Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2021

[goodroi]

As usual, it's both entertaining and frustrating when monitoring Google's SERPs, and the performance of our sites. Google's core algorithm updates have proved interesting, to say the least.

First we had Google Core Update May 23 - June 3, 2021 [webmasterworld.com] referenced in Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

Before long, in July, we see a Google Core Update July 1, 2021 [webmasterworld.com] which created much more frustration and angst, with some successes, which we referenced in theGoogle Updates and SERP Changes - July 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

Without much delay we heard of a Google and Link Spam: Qualify Links for Affiliate Links or Sponsored Guest Posts Update [webmasterworld.com].

And during July we had an interesting question How long for Google to Index a New Website [webmasterworld.com]
Did you see the news that we might get a sneak look at Google's ranking algorithm. Google "About This Result" in SERPs Indicates Ranking Info [webmasterworld.com]
Most of us know about the Google search operators, and here's an overview of SEO search operators [webmasterworld.com]
Plus lots of other Google search and SEO topics [webmasterworld.com].

What are your observations on the algorithm updates/changes to the SERPs?

[StupidIntelligent]

@rustybrick - It was also one of the most popular stories on your blog.

Thing is that the geniuses working there are pretty quick to kick the small guy to curb, when they want to pontificate.

The same rule book however resides at the bottom of a trash can, when the big media is in play.

Moz, SearchEngineLand, WordStream etc., should thank their stars that the big media newspapers haven't - yet - spewed out their SEO Guides, or What is SEO-type articles. Their rankings for the term SEO would be history within weeks or months, not if, but when that happens.

And no nofollow, sponsored, shamonsored crap would apply either. Moz can't compete with WashingtonPost and its bros in the biz.

[StupidIntelligent]

Danny finally took notice of this and will pass it on to their team.

[twitter.com...]

Authority shouldn't be allowed to be abused like this.

Ranking for every imaginable keyword just because you're a print media giant is unfair to smaller publishers with focused sites.

[StupidIntelligent]

My main point in the tweet was that no one is or can stop anyone from doing anything on their sites.

Harper's Bazaar can write about the String Theory. No one can stop them; but do they deserve to rank above Phys.org? simply because they have higher authority or "trustworthiness" of signals as JM puts it.

Perhaps Investopedia should start writing about managing Diabetes, if all it takes is a small pic of a doctor in the byline to make the content "trustworthy."

[MayankParmar]

There seems to be a new A/B test or bug/update affecting some sites: If an article appears in the Top Stories carousel, it automatically gets moved to the second page first position (it's always first position of second page). In another region, the same article is on the first page, but it would not appear in Top Stories.

For the same keyword, rivals appear on the first page as well as top stories.

[samwest]

What a mess...page one, pos three yet binary traffic, it's either 1 visitor on the site or zero. This must be rock bottom, but I'm sure they can figure out a way to stuff us further down the traffic abyss. They own it all and won't let you have any of it.

[saladtosser]

>>>>Harper's Bazaar can write about the String Theory. No one can stop them; but do they deserve to rank above Phys.org? simply because they have higher authority or "trustworthiness" of signals as JM puts it.

Perhaps Investopedia should start writing about managing Diabetes, if all it takes is a small pic of a doctor in the byline to make the content "trustworthy."<<<<

And this is the main problem with links dialed up to this level. Whoever has the best links, not best content/UX, links win. Domain authority outweighs expertise in a specific category. Jack of all trades, masters of none are the winners!

This is like google recommending you go to specsavers for bowel cancer advice just because specsavers has a better backlink profile and happened to publish a page about bowel cancer.

Remember when content was supposed to be king? I guess that went out the window with "don't be evil"

[mzb44]

https://twitter.com/hereandnowim/status/1422946641452142604

Meh.

I've been posting similar screenshots here in the past.

This all started with the core updates that made authority > everything.

Now all the big mainstream news sites have "best X", "X review" and "X coupons" content and all instantly rank on page one with generic 200 words fluff.

It's not just casinos, like in the screenshot. All those sites rank and have pages for anything that has an affiliate program.

Also, they're as shady as any generic no-name affiliate. Toplists are determined solely by what affiliate program pays more.

