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.

[mzb44]

If I remember correctly they did say that in the (far in my opinion) future it will be a more dominant ranking factor, not at the beginning. Any future strategies can change, it might get dismissed next year.

Yes, everything is possible. I just don't think they would release an update that would hit sites they're trying hard with every other update to boost, and benefit sites they're trying hard with every other update to demote.

Also, let's continue the CWV talk in the CWV thread before all this gets moved or deleted? I just realised this is the core update thread.

[christianz]

I think now they must have done something to remove the authority of older sites

Could be just how their link weighting algo works. Older sites host a lot of content (including images) and are barraged with spam backlinks. Hence why the dumb algo may think their backlink profile as a whole is "low quality".

I don't have a large sample size of sites to make this conclusive, but my own experience is that the younger the site and the less backlinks it has (including spammy ones) the better its doing since December 2020 update.

My oldest site has lots of backlinks (nowadays 95% spam, of course) and lots of pages - many of which have been properly maintained with redirects since 2007 (!), yet the pea-brain google algo thinks I am on same level as AI generated word salad created yesterday by a spammer in Thirdworldistan.

[LynMan]

I just got +50% from early June update and since yesterday another +30%

[Samsam1978]

It's pants!

[edited by: Samsam1978 at 9:15 am (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[Samsam1978]

Anyone else got the email from Google today? My gut feeling is that it will be fixed in July, maybe our ranking drops are to test the waters with new sites. Anyway been doing this stuff for 24 years, and I know what I am doing. My core vitals were pants still working like a nutter to improve them but had to remove images that users love but they are too heavy. Code (ads, Google analytics, youtube) from Google is weighing down the site.

Worse rankings in all my career history.

Messy spammy results outranking me.

Complete shambles.

Can't believe they would revolutionize the results like this and demote the independent publisher, noticed those people saying they got more traffic are newbies on here.

[mzb44]

I agree that the July update will be very revealing and course setting for a lot of people.

If they fix the algos and ensure fewer quality sites get (perhaps accidentally) demoted and more spam sites hit, then we'll know it's worth continuing.

If, however, the next core update will continue with the same trends as the previous ones - especially the May and December 2020 ones - then I believe a lot of us here that keep getting negatively affected should seriously think about quit working on the affected sites. There comes a point you tried everything and if nothing works then it's clear the site is done and probably won't ever recover.

[Samsam1978]

@mzb44

Keep going. You did not work this hard over the years to quit. Apple may bring out its search engine soon. If it carries on I think a list needs to be drawn up and one of us sends it to the search team. If we all came together (as I know users on here serve >4 million-plus a month being hit) Gosh the famous SEOers are being hit and staying quiet why? Why are the famous SEOers staying quiet - maybe they know this is only temporary? What we are seeing is a mess, I'm sure Google knows this.

[golderberger]

what pissed me the most is that i've created my own product, it was good enough and it spread around the internet and I've never done some SEO or paid for SEO at all (only now after the dump I have ordered some services) but finally my sales and traffic went to #*$! due to google algo changes

[saladtosser]

>>>Why are the famous SEOers staying quiet<<<

Probably fear, would you want to publicly criticise the hand that feeds you? Read an interesting quote today

"PROVIDING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
A handful of publishing companies own hundreds of media websites that collectively receive billions of search engine visits each year. E.g. Search for "best smartphone" and you may see results from websites like TechRadar, Android Central, T3, Tom's Guide, Anandtech, iMore, Louder, Creative Bloq, Digital Camera World or Top Ten Reviews. It doesn't matter which site you vote for with your click, the ballot is stacked: All of those websites are owned by a single company".

[mzb44]

Gosh the famous SEOers are being hit and staying quiet why? Why are the famous SEOers staying quiet - maybe they know this is only temporary?

For several years, they've been promoting the Google narrative that core updates are rewarding quality, authoritative and relevant content and websites and demoting low-quality and non-relevant content and websites. And that if you become their clients they will "fix" and recover your sites.

Now, how would it look if they were to admit their own sites are getting demoted by core updates?

