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?

[yollo03]

Something was rolled out over the weekend, it hit all my high volume keywords. Big drop, -50 more or less in ranking. The 'funny' thing about this is that it only targeted high volume keywords, all other keywords are pretty much the same.

So if the youtubers were hit recently (past few days) it is not the core update.

[StupidIntelligent]

@Sgt_Kickaxe - I searched Twitter for youtubers and updates, but didn't find anything. Please share the tweet.

[mzb44]

According to him, there's a super ranking code on top of everything. So, your site could be 10/10 in content, but if Google decides to favor another factor, say overall popularity, the super ranking code would multiply everything by 0.

This means you could be the top candidate to hit the top 3 spots, say securing 9 out of 10 points, but at the final stage, that super ranking code can throw you back to the bin by multiplying 9x0=0.

This is why popular news sites with low quality score can hit the top 10 with just a few rewritten words here and there.

I just came here to post something very similar.

Google has now clearly stopped using only objective metrics to determine rankings and now clearly has built-in overrides to achieve desired subjective outcomes.

A very good example is that of affiliate sites.

We know Google has a disdain towards affiliate sites these days and unless you are a big corpo affiliate site like Wirecutter you will have a much harder time ranking than before.

But that's good, right? Affiliate sites suck, right?

Well there're many affiliate sites (that aren't Wirecutter corpo level) that are great and acquire organically - without abusing the webmaster guidelines - thousands of high-quality backlinks from major, trusted and authoritative sites. Have great UX, a huge number of real and genuine positive user comments, etc.

But they keep getting hammered by core updates, every time.

Clearly they have all the metrics right, great natural links, amazing UX, great content, great user engagement. This means that objectively people like those sites and other trusted and authoritative sites are willing to endorse them by linking to them.

But they still keep getting hit.

It's obvious Google has something that's coded to override signals gathered by the algo.

Like, Google now believes that it knows better what websites searchers should actually visit. Even though searchers love that site, and third party authoritative websites highly endorse that site, they are still wrong. Google employees have determined that actually you should not like that site even if you do, therefore you should not visit it. Instead, here's a list of sites that you should visit, even if you actually do not want to.

You can never win in such a scenario, no matter what you do. You can have amazing user engagement metrics, never violate any google guideline, have a large number of endorsements (links) from top sites, but if Google subjectively believes that the type of site you have actually isn't good, then you will get hit.

[yollo03]

@mz44, what determines if a site is good or not? I don't think it's done manually. One of the algorithms must have a greater weight than others and it is the one that seals the fate of a given website. And that weight is being pushed around at updates. If someone can figure out what has more weight that will get you in the top spots very quickly. Its not the core web vitals, its not domain age, its not speed and its not content. It is (was) authority, now Im not sure what it is.

[golderberger]

practically every day semrush sensor is spiking, i don't think SEO makes and sense currently. Right now this is pure search result manipulation by google

[saladtosser]

You can easily prove the problem with DA. Simple take one of your in depth product pages, cut and paste a small section on e-bay and once google has indexed it it will immediately outrank you organically, proving scraped lightweight content will beat in-depth original content based on the domains authority alone (not the moz metric). This happens to me every time I sell anything on e-bay that's already on my site!

[RedBar]

but if Google subjectively believes that the type of site you have actually isn't good, then you will get hit.

Precisely and I'm pretty sure this has been going on for longer than they are prepared to admit.

I used to have a Coca Cola site!

The product was discovered by me 40+ years ago.
I have the global trademark for it.
The global industry refers to it by this name.
I have had the EMD Exact Matrch Domain since 1995.
I HAD the only 100% totally dedicated site to this product with all product technical descriptions, hundreds of unique images and all relevant information.
It was regulalry updated.
The product is still one of the top 5 worldwide in my industry.
For many years it was #1 and even though some of my images started appearing on other sites, I said nothing.

Then about 5/6 years ago it suddenly started to slide and within 6 months could not be found except for typing-in the EMD!

It was replaced by an importing wholesaler who compressed many pages of info into one page page with extremely brief descriptions and "sexy" latest-style graphics.

One year later I removed the site.

The importer is a US company, my product is sourced and produced in India.