Most of the casinos listed on those sites (yes, even the legit mainstream news sites) are scams or illegal/unlicensed.

Honestly, even the average no-name and low authority affiliate site has much better content, relevant guides and tutorials and etc. All these big sites don't even have to try. Slap a 200 words fluff text and add a toplist table and instant page 1.

[mzb44]

Danny finally took notice of this and will pass it on to their team.

[twitter.com...]

Authority shouldn't be allowed to be abused like this.

Except that booth JM and Sullivan seem to agree that this is ok.

JM: "The nice part about the web is that anyone can publish whatever they want. Affiliate sites can publish news, news sites can publish affiliate content. It doesn't mean it'll rank fantastically, but it can -- and that's not necessarily bad."

DS: "I think the screenshot doesn't reflect what I see in the first page of results. That said, I think more broadly we've given guidance about any site that hosts content it hasn't written or sponsored content is involved, and sites should be considering this. I'll also pass this on."

JM says there is nothing wrong with this.

DS deflects and focuses on the sponsored content guidelines (rel=nofollow, rel=sponsored, etc.) and doesn't touch the authority > relevancy issue that's the essence of the question.

To me this is confirmation that this is by design.

[StupidIntelligent]

@mzb44 - There is no way small publishers can compete with giant newspapers.

Also no point blaming them, when Google itself is doing the exactly the same. Look what happened to things like weather, hotel bookings, dictionary...the list is endless.

[saladtosser]

mzb44 realistically then the 10 most powerful websites in the world could simply hire more writers to cover every topic going (obviously it would take a lot of time) but in theory based on their domain authority (backlinks) swallow all 10 positions on page one for everything, throttling niche expertise and innovation in whatever topic they deem most lucrative? Doesn't sound good for the user to reward jack of all trade master on none sites... Now I wish I called myself "website of everything" without restraining myself to a single niche, easier to pick up backlinks if I widened my content past a single niche and they would help me outrank the niche authority sites I move into because I had more backlinks from a range of niches.

[westcoast]

Weird, the "link spam" update seems to have been rolled back, at least in the areas I had been watching.

It had fallen 70% across a huge number of spam sites the day after the update and kept slowly declining....

Then this morning all of those spam links -- and more! -- are back. All of the spam sites that had been dropped in the update are back, and many of them now have more spam pages indexed than ever.

WTF?

[EditorialGuy]

John Mueller says Google has no problems with newspapers publishing and promoting affiliate content. Since, they naturally get ranked above all others, it's very unfair to regular website owners, who don't have their level of authority.

Google has said for many, many years that it has no problems with properly attributed affiliate links. It just isn't enthusiastic about affiliate sites.

A great example of an acceptable site would be the The Wirecutter, which is owned by The New York Times. It has affiliate links, but it also has plenty of useful editorial content about the products that it features. If you stripped out the affiliate links, the Wirecutter's product reviews would still be worth reading.They aren't just slapdash promotional copy or merchant-supplied boilerplate.

Addendum: Our mom-and-pop information site has had affiliate links for more than 20 years, and we rank just fine in Google Search. (In fact, Google once cited one of our pages as an example of a page with affiliate content that's useful to readers.This was in a set of guidelines for Google evaluators from back in the day when such guidelines were leaked, not officially released.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

BRAND NEW sites created in April, May and June lost search impressions with the July update before they were even getting traffic. Their position in rankings remained the same, down in the 40-60 range where most linger until Google trusts them, but the impressions halved.

Seeing brand new sites that have yet to see the light of day take a major search impressions hit is just a signal of Google's direction.

Tip: If you want Google traffic build for other sources of traffic and Google will show you love,

[mzb44]

It just isn't enthusiastic about affiliate sites.

Sure.

But the claim here is that they became way too overzealous in their dislike of affiliate sites that if essentially any mainstream authority sites put up even a shallow affiliate page it will almost always instantly outrank any existing affiliate site, regardless or quality, history, relevancy, etc.

It's that this was not the case a few years ago.

Now if Google - or you for that matter - believe that this is a good thing then that's a completely different point and discussion.

I only made an observation of a recent phenomenon where nearly any shallow page targeting affiliate keywords on any mainstream authority site will almost always outrank any affiliate site even if the affiliate site is of high-quality and is relevant.

