Google Core Update May 23 - June 3, 2021

Google *finally* confirms 11 days later.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Yower, SEMRush is freaking out. A few of the other sensors seem to be spiking too.
This is hell. Never know what to do anymore, where to look...or what is actually evening happening.

[superclown2]

@Superclown, I worked for that company for a short while, that's how I know.

Wow. Do you have any knowledge of how they host these? Do they have their own servers with large IP blocks or do they use many different hosting companies? I'd have thought that having so many sites on the same or similar IP addresses would have been a complete giveaway to Google; or perhaps they are still not as clever as we give them credit for.

I remember that getting a server with a full Class C IP block (we could, in those days) and packing it with sites was a common spamming method 20 years ago but it can't be that simple today. If it is still working them maybe the latest algo hasn't been programmed to detect it yet. Switching to one using artificial intelligence must be a huge challenge and maybe, just maybe, that is one reason why the current search results are so dreadful.

[renatovieira]

Very big drop today.

By my daily morning traffic patterns, today I will have a 50% drop. Finally, the update is confirmed on my side. It's disheartening...

No european users currently active on my global site. This is surreal!

[RedBar]

I am seeing movement in my US SERPs, not massive changes however several keyword products that went MIA have returned plus seeing more multiple page views rather than single ones.

My biggest keyword phrase is still locked-down to US companies but now there are 3 non-US sites in the top 30. It's very disappointing to look at some of the scrapey US sites being ranked higher than the far superior foreign ones.

I uploaded a brand new page last week and it's already ranking #15, I wonder how far it will go?

Meanwhile I have another site that G simply will not update after 6 weeks:-(

[Martin Ice Web]

This is getting rediculous.
Search term german google: 3,5mm KlinkeKabel hochwertig

1 made for amazon shopping ads site
2 - 3 amazon
4 other site
5 - 9 made for amazon shopping ads site (5 and 7 are copies of each other !)

This is the new standard in our vertical.
Once again: as a user i donīt want to have domains made for amazon shopping in the serps. If i want to buy at amazon i go straight forward to amazon. Where is diversity gone to?

[ichthyous]

A mild reversal of my English language traffic...Canada is back, Australia and UK are both up and even visits from NZ. USA still down by 39% but it's only 10am and that tends to recover late in the day. Most notably, the pages that were seeing up to 70% drops in traffic are now back to normal. I won't hold my breath yet as the reversal could reverse at mid-day and head straight back down, as has been the pattern for the last several weeks...

Comparing GSC clicks for March-June 2021 to same period in 2020 I am seeing a 50%-100% reduction in clicks to my site for a wide swath of terms. It's a catastrophe actually. The only saving grace was that clicks for searches for my brand name and its variations were up by an almost equally huge amount. Has anyone else seen this and what does it mean?

I am seeing that a competitor that is ranking across the board (a large corporate ecomm site) is actually using good old keyword lists on their pages...a tactic straight out of the early 2000's. Wasn't this supposed to harm your ranking or is it considered acceptable now?

[RedBar]

@MIW - Obviously Google has no fear of Amazon shopping whatsoever!

It seems to me that Amazon, like Ebay, is bidding on every phrase there is regardless of the product and if they can supply.

When Bezos goes into space he ought to take a long, long vacation and not bother returning:-)

[jmorgan]

I'm not liking this update.

[BushyTop]

We've had Zero conversions today

[renatovieira]

Things are pretty weird today. I don't think it's a consequence of the last update, but something happening today.

Could it be related to the 'cloud glitch' that happened this morning?

[RedBar]

I've just been looking at a couple of small, different niche widget UK sites that, basically, have been wiped-out since last Thursday, extremely low page views plus zero online enquiries since then.

Anyone else UK-based seeing similar for a niche site(s)?

Keyword products seem to be ranking well on the first page.

[ichthyous]

Could it be related to the 'cloud glitch' that happened this morning?

It must be...my traffic started off strong this morning, then at 9am sharp it dropped sharply and has stayed at zero from noon to 2pm EST, and that includes zero traffic from paid search ads.

[lee_sufc]

@RedBar - this is exactly what I'm seeing.

[RedBar]

@lee_sufc

First page and very few ads or distractions?

[saladtosser]

Youtube has had a massive boost for about 60% of the species I cover in the pet niche since the last update, luckily I saw this coming and have been heavily working on youtube and picking up 10-12 subs per day based on the sudden shift organics are making from websites in the SERPs to YouTubers. Would still rather be a content provider via a website but based on the SERPs cant run that rodeo anymore (at least not only, I'm doing both now but youtube is taking over a month on month). Obviously, if Google didn't own youtube none of this would be happening but have to move with the way Google is moving for information queries, at least in my area.... It's very sad, my website is better than my youtube account but youtube is being promoted and websites demoted in my area! If it carries on, and I expect it will youtube may become the default search engine promoted by the normal google search engine top (5-6 results). I guess at least if I can convert all of my website content into youtube videos I won't need to pay Ģ185 per month for a dedicated website server and all that hassle that comes with it! If youtube hasn't come into your area yet, give it a try, make a video and a few months later your website is listed below it, fact!

