Google Core Update July 1, 2021

[sk7411]

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System: The following 120 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5037667.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 12:10 pm on Jul 7, 2021 (utc -5)

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July Core Update has started rolling out :

[twitter.com...]


Good Luck everyone.

[MayankParmar]

The core update has been looking good so far with massive Discover improvements, but Discover traffic seems to be slowing down now. Hopefully, it's temporary and not a reversal.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

According to search console, the July core update was not applied to image search until a week later. Sites that lost a lot of search impressions kept their image impressions in the interim but lost those as well.

[christianz]

@Sgt_Kickaxe

This is interesting, as image search is the area most severely affected by spam. I hope they are/will be heavily targeting those auto generated spam sites which hotlink images from real websites, add keyword-rich AI generated text and rank in image search above real websites that host them.

[ichthyous]

I hope they are/will be heavily targeting those auto generated spam sites which hotlink images from real websites, add keyword-rich AI generated text and rank in image search above real websites that host them.

There was a massive 50%+ drop in my image traffic on exactly March 15th. Since then it's been slowly decreasing and the patterns are totally different, with flat clipped peaks in clicks and impressions which show an extraordinary level of control and manipulation of the flow by Google. The major problem is not image spam, it's that only media conglomerates and huge websites are ranking for all the images now and have been all spring and summer. Pinterest heavily dominates the rest. I ranked well in image search for years, but suddenly it's as if my site does not exist. My image traffic this year is lower than it was in 2020, during the worst part of the pandemic. It shows no sign of improving since March.

[KaseyM]

Drop since Friday.

[christianz]

only media conglomerates and huge websites are ranking for all the images now and have been all spring and summer.

For top queries yes. But for long tail these spammers are ranking and getting traffic. I keep track of them because I log the referrer domain for all my images and can see how much traffic they are getting. Spam update 1 and 2 didn't wipe them out, unfortunately.

Pinterest and other large platforms spamming long tail is also persistent problem. But fake websites on expired domains and blogspot which redirect users to gambling sites is the most obvious problem with long tail image search.

Maybe the fact that only large site rank for popular queries is byproduct of the massive amount of spam in image results - Google realized they can't filter it out and just turned up the authority knob to the max. Therefore smaller sites have no chance at popular keywords and long tail, where large sites don't have matching images at all, is dominated by spam/Pinterest.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This is interesting, as image search is the area most severely affected by spam.

What I found interesting is that the losses in image search mirrored the losses in web search despite being seperated by a week, and being different search systems. It suggests that the cause of these rank change is not the content on the page, or in the image. It's an outside factor..

[yollo03]

I believe it is internal linking, site structure, duplicate content, depth etc. Domain authority is a factor too obviously. I will be launching a new site this week with only a few pages, that's it. I would like to see how it gets ranked on google now that the core update is probably over

[golderberger]

@yollo03: it's over? semrush still shows 6/10 and 7.3 for Internet and Telecom. Made literally 0 sales today, haven't had such low result since 2010.

[yollo03]

I believe it's over, it's just ripples now. In the next few days it will stabilize. If another update is pushed this week it means something went horribly wrong and they see the urge to fix it. But based on past core updates, it's pretty much over.

Edit: I will update how the new site ranks. I have a feeling it will do a whole lot better.

[ichthyous]

Relatively normal day here, except that direct traffic is down by 40%. Considering that Wimbledon, Euro Cup, and shooting Branson into space all happening today I'm surprised that traffic isn't down.

What I found interesting is that the losses in image search mirrored the losses in web search despite being seperated by a week

Not for me...Image traffic fell off a cliff on March 15th, the same day that search started declining. I wasn't impacted again on image search since then but there has been zero recovery. Search traffic has been all over the place since March and just kept declining for months.

[Martin Ice Web]

@franckleeceo,

you are right, all the last updates we saw a positive uptick in traffic that lasted through and after the updates.
This june update indeed set us back to allmost 3 years back.
And yes we had some deep problems that we didnīt see before back there. We worked hard and fixed all of the problems.
We saw traffic gains after fixing the problems.