The best example for this is the often cited PR Newswire example. Someone just bought some cheap $99 or $149 press releases and targeted high-value / high-difficulty affiliate YMYL keywords and consistently landed top 3 positions for them, outranking long-time legit and specialised affiliate sites. Sites that worked for 10+ years to be where they are and always stayed on the legit and high-quality side of SEO.

Why? "Domain authority" (talking generally here about massive mainstream sites and not some tool metric) seems to be the only obvious answer.

PS: Oh, and all the above does not necessarily have to do with affiliate sites only. Only that the above examples were of affiliate sites and affiliate keywords. The core issue is that recent core updates have clearly boosted "authority" and demoted relevancy.

Big, mainstream sites can now create pages on any subject, even if shallow or thin and they will generally outrank most smaller and specialised sites.

And again, the issue is that this is new. Obviously big and authoritative sites should rank high. But not so long ago there was something like "staying in your lane" or "topical authority" (probably not actual terms used by Google).

So even if you were some big massive news site with one million backlinks, you could not hope to rank for all kinds of random and unrelated stuff. A small and specialised site could perfectly well outrank a big and massive generalist news site on searches related to the niche of the specialist site.

Now it does not matter. Broad authority > all. 300 words random stuff on some big news site will almost always outrank any smaller specialist site.

[StupidIntelligent]

Att: Barry

Would you do a story on authority > topic expertise? or will this be censored?

Your few lines on this subject can go a long way, and may actually end up on the screen of a Google search team person, who might agree, and at least recommend changes to his or her department head.

It will hit everyone eventually because greed has no limit. Large media will come after everyone. No one is immune for long.

[mzb44]

Barry, would you do a story on authority > topic expertise? or will this be censored?

He generally avoids these kinds of stories.

It won't be censored (like, he can write whatever he wants on his site, obviously), but he won't touch this. It's just a subject that will not resonate well with his audience (usually mainstream SEOs) who happen to work at these big mainstream sites that now benefit from these changes.

It's also a subject that's constantly avoided / ignored by Google employees. They never, ever reply to any tweet pointing this out. Not even to deny it.

And if they happen to reply they do in bad faith and deflect and obfuscate with stuff like "domain authority is not used by google, etc", even though it's clear the term was used as an abstraction for "big mainstream sites with many links" and not a tool metric.

So there might actually not even be a story other than "some no-names on some forum claim...".

[rustybrick]

Would you do a story on authority > topic expertise? or will this be censored?

Can you be more specific?

[StupidIntelligent]

@Barry

Major news sites that post stories or articles about all types of general topics tend to rank high and in many cases outrank smaller specialized publishers under the category.

For example, a major plumbing company in a city can be great terms of customer service. It may even start a blog, a youtube channel, and start talking about lifestyle topics. But, would it make sense for Google to rank it in the top 10 of SERPs on the topic of "which stocks are best to buy for your portfolio?" Would anyone take advice on stocks from a plumbing company?

Big news media shouldn't get treated special, just because they write about everything and anything.

[rustybrick]

The domain leasing issue? I was going to cover Danny's tweet that he will pass it along, but it didn't seem like news.

Is this a huge problem? Google's guidelines say it is not something they want to rank. So if you see examples, send it to Danny and CC me. If I get a number of examples, I can cover it, for sure...

[EditorialGuy]

So even if you were some big massive news site with one million backlinks, you could not hope to rank for all kinds of random and unrelated stuff. A small and specialised site could perfectly well outrank a big and massive generalist news site on searches related to the niche of the specialist site.

In my experience, that's still the case (for general search, though probably not for Google News search).

[mzb44]

Can you be more specific?

Please read my posts on this page of this thread. They explain what this is about.

Please consider the PR Newswire example. It's very importat in this context.

The domain leasing issue?

No.

Is this a huge problem?

Depends who you ask.

I'm sure a lot of people think this is great.

[mzb44]

On a less passive aggressive note: I see many people who don't actively own / run multiple sites and target competitive kw's simply don't see this phenomenon at all. Multiple people on this very page have explained what this is about but seems it's still very confusing to Barry. Likely because he never encountered this himself (for objective reasons that are valid, I'm not criticising here).