I have looked at a lot of sites run by the famous SEOers the last couple of weeks. What I have noticed is that those sites get hit at around the same rate as sites from the "general population". One would expect sites of known famous SEOs and "core update" experts to get hit less or even not at all in comparison to "genpop" sites, but it seems about the same.

[JesterMagic]

PROVIDING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE - Most of those sites use to be good when they were owned by the original owners. Top Ten Reviews is such a joke in our niche, all the information is old and outdated yet they still get to rank for some reason.

This past update has turned the screws for websites that suffer from negative SEO (many fake backlinks, content that got scrapped, etc...). The pages that have suffered this the worse seem to have fallen at 1 - 1.5 pages.

[gatormark]

I am so confused by Google's numbers as of late. My page views have decreased 33% over the past three weeks. They normally decrease when school lets out so this is not too alarming. However, and strangely, my income has increased by 11% over this same interval and is the highest it has been in years during the month of June. June-August is typically my dead zone. I know there have been core updates during this same period, but these numbers are inconsistent with the page view decrease, not that I'm complaining. It's just something I cannot explain. The quality of ads is very good on my sites. The best they've been in a long time. Very strange times.

[yollo03]

Firefox browsers prevent tracking in analytics. There is a way around it (I think) that will force firefox do not track to be tracked. If there is an increase in Firefox users that block tracking that might explain the increase in revenue. Unless you are using a different method for tracking.

I am one of those websites that was hit but more than 1 - 1.5 pages. most of my keywords just evaporated. It's possible fake backlinks triggered it but I cant say anything for sure. I did see a very, very, very small recovery in the past 24 hours. I dont see it as an indication things are turning around now unless its consistent.

[ichthyous]

Could be just how their link weighting algo works. Older sites host a lot of content (including images) and are barraged with spam backlinks. Hence why the dumb algo may think their backlink profile as a whole is "low quality".

My oldest site has lots of backlinks (nowadays 95% spam, of course) and lots of pages - many of which have been properly maintained with redirects since 2007 (!)

@Christianz I am in the same position, a 20 year old domain with many direct links to images accumulated over the years and a massive number of 301 redirects in place from previous site designs.

My image traffic dropped off a cliff on March 15th in one shot (not gradually) and has stayed at the new lower level ever since, and direct traffic is down hugely since then as well. I think it may be the case that Google just wiped out the value of all those image links and perhaps is not passing value for redirects like it used to. It indicates that somehow the links to these images and / or redirects are being handled differently by Google with these updates going back to March.

[christianz]

This past update has turned the screws for websites that suffer from negative SEO (many fake backlinks, content that got scrapped, etc...). The pages that have suffered this the worse seem to have fallen at 1 - 1.5 pages.

Could be, judging by traffic patterns. But if they really are doing it, it has to be one of them dumbest things Google has ever done, because punishing fake links is the same as rewarding fake links, only in reverse - a SEO manipulator has to build fake links to his competitors sites, instead of his own. Makes no difference - the SERP can be manipulated either way.

The only thing they can and should do is completely ignore those links.

[westcoast]

"@Christianz I am in the same position, a 20 year old domain with many direct links to images accumulated over the years and a massive number of 301 redirects in place from previous site designs."

25 years old here! And we too have just been slammed by the recent updates. Our top keyword, which we held in the #1 or #2 spot for 20 years has now been demoted to #30 just as our backlink profile has been filled with over 40,000 spammy backlinks (and we are still #1 in bing and literally every other search engne!). Now tell me with a straight face that we haven't been penalized.

Our backlink profile is like yours, and other 20+ year old websites here. A good 90% of our backlinks are just trash.

The problem, of course, is that the 10% of our backlinks that are not trash are still a LOT of good, positive links -- far more and showing far more authority than any new website. We have 25 years of history in those links, and a lot of big sites have linked to us. Unfortunately, the spam and scraped-content hacked-domain links totally overwhelm them. Any algorithm looking at our backlink profile could only conclude "what a load of crap".

