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.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing a 50% drop in visits to my home page between June 1 and today...a straight line downward. That coincides with higher apparent views of interior pages and landing pages of lesser importance, so the overall drop isn't as severe as the drop in traffic to my home page.

I'm also seeing a big drop in "Direct" traffic on May 27th that has never recovered. "Search" traffic seems to be faring better. Is anyone seeing the same pattern? Is "Direct" mostly composed of image search, or does it also include web search these days?

[superclown2]

To add to the Google junk I am now seeing a 'People Also Consider' box on mobile. This is a carousel with ads on it. It is preceded by an ad with four prominent boxes; these look like search terms but they are not. They are part of the ad and clicking on them leads to pages on the advertiser's site. There are then three more prominent ads then the usual 'People Also Ask' garbage before the first organic - inevitably one of Google's favoured high spenders. The rest of the usual junk then follows including 'People Also search For' until the real organics some four or five complete scrolls down. At the bottom three more ads then 'Related Searchers'; just in case anyone is tempted to try page two.

Still wondering why you are getting no traffic?

[yollo03]

Semrush is showing slightly higher numbers for Australia and Japan, it's possible another update is being pushed through, we'll find out tomorrow. The web vitals is due in mid June, did they give a date?

Edit: My top affiliate that was nowhere to be seen in search today is now back where he was was. Something happened today and will probably continue tomorrow. Google literally removed his website from the first page in most of his top keywords. He is back now. Very strange.

[edited by: yollo03 at 10:20 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2021]

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: Looking backwards & wondering if things will change going forward [webmasterworld.com]
5:49 pm on Jun 10, 2021 (utc -5)

[edited by: goodroi at 10:54 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2021]

[gatormark]

Y’all are blowing up my email. :-)

[Samsam1978]

@mzb44 and @ichthyous, feel for you dude, its made me ill in the past as well!

For those who have dropped significantly from what I have read, It is indeed making us all ill on this forum.

Google should give independent websites - at least the facility to have a voice. If not, then fantastic websites will go out of business and the big media outlets and spam will be the only ones left.

[RedBar]

I was having a nice steady day until 20.00 UK time and then G simply switched off the traffic, again ... it is so obvious and deliberate YET they get away with it again and again ... it's 12.00-15.00 US time, let's stop the traffic to the "foreigners'" sites!

[superclown2]

I'm detecting a pattern during the day. I get a good surge of business early in the morning then next to zilch until late evening. The reason is googlespam. They regulate what comes to them and what they take for themselves by the number and size of ads and amount of junk they load onto the results. The more traffic they get the more they bury genuine web sites.

Nearly all my business is now coming from desktop. The mobile SERPs contain so much rubbish at the top that organic results haven't a chance.

[Martin Ice Web]

Next big hit yesterday. Another 50% cut off.
And it seems that all we lost from google is now coming via amazon.

[yollo03]

Something started churning in the background yesterday. In my humble opinion, a new ranking factor was introduced or an existing signal was upped a few notches.

[BushyTop]

Sermrush is heating up again in the UK

[Samsam1978]

Still dropping... some foreign sites above me now. How much more bleeding is expected?

Something started churning in the background yesterday. In my humble opinion, a new ranking factor was introduced or an existing signal was upped a few notches.

Any idea what?

[yollo03]

No idea, I can only guess that it is related to user experience. Could be speed, preparation for web vitals etc.

[Samsam1978]

Yes, my web vitals are not looking great, ill correct them this weekend and report if I see any improvement

[gatormark]

I will say this about the potential foreign bias. I live in the United States and built my business while here in the USA. I subsequently moved to Portugal for three years, at the peak of my Adsense revenue. A few months after my move to Portugal, I was accessing Adsense from another country obviously, my websites plummeted in USA rankings and my revenue dropped by about 40%. I don’t know if there were any other factors involved, but I do think my living in another country impacted my USA positions negatively.

[mzb44]

I subsequently moved to Portugal for three years, at the peak of my Adsense revenue. A few months after my move to Portugal, I was accessing Adsense from another country obviously, my websites plummeted in USA rankings

I don't think it's related.There're agencies managing these kinds of accounts from all over the globe for different international clients.

