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.

[Dooku]

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

Sorry, completely DISAGREE on this one. Have recovered too many websites where the disavow file was the decisive factor.
That same quote that the disavow file should not be used unless you see a manual action has been parroted too many times and for too long now in obvious "famous" circles........
Do you really think G is smart enough to make the right decision for each and every backlink?

The problem however I see all the time is that most disavow files are a botched job.......because people do NOT know how to select the correct back links to be added to the disavow file........that takes experience (ahumm.....from trial and error).

[mzb44]

That same quote that the disavow file should not be used unless you see a manual action has been parroted too many times and for too long now in obvious "famous" circles........

I am unsure who first came up with this advice and how it spread.

A Google employee just recently said that simply disavowing your links in case of a manual penalty is NOT enough. You need to manually try and remove as many links as you can and show it in the reconsideration request.

So, why would they simultaneously say the disavow tool is for when you have a manual penalty?

Sometimes I do actually wonder though if the disavow tool is actually even working at all? - Does anyone know of some recent case studies where someone intentionally disavowed all or most of their good links and then shortly after this massively impacted their rankings? I would be extremely curious to know.

[golderberger]

How do you know which link do disavow and which link caused the penalty? (and it also seems if someone wants to hurt your website he should spam few places with your links? )

[JesterMagic]

@Dooku - I haven't had your experience. The disavow file has never worked for me. I disavowed many, many obvious spam links almost weekly for a while (I also tried monthly for about 6 months) and not once did I see an effect in the rankings.

Are you sure you are seeing the affect from disavowing or is it just a regular every day update?

Say a site has 100,000 backlinks with 50,000 obviously spam, 25,000 could be spam, and 25,000 good.

So how do you approach using the disavow?

Do you just add the obvious spam links to the disavow file?

Do you keep old spam links in the disavow even if Google does not report them any more?

How often do you update the disavow file?

How many weeks later after updating the disavow do you think you see ranking improvement?

For the sites you manage how old are they and how many UV a month do you see?

For example my site is almost 20 years old ang gets 100,000 - 120,000 UV a month. I wonder if older more established sites have a harder time shaking the effects of Negative SEO.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - It's the same pattern here. Everyday at 2pm my US traffic is cut off.

This has been going on since february.

It seems like everyone turns off their phones and goes to sleep at 2pm. It's bizarre!

[RedBar]

Is anyone else experiencing a seriously out-of-date Google SERPs for local results?

I've just performed a restaurant search with a simple keyword 1/2/3 +town test, the sort of search I imagine Joe Public would use, and the results were shocking to say the very least.

1. DDG - Top 4 listings spot on.

2. Bing - Top 8 listings spot on

3. Google - An utter out-of-date mess:
#1 result has been closed permanently for over a year, G even states that in its RHS column.
#2 ok
#3 TA review of closed restaurant
#4 & 5 ok
#6 News paper review of closed biz dated July 2019
#7 ok
#8 Another newspaper review July 2018
#9 Closed biz again

Half the results are for a business closed about a year ago, it has never, ever had a website and G actually states it is Permanently Closed yet still lists it.

If G cannot get local results anywhere near correct it's no wonder so many are complaining about its national and international SERPs ... Disgraceful.

A friend of mine renamed AI as Artificial Idiocy, I corrected him with Accuidiocy :-)

[ichthyous]

@ichthyous - It's the same pattern here. Everyday at 2pm my US traffic is cut off. This has been going on since february. It seems like everyone turns off their phones and goes to sleep at 2pm. It's bizarre!

This had stopped for a few days for me, and some days it's 8/9am other days 2pm. I have not seen traffic get shut off for ten hours at a time though. This is very worrying, there's no way anyone can survive when they basically have half a day of traffic.

Someone else posted here that the reason for this is that Google has become much better at determining search intent and turns on more ads automatically, which are sucking up all the traffic at these times. I'm not sure about this theory...people can have intent to purchase something at any hour, not just 2pm onward. It also seems to be that traffic is turned off for the site globally...I stop getting traffic from everywhere at these hours...it literally goes to 0-2 people an hour.

[saladtosser]

Any of you tested the new search engine brave [search.brave.com,...] sooo much better and cleaner than google!

[westcoast]

"Any of you tested the new search engine brave [search.brave.com,...] sooo much better and cleaner than google!"

