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?

[Edge]

Well, I’m familiar with Rand Fishkin non-peer reviewed 2019 report. It remains unclear to me how anybody that is NOT Google can possibly know what Googles Search click through rate is. Certainly not most searches are satisfied with a Google snippet? Maybe Google publishes that detail search and click through data/log files somewhere that I’m not aware of?

Anyway, great post on your part now tell everybody….

Do you have a plan going forward for your visitors?

[Abaros]

Well, I’m familiar with Rand Fishkin non-peer reviewed 2019 report. It remains unclear to me how anybody that is NOT Google can possibly know what Googles Search click through rate is. Certainly not most searches are satisfied with a Google snippet? Maybe Google publishes that detail search and click through data/log files somewhere that I’m not aware of?

It is not clear to me either how anyone who is not G can talk one way or the other about anything G does.

What is very clear is the results of what G does and the effects of what G does. You have to be very blind not to see that the effects have been disastrous for medium and small content creators.

[mzb44]

Well, I’m familiar with Rand Fishkin non-peer reviewed 2019 report.

This implies we should shut down every single SEO forum.

Every single SEO should also refund and pay damages for non-existent services provided for all their clients and change profession.

If only Google knows how anything actually works and every other opinion of anyone else is invalid, therefore the entire SEO industry is a big scam, perhaps with the exception of some guys like Pedro Dias who actually worked at Google.

[StupidIntelligent]

"...therefore the entire SEO industry is a big scam..."

@mzb44 - But, the SEO industry is a scam. Pure BS; where a small number of "popular" people have made tens of millions of dollars.

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

[StupidIntelligent]

And Randy Fishkin was fine until he botched his exit from Moz. He became anti-Google only after his resignation/firing from the company he founded. That scar would be with him for life, but he's taking out his regrets on Google.

And Google is evil. Randy isn't an angel either. Everybody is working for an audience. The bills need paying.

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira - My big drop in USA traffic yesterday turned and I ended up much higher. Today is fairly strong. Traffic is much better than June, but still nowhere close to this time 2019, and still lower than this time in 2020. Even with the higher traffic it's been very slow this summer...people are either out enjoying life or spent out I think.

[ichthyous]

therefore the entire SEO industry is a big scam

It is a big scam, now. It didn't start that way though. Google has worked tirelessly to ensure that patterns cannot be inferred, and that a certain level of randomization is built in. Faster and faster algo updates and disastrous drops await us all, sometimes multiple...if it hasn't hit you yet it will, just wait.

Beyond basic prescriptions for what to do, like "build good content" and "beef up your author credibility"...SEOs are now flying blind and living off past impressions that they knew what they were talking about. They no longer do, and never will again. It's only a matter of time before everyone figures that out. Already all of them parrot the same advice, because it's all they can really do now without sounding too specific and getting themselves into trouble. The more Google kills off organic, the more nails in the coffin of SEO.

[JesterMagic]

SEO is an important part of a websites success in most cases. I would not call the SEO industry a scam as there is benefit to it but there are a lot of so called SEO experts out there promising the world and then never delivering. Lots of get rich quick type schemes.

I also hate how the latest trend in SEO seems to create these long boring articles that talk about everything on the topic except what it mentions in the title. There are so many of these type of articles in Google Discovery with ads it seems like after every paragraph. Really wish Google would stop promoting these.

I see the SEO industry more like the Diet/Health, and Finance industries where there is a lot of schemes that promise instant success but in the end do little to help the buyer.

[frankleeceo]

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

Not if the rewrite is retarded. And there is quite a bit of retardation right now.

Made Up Example:

Query: Is Apple Good?

Content:
"How An Apple a Day Keeps Doctor Away"

Rewrite:
apple good for doctor - apple

I saw some retarded description rewrites a few months back for 2~3 days too.

Somehow description was pulling from menus and tags.

So the full rewrite looks like this retardness

Content:
Title: "How An Apple a Day Keeps Doctor Away"
Meta: Learn about how apple helps keeping the doctor away for you.

Rewrite:
Title: apple good for doctor - apple
Meta: apple - banana - orange - contact us - do you think doctor - is good for you away .......applegood.com.

I recken when they run retarded changes like this they get the following. This change is great for Google business. Why? Just think when they butcher organic like this what happens.

1. Increased traffic to G eco system.
2. Increased ads revenue
3. Additional search volume.

When organics all look gibberish and retarded. Paid ads copy / G property content suddenly looks a lot more appealing.

[Edge]

Yesterday and last Friday (August 13) identical number of users mid... ##,###.

The last 8 Fridays and other days total number of users are always within 0.3%.

