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.

[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.

[Rndm]

I work in many B2B industrial niches where AdWords can work very very well. I have worked in niches where it doesn't work well at all. However, in general I would say that it works better than most types of advertising.

For everyone thinking Google has a long term master plan I would caution against that line of thinking. Google is composed of a lot of employees looking out for their own careers and most likely their bonuses. They are not going to work there forever and tomorrow's problems are the next employee's problems not theirs.

[shadowlight]

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".

@mzb44 do you have a link to the discussion or the paper?

[Lucas89]

I'm noticing lots of strange behaviours since the june update. In some keywords (more than 1000 impressions/day) the average CTR and clicks dropped to near zero, while total impressions and position remained the same.

[RedBar]

Since 5th July I have been seeing a much more consistent flow of slightly higher traffic, we'll see how the next couple of weeks progress.

[mzb44]

So is Google's main concern really making sure that the clicks they send to me or you convert?

I'm convinced that if they have the technology to divert converting traffic around, then they would choose to divert it to adwords users as it's them who are actually paying Google and not sites in organic.

Monopoly or not, if ads don't generate a return for advertisers then most will turn them off. They need to at least provide some ROI.

Ad blindness is also a real and documented thing. Including in the case of google's ads in search results. One of the reasons for the constant changes in ad layout (as shown in the link in one of my comments above) was because after a certain amount of time users always learned to instinctively avoid clicking on ads. Changing the layout usually reset this. This is well documented and there have been numerous studies on this.

But now they have kind of cornered themselves in with making ads look the same as organic. Eventually ad blindness will set in again - maybe a bit later than usual but it will - but now they can't really tweak the ad layout that much further.

Now they will have to try every sneaky trick possible to keep people clicking on those ads. The only avenue I see is getting them to click less on organic.

My personal opinion is that pushing all the PAA, snippets, reels etc straight below the 4 ads or 4 ads + 1/2 organic is meant to trick people into believing that they have reached the end of the page and they need to go back up if they want to click on a "search result".

[christianz]

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

YouTube is cancer. I entered search terms "stripped head nut" in Google web search and my entire desktop monitor real estate was filled with two things - YouTube (75% space) and People Also Ask (remaining 25%).

The YouTube googlespam has now ballooned to such size that it effectively took the entire above fold SERP. This is when they display the "key moments" (some collapsed some expanded).

If this is not an antitrust case, I don't know what is.

[Dooku]

if they have the technology to divert converting traffic around

They do, but it's not "technology", it's because of all the data that users feed G through all the services and apps like Chrome (and many more api's they are not even aware of). It's like handing the axe to your own executioner.......
G would be blind as a bat if everyone would stop using GA, Chrome and everything else "G" .....

[topaz]

Nothing worse than seeing a YouTuber reading your article from their phone and then ranking above you with it.

[martinibuster]

do you have a link to the discussion or the paper?

That member is misrepresenting what the paper is about. There is one paper, called, Rethinking Search: Making Experts out of Dilettantes [arxiv.org].

That paper is about a type of search query called Long Form Question Answering which is very difficult to solve.

There is also ANOTHER research paper [ai.googleblog.com] about this where they discover that the technology proposed does not adequately solve the problem, and I wrote an explainer about it here [searchenginejournal.com].

Google subsequently came out with a technology called MUM that tackles questions that cannot be answered with a single link but that might require a range of documents, images, products and videos drawn from multiple languages and translated to the language of the person making the query. Google published an article about MUM [blog.google].

MUM appears to solve the problems raised in the Rethinking Search research paper. I wrote an explainer that connects the dots [searchenginejournal.com] between the Rethinking Search paper and research papers that may explain what the underlying technologies are that power MUM. It's not just one technology but several.

Google recently said [searchengineland.com] that they will NOT release any application of the MUM technology that excludes websites, that they won't summarize content from a website and display that summary on its own. Google said that any use of MUM would be in a way that gives due credit and links to the site from which the information was sourced.

MUM is currently only in use for Covid information at this time, afaik.

[mzb44]

That member is misrepresenting what the paper is about.

Was already waiting for @martinibuster to pop in with the usual Google absolutism.