Absolutely zero manipulation whatsoever.

[mzb44]

@mz44, what determines if a site is good or not? I don't think it's done manually. One of the algorithms must have a greater weight than others and it is the one that seals the fate of a given website. And that weight is being pushed around at updates.

I'm pretty sure it's both. And about what determines if a site (rather type of site) is good or not is the opinion of people working at Google.

I am pretty sure they do "manually" decide what type of site is not good anymore and then apply hard-coded overrides to algorithmic signals.

Since 2018 they have essentially nuked all natural / alternative medicine sites. Most - if not all - of these have lost up to -99% of their rankings and traffic.

Now a lot of these sites had ultra massive authority, hundreds of thousands of natural backlinks etc. Yet they essential got nuked.

It's clear to me it was decided by people over at Google that despite the good algorithmic signals these sites are dangerous to rank, so their quality scores get zeroed out (or greatly reduced) by the "super ranking code" mentioned above.

In this particular situation honestly it actually makes sense to do this. Those sites are actually harmful to people.

My argument is that since at least 2018 they have been gradually expanding this manual editorial interference on what should and shouldn't rank. Beside natural medicine sites it's clear that affiliate sites are impacted as well, and their original quality scores are multiplied by 0.x, i.e. reduced.

But I'm sure there's many other types and categories of sites other than these Googlers have determined shouldn't rank and now have a times 0.X multipler applied to their "organic" quality scores.

*By manual I don't mean they check individual sites manually, of course. Rather they determine broadly that for ex. affiliate sites should not rank as much and hard code it so, say, every time the systems find an affiliate site they multiply its quality score by 0.5, etc

[mzb44]

Article by Barry is up: [seroundtable.com...]

Thanks, man. Looks really good.

[StupidIntelligent]

Barry took notice of this BS: [seroundtable.com...]

Thanks.

[EditorialGuy]

*By manual I don't mean they check individual sites manually, of course. Rather they determine broadly that for ex. affiliate sites should not rank as much and hard code it so, say, every time the systems find an affiliate site they multiply its quality score by 0.5, etc

The algorithm's perception of user intent could come into the picture, too. Take an ambiguous query like "[kitchen widget]" or "[hotel name]." Should the results be weighted toward "informational" or "transactional"? Even a slight change in Google's assumption of what the user is seeking could have a big impact on the search results. And if there's any increase of weighting toward "informational" when user intent isn't clear, that's going to benefit sites like The Wirecutter and CNET where the emphasis is on information and the affiliate links are (from a user's perspective) incidental.

[westcoast]

Heads up:

A large chunk of the "link spam" update from a couple of weeks ago has been rolled back over the last 3 days.

Billions of spam pages that had been removed in the update are all back in the main Google index, and worse than that, there are more of them than ever:

Queries:

"see full list on buzzfeed" (145,000 spam pages)
"see full list on msn" (286,000 spam pages)
...etc...

Spam pages directed at our site had dropped from 35,000 down to 5,000 after the update. Over the weekend that was rolled back, and we are suddenly up to 45,000 spam pages pointed at our site.

With the rollback we also got hit AGAIN with the "penalty box" algorithmic penalty which Google applies if it detects a very large number of new backlinks at a site. We dropped from #4 on our main keyword, to out of the index entirely, up to 20, 15, and now we're at 13.

Completely idiotic.

The worst part is that many of those 40,000 spam backlink pages to our site also contain scraped content, so Google is also dropping OUR pages from the index for what I can only assume is duplicate issues. We have now lost 25% of all of our indexed pages due to these hacked domain spammed-backlink pages. So. stupid.

Google, remove this crap. Seriously. And while you're at it, remove the damn duplicate content penalties that these spammy backlink / cloaked / scraped pages are causing on legitimate websites.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing considerably higher traffic since last Friday, after a week of terrible traffic. Something changed late on the 5th or the 6th I think. Uk traffic is back to normal after vanishing all week, and direct traffic came roaring back after being down 90+%. If Google can turn off/on all direct traffic to a site that is a massive amount of control and manipulation.