I saw it... does anyone know what user-agent its bot uses? I can't find that info...

The organic results also look oddly very similar to Google's, like they are using google's data somehow? Some queries are nearly identical results to google.

[MayankParmar]

Tested and it is worse than Google They're clearly favouring top publishers/media companies.

[mzb44]

This is extremely interesting: [twitter.com...]

Google releases a "Spam update" today.

I'm extremely curious to see what this does and how efficient it will be in doing what it's being claimed this update will be doing.

[edited by: mzb44 at 6:35 pm (utc) on Jun 23, 2021]

[southernguy]

@westcoast

The organic results also look oddly very similar to Google's, like they are using google's data somehow? Some queries are nearly identical results to google.

Yup, I've been trying Brave search since yesterday, and yes very similar to Google, that's not gonna fly well at least in my book. So for me it's still DDG.

[edited by: southernguy at 6:40 pm (utc) on Jun 23, 2021]

[mzb44]

The organic results also look oddly very similar to Google's, like they are using google's data somehow? Some queries are nearly identical results to google.

Tested and it is worse than Google They're clearly favouring top publishers/media companies.

I gave this a spin and can confirm the above.

It seems to me they developed it with the mindset that it needs to imitate Google results for this to be considered good.

It even has a "People also ask" often times straight below the first result. They didn't even change the nomenclature haha.

Disappointing.

Until Search will have an "iPhone moment" we're stuck with basically Google and others that clearly just imitate and copy whatever Google is doing.

Edit: Their page says that this is supposedly proprietary and the data is not sourced from Google or Bing. They are either lying or their ranking factors are essentially "come up with results that look like Google".

[edited by: mzb44 at 6:34 pm (utc) on Jun 23, 2021]

[Rndm]

"Any of you tested the new search engine brave [search.brave.com,...] sooo much better and cleaner than google!"

I saw it... does anyone know what user-agent its bot uses? I can't find that info..

I don't think it has a bot, but uses query and click data from the browser. I saw this somewhere with them saying their results aren't based on crawling the web.

[yollo03]

That spam update is what they rolled last week. The page experience is not live in my opinion and it's not a slow release. They can roll things quickly if they want to. They are just not sure exactly when they will roll it out.

About the spam update, I am surprised they even bothered to make a statement what the update they pushed last week was. A change of policy?

[Hollywood]

Westcoast, amen brother! Mention of a competitor: Brave.com, I'm pretty sure these posts will be removed though. Goog is getting pathetic, and old. Need a new boy on the block.

Let me ask this, due to this core update flop, who IS using a disavow file? I could talk about my experience on this, very interesting, but sort of at the mercy of time management at the moment.

[mzb44]

That spam update is what they rolled last week.

It's possible.

That tweet didn't actually say they released it today. In fact the follow-up tweet says it's finishing rolling out today.

This doesn't exclude it being launched at an earlier date.

Usually when they announce updates it's "Today we are releasing a...". This one is "we've released a..."

I may be reading too much into it though.

Now, if I were to joke, I'd say that the reason it's called "spam update" is because it's supposed to reward spam, right?

[rustybrick]

I asked Danny Sullivan, he said the spam update started to roll out today and will finish today also. There will also be a one day roll out of another spam update next week. So anyone seeing any changes and if so, what spam tactics did you use?

[RedBar]

Any of you tested the new search engine brave [search.brave.com,...] sooo much better and cleaner than google!

Clean, fast BUT all I got were the same results as G gives me, I didn't bother any further!

[RedBar]

Where on earth is Brave getting its data?

I had another look for one of my exclusive products and sure enought I was #1 BUT, BUT, BUT, with a domain I closed and let expire in April 2019 ... WTF?

[Samsam1978]

Can we try to come to a summary of this whole mess. Here is what I have found:

1. New sites outranking me - less than a year old with large content even new sites with content the same length are still outranking me with low domain authority
2. Spam - scraped sites are back with a vengeance and lot's of cloaking
3. Famous SEO and "older sites" appear to have a dip in traffic
4. Web vitals appear to not make any difference whatsoever. Domain age has been demoted from what I see
5. News sites outranking me with thin / uninformative content (this has been going on since May update) some from third world countries
6. Good content no longer appears to work, being outranked by poor third-world writing when first language is not English
7. USA traffic hit the most

Anyone want to add anything else?