"But Google ignores spam links!", says nearly every SEO expert. The problem with this assumption is that it assumes that Google can tell the difference between a spammy link and a non-spammy link. Well, it can't. Google is routinely indexing billions of spammy links each day, and clearly believes they are legitimate because they are searchable and in the index. They are so legitimate they appear under GSC. They are so legitimate that the spam pages remain indexed and searchable for months.

It seems clear to me what's going on for large, older sites: maybe Google is looking at the mess of backlinks and saying "wow, there's a lot of crap there. let's ignore everything", and it's ignoring all of the good, legitimate links as well as the mountains of garbage. It's the only way to explain how new, spam-content sites with a fraction of your authority based on your real, good links are routinely ranking higher than you.

The small handful of old, massive, insanely-high domain authority sites don't feel the effects of such issues because their authority is so overwhelming. It is the small to mid-sized players that get destroyed. Just a theory, but the correlation of the demotion of medium-authority-old-large-niche-players seems pretty strong to me.

[edited by: westcoast at 4:21 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[christianz]

My top 4 linking websites in Search Console section "Top linking sites":

1. Fake auto-generated spam site - 4.5k backlinks
2. Fake auto-generated spam site - 2.3k backlinks
3. Fake auto-generated spam site - 2.1k backlinks
4. Fake auto-generated spam site - 1.9k backlinks

First real website is at #5 and the list overall is probably 90% spam sites and spam backlinks at this point.

This is for a 15 year old website with plenty of user interaction and real links/shares.

[christianz]

What's more, I just checked one of my "top 4" linking sites and its a straight up cloak-job that redirects to gambling site with affiliate link for all of its indexed pages.

Absolutely shocking. Google is COMPLETELY BROKEN.

[westcoast]

"What's more, I just checked one of my "top 4" linking sites and its a straight up cloak-job that redirects to gambling site with affiliate link for all of its indexed pages."

Hah. As of this morning 670 of my "top 1000 external link sites" in Google Search Console are active, cloaked hacked-domains that redirect to malware (all are searchable and indexed in google itself). Another 100 or so domains are expired domains or previously hacked but now taken offline. At most 200 of my top 1000 backlinking domains in GSC are legitimate. There are another 4000+ hacked domains outside of that top 1000 that link to my site. In other words, in Google's eyes, approximately 4800 of 5000 domains linking to my site are low-quality spammy backlinks. Is it any wonder Google has trashed our rankings?

Yes. Google is broken beyond comprehension. A reckoning is coming though, because I have watched this spam absolutely go parabolic over the past few months. A few months from now and this will be the #1 topic in SEO land and at Google HQ. The "toxic link checkers" at semrush and ahrefs have got be absolutely stuffed with crap and nearly unusable at this point. Imagine what it will be like a year from now.

They can ignore it while it only affects sites like ours, but when it starts bringing the entire index to its knees they'll be forced to take notice.

[christianz]

Why is this not front page news on every SEO site? That supposedly smartest search engine in charge of "organizing world's information" can't tell a cloaked adware/malware site from a real website never mind a human written website from nonsensical random word soup?

[westcoast]

"Why is this not front page news on every SEO site?"

Because they are all obsessed on stripping down websites to force-fit them into arbitrary and fantastical "core web vital" numbers that pretty much every large website fails because the parameters are so disconnected from reality.

You can't make this stuff up.

And no, Im not complaining about our web vitals personally. We have a 100% green across the board in web vitals and experience because I've always believed in a very efficient design and responsiveness. It hasn't stopped our plummet in any way though.

It does make me roll my eyes though when I take a look at this in page insights:

Amazon ( 43 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! lol! noobs!
YouTube ( 36 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! A Google property! Haha
Ebay ( 46 / 100) - RED! FAIL! SORRY EBAY!
CNN ( 12 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! lol!
MarketWatch ( 15 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! lol...
Buzzfeed ( 20 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! oh no...
MSN.com ( 34 / 100 ) - RED! FAIL! Sorry Bill!


