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.

[RedBar]

I was checking serps through a proxy and was only able to get 3 searches deep before Google blocked me, stating suspicious activity.

Yep, I can confirm this too, even when using Chrome with no history / cache on a squeaky clean machine but not using a proxy the other day I was getting this as well about evry 8/10 searches and having to go through the moronic robots test.

When I close browsers I have them automatically purged clean which then means if I wish to use Google I have to agree to their T&Cs ... I'm not logging-in to a G account therefore why do I need to do this? I assume it's to annoy people so they stay logged-in and they can cature even more data / info etc.

[gatormark]

It seems like Google uses a new algorithm every day and even at different times of the day. I monitor the ranking of one of my pages and its ranking fluctuates between 8 and 13. It has been doing this for a while.

[mhansen]

If anyone wants to go down a very interesting rabbit-hole, take a look at the SEMRush metrics on websites that run the (Google Partner) AdThrive Network for Adsense. There are currently more than 3,300 publishers in their publishers json file (Like ads.txt, but I won't share the link for privacy reasons).

A fellow publisher and I have collaborated for many years and he recently switched over to the Adthrive system after seeing a few of his competitors do so and experience quite a gain in SEMRush metrics. I told him that from a publisher view, it looked like suicide. His pages are very ad heavy now... To the point it looks like a spam MFA website.

In under 2 months, he has regained nearly 100% of all traffic he's been bleeding off for the last 4+ years. When I dug in and looked at other publishers on the list that were added just before and after him (I checked SEMR data on 10-15 publishers in each direction) nearly all of them have also experienced very significant increases in search exposure, rankings and traffic. To be fair though, a few have dropped slightly as well.

It begs the question:

1) Does Google favor it's partner delivered products over manual placement directly buy publishers?

or....

2) Does AdThrive deliver ads in way that helps the sites core vitals, thus boosting the relevancy of the website displaying them?

or....

Do I need a different tinfoil hat?

[ichthyous]

I am wondering if Google has ratcheted up penguin filters recently. I have a lot of links pointing to my landing pages from partner sites that sell my products, and the landing pages with the most inbound links have dropped the most. They do have keywords in the anchor text and are all from very high domain authority sites in the 70-85 range. We are talking 600-1500 links per partner site to landing and interior pages all over my site. How would one recognize if a penguin penalty had been triggered other than a slow leak of ranking since mid Feb and especially picking up since 3/15

[yollo03]

I have noticed a repetitive pattern. You have to watch the impressions and not position. A certain page for example is ranked at number 3 but the impressions suddenly dropped. You can argue that the subject of the page is simply becoming less popular but it is not the case. I am too lazy to upload a screenshot that demonstrates the above.

In my opinion, if your ranking is more or less the same but impressions dropped, fair chance you were penalized. It takes a few months to wear off but I guess it can last longer. When I was penalized it took 4 - 5 months to lift off. This was in 2020.

[topaz]

Am getting indexing issues. 30 minutes and news articles still aren't in index.
The leeches that copy off our original articles are getting indexed though.

[NickMNS]

@yollo03
I fully agree:

You have to watch the impressions and not position. A certain page for example is ranked at number 3 but the impressions suddenly dropped. You can argue that the subject of the page is simply becoming less popular but it is not the case.

I feel like a broken record, but in GSC rank (average position) is position given that there was an impression. So if you appear in position 11, but the user never clicks to page 2 of the SERP, then there was no impression and so no position. So impressions are everything, and position (rank) needs to be viewed with a grain of salt.

[sk7411]

Guys i have come to conclusion that Thursday-Friday is their testing day.

[superclown2]

I'm wondering if the fraud tsunami that has resulted, at least here in the UK, after data from the facebook hack was released, is responsible for at least some of the reduction in business some of us are seeing. A lot of people are frightened of clicking on links now, let alone giving personal details (especially CC) over the net.

Perhaps we can't blame G for preferring well known companies that they have confidence in, rather than sites that might, just might, be fraudulent.

[RedBar]

Global site 42% Friday

UK hotel site 149%

UK widget site 152%

I'm seriously considering locking-down my global site and re-think if we even want to participate this belligerently manipulated farce any more. We have a large widget trade email database of contacts with whom we can keep in contact and provide log-in details should they need / require product details.

The loser, again, will be Joe Public since my global site is the ONLY source on The Net with all its pertinent information.

If I do this G, it's your fault, no one else's and I shall not wait around for months / years on end anticipating a recovery, it will be done within weeks, possibly days.

