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?

[BushyTop]

Its absolutely insane how much Google is refreshing at the moment. Either something isnt right/performing how they want it too, or they are completely revolutionising the way the algos work.

[yollo03]

Based on my assessment of what's going on, authority is still at the very top but something else was added. To rank well you need high authority and something else, I am not sure what it is but it's not the web vitals. I think it is related to content somehow.

In my case, only the high volume keywords I ranked for got hit, all the rest is normal.

Edit: 2 of my competitors were heavily hit by the update, average rank 20 for keywords Im tracking down to 68 in the past 48 hours. Other competitors were removed from the search in many countries but maintained their position in the countries they are ranking. I think it's a really big update but you cant tell if it's over yet.

NO TRANSPARENCY WHATSOEVER.

[RedBar]

Monday 9th / Tuesday 10th August

How many saw an increase / decrease in traffic on those dates and continuing to, so far, today?

Anyone, no one?

[KaseyM]

Decrease close of last week through weekend. Rise yesterday and slow again today.

[seomotionz]

Monday 9th / Tuesday 10th August

How many saw an increase / decrease in traffic on those dates and continuing to, so far, today?

Anyone, no one?

@RedBar Phenomenal spike in traffic and CTR since the last 48 hours specially in the tech niche. But entire last week was pretty bad, in terms of traffic and everything.

[golderberger]

it's scary though that G can cut your sales down 50% or more just like that and still you can't do a thing to them

[EditorialGuy]

it's scary though that G can cut your sales down 50% or more just like that and still you can't do a thing to them.

Or they could increase your sales by 50% or more, and they don't even have a tip jar or a "thank you" button.

Rankings go up. Rankings go down. Sometimes you benefit, and sometimes other people benefit. But Google isn't "cutting your sales"--it's just being a search engine, as opposed to a business directory.

[golderberger]

@EditorialGuy: I've been running my own business since 2012 and I have not experienced drops in sales like this EVER before this year G update - matter of fact we had a steady growth each year. Right now it seems like we are in 2012 again and starting our business. And this sales drop clearly correlates with the SERP changes.

Right now IMHO this is pure traffic manipulation.

[yollo03]

It's probably temporary. Those that received a boost, enjoy it while it lasts. Every time when an update is rolling out, at the very beginning there is spike, up or down, it then 'normalizes' in the next few days. If after a week you are still ranking higher then you were, it will stick until the next update.

[RedBar]

Right now IMHO this is pure traffic manipulation.

Right now?

You started in 2012, it has been manipulated since you started, you have always had this manipulation and fortunate enough to benefit from it ... some of us have been living with this seemingly for ever, well, certainly far too many years:-(

[mhansen]

Lead Gen / USA Market.

My leading website has not seem much, if any changes in search position change over the last couple years. It's a very small website, maybe just 8-10 pages on a very tightly focused topic that answers only a couple very specific questions. The topic is very transactional and popular.

Though the search positions have changed very little, the number of visitors from G is roughly half what it was just 1 year ago. I have family and friends all over the USA and they too have checked a few phrases for me at random times, just to see what it looks like to them.

In our case, the Google widgets have taken over serps. PAA, local results, map listings, product listings, etc. Basically, even with organic position #1 for high volume queries AND having the featured snippet on those same queries, Google have simply used the space to promote their own agenda versus sending people to websites.

Not much I know of, that we as website owners can do about it.

[shadowlight]

Though the search positions have changed very little, the number of visitors from G is roughly half what it was just 1 year ago.........Google widgets have taken over serps. PAA, local results, map listings, product listings, etc.

Right now IMHO this is pure traffic manipulation.

You started in 2012, it has been manipulated since you started

It has been manipulated ever since the beginning, after all that is what search engines do, manipulate their results to present them to the user. It hasn't always been manipulated to such an extent towards pushing organic listings down as much as they do these days and increasing the size of ads and directing traffic towards the ads. This has only been happening for the past couple of years or so.