I am noting that despite the higher traffic, conversions are very low and the inquiries seem to all be low budget shoppers. Typically I have very strong summer sales with serious clients.

[yollo03]

What you described tends to happen when an update is rolling out. During updates, you may see a surge in traffic or a big drop that normalizes the next day or several days after. The switching off part was executed on a daily basis. Im not sure if it changed since the last update they pushed last week.

[ichthyous]

You may be right...traffic was high all weekend but dropped off a cliff at 2pm sharp today. USA -5%, UK -20%, AU -9%, CA -14% and still dropping.

[philooo]

OFF TOPIC:

If Google can turn off/on all direct traffic to a site that is a massive amount of control and manipulation.

My site is clearly throttled by google. When I look at the real time analytics, before and after the 'summer update', it it just ridiculous, how the ceiling has changed from one day to the other, and now is soooo stable at the new ceiling.

There is not a single question in my mind that google throttle traffic.

[iamkingsleyf]

affected as well, by at least 50%

[saladtosser]

My website traffic is down 78% and falling since the last day of June thanks to July core update, my YouTube traffic is up 87% from the same period, about to completely abandon the website and concentrate 100% effort in YouTube as that's now where the traffic is for our area! If the website bounces back in another update then I may start working on it again but as long as all the youtube videos are listed above me in the SERPS (even my own videos) I don't see G diverting all that traffic back to the serps and away from youtube after the record breaking youtube quarter, if anything they will need to increase the volume of youtube videos each quarter until the SERPS are mostly YouTube!

So this will be my last post/visit as I become a full time youtuber and ex webmaster, best of luck to you all :)!

[ichthyous]

So this will be my last post/visit as I become a full time youtuber and ex webmaster, best of luck to you all :)!

I've had a few friends tell me to focus on youtube videos for some years now. However, my niche is so saturated with people posting videos it's insane...with social media it's get in early or don't bother.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic down 52% at 11am...my home page traffic is down 72%. Every other country normal or higher today. Let's see if USA traffic starts recovering after noon today...

[iamkingsleyf]

Let's see if they will do anything about it

[RedBar]

I now seem to have a random high day and a random low day. Today is a high, already double my average traffic with multiple global PVs as opposed to a low day when I get 90+% single PVs and definitely not as global.

Someone forgotten to flick the manure switch today at The Plex?

[RedBar]

@iamkingsleyf - Welcome to WebmasterWorld

[philooo]

Or it was simply that everybody is watching the Olympics and we are all F**** Paranoid :)

[RedBar]

It's August, much of my global trade is on holiday etc, yesterday saw my 2nd-highest day since the beginning of March when my traffic first started to decline, 237% of current average!

Algo conflicts at The Plex?

[ichthyous]

I now seem to have a random high day and a random low day

I am seeing the same...average traffic for the most part, but then 1-2 days where traffic mysteriously plunges and less often 1 day where it soars. "Average" is still much lower than last year at this time, and that in turn was much lower than 2019. So overall, it's not great and I don't expect that traffic to ever return as organic traffic has been declining since 2018. Time to turn to other methods of sales and forget google organic search, as difficult as that may be.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:56 am (utc) on Aug 12, 2021]
[edit reason] Removed off-topic "aside" which was steering entire thread off topic. [/edit]

[NickMNS]

I've been experiencing an upward trend since the July update, and since yesterday I'm seeing an even bigger increase in traffic, up 15% vs same day last week and 35% vs same day last month. This morning traffic is up between 20% and 50% vs same day last week. My traffic has now reached level not seen since before the March 2020 update.

[BushyTop]

Thats great to hear @NickMNS - we've seen some good quality traffic the past few weeks, but this past weekend, whatever everyone felt and recorded, we're back to non geo targeted traffic, inflated bounce rates and low engagement periods.

It blows my mind how this works now. The tap on/Tap off is the best analogy there is.