Oh, and don't get me started on having GOOGLE Adsense sending me emails trying to get me to place ads above the fold, and then having GOOGLE Search tell me they will penalize me for it. Don't. Get. Me. Started.

Between the spam and idiocy like this Google is doomed.

[NickMNS]

"Why is this not front page news on every SEO site?"

Because there is nothing new about it.

Yes. Google is broken beyond comprehension. A reckoning is coming though, because I have watched this spam absolutely go parabolic over the past few months. A few months from now and this will be the #1 topic in SEO land and at Google HQ.

This has been going on for years, this hasn't just started, you have never noticed because it hasn't impacted you directly until now. The bottom line is that Google is aware of this and does "manage" it by basically ignoring these links. Just because your GSC report shows these links doesn't mean there is any impact on your website. And just because you can type some long winded key-phrase in quotes into Google and get it to show you spam is not proof of a bigger problem.

The "toxic link checkers" at semrush and ahrefs have got be absolutely stuffed with crap and nearly unusable at this point.

Yup, spam exists and these 3rd party tools need to deal with it. Google doesn't provide any information as to what criteria it uses to value links. These tools, will and have been facing a garbage in garbage out problem that they willfully ignore. Most SEO's don't know and or don't care and thus happily pay monthly to view some nice graphs and figures on basically meaningless numbers.

[christianz]

The bottom line is that Google is aware of this and does "manage" it by basically ignoring these links.

My observations contradict what you are suggesting. My sites with most spam backlinks are doing worst, with least - best.

Just because your GSC report shows these links doesn't mean there is any impact on your website.

Several months back after December 2020 update they cleaned up the Links section and some 70-80% of fake sites disappeared. Now they are back and worse than before. There are reasons why they pass certain threshold where Google considers them legitimate enough to show in the Links section. I am also noticing the same domains that disappeared last year reappear very recently.

If they showed everything, there would probably be even 10x more spam domains. So there that they show pass some "quality test" and it is reasonable to think they might pass to contribute to ranking as well.

And just because you can type some long winded key-phrase in quotes into Google and get it to show you spam is not proof of a bigger problem.

Who said anything about "long winded key phrases"? They are ranking for normal phrases. In image search and regular search. I know this because I am tracking incoming traffic for my images.

I don't need to prove anything to you. The "bigger problem" is obvious to most people in this industry who are able to see.

[westcoast]

"This has been going on for years, this hasn't just started, you have never noticed because it hasn't impacted you directly until now. "

I am well aware it has been happening for years. I have fought battles against spammers and scrapers for decades.

It has suddenly become much, much worse over the last 6-12 months though, and others who I correspond with on the matter agree -- particularly in Google's battle against hacked domains and cloaking.

"The bottom line is that Google is aware of this and does "manage" it by basically ignoring these links."

You can make a claim like that all you want, but the fact is these spam pages are in the index, are searchable, and appear in GSC. The evidence for them "not being managed" is far greater than your wishful sentiment that "they are being taken care of".

I understand that Google *says* they are being taken care of. I understand that they WANT them to be taken care of. I understand that Google tells SEOs that they are being taken care of. I think we can agree everyone would love for them to be taken care of.

But, *are* they being taken care of? Can you prove it?

"Just because your GSC report shows these links doesn't mean there is any impact on your website. "

You are correct of course - it doesn't necessarily mean that. It is also a correct statement to say that the presence of such links in GSC (that are also searchable in Google) means that they COULD have an impact on my website. After all, they are correlated in a chart under my website's statistics. It is not an unreasonable or irresponsible concern to suggest that they could be harming the website.

I don't think anyone here is claiming *for certain* that any of this stuff harms a site's ranks. We simply don't have the data to make such claims. Neither do you have the data to prove that they DONT harm a site's ranks. I think it's dangerous to assume that Google's algorithms are 100% infallible. I've yet to meet software that is, and I am a software engineer.

I would encourage you to be open to the possibility though that spammy backlinks *could* have an accidental, unintended detrimental affect. I would love for Google to investigate the matter and do some analysis to really make sure that they aren't. Take a look at large, old midsized websites with huge backlink profiles and see what the backlink data looks like and how it is affecting their rankings.

