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.

[mzb44]

Danny says on Twitter

You should be extremely skeptical towards anything Sullivan says.

That recent feud with Rand Fishkin he had where he posted that official G blog post full of obfuscation and gaslighting clearly proves he has no problem with lying / distorting facts to obfuscate truths.

[strummer19]

Today in french Google News, for a "name surname" from a french VIP, i have only 10 answers from Yahoo and no one is right.

[Martin Ice Web]

We are not only reseller but manufacturer. We sodl a lot of your items every day. So several weeks ago we added our brand to all our items. Like: brand item-name. We didn´t changed the item name though.
Next day ALL of the items had a big drop in serps. Sales went down by 80%.
I thought ok google thinks we are gaming the algo and we will give it some time.
But up to now nothing has changed. IMO google kicks out brands for forcing them to join GSA.

[saladtosser]

When Danny became Google's public Search Liaison the SEO community was pretty jubilant as it was assumed he would bridge the gap between google and webmaster, his own mission statement was

"The goal is to increase the connection between those at Google who work hard on search each day and the public that depends on Google for answers. I’ll be educating the public about how search works. I’ll be exploring and explaining issues that may arise. I’ll be looking at ways to take in feedback and work for solutions to improve search going forward."

Seems JM is more of the google Search Liaison tbh as he seems to bridge the gap better and they kind of just unpack Danny from vacations as and when they want someone seen as one of us to defend something and tweet about star wars? I wonder if he has more or less insight than JM on the ins and outs of the algo,

[vivektank]

Somebody, please help me 6 keywords dropped already.!

Previous year we successfully ranked our 80% keywords on Google.com.sg. This year we noticed from March one by one our keywords are dropping. Right now only 20% of keywords are ranking.

We already check with our developer team to check if they revamp our website. The team did redesign the website. We also checked Google Search Control's security & manual actions to check for Google Penalty.

May I know how to recover it? Please your ideas & plans.

[mzb44]

Seems JM is more of the google Search Liaison tbh as he seems to bridge the gap better and they kind of just unpack Danny from vacations as and when they want someone seen as one of us to defend something and tweet about star wars? I wonder if he has more or less insight than JM on the ins and outs of the algo,

Yes. I think it's pretty clear they wanted Sullivan to placate (shut up) the SEO community and stop criticism. Especially coming from known SEO influencers who could potentially rile up a pretty strong anti-Google community sentiment if they wanted to, but probably aren't as most are long-time friends of Sullivan's, IRL conference buddies etc.

Also Sullivan does interact from now and then with the higher profile SEO personalities (usually exclusively with those, and exclusively with those who never criticise). Obviously this wold stop if you were to post critical comments towards G. None of these people want to lose this access.

That's pretty much his real job imo. Just to be there because of this background. He's near-always on vacation. I think it's pretty clear they just wanted him for PR and to exert control over SEO industry sentiment.

[strummer19]

Barry Schwartz makes money by making every post an article? Oups, he's a "friend" from Danny S.....

[mzb44]

Barry Schwartz is cool and going straight to his site and see all the latest news - and yes, including even whatever some Google guy tweeted - in one place is actually very useful. Otherwise you'd have to dedicate hours every day to check all the forums, important twitters etc.

[yollo03]

more keywords are coming back today at a faster pace now. The update is good for me so far although I must say it is not translating into more traffic yet.

[TalkativeEditorial]

The search results were entirely different to mine because I delete cookies regularly. He didn't know what a cookie was.

It's actually a bit more complicated than that recently. Google has done away with support for third party cookies (in early March I think). They're replacing it with their own system called Floc or something - but that's only rolled out across about 10% of browsers or something.


How much that relates to the awful SERPS (and I am fairly sure there is some connection) is something we can't really know for sure yet.

[strummer19]

Mzb44, i use a bot to do the job.... ;-)

[superclown2]

How much that relates to the awful SERPS (and I am fairly sure there is some connection) is something we can't really know for sure yet.

Yes what I wrote is just a hypothesis at the moment - not enough proof to be a theory - but I'm pretty sure that personalisation has a greater effect on the SERPs now than in the past. Possibly this is because there is a lot more data being gathered by Google about people (kind of creepy isn't it?). Again this is just a hypothesis.

[Rageboi]

Indexing issues continue. Pathetic!

[samwest]

Worst week since 2016. Totally eviscerated by Google...again. Big surprise.

[JesterMagic]

I have seen a 15% loss in traffic over the past week and no real difference in keyword rankings as far as I can tell for my website.

The tech industry is broken when you can have companies like Google completely control an important sector like search. Putting the algorithm aside a typical result page is loaded with ads and widgets which just makes Google money and does not in any real way help the user. There are so many ads that are generic and have no real bearing on the actual search result. The widgets just take users in circles regurgitating the same crappy answers.

Things will slowly get worse as profits must go up. Government needs to wakes up and start cutting these companies up and start putting limits on sectors. We can't trust the companies to do it themselves and there is not enough real competition out there in the search sector, etc. If a big company like Microsoft can't successfully compete in search I don't see how others will have any chance.

[ichthyous]

What the heck...my USA traffic is down 80% from an average Friday, total traffic down 40%. Search down 37%, direct traffic down 43%. Lost the three terms I gained yesterday. This is unbelievably bad now. I hope Google is having problems with it's USA index and this is not the product of a new update...

[TalkativeEditorial]

I'm pretty sure that personalisation has a greater effect on the SERPs now than in the past. Possibly this is because there is a lot more data being gathered by Google about people (kind of creepy isn't it?). Again this is just a hypothesis.