[edited by: Samsam1978 at 8:28 pm (utc) on Jun 23, 2021]

[mzb44]

Samsam1978, 1-3 seems about right. 4 is behaving exactly as Google said it would so I don't see a problem with it. 5 is now "old news", it's now the new normal. 6 is correct. 7 I don't know, haven't seen it personally.

[Samsam1978]

@mzb44 what is your conclusion on the analysis you have done. I have looked at many sites over the last week and older ones all appear to be hit by this update negatively

[mzb44]

Samsam1978, pretty much what you wrote in your summary. except core web vitals are behaving exactly as Google said it would so I don't see an issue there.

I agree it's a huge mess. I agree it's not being discussed much - if at all - in mainstream circles.

June and July are also now update galore. We'll see what happens after all this settles.

[Samsam1978]

I have a feeling it will revert which is why the SEOs are keeping quiet they know. Maybe the AI is going through all sites to form a conclusion on the value of all content. My page views are starting to stay the same now every day but SEMrush is still shrinking my rankings. Does not make sense.

[yollo03]

@Rusty, do you remember any update from google that was released and fully rolled out on the same day? I don't use spam tactics so I will never know. I hope I will earn a few ranking points for good behavior.

[yollo03]

@samsam, try tinyranker in addition to semrush. There is a 30-day free trial with no credit cards. It updates once a day. Compare it to semrush and see if you are receiving the same results. The free trial is limited to 50 keywords I think.

[westcoast]

This is extremely interesting: [twitter.com...]

Google releases a "Spam update" today.

I'm extremely curious to see what this does and how efficient it will be in doing what it's being claimed this update will be doing.

WOW! It looks like they too have reached the "WTF is with this spam" threshold and are trying to get serious about it.

Fingers crossed this helps with the avalanche of spam and crap filling both the index and GSC.

I will monitor the mountains of spam I have been watching grow for months in the index and report back over the next few days/weeks on its status.

[westcoast]

Let me ask this, due to this core update flop, who IS using a disavow file? I could talk about my experience on this, very interesting, but sort of at the mercy of time management at the moment.

I started using a disavow file 6 months ago and filled it with all of the spam domains that pointed to our site. I kept up with it every couple of days adding new hacked domains. At its peak I was up to 8000 lines in that disavow file.

It had no noticable difference in that 6 month period. We hit the core update and nada... we dropped.

So, I threw up my hands, waved the white spam flag, and removed our disavow a few days ago. It just doesn't seem to do anything, and who knows, maybe it makes things worse.

What if by disavowing legitimate spam you hurt your site? Imagine spam site blah.xyz that has spammy cloaked links and scraped text to both you and your competitor. Google thinks it's legit because, well, Google thinks most cloaked stuff is okey-dokey.... and when you disavow it your competitor gains a positive link credit from the spam, and you don't because it is disavowed. But, Google still sees 50,000 new links to your site so hits you with a "too many new low quality links" algorithmic penalty. So you lose twice. Just a possible way that you could get double-screwed disavowing.

So, I gave up. We now have somewhere like 100,000 spam backlinks from 10,000+ domains to our site, and there's simply nothing we can do about it. The only hope is that Google decides to take this stuff seriously and yank it out, and repair and give proper credit for our backlink profile.

[trabis]

"So anyone seeing any changes and if so, what spam tactics did you use? "

3 pages, 10 pinterest results. Answer is no.

[yollo03]

@Westcoast, someone said that certain features in the console work like the 'close doors' button in an elevator. I never disavowed anything yet.

[ichthyous]

Wow, I just checked out DDG for the first time and it's like stepping back to Google results six months ago. I'm ranking far better in both web search and image search than I am currently in Google. It makes me wonder if my site is caught up in some sort of penalty for the first time.

There will also be a one day roll out of another spam update next week. So anyone seeing any changes and if so, what spam tactics did you use?

I'm not using spam tactics but my traffic was still down 21% today and my home page was down 54%. After 4pm there has been very little traffic today.

I have a feeling it will revert which is why the SEOs are keeping quiet they know. Maybe the AI is going through all sites to form a conclusion on the value of all content. My page views are starting to stay the same now every day but SEMrush is still shrinking my rankings.

I doubt it, when was the last time that Google actually reverted any update? I don't remember one. My ranking is stabilizing, albeit at a much lower level, and traffic and PV are still going down.