Algorithms are not infallible. Give them enough garbage in and you're going to get garbage out. It is quite possible that complicated algorithmic dances and the interactions of different algorithms doing different things can result in unintended negative consequences.

Thanks for your response. I do think that algorithms need to be checked and made sure they are doing what they should be doing as time passes and as datasets grow large and complex.

[edited by: westcoast at 5:39 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[mzb44]

The bottom line is that Google is aware of this and does "manage" it by basically ignoring these links.

I'm sure they are trying. Doesn't mean they are succeeding.

You can still get penalized for buying links / pointing automated links / etc. at your own site.

Link penalties still exist today.

Why would you not get penalized and instead the spam links ignored if someone else does the exact same thing with the exact same links to your site, but do get penalized if you do it yourself?

The fact link penalties still exists means that spam links pointed at your site by others or bots can negatively impact you in certain situations.

Most spam links are probably ignored but probably not all? Could it be that the automated tools sometimes believe some spam links were created by the site owner and penalize / demote those sites as a consequence?

I think it's dangerous to assume that Google's algorithms are 100% infallible.

This. 100 times this.

This is the biggest problem of Twitter celebrity SEO, in my opinion. I'm unsure if these people genuinely believe this themselves, I kind of suspect they don't, but this is pretty much the only approved sentiment you are allowed to project if you want to interact in those circles.

[gatormark]

I may be in the minority here, but I like love the idea of the core web vitals. There are too many websites that are inundating users with ads and the performance of those websites is horrible. There are more ads than content.

However, I do think there is additional motivation for Google to push core web vitals. The code of many advertising providers is extreme slow loading. Some of these don’t even provide asynchronous loading. If Google can encourage webmasters to get rid of these secondary ad providers, behind the façade of promoting performance, then more advertisers will move back to Google. They will force these providers out of business.

I recently removed one of my advertising providers that had extremely slow code. I removed them primarily because their revenue plummeted after Covid and never recovered. Prior to that, I was making good money with them. Once I remove their code from my website, Google started liking my website again and many of my pages started moving up the rankings again. My cost per click and Page RPM have skyrocketed as well.

It seems as though Google SERP rewarded me for removing those slow ads…which happened to be competitors of Google.

Not coincidentally, the biggest SERP hit I ever took in a Google update was a few months after I added these new providers.

[edited by: gatormark at 5:55 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[christianz]

only approved sentiment you are allowed to project if you want to interact in those circles

Ha ha ha. I am almost tempted to become that non-bootlicking SEO personality to provide some balance. But I am not sure if its worth trying, because if I ever get successful on platforms like YouTube etc doing this, I would get algorithmically demoted to oblivion, because my coverage would be obviously bad PR for the likes of Google.

This is another reason why we see echo chambers on Twitter and most visible SEO personalities are all parroting each other and some boring, vacuous unicorns & rainbows Google guideline bs.

[christianz]

It seems as though Google SERP rewarded me for removing those slow ads…which happened to be competitors of Google.

Not coincidentally, the biggest SERP hit I ever took in a Google update was a few months after I added these new providers.

Removing ads is not an option for everybody, because many websites can only exist if they are funded by ads and in many cases they can not fund themselves by AdSense - the yield is not enough.

The fact that Google seems to prefer AdSense sites (I have idiosyncratic evidence of this with my own site as well) alone is very disturbing.

[ichthyous]

Just because your GSC report shows these links doesn't mean there is any impact on your website.

I have been submitting very long disavow files for years, but it wasn't until early in 2021 that many of the scraper site links were actually removed from my GSC link report. I didn't want any of those links because I was worried about negative SEO effect. The GSC link panel cleaned up nicely all on its own, but it took half my traffic with it. Not sure if the two are correlated, but as I mentioned in my last post, my image traffic dropped off a cliff on exactly March 15th and never returned. March 15th is also the date that I started to see a big loss of keywords and traffic, which continues with these core updates.