[ichthyous]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:56 am (utc) on Aug 12, 2021]
[edit reason] Removed off-topic "aside" which was steering entire thread off topic. [/edit]

Seems like anything directly critical of the scam artists at Google adwords is being edited out as being "off topic". It appears that WebmasterWorld is becoming extremely cautious and afraid of retaliation by Google. Sharing our experiences with Google adwords is far from off topic, it helps to inform the other users of the reality of the situation, especially when many people are seeing the same thing and concurring. Start censoring too many topics as being off topic and people will stop visiting this site to get the 'real story'

[RareBit]

Is anyone seeing 2 results for their site in the SERPs this week? My 2nd URL appeared on Monday and is still showing - Ive not seen that for a long long time.

[mzb44]

Sharing our experiences with Google adwords is far from off topic, it helps to inform the other users of the reality of the situation, especially when many people are seeing the same thing and concurring.

I get that this is the monthly serp changes thread but it's kind of also honestly the only active thread left on this forum.

Post anything "off-topic" in a separate thread and there will be 2-3 people participating maximum.

Not implying the monthly serp changes threads should be made a free for all, but a little bit of "off-topic" if it makes sense in context should be tolerated.

[EditorialGuy]

Post anything "off-topic" in a separate thread and there will be 2-3 people participating maximum.

Which is another way of saying that "off-topic" posts are mainly of interest to the people who post them.

Venting may be cathartic for those who vent, but it just adds to the background noise.

[mzb44]

Which is another way of saying that "off-topic" posts are mainly of interest to the people who post them.

You can glance through the general Google folder here [webmasterworld.com] and see that anything apart from the monthly main treads generally has between 1-5 posts on avg. None are venting threads.

Instead these are threads about various stuff that's usually also discussed in the monthly serp changes threads by much more people but is considered off topic.

Best example is from last months' thread were people talked for several pages about PAA but in the dedicated PAA thread only like 2-3 people posted.

[NickMNS]

Best example is from last months' thread were people talked for several pages about PAA but in the dedicated PAA thread only like 2-3 people posted.

And that is question of discipline. The volunteer moderators do their best to try and keep things inline but if participants don't cooperate there is only so much one can do. Participants are lazy why follow another thread when one can have one disorganized rant about anything and everything.

The benefit of separating topics is that they are easy to find and reference at later date. Lumping everything into a big mess renders it of little value. No one is going to rummage through twenty some pages of posts to find a reference about a topic. But if that topic has it's own thread, no matter how long of short it has value.

[2z7B]

@westcoast

Our hopes for the link spam update were high, but we are still seeing a big influx of spam links.

Tons of new spam is indexed every week and our link profile is now made by more than 90% of pure spam. Impossible to balance. This triggers some kind of penalty that weakens rankings for the whole domain.

The current state of things is very sad.

[christianz]

Tons of new spam is indexed every week and our link profile is now made by more than 90% of pure spam.

I am seeing same. According to ahrefs I was getting around 2000 spam backlinks per week but now I am getting over 3000.

Spammers wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work. My image referrer tracker also sees steady traffic to spam sites that hotlink my images.

Its as if there was no spam or spam link update at all.

[christianz]

So this will be my last post/visit as I become a full time youtuber and ex webmaster, best of luck to you all :)

For some websites it may make sense to move entirely to video format. But for others it makes no sense. Its as if Bill Gates told he was done with developing operating system and instead will transform Microsoft into YouTube channel. Or Wikipedia declared they will delete all pages and become a giant YouTube channel with narrated articles.

It just does not make sense. Video can't do what webapps can.

Besides - if you dedicate all your time building audience on YouTube, be careful and always remember that you don't own your YouTube audience and it can be taken from you any second for any reason (or no reason) whatsoever. And YouTube search results and recommendations are even more heavily biased towards priority media companies than web search. Although web search is, unfortunately, moving in that same direction, as long as Google has 99% market share.

[mzb44]

And that is question of discipline. The volunteer moderators do their best to try and keep things inline but if participants don't cooperate there is only so much one can do.

I understand and I agree, but I believe situations need to be adapted to how things actually are rather than to how one believes they should be in an ideal but inexistent scenario.

Or the mods can just ban everybody posting off topic and not cooperating with the ideal imagined scenario and then have a total of 3 people remain active on this site discussing between each other how great Google is and how anyone who says otherwise "just does't understand it".

[mzb44]

re: spam update and spam links showing up.