[Neohippy]

So much for the spam update - just tried "see full list on <site>" again (thanks @Westcoast for the tip!), and the number of shady redirected results has actually increased since last week *facepalm*

[christianz]

New volatility peak in semrush sensor and new traffic reduction for my best and biggest site (only the best, biggest and oldest one, as usual). This just verifies that Googles algo keeps changing but its changing in the same direction for 7 months.

Maybe I need to re-calibrate my thinking and accept a reality where nonsensical auto generated text is actually what searchers are looking for?

What if spun content IS great content?

[mzb44]

So it feels like they need to do a spam update now to perhaps patch up the spam largely enabled by the last few core updates (I already explained many times here why I think it's the core updates that enable and incentivise so much spam).

Seems like they really want to force the things they are doing with the core updates no matter what and aren't willing to back down, and instead come up with separate updates in an attempt to separately "fix" what the core updates broke.

Pure speculation obviously. Remains to be seen how effective these "spam updates" will turn out to be. especially interested in potential collateral damage.

[christianz]

So it feels like they need to do a spam update now

I also feel like they can't be satisfied with the way things are spam-wise right now (AI generated, spun, cloaked, expired domain, PBN sites ranking). I just don't understand why this has not been addressed over past 7 months and has actually got worse.

[rustybrick]

yollo03, I don't think Google ever communicated so well about start/end times about updates until recently and all those previous updates were more than just a few days from what I remember.

[mzb44]

Anyone seeing anything yet with the spam update?

[RedBar]

Has Google a fascination with "10"?

I was just making a couple of searches and ALL the results started with "The Top 10", "The Best 10", "10 Widgets" etc ...wtf?

[mzb44]

I think that's just how most webmasters are creating their content.

You see that stuff everywhere because that's how most write.

[Dimitri]

I can't find it, but some times ago, Google published a document about titles and CTR , and reported that titles with a number in it, were getting a higher CTR. Since that time, everybody started to build this kind of titles.

[RedBar]

I noticed that awhile back with Pinterest and another site, utterly useless in most cases, IMHO :-)

[westcoast]

Anyone seeing anything yet with the spam update?

No changes to the billions of indexed-and-searchable hacked-domain spam pages I've been watching yet.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing lower traffic yesterday and today, both search and direct. Most of the loss is USA traffic, which is down about 20%. The sudden steep drops down to 0-2 visits an hour are still taking place at various point in the day. Yesterday it was 5pm, two days before that 2pm, today it's 10am. Not sure if this has anything to do with the "spam update", but one positive sign is that landing pages that were hit hard for weeks and weeks are doing better.

[Samsam1978]

Interesting my content summary people have pinned on Pinterest is outranking my original articles. What a mess.

[watesh]

Been hit massively with the core update. 7-year-old site with hundreds of thousands of backlinks getting outranked by a site with 900 low-quality backlinks with content that barely talks about the keyword searched. Dropped from 1st to 6th for the keyword

[KaseyM]

Definitely lower since yesterday.

[azurewhite]

I wonder why my overall ranking and traffic didn't drop a lot, about by 5%
However, the Googlebot crawl request dropped a lot after the core algorithm update. Why is that?

[westcoast]

Seeing a slight drop in some of the buckets of google-indexed spam I've been watching. At least, the acceleration of new spam that had taken place over the past 3 weeks appears to have stopped since the spam update announcement.

I wonder if the "spam update" didn't yank spam, but rather improved spam-detection in the crawler. In other words, maybe spam hasn't been taken out of the index in an all-at-once fashion, but rather will slowly get removed upon recrawl of existing spam URLs. If so, we should observe a gradual reduction in the spam over the coming months, but no one-day miracle drop in spam.

It's still early though...

[saladtosser]

Getting a lot of e-mails selling negative SEO services for my competitors the last few days. Just in now "Hi there If you ever need Negative SEO to de-rank any site, you can hire us here"

Instead of tackling spam links by ignoring them.....by penalising them Google actually created a whole new and shiny spam industry that never existed before. Pat yourself on the back Google, you could have given zero incentive to create any spam links but instead you choose to create a new incentive altogether which resulted in a new spam industry (Negative SEO) new spam links (Negative SEO Links) and new spam e-mail campaigns (Negative SEO Services), good job team!