Oh 100% personalisation is (worse) now. But the way the transition from third party cookies to their Floc system is being handled is almost certainly making it even more terrible - and I don't just mean that in a generic bad SERPs kind of a way.

[saladtosser]

>>>>Government needs to wakes up and start cutting these companies up<<<<

I think you will find most people in government are probably large shareholders in Google so I don't think they have any incentive to tackle it.

Realistically anyone in government should be banned from holding shares in these sorts of companies as it creates a conflict of interest IMO.

It doesn't seem right or logical that 3 USA companies have pretty much total control of the entire worlds advertising and every company reliant on these 3 companies to varying extents for survival.... but that's the reality. Competition is very badly needed but sadly excluding DDG there isn't any and "duck duck go it" just isn't catchy. If Google were called duck duck go and DDG were called Google, I wonder if everything would be different just based on the name?

[KaseyM]

Wildly up this morning?

[yollo03]

Traffic is low (as usual since the last core update) but I am re-gaining my lost keywords at a faster pace today. What I did notice that only pages in the core web vitals are gaining keywords. Pages that are not listed in the core web vitals are not gaining any of their lost keywords. I don't believe that the pages in the core web vitals are just 'sampled' to measure the metrics.

[mzb44]

Traffic is low (as usual since the last core update) but I am re-gaining my lost keywords at a faster pace today.

Yeah me too. Also core update affected site. Clearly up today, biggest since the last core update (not expecting it to stick though, it never does).

Clearly they did something, tweaked / refreshed some algos they usually run at core updates. Not sure why Sullivan can't just confirm this.

[RedBar]

I've just been checking my current USA traffic levels v my 30 / 60 / 90/ 180 / 365 levels/

I am now averaging 60%, i.e. -40%

If I compare current levels v 1st Jan 2021 until 31st March 201 I am at 51.8%, -48.2%

Trafic for the first couple of weeks of April was down however for the last two weeks of April I saw a dramatic reduction.

My RealWorld business enquiries and order levels have not altered one little bit leading me, my fellow Directors and techies to the conclusion that chasing rankings is utterly pointless since it doesn't matter what I / we do with a website since the Gorg is living in a totally different world, certainly not one of reality.

[superclown2]

This morning I saw that the 'people also search for' popup that I hate so much was replaced by a text box to the right of the SERPs. If they must have it then that is at least an improvement, if it sticks. I haven't seen it all day and apart from the 'valuable' job it does in burying the organic results I really don't see why it exists.

If Google were called duck duck go and DDG were called Google, I wonder if everything would be different just based on the name?

Absolutely. They do have the duck.com domain name though, and they could be a red hot takeover target for someone with a lot of money to spend, particularly since G's monopoly may be broken by the legislators.

[cwalker216]

Absolutely. They do have the duck.com domain name though, and they could be a red hot takeover target for someone with a lot of money to spend, particularly since G's monopoly may be broken by the legislators.

Duck It....has a nice ring to it

[RedBar]

The USA companies only takeover of Google.com SERPs is complete in my widget sector.

From the top 10 of ny trade widgets NOT ONE non-USA company is now ranked on the first page and very, very few on the second page.

What do I say? Useless, biased, deliberately manipulated?

Whatever the reason it is now clear for all to see within my industry.



.

[superclown2]

An images block has been inserted today for every search term I've checked so far in my vertical. Now we have ads, a single organic result, the image block, 'people also ask' junk then the organics mixed in with the rest of the usual googlespam.

The number of organics has been reduced to nine from the ten that have been displayed for months. Got to make room for the ads, after all.

Speaking strictly as a searcher; this image block has absolutely zero value since it just takes me to another page full of images. Finding anything on Google has become hard work.

I'm looking for fast, accurate information about my search term. Not pictures, videos that waste my time, news outlets in another country, or suggestions for other search terms that I could have entered if I wasn't so stupid as to look for the info I really want.

How long before the mass media let people know about this, and that there are alternatives to Google? It can't come too soon.

[christianz]

Finding anything on Google has become hard work.

When I used Google I always had specific website in mind and I added that website name/domain (or abbreviation of it) after search terms, making it a "branded search". If I just entered my intent in the search box I always felt like I would be abused by someone selling something (ads, affiliate sites) or just clutter (googlespam).

[TalkativeEditorial]

Yowzer. SEMRush off the charts for US and climbing for UK - and definitely seeing some odd behaviour (possibly indexing issues related) on a few sites I look after (that are not my own)

[RedBar]

Since G has decided to penalise non-USA company sites I thought it would be interesting to see how the hotel / pub site was doing v old averages. Bear in mind this place has been closed to all excpet to essential workers since 5th November 2020:

Jan 13.7%
Feb 23.1%
Mar 41.5%
Apr 1st - 15th 74.2% partial opening April 12th
Apr 16th - 30th 97.8%
May 1st - 7th 100.4%
May 8th - 14th 132.6%

During the lockdowns I did perform some very nice tweaks which have resulted in a great UK SERPs plus we haven't even started with the live music as yet and that used to be the second most visited page.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Ok wow, something absolutely wild is going on....on mobile, some breaking news terms are showing badly outdated results (and not until after a Wiki page, Twitter profile, Instagram and several "people also ask" obstacles). When flipping over to the news tab, the results aren't even relevant to the term in some cases. Yet to assess desktop damage, but this is just.....weird.