It is absolutely disgusting that you can rank number one (organically) on the worlds most popular search engine and get half the amount of sales you used to, they are trying to force businesses into paying for ads and getting users to click on the ads at all costs.

They have been avoiding paying billions of dollars of tax for years, Ireland was pressured into changing their tax laws by the EU in order to prevent them & other mega corps from operating this way and avoiding tax. The Irish times reported that the last time Google did this in 2019 they moved $75 billion. They used a tax avoidance method called the double Irish with a Dutch sandwich in order to move billions and billions back to the U.S from international ad sales virtually tax free, for many years, this has now come to an end.

[irishtimes.com...]

This means their tax bill just got bigger and it is going to become even bigger when new legislation is passed that means they will have to pay tax in the countries they actually make their money rather than the countries they currently shift their profits too with low tax rates. 130 countries are behind the new tax rules and they are expected to take effect in 2023.

[forbes.com...]

So they can no longer avoid paying tax on billions of dollars of profit using loopholes such as the double Irish and soon they wont be able to shift their profits to countries with low tax rates either.

They have also been essentially forced into providing users with a list of up to 12 search engines to choose from on every single new android device distributed in the EEA and the UK on or before September 1, 2021.

[android.com...]

These search engines will appear on their for free, instead of having to win an auction and pay Google like previously, they are having to do this as a result of the European Commission’s July 2018 Android decision in which they were fined 4.34 billion euros.

[ec.europa.eu...]

They will no doubt lose market share because of this. This is why they are monetizing the SERPs they way they are right now. Its all about profit, profit, profit, they want and need to make as much money as they possibly can from search as the net is closing and Governments are starting to reign them in.

The more they are squeezed, the more they will squeeze the SERPs and online business.

[christianz]

Why is Google displaying any organic results at all?

If they change to paid-only (wherever there is enough paid results to make up complete and well targeted result list), they could even remove the "Ad" labels because everything would be understood to be ads anyway. People also ask and other widgets could be removed too. It would be beautiful and super profitable.

The consumer is gullible enough to stomach this and not complain. After all, they are used to consuming content on just few platforms anyway. They don't understand the concept of having choice in online platforms and services. They don't choose between different Facebooks, Twitters and Instagrams. They won't choose between Google and better, organic search engine. They can't type web addresses and most don't even know what domain is.

Seems like an awful waste to still direct all this "free traffic" to sites that don't pay a single cent for ads. I understand in early days they had to maintain credibility as impartial search engine, but these days - they are a verb in Oxford dictionary. Why not just spare us all this slow, torturous decline and just go for all the profit 100% at once. At least we would have more clarity and peace of mind that things can't get any worse - only better.

[ichthyous]

Right now it seems like we are in 2012 again and starting our business. And this sales drop clearly correlates with the SERP changes. Right now IMHO this is pure traffic manipulation.

Was this ever in doubt? Just look at Google's insane revenue growth each quarter. That is coming at the expense of sales for sites that rank organically. My inquiries and sales are a fraction of what they were in January and February before all this started. My image traffic is less than half because it's all going to the largest media companies now. Since Google is afraid of having to pay them for content after the Australian court decision.

All of my high volume terms are gone, only very large sites are taking all the top spots now. The few exceptions are competitors who are writing articles on every topic, because articles have replaced many searches with commercial intent. No variety, only cheap silly how-to articles and lists.

[Martin Ice Web]

All of my high volume terms are gone, only very large sites are taking all the top spots now.

Yes, this last updates aimed 100% to high transactional keywords.I have contact to a lot of shops and all are saying the same. Sales are cut to half and more.

BUt why does google destroy their own image of beeing a middle good search engine?
Searching in my niche is frustrating. 50% of the search has nothing to do with the search. My guess is that they implemented "Poeple also searched for" in normal serps, what would be very, very silly.

And i don´t know if i can trust a chinese seller on ebay/amazon more than one located in my country?