[Martin Ice Web]

@yollo3,

i am complete with you. My guess is site structure, too. This update killed most off our deep linked content ( 3. linking level ). And this perfectly matches the upcoming affiliates with only pictures. This type of sites just have one linking level with infinity pages.
I guess the more similar content you have in a vertical level the more it will count as duplicate content even if it is not.

[saladtosser]

This guy had a good take on the July update [youtube.com...]

This is what I was saying last week, it seems rankings have stayed the same but the PAA box has cut traffic hugely and pushed us back a couple years in terms of traffic! If your average position is the same but traffic dropped its a good chance its all PAA related as PAA and the websites in it aren't classed as a position.

[yollo03]

@Martin Ice, yes, this is pretty much what I concluded. It is a real shame they are not as transparent as they used to be. Why can't they just say improve your site structure? I have been working on it and I still am. That's why the new website I am launching will just consist of several pages.

Edit: Another naughty feature they have added is blocking navigation inside the search on mobile devices. Let's say I search for running shoes (its just an example, I doubt it will happen with those words), if you keep navigating to page 2, page 3 etc. At a certain point, I think around page 5 it will not allow you to navigate to page 6. It will just tell you try searching again.

It happened twice when I looked out for it. So in mobile search, if you are not in the top 3 pages your traffic was probably sliced.

[edited by: yollo03 at 11:12 am (utc) on Jul 12, 2021]

[golderberger]

@yollo03: is there any online tool that can verify your website structure?

[Martin Ice Web]

@golderberger,

try screamingfrog

[yollo03]

Any seo tools. Try netpeak spider, you get all features for free but only for 24 hours I think. There are many other tools of course.

[golderberger]

Thanks for the hints. I've checked my website primary for broken links. No broken links except the missing favicon.ico. I've 95% on google pagespeed checker. Is there anything more to check for?

(just a note, my website is pretty small, 2 level tops)

[mzb44]

This guy had a good take on the July update [youtube.com...]

This is what I was saying last week, it seems rankings have stayed the same but the PAA box has cut traffic hugely and pushed us back a couple years in terms of traffic! If your average position is the same but traffic dropped its a good chance its all PAA related as PAA and the websites in it aren't classed as a position.

Agreed.

The PAA Google pure-spam is definitely one of the biggest reasons why sites are losing traffic despite stable rankings.

I disagree with that guy's take on PAA though where he believes Google will move this feature down to the very bottom because currently it's bad user experience.

This misses the point of PAA existing precisely to demote organic and to concentrate clicks to the above the fold area of the SERP where the ads are located.

They won't ever move this feature further down. The quarter they would do this would mean -20% -30% revenue, something that would be catastrophic to a publicly traded tech company.

[superclown2]

This misses the point of PAA existing precisely to demote organic and to concentrate clicks to the above the fold area of the SERP where the ads are located.

I will second that. I hold second place for a useful search term (second to a mega site with a single page of boilerplate content, naturally) and on the days when PAA is under the first result I get less than half the traffic than on the few days when it's under the third one.

As a searcher I find PAA useless, the answers it gives are either from foreign sites, highly biased or completely irrelevant to my search query.

For some (non-local) search terms, even if I have top position it is buried under a local results box complete with a huge map and a list of local results which only represent my search term in the vaguest possible way and are therefore practically useless to a searcher. That has a PPA underneath it so even with no.1 in the SERPs the link is completely buried.

[edited by: superclown2 at 1:48 pm (utc) on Jul 12, 2021]

[mzb44]

I will second that. I hold second place for a useful search term (second to a mega site with a single page of boilerplate content, naturally) and on the days when PAA is under the first result I get less than half the traffic than on the few days when it's under the third one.

I can take this one level further.

What if Google strategically inserts PAA/People Also Searched For/etc. in cases of high-quality, high-conversion likelihood traffic?

Conspiracy theory? - We do know Google Ads has a feature that if selected will allow google to place higher bids in case of searches that it believes have a higher likelihood to land a conversion.

This means google at least believes that it's able to detect traffic / users that have a higher chance of potentially resulting in a conversion.

So, what if in case of such high-quality "buy traffic" Google strategically inserts above the fold all the spam features that exist. PAA, people also searched for, image reel, news reel, featured snippet, etc. etc. to keep the clicks above the fold where the ads are?