As an aside...my own server still shows a lot of direct links to images that were never shown in GSC and they are still in place. I redirected the images in mass when I changed the image urls on my site. I now have a very heavy htaccess file over 1mb in size and I am wondering if Google is just straight up penalizing sites with too many redirects. Has anyone actually tried to remove or reduce redirects recently, and what was the outcome?

Finally, I think that other things are also at play here...Google is without question targeting the highest converting and most important landing and content pages and systematically reducing traffic and ranking. I have watched the most important pages on my site wither up and die, while unimportant not very highly linked content has risen in PV. I have no doubt that Google has made an analysis of each site and knows what is the money content and what isn't, it's just too targeted. In addition, the traffic reduction is almost entirely from USA, my own market. If this were just about links then all traffic would be reduced evenly, not just USA. This is an intentional move by Google to kill off every site's most important traffic to force us all to pay for advertising, period.

That is why I removed analytics from my site...anonymized data or not, I don't want Google having too much info about my traffic.

[edited by: ichthyous at 6:30 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[topaz]

Unless you got a manual penalty...you guys should really stop using disavow.

[ichthyous]

Unless you got a manual penalty...you guys should really stop using disavow.

Are you sure of that @Topaz? I'm not...for me the risk of having tens of thousands of links from .info and other scraper sites hosting malware seemed too large. I didn't want those links associated with my site. I've never had any kind of penalty.

[NickMNS]

My observations contradict what you are suggesting. My sites with most spam backlinks are doing worst, with least - best.

Correlation is not causation

There are reasons why they pass certain threshold where Google considers them legitimate enough to show in the Links section.

No, why must there be a reason, they provide a sample. In fact they intentionally show you a "random" sample such that you cannot determine which links are beneficial and which are not. To prevent you from gleaning information that could then be used to game the system. Most of the links currently appearing in my GSC report are dead, the domains lead you to GoSpammy registrar and are now available for sale.

It has suddenly become much, much worse over the last 6-12 months though,

This may be true, but the nature of the links and spam remains the same, there is nothing new, except potentially an increase in scale.

But, *are* they being taken care of? Can you prove it?

No, it would be difficult to prove either way. Can one do anything about? No. So I prefer to focus my attention on actions that can make a measurable difference.

You can still get penalized for buying links / pointing automated links / etc. at your own site.
Link penalties still exist today.

This is a completely different thing, the people creating links don't care about penalties, if they were required create a GSC account for each spammy domain/subdomain they created then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I have been submitting very long disavow files for years, but it wasn't until early in 2021 that many of the scraper site links were actually removed from my GSC link report. I didn't want any of those links because I was worried about negative SEO effect.

It is very unlikely that the disavow would have any impact on this issue at all. As I mentioned above most of the links in my report are gone before they are even shown to me. Disavowing links that are already dead seems pointless.

In fact if this spam is having an impact at all it would most likely be very short lived and be coming from links which are not yet reported. Of course by short lived, I'm referring to the impact from any one specific link. Assuming that the links are being churned, the effect could be sustained.

[ichthyous]

It is very unlikely that the disavow would have any impact on this issue at all. As I mentioned above most of the links in my report are gone before they are even shown to me. Disavowing links that are already dead seems pointless.

In fact if this spam is having an impact at all it would most likely be very short lived and be coming from links which are not yet reported.

@NickMNS None of this is what we were actually seeing though. I had massive numbers of spam links reported in my GSC panel for 6/9/12 months from the same scraper sites. Google never removed them, even though the disavow file was submitted. What I am saying is that 2021 is the first time I saw a significant reduction in scraper links in years. And they still are showing on my panel, but in reduced numbers.

[NickMNS]

Google never removed them,

Google has been explicit about this, they have said that adding links to your disavow file will not make them disappear from your link report.

[ichthyous]

For those of you considering supplementing your traffic by paying for adwords, do not bother...I just added up my clicks from adwords in the last couple of weeks, about 50 in total. 64% of the clickthroughs hit one page and stayed less than ten seconds. Of the rest, ONE actually inquired about an item and there were NO sales....ZERO. For this I have a bill of about $180.

