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.