Google rank dropped 50 positions after new core update

[Jariuusit]

Hello,

My most important keyword dropped from 3rd position to 5th page on monday the 7th of July. I have read that some websites have had issues since sunday when google started updating a new user experience core algorithm.

Only the most important keyword dropped. However, it has been 3rd or 4th every day since that for a few hours but mainly on the fifth page. Even when I launched my website, i wasnt that low in google.

It only applies to my own country (where all the customers are) but if I check for any other country's google results, I am still in the top 3. This could be something else but I suspect it is due to the new core update by Google.

My website is mobile friendly, I have always 98-100 page speed score on both mobile and desktop. I have tried to do everything and spent 10h a day trying to find out what is the matter but nothing happens.

I am out of business if I cant fix this. Any ideas what and how I should fix it? Also, any tools I could measure user experience ?

[not2easy]

Hello Jariuusit and Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I hope that the July date you mentioned is a typo and that we are talking about a time period of a few days and not since July last year.

Are you seeing changes within your GSC account? If nothing has changed on your site and there are no messages in GSC I would say it appears that the update has upset the smooth path you had and until Google sorts through the sites you may need to be patient. The worst thing to do is to panic and begin making changes until this has time to settle.

One thing yo can do is to visit the sites that have moved up in the results and see how they differ form the UX on your site. I would not jump to make changes based on what you see now as it has not settled yet. It may self-correct. IF it does not, then researching differences can help you think of what might be better.

I realize it does nothing to help, but millions of others are in the same position right now. Avoid big changes during this flux.

[Jariuusit]

Hello not2easy

Thank you for your reply. Yes I actually meant June update from last week :)

Yes I can see the drop also from Google search concole account for some keywords. Any ideas how long I should wait before trying to make any changes?

[not2easy]

You would expect to see the drop in GSC, it reflects the status. Without any notifications or errors noted there, you can't guess about why and what or if to change anything.

There is no set time to expect that all verticals/topics/fields will be sorted and settled. The larger your 'group' of affected sites, the longer it can take to settle. Some differences should be clearer within a week or two overall, but in a large vertical it may be longer.

[EditorialGuy]

Some of our rankings have slipped a little, too, and that's been enough to have a measurable effect on Google traffic. The change didn't occur until about three days ago.

The fact that Google is showing outdated titles in its SERPs for some of our high-ranking pages makes me wonder what's going on. Is Google reverting to an old, cobweb-covered index?

[JS_Harris]

There are so many reasons this could have happened that I suggest you do nothing different until you let some time go by(3 months min) to gather good date on what has changed. Also, examine your page titles in Google to see if they have changed. I see the following quite a bit lately, not on my site but in general...

'This is a page title - example.com'

has become

'This is a page title - example.com - example.com'

and it has nothing to do with the website. google changed something and thinks it should add the domain info to page titles it's already in.

Solution: Create longer page titles to take up any extra room.

Good luck

[greenlift]

The Dec 2020 update hit us hard and from there our keywords just slipped down the ranks... frantically trying to fix things did not help at all.. we fixed a lot of issues though.. the funny thing is that we have built such a strong brand awareness in the last 10 years and the way people find us as of late is by typing the name of our domain/business... the brand is so strong that no matter what google does, people still find us and we still retain at least 70% of the traffic even if our keyword rankings suck at Google.. So we really hope with time Google will realize the error of their ways (haha) and auto correct.. in the mean time we are scratching our heads on how to get back the love we lost from almighty Google.. urgh..

I still think at the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you are really providing your web visitors with value.. If people value your web site they will return and hopefully Google will figure that out? The 'huge' updates Google has been running of late seems to me more like a cut and paste operation of fixing issues instead of unveiling a better search experience... who knows? ... perhaps it is just the pessimist in me talking..

[dojo]

See in Google Search Console, if you haven't been hit by a manual penalty. Did an audit for a big personal finance website and noticed they had been hit with a penalty for too many "unnatural" outbound links. Then see if you don't have indexation issues and anything that prevents google from properly crawling the website.

[jediviper]

@greenlift

Don't confuse branded search with non-branded search.
They are 2 difficult things and require different approaches regarding SEO.

And yes, if you have a strong brand name, you don't have too worry so much as the rest of the people who are not so known in the market.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

New sites launched in Feb-June saw major impression reductions from search too. Good content wasn't enough to remain visible.

[SteveBeck66]

Our business site also dropped in search after the algo updates in July. It is not a competitive industry as only a couple of people provide this service. However, google has decided to put dictionaries, Wikipedia, youtube, news, etc above actual people providing this service.

We have got a boost in traffic from countries we can't provide service to. When people are searching for a person doing this service, it is not a good user experience for them to find someone from a different country.

It appears google is pushing mom and pop shops down locally in the serps.

[Kendo]

google has decided to put dictionaries, Wikipedia, youtube, news, etc above actual people providing this service.

This is not new. It has been like that forever.

[greenlift]

Something I've noticed as of late is that Google will give sites with authority on a particular subject a high ranking and the keywords you searched for has less of a bearing... If you're looking for something in particular it just sucks getting to it because the sites with authority on the topic get ranked higher but the results you see will not give you the answers you are looking for. I get the idea that the authority of a site on a specific topic causes higher keyword rankings.

[headingame]

We've been experiencing a decline with a few of our websites as well... ours is a bit more drastic though. Our traffic plummeted by 2k and we're underway on fixing it. Pain of the ass, really.

[Kendo]

sites with authority on a particular subject a high ranking and the keywords you searched for has less of a bearing.

One would think that after almost 2 decades of experimentation that they could do a lot better.

[RedBar]

and we're underway on fixing it.

Fixing what?

Something you knew was wrong when originally launched or a major re-construction top to bottom?