Note, I'm not taking about keyword level here, this is targeted based on the profile of the individual searcher.

So, when Google detects a high buy-intent searcher it will spam all these features to make sure they click on an ad, but if the profile of the searcher is lower buy intent it instead directs them to organic.

That means that even if you are top 3 organic now, you most likely will get the traffic Google deemed to have low chances of converting.

I'm seeing multiple comments in this thread about either same traffic but lower conversions or even core update recoveries but still lower conversions than before.

Perhaps they made an update to when PAA/etc. now show up and on which position, based on the likelihood of a searcher generating a conversion or not.

The fact that Adwords always had a feature that allows you to target these specific users with higher bids means that they always knew to categorise searchers by buy intent. So it makes sense to push ads on these users and redirect anyone else back to organic.

As an advertiser (Google's actual customers) I wold LOVE this feature and update.

[mhansen]

Re: PAA - When returning to Goog after searching and clicking within the organic results (past the ads, past the top PAA, etc), then using the back trigger to return to G and look at further results, the PAA is much more prevalent, expanded automatically and laid out completely different (2 columns, 3 or 4 suggestions in each column), as well as displayed directly below the link I previously clicked. This happens in organic listings as well as PPC, paid listings displayed.

[NickMNS]

It appears that the update is done, and I'm ending pretty much were I started. I was negatively impacted by June update but the July update brought me right back to were I started, not sure what conclusion to draw from that.

@mhansen

then using the back trigger to return to G and look at further results, the PAA is much more prevalent,

When you click the back button, that is PASF "People Also Searched For" not PAA. I also made that mistake (see link below).

Re PAA more generally:
There is full thread discussing PAA and also PASF here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[mzb44]

But if I post the real reason, my thread will be deleted... as usual.

Is there a place here that can be explained without my topic being deleted?

What's happening now is a very old trick that has happened countless times and affected many businesses in the past.

Your post won't be deleted if you stay within the forum rules. No mentioning of specific sites, not going too much off-topic, no insults etc.

[BushyTop]

@NickMNS consider yourself lucky. We got hit like you in June, except we didn't see any recovery in July. Weird really, when it was announced we saw a huge uptick and then, since that first day of the July rollout, we've slowly slid back down again. Demoralising, its absolutely broken me mentally.

[Samsam1978]

Lost another 10% since last week but rankings stay same. Really don't know what is going on tbh

[golderberger]

@Samsam1978 not sure if you mean the conversion rate, but I have been talking to various people this weekend and even those with local businesses started getting useless traffic from odd countries or another continents. Seems like google somehow calculating which traffic can convert to some sales and keep it for themselves or affiliates. Scraps will be disposed to normal websites.

[Samsam1978]

I know exactly why so many people have had this absurd ratings drop with Google.

We want to know post it. Any information will help us and I don't think it will be deleted.

[Samsam1978]

@golderberger I don't sell anything mine is a content site but it appears to be across the board tbh to the point I am thinking of creating something new. I cannot get the core vitals down without making my site look awful. I am going on CDN now to see if that helps - and give it 6 months then move onto something new if I keep seeing massive drops.

[golderberger]

@Samsam1978: gotcha, well for what is worth all my sites are at least 95% green on PageSpeed insights for at least a month now. No changes what so ever, it seems it keeps getting worse in terms of conversion or good traffic.

[Markedd]

@Samsam1978 I wouldn't put my hopes up. My main website is at 100% on Core Web Vitals. Got hit in June and lost about 5 percent of traffic. Got hit in July and lost another 10% and dropping. My main competitor that's also in the green is also dropping. He has pretty much the same traffic as my website and both he and myself are being slowly replaced by shallow articles from big media. So, we're spam, essentially.

[mzb44]

Seems like google somehow calculating which traffic can convert to some sales and keep it for themselves or affiliates. Scraps will be disposed to normal websites.

As I said on the previous page, Google Ads for ages had a feature that allows you to automatically bid higher in case of traffic that it deems to have a higher chance of converting.

And here I mean on a traffic level and not keyword-specific level.

i.e. you bid for the keyword "buy backpacks online" and set a max bid of $1 per click. There is a feature that if selected allows Google to bid higher than $1 in case it believes an individual user has a higher chance of converting.