[ichthyous]

My traffic is so low this morning that I would classify it as 'negligible' or 'inconsequential'. USA off by 57% and UK traffic is zero, down from 50% of my daily some days. Canada is also zero. I wouldn't mind Google shaking things up some days of the week, but the days with poor traffic are now the norm, while days with decent traffic are becoming rare.

[ichthyous]

@yollo @NickMNS My impressions in GSC for web search remain relatively stable, but clicks are way down...I posted a graph earlier this week showing the growing gap between the two. With regards to image search, there was a massive drop of 50% on both impressions and clicks on March 15th and it now is stuck at the new lower range for months in a highly controlled (clipped / throttled) pattern. I also posted that graph. Nobody else responded that they had the same sudden and massive drop in image search traffic, but I am sure that I'm not alone.

How does one really analyze if there is a penalty applied to your site? I saw big losses in top ranking keywords starting in mid Feb, and it continues until today. Probably 50%+ at this point, and most of my high volume keywords were hit. But it seems that this also happened to many others so it doesn't seem like a penalty on my site as much as being out of favor with the new algo. I fell from #1 rank to #7 now for a high volume and competitive term that I was #1/#2 for a decade...an amazon product page for a book is in the top ten now, ridiculous!

[RedBar]

After 2/3rds of my Googleday I am seeing a Xmas and New Year's day level of traffi it's that low.

I've already formulated an experimental plan of action to test what I believe is happening, work has already commenced on it and it will be launched on 1st June ... Yep no holiday weekend here even though it is one ... It will be interesting to see if G even indexes and ranks it since I launched a revised site a months ago which DDG and Bing have picked up yet Google has not!

[yollo03]

@ichthyous, I am in the same boat as you just not with the images. Although it was dismissed by others, look if your referring domains inside GSC dropped. If they have, this is the reason for the drop in keywords, at least for me. I am down about +40 referring domains, some with very high authority. When the rankings and impressions improved some of backlinks that did not show in GSC suddenly appeared again. Once they disappeared so did all the improvements.

This is definitely in my opinion some sort of a penalty. I do not spam links so I have no idea what is the reason behind this except for a tweak in the algorithms to combat spam, this is just 'collateral damage.' I came to a conclusion there is virtually nothing you can do until they decide to update their algorithms. Float as long as you can.

[mzb44]

look if your referring domains inside GSC dropped. If they have, this is the reason for the drop in keywords

All I want to say is that you should always avoid thinking in absolutes.

You saw that your rankings dropped. You anxiously started looking for clues why. You saw that GSC dropped a few links. Now suddenly you are 100% convinced this was the reason your rankings dropped.

All I'm trying to say is that you need to be careful with these kinds of things. I understand we all desperately want answers and want to find patterns, but we should not immediately ascribe any change to the very first thing we may discover to be potentially off and then stop looking at anything else after that.

On a related note, the timing when you said your rankings dropped coincides with when everyone reported significant rankings and traffic shifts, indicating a potential Google update. The more likely scenario is that your site was affected by this unannounced Google update. But I can see why this option is not very popular, as it would mean it may not have been anything you did on your site, making you feel not being in control and not being able to potentially change or fix this.

[yollo03]

If google decides to remove domains from links this is not in my control. This is simply what changed and suddenly keywords dropped. I wasn't anxiously looking for clues why.

[mzb44]

If google decides to remove domains from links this is not in my control.

I might be misunderstanding it.

Links disappeared from GSC but they were live on the linking sites and those pages were still indexed by Google?

Or those links were actually deleted/removed by those sites?

If it's the first then it means nothing. GSC at no moment in time will display all your links. If the linking page is live and indexed by Google then the link counts towards your site, even if you don't see it in GSC.

This is simply what changed and suddenly keywords dropped.

Keywords dropped/increased for a big number of sites exactly at the time it did for you, indicating a Google update.

[Markedd]

Since my other post was deleted (too direct with my opinions), I will rewrite it in better words. The issue we all seem to be having is that Google favors big authoritative websites and we're left behind. The difference between us, the little guys and the huge mega websites is proper networking. They talk between each other, cooperate and help build each other's brand. We instead are too individualistic, don't consider cooperation and to build a good networking between each other. Hopefully this puts my ideas better into focus.

[yollo03]

I am aware there was an update. The effects of the update were lost referring domains in GSC among other things. My core web vitals dropped to zero, no good urls, no bad urls, no need improvement urls, just zero. It takes approximately 5 days for it to reset itself, it happened before.

It favors very big authorities sites, I agree. I did see websites with high authority pushed back due to link spamming. So even if you have high authority, if you spammed edu or gov for example you will get penalized for it. I am working on network building like you suggested (like links exchange), it's not easy at all. Some are very stubborn or want money for it.