It was probably something else.

[Samsam1978]

Can someone help me with something. In Google webmaster tools there is a graph that displays your impressions and clicks. Since this update, the white gaps between these two lines are growing wider every day. - Does anyone know why is that due to a ranking drop or do you think it is a server issue?

[Samsam1978]

I will say this about the potential foreign bias. I live in the United States and built my business while here in the USA. I subsequently moved to Portugal for three years, at the peak of my Adsense revenue. A few months after my move to Portugal, I was accessing Adsense from another country obviously, my websites plummeted in USA rankings and my revenue dropped by about 40%. I don’t know if there were any other factors involved, but I do think my living in another country impacted my USA positions negatively.

Depends on where your server is located, if still US then it will not make a difference.

[RedBar]

@gatormark

I will say this about the potential foreign bias.

I completely agree with you and have been saying similar for many years. It is blatantly obvious in the US Serps that G favours US company websites v non-US websites and in many G.tld sites it still favours US sites even when it is a complete impossibility for them to supply for whatever reason.

This has been on-going for many years and I'm fairly sure that the US market / consumers are totally unaware of it.

[golderberger]

Depends on where your server is located, if still US then it will not make a difference.

So if your server is behind cloudflare how google would know whether it is USA business or not?

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld golderberger

So if your server is behind cloudflare how google would know whether it is USA business or not?

That is not the only criteria however insofar as a business is concerned remember that Google itself is a domain registrar and has access to loads of ownership data.

It can also easily check whether you are a business for local services, national etc .

It is said that at one time the IP address location was a ranking factor...

[NickMNS]

So if your server is behind cloudflare how google would know whether it is USA business or not?

You are absolutely correct there is no way for Google to know based on your "server location" directly. Indirectly, if your server is located in India and your serving US clients than there will be considerable network latency and that in turn will impact your page speed score, which in turn impacts your ranking in the US.

But Google likely determines "location" by content related factors, like if you display location information on your business, or the location of website/businesses linking to you website. Language used EN-US or EN-UK, behaviour or behavior. There are enough other clues available to Google that server location is not required.

[ichthyous]

I'm detecting a pattern during the day. I get a good surge of business early in the morning then next to zilch until late evening. The reason is googlespam. They regulate what comes to them and what they take for themselves by the number and size of ads and amount of junk they load onto the results.

Many of us are seeing the exact same thing...strong start to the morning then traffic goes down to nothing all day until the evening. One day direct traffic vanishes, the next day search traffic is low. English language traffic is way off, especially USA. Also, my most important landing pages have been blitzed, some down 70% today.

[Soupmaster]

In my niche (Jobs and Careers). I track around 10 competitors, 2 of which are the mega players. 8 of us are all down with this update, while the 2 industry leaders are up.

From my end, and some of the posts I've skimmed through, this update really benefited websites with a ton of authority.

[golderberger]

Many of us are seeing the exact same thing...strong start to the morning then traffic goes down to nothing all day until the evening. One day direct traffic vanishes, the next day search traffic is low. English language traffic is way off, especially USA. Also, my most important landing pages have been blitzed, some down 70% today.

exactly same thing here :|

[yollo03]

It's like someone opens and closes the tap at certain hours.

[Jori]

@gatormark :I moved to Portugal in 2016. In 2017, my website was heavily penalized. My society was french, and it changed to portuguese status.

I also thougt back in the time that it was a factor in my penalization. But some months later, it all went back on track again. I did a lot of improvements, so, I don't have strong opinions on this...

[superclown2]

From my end, and some of the posts I've skimmed through, this update really benefited websites with a ton of authority.

At least in my UK vertical the top organic result is followed by a mass of googlespam. This top result is almost always one of the high spending advertisers.

If follows that any sites under number one will get crumbs only, if anything at all.

It is all part of Google's grand plan.

[yollo03]

It happened again. My top affiliate has been removed from the first page (I cant even see him in the first 5 pages). Does anyone have a suggestion why the top spot for certain keywords change at certain hours? It can't be a penalty or random.

[KaseyM]

I think something is still rolling out - very strange rankings. Almost getting different results every hour for the same search query.