Why am I saying this? - It proves Google always knew (at least to some degree) the potential conversion probability rate of an individual searcher.

Therefore, what if now when they detect such high-value traffic they make sure to display the maximum number of ads possible, all with the maximum possible ad extensions, followed by 'people also asked', 'featured snippet', news articles, image reel etc. but do all these less in case they detect a lower 'buy' probability searcher?

So now the adwords users get a higher percentage of quality traffic while 'non-performing' traffic gets directed to organic.

My point is that the features to make exactly this happen have kinda existed before. It doesn't take making up wild conspiracies to imagine the above.

[yollo03]

The core web vitals have no or little impact. I am guessing at the end of August it might be different. My rankings have (little) improved but not impressions. As long as the impressions are down the ranking positions are irrelevant. I believe it is down due to automated penalty that has yet to be re-reviewed.

Mobile web vitals are still zero since the end of May despite all green in tests. On top of that, my semrush personal score is above 8.5 today.

Edit: This screenshot is one of the main keywords (high volume) that earned the most conversions. You can see that impressions were pressed down but the ranking position remained the same. This is an automated penalty of some sort, I am guessing duplicate content due to site structure.

[ibb.co...]

[ichthyous]

Starting to lose top 10 terms that I had regained for the last two weeks, and placement is sliding again. In general traffic is still steadier than in June, but certainly not great.

Google makes sure the one way or another the traffic stays low...vanishing home page or landing pages, or traffic mysteriously drops for English language countries one day and returns the next, or direct traffic drops 50% and is back the next day. I've had some recent inquiries at least, but it won't last if I drop back to June levels.

So now the adwords users get a higher percentage of quality traffic while 'non-performing' traffic gets directed to organic.

It may be the case, but I ran adwords in June and of the 60 clicks I got not one converted. Most stayed a few seconds and bounced. Adwords is an extremely expensive method of acquiring new leads compared to anything else. I switched all my terms to "exact"...no more allowing Google to send me crap using phrase matches it chooses. Once I did that I stopped getting any clicks from Adwords completely, even though the account remains on.

[edited by: ichthyous at 12:14 pm (utc) on Jul 13, 2021]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Well, after the July 4 dust settled down, I'm facing with massive drop from Google: almost 25% negative surge on both of my websites. This happened after the bigger website recovered from May 2020 update and started rising again. All these things happened despite the fact that a month ago I've updated the content that is also dropped with this update, and now I'm pretty sure that producing great content won't save you from the drop. It will come for your website, sooner or later. My TOP performing pages are clean as possible, and filled with newest updated info; I've updating the content within my publication strategy. But now it's failed too.

[yollo03]

I think it was already mentioned in the forum that google's approach to great content may have been abandoned. There are other factors now that are superior to content. What is your domain rating compared to your competitors, higher or lower? How good is your site structure?

[JesterMagic]

Hard to say where we landed yet for the July update (as it is only a few days old and I am still seeing ripples) but it seems to be an improvement for us over the losses in June.

Seeing some press release and pinterest pages rising for some reason. A spam site that got huge boosts since the June site reigns supreme though. On the surface it looks good with no real ads but when you look at the content it is really poor and not informative. Lots of big useless images as well along with a lot of fake content (like fake statistics, featured in, etc...). Now we have 2 such major spam sites taking over our niche and the money keywords while offering very little in terms of value. When you combine this with the useless PAA widget and Googles push to answer the visitors question on Google instead of taking them to the website that researched the content basically everyone lost in these past 2 core updates except Google themselves.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

There are other factors now that are superior to content.

So what are they?

What is your domain rating compared to your competitors, higher or lower?

I have stronger competitors, so as competitors with lower rating. My website is a middle-sized one in IT tutorials niche.

How good is your site structure?

What do you mean when saying structure? My website is a common Wordpress theme, URL can be reached through 2 clicks from main page. Main page links to featured articles (from TOP 25) + it's linked to recent posts. Every article contains links to other articles (almost all links are from texts with description of the linked article - for example "try our ;link; tutorial on how to turn on timer on Windows;link:). Also I monitor broken links every month, I perform content prunning every 4-6 months.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Here is a screenshot with updates impact on my main website:

[imgur.com...]