[StupidIntelligent]

A guy on Barry's website is even contemplating suicide because his affiliate site was destroyed; his only source of income for her autistic 3-year-old daughter.

[i.imgur.com...]

[seroundtable.com...]

See comments section.

[frankleeceo]

To continue my previous posts. Let's further explore the issue. And it's happening right under our eyes. Don't tell me I am the only guy seeing this stuff.

Query: Is Apple Good?

Position 1: Shopping Ads
All types of Apples from all the Major brands.

Position 2: Adwords Ad from Brands to Sell You the Best Apples

(extra note, this part is already below the fold, in some circumstances nearly 2 scroll away)
Position 3: Retarded rewrite
Position 4: Retarded rewrite

Position 5: Organic Shopping Listing About Apple

Position 6: Local Apple Sellers

Position 7: People Also Ask
What is the Best Apple
What is the Best Apple Brand
Where Do I Buy Apple
Should I Eat Apple Everyday

Position 8: YouTube Listing
Apple Reviews, How to Eat Apple, I Ate Apple for 5 Days and this is What I Look Now.

Position 9~10: Spam Website that Lead to Pono
It's entry would like like this
Apple is Sexy
Apple is Good and Hot Tonight

Knowledge Graph:
The closest grocery store near you. (In the not so distant future, you can buy the placement with Ads too!)

With SERP's like this, a person doesn't have to be a retard to see how google is:
1. Increased traffic to G eco system.
2. Increased ads revenue
3. Additional search volume.

No SEO can optimize their site enough to "stand out" from this dump. Better to take out wallets and credit cards and see the "sacrificial offering" to Google God as a cost to the business. The more I learn about paid media and ppc part of business. The more confident I am with my current conclusion.

In a sense, only serious businesses would pay to get on top. So they deserve to have POS 1, right? This is how Google is finally decided to battle the spam.

Turn every organic into spam, so what left is the brand and paying customer. The money filter out the cesspool. The writing had been on the wall for several years. And things are getting ridiculous.

[Edge]

@ frankleeceo + I'm getting very different results..

Position 1: Webmd - nutrition info for apples
Position 2: "People also ask" apples and fruit stuff
Position 3: Healthline - nutrition info apples
Position 4: Medical site Benefits of eating an apple

the rest are sites discussing apples their benefits.

no ads...

Interesting..

[frankleeceo]

@Edge

The more likely you are to convert for a given keyword, the higher percentage of ads that you will see. Sorry you were not targetted by any campaign for your given choice. Or google system decided that you do not fit in that conversion segmentation bucket.

It depends on your buying cycle. The closer you are to the conversion funnel, the amount of ads you see exponentially increases.

(and apple is an example, switch out with a high competition keywords / product). Your intent is tracked pretty well. So if you search randomly, you probably won't see it. Goog knows that you ain't buying.

To really replicate this, you need to have searched for those keywords, visitor many sites selling products, purchased the product before, and join those company's marketing list. The effect can become mind boggling. You need to prove to Goog that you are ready to buy, and you will be matched with the ads.

Anyways, the long term implication of this is that.

Organic conversion rate will trend down continuously.
And PPC ads conversion rate will gradually creep up.
Organic traffic will be for brand awareness.
And PPC is the final conversion funnel.

That's the path we are fully steering into. Whatever "magic" or "algo" change, needs to fulfill the agenda above.

[golderberger]

Kinda off topic but fine read regarding Google "policies" and app store: [twitter.com...]

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic this morning. Has anyone else noticed a significant increase this morning?

[golderberger]

@renatovieira: my traffic seems to be consistent, the main problem is that it does not convert to sales. Last 4 days were terrible - despite the fact i'm still #1 in SERP . In my case it correlates to the changes detected via SEMRUSH SENSOR or similar.

[Dooku]

Don't tell me I am the only guy seeing this stuff.
Query: Is Apple Good?

Alright, slow down and check what your doing? This query is NOT representative at all for ANY conclusion to be made.
Also, checking on several computers at different geo locations I (nor others) do NOT see such results.

Yes, I consider people using adwords to be just paying G tax as the ROI in my opinion is NOT worth it EVEN WHEN I know how to make a profit using it. I do my own SEO for my sites(with some outsourced work for the tedious time consuming tasks). But this way I control my own SEO and the results last MUCH LONGER than the results in adwords where G changes settings and adds options much faster and then you need to tinker AGAIN and AGAIN with your campaign settings.

Yes, the SEO industry is 95% at least a scam, but SEO in itself is NOT. People running after the "latest SEO fads" or using bad agencies are the problem and then they start blaming everyone and their mother.

[RedBar]

Like most others I am bewidered as to what may be happening.