[mzb44]

So even if you have high authority, if you spammed edu or gov for example you will get penalized for it.

When talking about "high authority" here in this context (core updates, google favouring authority sites) it's not about the kind of sites that spammed edu or gov links or just have "a lot of links".

In this context it's almost always about big mainstream brands, usually big US or international news sites.

It's these that get favoured at the expense of everyone else. These sites can write anything about any subject and have the power to outrank smaller but specialised niche specific sites on the spot with no effort.

You have no chance against these sites. You can legitimately acquire 10,000 ref domain links tomorrow and it might not make any difference because those sites have hundreds of thousands with dozens/hundreds of new ones being added every day.

So, while I agree that we should band together and cooperate, nothing we could do would come remotely near what a multimillion/billion corp can do. If favouring these kinds of sites is now Google's official stance, then we have no chance at all.

[Markedd]

I am not entirely sure it will not work, at least it will weed out some feeble spam domains and push the fight only with the mainstream sites. This would mean that we're still going to get closer to the first places on Google, so still some progress.

[ichthyous]

You have no chance against these sites. You can legitimately acquire 10,000 ref domain links tomorrow and it might not make any difference because those sites have hundreds of thousands with dozens/hundreds of new ones being added every day.

@mzb44 While I agree with this in general, I have watched a minor competitor of mine with a mediocre website rise to the top of term after term in the last few months. He is #1 and sometimes #1 and #2 spots for these terms, above major corporate sites. His domain rank is one above mine, and his home page is lower than mine, but he has risen and risen for months to take over all the spots, while I lost 50% of my top 3/5/10 terms. The only thing that I can see is that he has published a lot of articles on his site that have garnered some links from high level newspapers, and also guest posts from partner sites in the same field etc. My conclusion is that Google is strongly favoring sites with a lot of articles now. But in general you are right, I am seeing major ecomm and sites dominating any search with a commercial intent at the expense of everyone else.

[yollo03]

I have seen a new site that has been climbing up the rankings quickly. They started in December, presumably after the core update. There isn't a lot of content, only 30 pages more or less. The only thing that they seem to have are 3 GOV links with dofollow.

[yollo03]

Something is happening... I have 9.3 personal score for semrush, highest I've seen in a while now. Perhaps winter is coming...

[mzb44]

I have seen a new site that has been climbing up the rankings quickly. They started in December, presumably after the core update. There isn't a lot of content, only 30 pages more or less. The only thing that they seem to have are 3 GOV links with dofollow.

It's a common strategy to wait for a core update to roll out and then you start a new site and spam hard. This way you have a good window of opportunity to make money until the next core update, as your new site did not yet have the chance to get demoted by the last update.

It's very common with the 301 redirect spammers.

Expect a lot of new sites launched immediately after there's going to be another core update. Meanwhile a lot of legit non-spam sites that are in for the long-term will get hit.

[RedBar]

@hussaind

Realistically no one knows at the moment and Google, as usual, denies any update however there have been noticeable visual changes.

What is certain is that the top of the results page for higher value keywords have been drastically changed to favour Google advertising opportunities.

For some of us, non-USA companies, G has manipulated its USA SERPs to favour US companies for the higher-valued keywords, apart from that it is a mystery to us all. ... Unless you know better ? :-)

[ichthyous]

Another weekend in Google hell. Search traffic was down 35% yesterday with traffic from UK hit especially hard (-83% Friday, -58% Sat)...Australia and Canada traffic nowhere to be found anymore. The traffic patterns are also very odd...visits to my home page are off by almost 60% and it's all going to obscure interior pages that usually don't get seen very often. Needless to say, there aren't going to be any new leads coming in with this mess of traffic.

[yollo03]

I have 9.3 score on semrush with no major movements in the keywords I monitor (hundreds) and ranking in general. Not sure what is happening to be honest, perhaps it will unravel in a few days.

[mzb44]

I have 9.3 score on semrush with no major movements in the keywords I monitor (hundreds) and ranking in general. Not sure what is happening to be honest, perhaps it will unravel in a few days.

If you have a smaller site then just a few keywords moving by a few places should result in a significant change in your semrush score.

As I already said a few times, following these tools at face value is a mistake and detracts from the big picture.

[yollo03]

True, except that I only have 8's or 9's during an update. I think this is a rollout of one of the updates they made that finally reached me.

[mzb44]

Yeah I'm not disputing that. There's clearly updates happening almost all the time lately. I myself see regular wild swings every few days.