[mzb44]

I abstained from posting about the core update and how it impacted me because often times things can change before it's fully rolled out.

Now that it finished rolling out I can report that the July 2021 core update completely reversed my December 2020 core update demotion.

It however did not reverse the May 2020 demotion - which was the biggest of the two negative hits I got last year. Seems like whatever they did in May 2020 it still sticks and affects my site but the December one was lifted.

So, overall, good news, right?

Well... it appears that my conversions now are actually worse than before July 1 2021. I am now receiving approximately +40% more traffic but conversions seem to be down by at least -50%.

And yes, I did check keywords, type of traffic, intent, etc. and I'm pretty much getting the same traffic as before from the same keywords but more of it because of higher rankings. It's not because I'm now getting new traffic I did not get before at all from new keywords and to new pages.

I'm seeing that a lot of people have reported the same in this thread. I got also hit up by two of my friends who also complained to me about terrible conversions after July 1. One of them even told me that as of today he has had 0 conversions since July 1 despite a 20% boost after the core update. He told me there should have been at least 15-20 by now even with the old traffic levels.

Coincidence? Maybe. I have no proof for any alternative explanation. But it does make you think whether they implemented something new that helps them redirect high converting traffic away from organic, such as what I have described in my previous post.

[mzb44]

It may be the case, but I ran adwords in June and of the 60 clicks I got not one converted. Most stayed a few seconds and bounced. Adwords is an extremely expensive method of acquiring new leads compared to anything else.

Which is precisely why I strongly suspect they must have done something to divert converting traffic to ads.

Google makes like 90%+ of their revenue from ads. If ads stop providing a return to advertisers, the whole thing collapses.

They need to ensure ads users get a return on their investment. This is probably #1 priority. They can't optimize the ad layout any further, they already are near identical to organic search results. Any further optimization by default must involve something else.

[samwest]

First, a shout out to MIW, good to see you back here!
Second, GWMT is reporting almost a thousand previously indexed pages (existing for about 21 years) now blocked by "noindex". After running screaming frog, I have zero pages blocked by "noindex" - is Google blocking those pages and trying to blame it on a "noindex" directive that does not exist? Seems like something they would do. If so, they are either very evil or very inept....or a combination of the two for plausible deniability.

[mzb44]

Since its inception, Google was constantly optimizing the layout of ads with the goal of increasing ads CTR.

If we look at historical data we can clearly see that this optimization was an incremental process towards making ads look near identical to organic search results.

You can see it yourself here: [searchengineland.com...]

Why am I posting this?

Because now that they have reached near visual parity between ads and organic, they will have to look at other optimisation opportunities.

The current ads layout was implemented in 2019.

Coincidentally or not, it was around this time the onslaught of PAA, and all those other search features started to massively be spammed everywhere. A lot of these features did exist before, but it was around this time you began to see them nearly everywhere every single time you searched for something.

It makes sense, really. Why would anyone believe that after 12 years of constant ads CTR optimisations - as exemplified by the above screenshot - they would now suddenly stop? And as explained, because they can't drastically change the ads layout anymore, now they must optimise somewhere else in order to maintain ad revenue growth targets and to combat the effect of ad blindness.

[saladtosser]

mzb44 what happens when everything's optimised to the max? Remove all organic commercial queries I suspect? Then commercial is fully maxed out..(like a paid directory in essense).

Then what though, if they run all non commercial (informational) sites down to the point content creators don't earn enough to justify creating new content or the server costs? Then what? The web slowly dies and google has less good/new content to monetize which will end up hitting themselves? Could that be a possible future? I guess if the contents gone its not like other search engines can make use of it either....

Seems unstainable unless Googles hoping by that point their AI becomes good enough to create content itself and no longer needs MOST of the content creators (anything evergreen leaving news) it currently relies on? What's the end game because sooner or later then wont be able to monetize anything more effectively without destroying their own business model that relies on a symbiont relationship with the web.

Really wish they didn't own YouTube, 100% case of anti trust there!

[mzb44]

mzb44 what happens when everything's optimised to the max? Remove all organic commercial queries I suspect? Then commercial is fully maxed out..(like a paid directory in essense).