Yesterday I chatted with the Google rep to complain about poor targeting of the searches to the keywords, clicks from excluded locations, and my budget being exceeded yesterday by almost double. He did nothing but keep me on hold and say they were working on it, then said it was taking too long could he call me back? He never called back. If you send them proof of the crappy (I would say fraudulent) clicks they say they are unable to comment on your own site metrics. That's it for me, I tried and got a good lesson in the abysmal quality of Google's paid ads. I will never turn it back on again, it just does not work.

[ichthyous]

Google has been explicit about this, they have said that adding links to your disavow file will not make them disappear from your link report.

That's not the point...you commented that the links disappear before they are ever reported...and yes that is true for many sites. But some of these sites kept links up for months on end...long enough to be reported and to grow in size month after month. When you have image scraper sites with 2,500 backlinks to your pages that aren't getting cleared up or disappearing on their own that is a risk.

[EditorialGuy]

Is Google really investing millions in Core Vitals simply for the "tiebreaker" of Web pages?

Sure, just as they did when SSL became a ranking factor.

When John Doe searches for "red widgets" or "subway timetable in timbuktu," things like LCP, FID, and CLS aren't exactly top of mind. But if Google can point John Doe to the faster of two closely comparable sites, that's a win for the searcher (and, ultimately, for Google).

[westcoast]

No, it would be difficult to prove either way. Can one do anything about? No. So I prefer to focus my attention on actions that can make a measurable difference.

User feedback about strange or unexpected behavior emerging from complicated algorithms is critical. Google needs to know that this spam-backlink issue does appear to be correlating to strange site penalties and ranking dives for a number of (usually older) websites.

Without people speaking up, potential problems or blind spots in algorithms will never get corrected.

A lot of us say there is an issue here. Either there is or there isn't. Only google can determine that by examining their algorithms and data. By voicing our concerns we hope that the issue eventually makes it way to the ears of someone who can do some investigating.

I have no doubt this issue will become a much bigger and much louder issue as far more websites are affected by it over the next 12 months.

[gatormark]

In my 15+ years in this game I’ve only paid a little attention to SEO; just focusing on basic information architecture design and meta-data writing based on Google’s recommendations. My primary focus has been building communities.

I have always wondered if I had been focused on a acquiring backlinks and studying SEO nuances like many, would it have made a financial difference.

So I guess I am that dude. The guy who refuses to lick the boots of the SEO gods. I will never know how ignoring SEO to this level has impacted my websites and wallet.

[NickMNS]

I have no doubt this issue will become a much bigger and much louder issue as far more websites are affected by it over the next 12 months

Again this isn't a new issue. It has been around for years even decades at this point.

If you want Google to be informed of your situation then you should be raising the issue in a Google forum. The best choice would be in the Webmaster Central office hours, the next one is Friday.
[developers.google.com...]

[NickMNS]

Is Google really investing millions in Core Vitals simply for the "tiebreaker" of Web pages?

Let's not get carried away here, the concept of "tiebreaker" is meant as an analogy. As in, the impact will be marginal at best. But it is not to say that it will be implemented as a literal tie breaker. I read this as Google saying not to expect your site to rank at number one just because you achieved a perfect score in the report.

The sum of many marginal increases can be significant, but alone any one is unlikely to be noticeable.

[gatormark]

@ ichthyous

One should never look at Adwords as a way to supplement their traffic. That’s certainly a bad approach.

Really, one should always look at advertising from a long-term perspective. Primarily with a goal to build brand awareness and hopefully over time this will lead to the sale of products, assuming that you have something to sell.

I have been using Adwords every month for over 10 years with the goal of acquiring members of my community. I spend anywhere from $160 to $350 a month on Adwords alone. The cost of advertising will not immediately be made up by them becoming a member, but if I have a good website (or product) and they remain a member (or client) long enough, then the payoff will occur over a period of time.

