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.

[strummer19]

Last time we see a loss like today it was just one day before last december core update. WTF Google ?

[superclown2]

On the credit side: google is spotting updates to most of my sites within hours now. A short while ago some of them hadn't been updated for a fortnight. Some changes I made yesterday are visible already.

On the debit side: that 'People Also search For' popup is driving me mad. I'm just about to click on a link and everything moves. Then underneath is 'People Also Ask'! What next? 'People also look at'? 'People like to see this as well'? Google please. Give me results for the search term I've entered. Real results too, not the lowest common denominator authorityspam I have to wade through.

Thank heavens for DDG.

[christianz]

A bunch of SEOs, fairly known, reacted to this on Twitter with comments such as "This is fantastic news for content creators!", "Awesome, Google always working on delivering a great experience" and "This is a great opportunity for webmasters".

Ha ha ha.

If you exclude the webmasters working as employees of large corporations and bunch of impoverished freelancers from third world countries who are happy to make 10 dollars / month on AdSense with some hopeless poor language copy-paste blog, I wonder how many real webmasters are there still left in 2021...

Have these SEO influencers even seen or met a real webmaster, have they asked what they think of these spam widgets like People Also Ask?

They are just perpetuating the same type of gaslighting that G does via their PR employees and published guidelines

We are supposed to just joyfully take this abuse and thank G while its doing it. Famous Mike Tyson quote comes to mind, which I rather not quote here...

[Samsam1978]

While there might be a bit of the "don't want to compromise our relationship with Google" going on, some of the 'famous' (assuming having some followers on Twitter is the benchmark) don't actually know so much of what webmasters / site owners know - especially if they are working with big publishers, because those publishers would just be screaming PANIC.

Yep. Many of these famous SEO people I was speaking to back in 2000 on another forum back in the day, and, they now ditched their websites to be a famous SEOers. How much can they honestly understand when they don't actually don't run a legit niche publishing business. If they did, they would experience the rollercoaster rides that we all have on a monthly basis - and the stress to make sure we make a living each month and can pay our staff. Imagine what we could do with the millions of funding these large corporates get, we should get more credit. Delivering amazing content and UX on an AdSense shoestring, the niche webmaster needs a bit more credit for the years and hard work they have put in to produce an amazing website, not be effected by the fact Google wants to quickly fix the spammers. We are collateral.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Wow..... the results for some phrases are BAD right now. Was looking up a TV show (not my niche, just interested) - search not that far down was from a forum discussion and the title for the serp was: persons-name-tv-show-title

Just like that - with the hyphens to boot.

[mosxu]

Moving the Cheese game is back

[AdrianRozic]

Something happening today

[strummer19]

-50% in just one day. 😳

[Samsam1978]

More news sites ranking above me today with just one sentence on my keyword. My article is 3,000 words about the keyword -30% worse ever in the 15 years of running my site. Don't mind losing ranking to an article that is better and more informative to the user but its newspaper click bate with about 10 lines. Gosh.

[strummer19]

Same situation for me Samsam (11 years or running our site)

[yollo03]

I am continuing to recover at a turtle pace. More keywords are being re-added, which is a good sign. I wish it will be faster though. Traffic is still generally low.

[TalkativeEditorial]

No recovery.... damage from featured snippets continue as I've just seen some of the ones we rank for have gotten longer (ie bigger paragraph of text lifted and displayed).

And yet still not good enough for Discover since whatever it was they did in March. Yet content that literally has SPONSORED CONTENT in the title shows up in Discover. Well done, excellent UX!

[BushyTop]

More changes in the UK this morning.

[MayankParmar]

Trash algorithm, trash results.

[Neohippy]

Interesting... seeing some changes since the 5th that are very similar to changes at the same time last year...

[TalkativeEditorial]

Well there's definitely a few spikes on the sensors, but tbh, it's been so volatile that I never actually look at those anymore.

[Samsam1978]

Please let this be a rollback to Jan 2021 - where things were more stable, at least hopefully things might be corrected as the results as a normal user are the worse I have ever seen.

[saladtosser]

Was just searching for local carpet cleaner in my area, seems they have bumped "people also ask" up above all organics and straight under maps. I really don't see why google puts this widget at the top or even the middle of the page, it belongs at the bottom of the page so that it becomes useful if the first 10 results weren't useful.... This is like going into a pub, asking for a pint of beer and the bar tender immediately telling me what other customers drink...Just give me what I asked for please

[yollo03]

Received a small ranking boost so far. Nothing out of the ordinary but it's still looking good. No traffic increase though.

