnormal periods with no traffic at all, followed by brief spikes and then right back down.

[westcoast]

For those of you who are experiencing an unusual and continual and suspicious drop in rankings / traffic day after day, week after week for the past couple of months:

Do a google search for "See full list on <your site name>" (use the quotes for a direct match search)
Example: "See full list on buzzfeed"

There is a massive spam/cloaking/doorway page hacked-domain campaign out there that I think may be hitting some of us small to midsize players very hard. We have over 20,000 backlinks now to our site from this hack in the last couple of months that correlates closely with our drag lower.

My theory is Google is seeing this sudden surge of backlinks pointing to us and going "woooah now, penalty box for you". Just a theory. Could be wrong. I've just never seen such a strange grind lower between core-updates on our site in the 25 years we have been online. Do the query above and see if you have hacked domain pages pointing to your site.

[strummer19]

Another day in hell.

[MayankParmar]

Semrush is 8.7

[yollo03]

Yes, big movement in semrush. Like all past updates it will hit me tomorrow. At the moment things are very quiet on my end. Could this be a core update?

update: I looked into other platforms aside semrush, at the moment it doesnt appear to be like a core update.

[topaz]

weekend shenanigans becoming a norm now...is it that the SERPS / New AIs don't sleep. :-D

[yollo03]

Someone had a theory that the AI is now in charge of the updates and decides on its own who will enjoy a nice run of traffic and who won't every weekend. Interesting theory if you ask me.

[strummer19]

I agree with AI theory

[christianz]

My theory is Google is seeing this sudden surge of backlinks pointing to us and going "woooah now, penalty box for you".

If Google algo is really that stupid then I am ok with losing all my traffic and living under a bridge.

Vetting inbound links is not our business. We build and maintain websites.