[yollo03]

@Martin, one theory is that this is the best way to get some of them to start paying for ads, no? Users won't see the difference, only shop owners. I was affected as well by the way, only high volume keywords were targeted.

[BushyTop]

I'm seeing a larger and larger disparity between Desktop and Mobile Rankings. Mobile being better for us. Anyone else seeing this?

[Martin Ice Web]

@yollo3+,

i know but everyone knows that google ads do not work. Spend 10 bucks and earn 3 bucks. Therefore the most shops will not participate in google ads. Many of those shops do have unique items. That will not be found on google anymore. Most of these shops will migrate to amazon instead fo paying google for nothing. Can google realy effort this?

And i was total astonished that a friend did tell me that they switched to bing at home. ( they are not very familiar with computers and search). Poeple are sick of to many ads.

[mzb44]

i know but everyone knows that google ads do not work. Spend 10 bucks and earn 3 bucks. Therefore the most shops will not participate in google ads.

It absolutely works for a lot of people and businesses.

There are many cases where it does not work for a variety of reasons a lot perhaps not even anything to do with Google.

I know we dislike Google for a lot of things they did the past few years, but let's not lose our sense of objectivity.

Also, like SEO, adwords is not as simple as many believe. It's not as simple as just loading your account with $100 and adding a few random ads and boom you generate positive ROI. There could be a million reason why some campaigns might not perform, including even some products advertised might not even suit adwords at all.

[JesterMagic]

They have also been essentially forced into providing users with a list of up to 12 search engines to choose from on every single new android device distributed in the EEA and the UK on or before September 1, 2021.

Finally, I hope this comes to North America. We need to end mega corps taking over our devices and controlling what content they show us and what apps we use. Yes I know you can install what you want afterwards but 90% people in the real world do not know how to do this so just stick with what comes preinstalled.

When you first boot up your new device (phone, tablet, PC, whatever) It should not assume what you want but ask what is the default search engine, what browser you want to use, what mail client, what cloud service etc... Not forcing mega corps like Google, Apple, and Microsoft from doing this just intrenches them further and makes it harder for any competition to gain market share.

[ichthyous]

My sales are cut more than 50%...this summer there have hardly been any sales at all. As soon as Google has one of its almost daily updates that seems to favor my site the inquiries shoot up, then vanish again. Google is simply intent on keeping all of the converting traffic for itself and pushing it towards adwords, period.

As for the effectiveness of AdWords...no it doesn't really work well for any business anymore. Read the forums where corp marketing reps are complaining, where everyone discusses AdWords as simply being a branding tool, etc. Real sales are not expected anymore. Corporate marketing is not occupied by geniuses, for the most part they are simply spreading all the money across every platform to make sure they reach as many as possible. If they find that AdWords are very expensive and don't convert they can always move their money elsewhere...but seeing that Google is a monopoly they are rather stuck sending money Google's way. This is only going to get a lot worse...Google will keep squeezing organic search now that it has realized that nobody really cares if organic dies. Whether the mom and pop shop owners will pay for AdWords or can afford it is completely irrelevant to them.

[EditorialGuy]

My sales are cut more than 50%...this summer there have hardly been any sales at all. As soon as Google has one of its almost daily updates that seems to favor my site the inquiries shoot up, then vanish again. Google is simply intent on keeping all of the converting traffic for itself and pushing it towards adwords, period.

Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." There's nothing in that statement about helping you, me, or the company next door make sales. In the pre-Web world, nobody expected the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature to index the Sears Catalog or the weekly Piggly Wiggly flyer. Yellow Pages phone directories had token free listings (business names with phone numbers) surrounded by bold paid listings and ads. Should we be surprised that search may be continuing down the same path? Or that savvy companies are using PR, content marketing, product placement, and other strategies instead of simply relying on God and Google to bring traffic to their sell pages?

[ichthyous]

USA traffic has just stopped for four hours this morn...down 56% by 10am. Australia was down 80% yesterday and down 100% (0 visits) today.