This is where the antitrust should be looking, youtube and the way they force it down your throat because they own it! (as you can tell I'm begrudgingly becoming a youtube now, winning but don't want to have to do it because I know the effort and cost that goes into holding up a decent website and the costs involved of dedicated servers and good content!) Uploading a video right now, have a lot of people asking for it but feel like I'm whoring myself out ;(

[edited by: saladtosser at 9:03 pm (utc) on Jun 8, 2021]

[christianz]

This is where the antitrust should be looking, youtube and the way they force it down your throat

Yup. And they are force-feeding YouTube to all kinds of information queries where video is just about the worst information form-factor imaginable.

It is beyond stupid now. Do I really need to generate 1000 YouTube videos for the each piece of numeric facts and figures I am publishing in my website?

Its like we discovered WWW and Google is insisting that we must use video cassettes.

[saladtosser]

christianz i agree with you, you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time per year to earn a penny off your content even if google earns off it. This isn't a bad thing if it was just youtube but now it's forced down organics it becomes a problem for us, not them (or the YouTubers who didn't own a website a few years ago), enjoy them ads you cant scroll by though, they are plenty! On the plus side......................actually, there is no plus side for the web, just YouTubers, and as one forced into it I have to say it sucks!

[superclown2]

How can a video be suitable for information? By the time you've sat through an ad, watched the intro, squirmed at the hyperactive youth yelling at you to subscribe to his channel, you could have found the info you wanted in the SERPs several times over.

Searchers are impatient. The want fast results. Videos are clearly there to serve ads and detract from the organic results, not to benefit the searcher. Google is playing a dangerous game.

[RedBar]

WTF is going on?

Today I had a pre-update day of multiple global PVs until 19.00 UK time ... I was at 80% of my old level and then STOP STOP STOP ... in the last 5 hours I have gone back to a few single PVs ... Honestly Google, you are an indescribable, manipulative joke ... pathetic is too good for you ...

The Internet would be better off without your presence, you are a complete and utter disgrace to the geek community ... HONESTLY!

[ichthyous]

@RedBar...same thing here, the traffic was moving until about 10am, then dropped to nothing for the rest of the day...it's 7pm and I have had 2-4 PV per hour since this morning except for one spike at 3pm. I turned on paid ads and got three visits which cost me over $13...two of those visits hit the home page and left, and two were outside of my target area...in other words, they kill your traffic and even if you pay it's mostly BS, non-converting, and very expensive clicks.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous @RedBar

Same boat!

[KaseyM]

Anyone having very slow indexing today?

[McMohan]

Blatant impetus given to sites built on expired high authority domains, with support or without from PBN links - is the flavor of the update so far for me.

The domain before expiring could haven been in any niche, doesn't matter.

[mzb44]

Blatant impetus given to sites built on expired high authority domains, with support or without from PBN links - is the flavor of the update so far for me.

The domain before expiring could haven been in any niche, doesn't matter.

Yeah this is going on for a while now.

The last 3 or 4 core updates significantly boosted root domain authority (not the moz metric!), meaning if it's high enough you can rank for anything you want.

I already posted a few examples here such as: keyword targeted and affiliate-linking press releases ranking above legit sites, expired domains of state embassies repurposed as financial scam affiliate sites outranking absolutely everybody legit etc.

Show these concrete examples to the famous SEOers who push the "EAT / google getting better at judging relevancy" narrative and they will immediately stop responding and will pretend they didn't see it.

[BushyTop]

This update has completely broken us. Never had so much non geo specific traffic. We're a UK business, but getting traffic from everywhere, presumably that isnt even human!

[lee_sufc]

@BushyTop. I'm seeing this, too. In addition, I'm seeing lots of very old pages that haven't been updated in 10+ years appearing in top five results.

[Martin Ice Web]

@BushyTop: located in german we get hits from japan. But to be honest, this was every time they pulled an updated.

[southernguy]

Yes, expired domains do rank well regardless of their niche, many of my competitors have been doing those for a couple of years now, they buy an expired domain for 5000.00 or throw their content up there and within weeks it's getting massive amounts of traffic and outranking everything. LAs year I saw lots of medical and edu domains with tons of affiliate content, they must be making a killing.

[BushyTop]

@lee_sufc and @Martin Ice Web I've never been more disappointed with an update. I've seen complaints about previous updates from other members in the past, but never been effected to this extent. We have of course seen drops, but this seems to have been a drop with the added bonus of non converting, non-geo traffic - so the bit we do have left is completely useless.

The pressures of covid were bad enough. Our e-com industry had already seen a dive because of the pandemic.

[ichthyous]

Never had so much non geo specific traffic. We're a UK business, but getting traffic from everywhere, presumably that isnt even human!

Ditto...I'm a USA business and my USA traffic has been declining since the mid-March updates, but this core update really takes the cake. I'm glad to see the UK/AU/EU traffic recovering in the last few days, but that traffic doesn't convert nearly as easily.

For the last two days page views have been strongly up by the time I wake up here...50%-250% increases, and pages that have been out of commission for weeks or months are almost back to normal. But USA traffic suddenly drops around 9-10am and stays down for hours so I still end up in the red by day's end. Let's see if this pattern continues, or if the USA update is just lagging behind the rest of the world.

[Martin Ice Web]

What wonders me is that with every update nothing changes for the better. Stil big companies rules and the in most cases amazon and ebay gain much more audience while other good sources get bourried on page 3 and 4.

If google would real push a updated that would bring some quality than they would demote amazon, ebay a.s.o.