[superclown2]

This is getting ridiculous. I've just waded through the 'People Also search For' popup - the most irritation clutter of all - 'people also ask', which insults my intelligence - a 'find results on' bar which is supposed to give a chance to other directories but which is being abused by sites pretending to be directories - a map, then local listings - ' top stories' (three large images from the USA, useless to me in the UK, none of which are newspapers); then finally a big block of 8 'related searches' - all of which, coincidentally, are big brands which are heavy google advertisers, and also the same sites that are at the top of the SERPs.

How long before the public get sick of this? I certainly am.

I remember when google first started - a lovely clean interface which was preferred over the cluttered ones their competitors had and which was one of the main reasons why they succeeded. Now, if sites like DDG and Ecosia had a level playing field google would go the way of altavista.

[ichthyous]

Traffic started strong this morn and then went off a cliff at 9am. All of the decline is USA only, every other country is stable or strong. Very little recovery of lost terms. I have noticed the sites that are ranking mostly have exact match keywords in the url of the page. Is this a thing now?

[KaseyM]

Seeing a lot of spam in the results again which gives me hope long term.

Still seems to be around 10-30% down month on month.

[mzb44]

I really don't see why google puts this widget at the top or even the middle of the page

Yes you do.

It's very obvious this feature solely exists to get people to click on ads.

It's nowadays plastered everywhere straight below the 4 ads and before any organic result.

Yes, it's illogical to put this widget before the searcher had even the chance to look at any organic result at all. Clearly it's to just push organic further down.

[RedBar]

Global site US traffic still down with UK traffic at normal levels.

UK traffic going well on UK focused site.

[strummer19]

Danny S. is a liar and seo "specialists" just puppets.

[westcoast]

"Yes, it's illogical to put this widget before the searcher had even the chance to look at any organic result at all. Clearly it's to just push organic further down."

It does appear that the endgame here is that Google entirely removes organic results and the entire engine is just a front-end for its own services.

It's mostly there now. It's just a matter of time.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Blimey. Midway point and site is down almost 17% vs last month. And last month was horrific, the worst since June last year.
And yet I am sitting here with all my featured snippets, wondering when they are gonna start paying some rent,

[topaz]

Danny says on Twitter they've been no big updates worth talking about..... that's just not what I've been seeing since late April.

[westcoast]

"Danny says on Twitter they've been no big updates worth talking about..... that's just not what I've been seeing since late April."

There have certainly been some important stealth updates pushed out.

One is pushing Google App Store entries WAAAAY up rankings. One of the core keywords we follow now has 4 app store links (3 Google, 1 IOS -- 2 duplicates of the same app) in the top 10 results after none of them were in the top 20 for the past decade. Naturally.

[superclown2]

Yesterday I fixed the OS on a friend's old and well used Android phone. The search results were entirely different to mine because I delete cookies regularly. He didn't know what a cookie was.

This guy's phone showed search results even more packed with big companies than the SERPs I see, which is saying something. Which got me thinking, and here is my hypothesis which may explain why the current Google SERPs are so awful.

He will have clicked on the sites of these heavily advertised companies in the past, which will have pushed them higher up the SERPs he was seeing for other search terms. This means he was more likely to see these high up for terms that the site was less relevant for. He would therefore be more likely to click on them.

This would be happening on millions of phones tablets and computers. Because the sites were being clicked on, Google's algo pushed them higher up the SERPs again.

Result? A vicious circle resulting in organic SERPs packed with sites of heavy advertisers, even though they are not the best match for the search term which has been entered.

It was alleged recently that a nameless Google employee told an adwords client that the more that was paid for clicks the higher that advertiser's site would be in the SERPs. I stress that this was a rumour only and I have no doubt that this would not be done deliberately by Google. However is it a side effect of those well meant factors in their algo?

I agree with others that the problem with the SERPs is not so much the algo itself as the effect of the personalisation cookies. This could of course explain why so many people are seeing falls in clicks despite seemingly stable positions in the SERPs. It could also explain why a company which is capable of producing such wonderful technology is failing to display the most relevant sites for the search terms that are entered; even though they could do this so well ten years ago.

Perhaps we are blaming the awful SERPs on Google's drive for higher and higher profits (which is understandable; and yes the massive increase in Googlespam helps them in that aim) when there is a simpler reason; one that may well be rectified. After all is it in their interests to produce ever worsening imprecise search results, giving everything to big companies regardless of their relevancy, when they are capable of doing so much better?

Bearing in mind that they are facing a possible end to their monopoly through regulation, and real competition, this is illogical.