I'd just like to point out that just because someone does automated spam link attacks or spam link creation that does not mean those spam links will actually be counted by Google or that they will harm your site.

For all we know, those spammers might just be wasting their time.

[christianz]

just because someone does automated spam link attacks or spam link creation that does not mean those spam links will actually be counted by Google or that they will harm your site.

For all we know, those spammers might just be wasting their time.

I am getting flow of hits to my images from these spam sites. Clearly they are getting some level of Google traffic.

[NickMNS]

I am getting flow of hits to my images from these spam sites

You should block hot-linking of your images it will put an immediate stop to the spam. It is a relatively easy fix and will help reduce wasted bandwidth and potentially improve your ranking.

[christianz]

You should block hot-linking of your images it will put an immediate stop to the spam.

I have blocked it already (since ~2 weeks ago) and they won't stop. Maybe it will take time until the spammer/spammers notice that my images return 403 Forbidden. I still count the requests, just to keep track of how much traffic they are getting and what domains they are using (lots of ***.blogspot.com).

Many of those sites don't even hotlink - they use thumbnail images generated and hosted by Google Images. They just backlink to my original images/pages.

[NickMNS]

I have blocked it already (since ~2 weeks ago) and they won't stop.

If its blocked then it's blocked. Are the requests returning the 403 response? If so then your done. Google will no longer count the link as it is dead with 403 response. The requests may continue for a while from those spam websites as I doubt they would bother to clean up the dead links. But here again you server is serving a 403 response not an image, so you should already be saving the band width.

It will take a few month for Google to crawl and account for the changes in the index, in my case I saw a rankings improvement after about 3 or 4 month (I have a very big website). Also, there is no guarantee that my improvement is attributable to the blocking of the hotlinks.

Final thought, have you tested that the blocking is working as expected?

[amitjat]

Yes, we also notice some drop in our health niche client

[Martin Ice Web]

After 3 days of normal traffic with lots of sales, we got hit yesterday in the evening again ( -50%).
And it feels like a punch in the tomach while google sends every day an email with 120 EUR for free ads to accquire NEW cumstomers.
So with start of this updates we see constant climbing sales on amazon. Its now an increase up to +200% for our own items.

Our vertical is full of outdated shops. Feels like back in the 90s.

[yollo03]

I have a theory that the tap on / tap off of organic traffic is based on impressions. When you reach a certain amount of impressions you get shut off (for those that are affected by it). Those that are experiencing it, can you look into impressions and see if you find a pattern?

[RedBar]

@yollo03

Are you referring to the long-held suggestion of a traffic ceiling?

In my case it's not XX PVs and stop, I have:

80+% Multiple page view visitors from many countries

or

90+% Single page view visitors from far fewer countries

It doesn't happen gradually, it happens immediately "G does something" and, similarly, when it's flicked again, normal traffic.

FWIW considering I expected my lowest traffic of the year this month apart from Xmas week, I am now on my 4th day of what I would have described as my old normal holiday traffic ... averaging 150% of last week.!.!.!

Normal it is not.

Here's a question ... This has been happening for so long now I wonder if G even KNOWS it is occurring?

[renatovieira]

Very big drop today.

[shadowlight]

Seems like anything directly critical of the scam artists at Google adwords is being edited out as being "off topic". It appears that WebmasterWorld is becoming extremely cautious and afraid of retaliation by Google. Sharing our experiences with Google adwords is far from off topic, it helps to inform the other users of the reality of the situation, especially when many people are seeing the same thing and concurring.

Google adwords is absolutely 100% on topic of Google SERP updates & changes as the Majority of G updates these days are all about G maximizing paid clicks & minimizing organic clicks in order to maximize their revenue & profits.

[ichthyous]

A 32% drop in USA traffic from 8am this morning, but search and direct traffic appear normal. It appears to be coming from lower traffic via referral links and social media. Perhaps people are just out enjoying their summer Saturday. Sales have been awful this entire summer...non-existent really, and also hearing that it's quiet from friends in other niches not related to mine. Coincidentally, CNBC reported the largest drop in US consumer sentiment since 2011 - [cnbc.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 8:09 pm (utc) on Aug 14, 2021]
[edit reason] fix broken link [/edit]