[edited by: gatormark at 9:49 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2021]

[gatormark]

@christianz

Removing ads is not an option for everybody, because many websites can only exist if they are funded by ads and in many cases they can not fund themselves by AdSense - the yield is not enough.

The question you have to ask yourself is if you are inundating your users with ads does that have an adverse outcome on your traffic and subsequently your income. I know there are variables based on country. Maybe you are using an advertising provider that focuses on your country or niche. However, if yours is a USA-targeted website, then Adsense should be enough if you are relying mainly on advertising income to survive. The other providers, as you noted, may end up hurting you in the long term if their code is slow.

[ichthyous]

@ gatormark The intent is to bring in sales, not just traffic. I'm already a brand and the highest number of searches coming into my site by far now are searches including my brand name. What I need now is to replace the eyeballs that were visiting before Google destroyed my organic traffic between March and June.

Google adwords is miserable at converting...actually useless from what I see. Many others here have posted the same experience so perhaps it depends on the niche. I certainly have no intent to pay $3-$5 per click to get fake clicks from India while Google reps lie to my face and tell me they are from the USA. When confronted with the actual stats from my own analytics they say they cannot discuss it or sign off. I tried it and now I know, it's not an option for my business. I wish it were, if Adwords were effective I would gladly pay them and have less stress in my life!

[gatormark]

@ichthyous

I understand that for you sales is the goal. My point is simply that people will advertise for a month or two and then say that, in this case, Adwords doesn't work and they will never use it again or disparage it. Unfortunately, that's not how advertising works.

[ichthyous]

@gatormark The purpose of Adwords isn't really brand awareness, its targeted clicks geared toward sales. It doesn't take more than a few weeks to see the abysmal quality of the clicks from adwords. If two thirds of the clicks hit one page, stay under ten seconds and leave then they are useless for my business. Why keep wasting your money month after month when the leads aren't going to improve? Move on to other methods of advertising...display network, social media ads, email. Continuing to pour money into Adwords when there is zero ROI is actually foolish, at least in my book. Now it could be that Adwords just doesn't work for my niche and my site, and works better for yours.

[ichthyous]

Google shut off my traffic at 2pm sharp today and kept it off for the entire day...0-4 visitors per hour for ten hours in a row. It used to be two hours, then three, then five, now 8-10 hours at a stretch. Is anyone else seeing this?

[mzb44]

After having looked at hundreds of sites the last 3-4 years, all related to core update hits, I have realised something today.

It's that I have seen more sites recovering that didn't do absolutely anything at all, than sites that made all kinds of massive changes (*usually recommendations by mainstream SEOs and Google employees) trying to desperately "fix" things.

The ratio may not be that different between these two categories but even this in itself shows that "fixing" things may just be placebo at best in most cases.

* One of the worst advices that is going around at the moment - and I know this may be extremely controversial and some may dismiss this out of hand and even laugh at me - is that trying to follow E-A-T guidelines and having experts create in-depth authoritative, accurate content can help you or it's what core updates are rewarding.

I have just seen way too many hit sites that have been desperately pumping literal fortunes into completely remaking their entire content by actual experts and specialists and genuine known authority figures... and absolutely nothing whatsoever happened at all. No recovery at all and they keep getting outranked by cheap $0.01/word third world writers.

I'm sure doing the above can help in some specific individual cases, but looking at raw numbers, it appears that at least statistically this does not correlate with core update recoveries.

Doing nothing actually correlates more with having better chances at recovery. (Yes, I know correlation =/= causation. I am definitely not claiming that it was the doing nothing part that recovered some sites.)

I have proof and can show hundreds of sites clearly proving my above statements but it's not allowed on this forum.

[yollo03]

How do you know they didnt concentrate on their domain authority?

[mzb44]

Yeah I checked that. No new links / no sudden link surge etc / or link acquisition was just in line with how it was before. - it did really seem they genuinely did not do anything at all.

Yes, yes, you can't actually know what someone does unless you have access to the site. But if you've been doing this for 15+ years you kinda can get a "feel" for what someone is or isn't doing.