The answer is that I don't know. This might still be a process that could take 10 more years. I'm sure there's still a lot to be optimised. Increase the font size of ads? Increase the size of images in image reels to push organic down more? Display more news? Increase PAA results to 10 items by default? Display only maximum 5 organic results per page? Decrease character lengths for organic titles and descriptions? And so on and so forth. I'm sure there's a lot of possibilities they can continue to spin and combine around for years to come.

Then what though, if they run all non commercial (informational) sites down to the point content creators don't earn enough to justify creating new content or the server costs? Then what?

I am assuming that they are counting on AI & ML technology progressing enough in the next 5-10 years for Google to be able to provide direct answers generated by itself (NOT scraped from other sites!) making displaying links to third party sites obsolete in case of informational content. A few months ago there was a research paper from some Google researchers proposing exactly this. It was debated on this forum. They are already working on it and are publishing research papers on their progress.

In that research paper they called displaying links to third party sites in search results a "problem" that needs to be "solved".

[engine]

Just for the record, Google has confirmed the "July 2021 core update rollout is now effectively complete."

[twitter.com...]

[ichthyous]

They need to ensure ads users get a return on their investment. This is probably #1 priority. They can't optimize the ad layout any further, they already are near identical to organic search results. Any further optimization by default must involve something else.

The reason that monopolies drag down the economy is that they actually don't have to provide a great ROI since there is no real alternative. I'm sure that adwords may work better for some niches than others but what I am seeing is that Google sends complete crap traffic, junk quality one hit wonders at $5 a pop. Now look at any forum where Adwords users report their experience and you'll find that many are complaining about the same poor return.

So is Google's main concern really making sure that the clicks they send to me or you convert? I would say that Google's complete focus is driving users to click the ads so that revenue is generated...the return to customers is way down the list. This customer may stop spending but there's another sucker right behind them. They can provide these dismal results because there is nowhere else to turn. It's a good thing that FB and Amazon are applying a little pressure now.

If anyone is thinking about running adwords one thing I would advise is to use exact match keywords only. Otherwise you'll get a lot of useless clicks for unrelated terms no matter how many negative keywords you ad.

[saladtosser]

>>>>The reason that monopolies drag down the economy is that they actually don't have to provide a great ROI since there is no real alternative.<<<<

I posted the other day about a friend who does wasp nest removal in the UK and has been pushed into google guaranteed (with the PAA last update) which increases the price for the user buying the service dramatically to cover the costs.

I was talking to him today and he's had to go on a UK benefit called universal credit to top him up, this government top-up goes directly to his ad spend each month (written off as non income business expense) and because he's spending that much on ads to stay a float they are having to top him up month on month. Essentially this UK benefit (tax payer money) to help business goes straight to google from the tax payer, this is on top of google tax avoidance in the UK, a double whammy for the UK tax payer. Cant be good for any economy as I suspect many business's are doing this right now in the UK.

[superclown2]

If anyone is thinking about running adwords one thing I would advise is to use exact match keywords only. Otherwise you'll get a lot of useless clicks for unrelated terms no matter how many negative keywords you ad.

My advice to anyone thinking of running adwords is: don't. I've tried it numerous times ever since Google first existed. I've read every adwords book I could get hold of, even attended Google training courses where, on the last occasion, a Google employee admitted that the only advantage of adwords was to give a brand exposure. After months of research I put together a block list of hundreds of IP class A B and Cs and negative keywords. Every single promotion I ran still lost money.

OK if you want to see your site advertised at the top of the SERPs (even though you'll lose money on the bit of business you'll get; if you get any) then go ahead. Just accept that most clicks will come from bots, competitors burning up your budget and schoolkids working on a project.

Anyone who spends money on adwords is feeding the monster that will eventually devour them.

In May my conversions were about double what they were historically. They have now collapsed to a fraction of that. Same web site, same position in the SERPs. Why? Covid? Holidays? Google manipulation? Googlespam? I can almost set my clock by the business I get, the on-offs are so regular. Most googlespam I am seeing comes not on top of the most popular keywords (which are also the least likely to convert) but the more focussed ones where even with first position my sites, and those of my competitors, are completely buried under junk, most of which is completely useless to a searcher.

The writing is on the wall. There is only one way the Internet will survive as a useful tool and we all know what that is.