SERP positions are slightly down this week, including one high-volume term which I have been knocked to 5th place because my competitor has two slots in #3 and #4...home page and an article. Anyone else seeing this stop in USA traffic?

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:25 pm (utc) on Aug 19, 2021]

[EditorialGuy]

I'm not seeing any dramatic changes, but August has had more little peaks and valleys than the previous few months did. I think that's probably because we've got a travel site and every new headline about COVID-19 or national entry requirements has an impact on what people are researching in terms of travel.

I suspect that the Delta variant has erased some of the optimism and eagerness to travel abroad that we were seeing as recently as a month ago--which is another way of saying that, for some topics, what's happening in Google Search may be less important than what's being featured in Google News.

[yollo03]

Looks like the update was about title tags, that's why some saw a big drop. [searchenginejournal.com...]

[Edge]

Ok “As usual, it's both entertaining and frustrating” reading this thread. I came looking for answers and solutions and a working understanding of what happened early July. Personally, I don’t allocate more than a few minutes to complaining I then focus on understanding what has happened, formulating a solution and a plan to the challenge at hand and then executing the plan.

I’m there on the plan and executing – if you’re wondering.

Here’s the bottom line, Google is a business and like any business profit matters as well as increasing profit.

So, Google juggled the results and when I imagine that I’m sitting at the Google search results strategy team meeting I can see many legitimate reasons why they may have shook-up the search results tree.
Let’s examine what the big G might be thinking – let’s say a is product for sale and there are ten competitors selling the identical product. Is the website with the SEO that best fits my current algo really the one you show forever? Probably not if you want traffic.

Honest sincere question folks, should SEO effort and spend be < PPC? How much should one spend on free advertising and traffic anyway? Moreover, how do I know that I’m sending visitors to the right site? What if all the first page ten results are free loaders (I said it). Therefore, as an experiment, rattle the spend impulse on these folks and give my visitors a little variety and test my algo - let’s see what happens. Let’s juggle the results based on some metric like time on site, or maybe return visitors, etc. Heck If I’m big G I got all kinds of visitor data to consider (SEO my results) for my visitors.

Maybe in a move to be fair to these websites and keep up the competition (would not want to kill a business due to SEO) I could distribute the traffic evenly-ish among these ten competitors? This could be a reason for what appears to be referral traffic limiting to the best SEO site(s).

I can think of a bunch of reasons why G and I might maneuver to improve my results and get a spend out it from my visitors.

Good luck everybody -

[shadowlight]

Looks like the update was about title tags, that's why some saw a big drop. [searchenginejournal.com...]

Just another way for them to reduce CTR in my opinion.

[EditorialGuy]

Just another way for them to reduce CTR in my opinion.

Not necessarily. If the search engine rewrites the page title for a specific query, CTR for that page and query should increase.

[Dooku]

@Edge, while your arguments sound logical and i assume you pose an honest view, however the real life data is the opposite.
Each and every action/product/widget etc..etc... that G has implemented in the last 5 years has been done to clearly undermine organic traffic, seo abd even adwords(!) in favor of their own eco-system.

I dare you to find ONE, just ONE action by G that has been implemented to benefit webmasters.
There is a reason why G went out of their way to vehemently deny the report, BACKED BY REAL DATA from Rand Fishkin that 2/3 of internet searches in 2020 ended without a click. Do you really think all those searchers then just disappeared, turned off their computers or mobile devices(?).........NO, those clicks conveniently went to the G eco-system instead.

This is also the reason I despise all those famous "seo guru's" who actually know nothing and can do conjecture at best and completely misinform people at worst. Because they are part of the problem and actively working at embracing all the cr@p that G implements. Did you ever see G criticizing any fanboy seo guru a-holes? But they go out of their way to try and do some character assassination on Rand Fishkin.

"Shaking up the tree" is FINE, I wholeheartedly agree.......as long as every party included gets their fair share of apples.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - I had some spikes in traffic yesterday. Today I see a big drop in the US morning.