[RedBar]

I "think" my reductions have now stabilised and can now see that, for me, this all started in mid-March, losses have been:

May v April -22.6%
May v March -33.6%

We'll see if it stays at this level!

[ichthyous]

Traffic still way below normal here. At 3pm EST UK traffic is down 40%, USA -23% from the norm. Friday, Sat, Sun, and Mon were all awful traffic and continued loss of keywords.

[mzb44]

I feel we are close to a new core update.

They could launch it together/close to the core web vitals update to obfuscate the effects of each update and make analysis harder.

[mzb44]

Also, I am noticing something extremely interesting.

For the last few weeks my rankings are increasing significantly. Like, up 20% or more. This is also reflected in GSC with higher impressions.

But traffic and clicks remained exactly 100% the same as it was before, no change whatsoever.

So, I've looked into it and it appears that any increase in impressions is compensated with an appropriate decrease in CTR. The end result is I have the literal exact same amount of clicks as before.

Related image: [ibb.co...]

Impressions and CTR. CTR decreases proportionally to any impressions increase. Clicks are a near-straight line in the middle (not shown here).

Anyone else seen this?

[nikkimc]

In my case I'm seeing record impressions and rankings, but traffic and clicks are slightly down

[RedBar]

The first day of June for my global site 57.0% "

My average for the last 12 days 57.5%, ahem.

Meanwhile UK hotel site:

May 130%
1st June 180%

So, for the short term, we're taking May's average as the new norm which makes it 138.5%

[JesterMagic]

Notice some changes again and some of the spammers that were filtered out a few weeks ago have moved back up in the SERPS.

Also this past 2 months about 6 different sites in my niche that use keywords in their domain name have slowly moved on to the first page for a large number of important keywords. Definitely some black hat techniques going on and while the sites have unique content (but all on the same topic and very similar wording) they look to be styled by the same person. Plus all have the same IP address.

Come on Google, these sites have so many red flags that point to someone manipulating your results. These flags should also be easy to identify by AI.

[southernguy]

Come on Google, these sites have so many red flags that point to someone manipulating your results. These flags should also be easy to identify by AI.

From what I can tell this has been happening over the last two years, with lots of expired domains big link profiles. I have always said how is it that BING and DDG can manage to filter these sites out but Google cant. I think this just adds somehow to their advertising and $$ grab. This is very noticeable when you do a search and then click on one of the links on the answer boxes it just brings up more of the same redundant results.

[ichthyous]

But traffic and clicks remained exactly 100% the same as it was before, no change whatsoever.

@mzb44 I posted on May 26th about the widening gap between impressions and clicks, here is my graph: [ibb.co...] In my case my ranking is lower than it has been in years though. I have lost about 50% of my top 3-10 terms since mid-February. My CTR for web is now what it used to be for images, 0.3%-0.5%...utterly ridiculous.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:54 pm (utc) on Jun 2, 2021]

[RedBar]

I think this just adds somehow to their advertising and $$ grab.

Absolutely, when people click on links and it leads to rubbish, even when researching and not in a buying mode, they are very likely to click on an adlink .. Win-win for G and probably quite often for their advertisers.

Only by using DDG / Bing / Another does one realise how cluttered and awful G's presentation is.

As a Brit I wish DDG / Bing could make their results a bit more accurate, like G they both seem to filter in the same USA sites for UK queries which can be darned annoying.

[KaseyM]

Something big happen yesterday or today? Down a fair bit.

[saladtosser]

Lighthouse in chrome is having problems again, my sites were scoring 97% performance yesterday now way down in the orange, checked other peoples sites and everyone's been downgraded according to chrome lighthouse, no one in the green for anything. Possible bug with lighthouse?

[No5needinput]

@saladtosser Are you using Lighthouse in Chrome incognito mode (No toolbar extensions enabled)? Sometimes the extensions cause the website audit results to be inaccurate.

[rustybrick]

We have a new core update - the June 2021 core update rolling out later today

[twitter.com...]

[sk7411]

Ah, here we go again , so they were testing the core algorithm update all these days . Makes sense .

[mzb44]

And another core update in July. Absolutely crazy. Get ready for a massive ride the next couple of months.

[saladtosser]

No5needinput + yea always, I should have mentioned that m8!

[saladtosser]

Why two core updates only a month apart? Any thoughts? Hold onto your sphincter guys.....

[JesterMagic]

So parts of this update are not ready and there is also will be a July Core update. IMO throughout May they have been "testing" these updates live.

Hopefully it is not to much of a rollercoaster ride (or at least one that only goes up).