So it's basically this: Many people claim to have observed that one thing core updates did was to massively boost 'broad root domain authority' (an abstraction of 'big mainstream sites with a lot of backlinks', not any tool company score) at the expense of relevancy.

As a consequence of this, big mainstream news sites recognised that they can ride their 'broad domain authority' and essentially rank on nearly anything they want just by slapping some random pages together with shallow content. So they began posting affiliate content for almost anything that has an affiliate program.

Most often these affiliate pages on these mainstream news sites are of rather low quality and shallow. Knowing that they will rank on 'broad domain authority' alone, they don't even need to try to actually create something new, useful, unique, etc.

These mainstream news sites nearly always outrank smaller but specialised and expert and topically relevant sites. Their massive 'broad domain authority' just overwrites everything.

This is a new thing. It was not always the case. Earlier, a smaller (in comparison to major news sites) but high-quality and relevant site could very easily outrank a much bigger but more generalist news site, on search terms within the smaller site's expertise.

TL;DR: In E-A-T, the A has a disproportionally bigger impact than the other two. If the A is massive enough, in a lot of cases the other two become completely irrelevant.

[mzb44]

TL;DR: In E-A-T, the A has a disproportionally bigger impact than the other two. If the A is massive enough, in a lot of cases the other two become completely irrelevant.

Is this a huge problem?

A consequence of the above is the prevalence of the currently two most popular SEO spam tactics.

Parasite spam and expired domain spam.

Parasite spam: Recognising that if 'broad domain authority' (not any tool metric) is massive enough you can rank for anything / outrank anyone, a lot of spammers post articles on very authoritative user generated content sites (i.e. Medium) or press release sites (PR Newswire, Globe Newswire etc.). In many cases these 'parasite' pages will outrank legitimate sites, because their host domains (PR Newswire etc.) are so massively authoritative from a backlink perspective.

Expired domain spam: Spammers buy expired domains with a large number of top tier backlinks (think New York Times, etc.). They revive these domains usually as affiliate sites. Sometimes (not always though) these sites will massively rank and outrank anyone, even with spun/machine generated content.

in both cases it's because Google made 'broad domain authority' (not any tool metric) seemingly the most important factor that can overshadow most other factors such as relevancy, expertise in the subject matter, content quality.

Usually this phenomenon is only observed in the case of truly massively authoritative domains. Most often it's major international news sites. Their A is just so big, most often they can just post a random 300-400 wordsalad and it will nearly always outrank even the biggest expert niche site in that industry.

[rustybrick]

This is a new thing. It was not always the case. Earlier, a smaller (in comparison to major news sites) but high-quality and relevant site could very easily outrank a much bigger but more generalist news site, on search terms within the smaller site's expertise.

SEOs have been complaining about this since 2005 or so. I am not sure if this is new.

Trust me, I get it, I am a publisher, I have websites. I get it. I've written about this topic before, I can write about it again. I just need more examples and generally WebmasterWorld doesn't allow specific examples...

[rustybrick]

FYI, I just asked for more examples on Twitter, let's see what I get...

[yollo03]

I don't believe he was unaware it is all down to authority. It has been going on since December core update. I have seen high authority website that outranks everyone in a page that is less than 250 words. I highly doubt this will change as they would have done it already by now. It's get used to it basically.

[philooo]

Weird because when you think about it, It would be in the best interest of Google to NOT rank high these big sites, considering they are the one with big ad budget.

So helping the mega site be on top of ranking really is not helping their bottom line. It is just pushing the large site to hire affiliate content creation team.

[yollo03]

One of the theories is to fight spam they credit high authority websites so spam get pushed down the search. The problem it creates is that other legitimate sites get pushed down as well. Do they care? Not really and why should they? From their perspective they are defending the 'quality' of the search, if you have low authority they don't need you. This is what has been happening since December core update. Some websites did recover in July but high authority sites dominate any keywords they want.

[StupidIntelligent]

Barry's tweet has been showered with examples of how authority sites can completely eat up a niche.

[twitter.com...]

[yollo03]

it's not new, why is it resurfacing now? I think because they are starting to get hit now so they make some noise. When lower authority sites were hit since December, as long as it wasn't them they didn't care. Everyone is taking care of themselves.