Overall August is usually one of my quietest months and running through from July into the first week of August I was pleasantly surprised that traffic continued at slightly above my new daily average however the last two weeks until yesterday has me preplexed.

Far from reduced PVs I have now had a couple of weeks averaging +126.5% with much more January to March type of traffic and PVs.

Clearly, for the moment, something has changed substabtially however I can not see precisely what at the moment therefore this afternoon I'm going to have a good delve into my rankings and G's SERPs.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar My traffic is substantially up too for the last few weeks...and clicks and impressions are sharply higher at GSC. My mobile pages went to 100% green / good and my desktop is also substantially improved. I am still no where close to Jan-March though, and high-volume terms have not improved at all. In my case most of the difference is a return of direct (image) traffic, which had disappeared all summer. Have you taken a look to see what segment your traffic is coming from...improved search or direct? Seen an improvement in ranking? I sure haven't

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:39 pm (utc) on Aug 22, 2021]

[ichthyous]

my traffic seems to be consistent, the main problem is that it does not convert to sales. Last 4 days were terrible - despite the fact i'm still #1 in SERP .

I am seeing same...traffic slowly inching upward for weeks but very few inquiries and almost no sales this entire summer. Still, I am nowhere even remotely close to recovering the ranking I had in Jan-March. There are only a handful of high volume terms that my site ranks for now...probably a 2/3 reduction in my ranking for high-volume terms and no sign of improving.

[StupidIntelligent]

@ichthyous - No sales all summer.

Man. I hope you have a backup or savings in the bank, because any business would shut the door and move on. No sales equals no money to pay the bills.

[ichthyous]

@StupidIntelligent Sales were so strong from Jan-March that I was barely sleeping more than 4-5 hours a day. But Google certainly took care of that starting with the March updates! Certainly the prospect of much lower business moving forward due to the changes Google has made have led me to reassess the entire business model. I am fortunate that I started out in 2004 and had many good years and invested the money from this business into other things and had very good luck with that...I could retire now if I wanted, but I'm too young for that. So while I am not pleased about Google totally screwing my sales I am not panicked.

[StupidIntelligent]

@ichthyous - Kewl.

[RedBar]

I'm going to have a good delve into my rankings and G's SERPs.

I had an hour or so on this yesterday afternoon and the SERPs are so-so, messy, unfathomable at times, ok and incestuous!

1. G.com was pretty much as expected with the usual US businesses and very few foreign companies. I had some excellent rankings for some very popular widgets for which I am getting no enquiries whatsoever, and then again for those widgets I am getting enquiries I do not appear ot be ranking!

Pinterest was very noticeable with usually 2/3 results on the first page.

2. G.uk is very messy, far too many incapable of supplying US companies are ranking. Pinterest is either 2/3 results per page or nothing whatsoever. Some of the first page results are so thin it is crazy, keywords in titlebar, on page, one very poor image, a couple of lines of generic text and there ya goes ... top ten result.

My rankings are plainly weird, I'm either #1 or #2 or cannot be found, after 28 years of websites I think I have a good track record and a darned sight more reputation than Gs within my industry and its bizarre ranking selections.

Does anyone have any inkling as to why G has this obsession with specific US sites and inserts them in EVERY G.TLD when they cannot supply? From an import / export perspective G even insert these companies into the SERPs FROM that supplying country even though there are plenty of national sites which ought to be ranked.

It stinks of incestuous manipulation through and through all the time.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar If you are ranking #1-#2 on a lot of terms consider yourself lucky...about 2/3 of my top ranking high volume terms are gone, and likely for good when I see what has replaced them. Rather than allowing a mix of sites which would reflect the reality that people have various intents in searching for some terms, Google has chosen for us what the intent is, and therefore all the traffic is accruing to the sites it deems fitting that single intent...and they generally are the same sites over and over. When you say 'manipulation' for me that is the single largest form of manipulation of the SERPs now.

BTW...My UK traffic is always extremely high, and I do serve a UK customer base for the last 20 years. It's not like it's difficult to ship something across the Atlantic. In order to keep costs down I have part of the manufacturing process located in the UK (or Australia, EU, Etc)...that way it can be finished locally and shipped internally, skipping customs duties and international freight charges. UK is an easy market for US suppliers, and vice versa.

[RedBar]

If you are ranking #1-#2 on a lot of terms consider yourself lucky..

Well,, it's all very well ranking highly but actually precisely WHERE am I on the page when it comes to all the G ads and guff before you get to the organic rankings? At least a couple of regular mouse scroll clicks southwards!

UK is an easy market for US suppliers, and vice versa.

Obviously this depends on the nature of the widget. My stuff is so heavy that we ship in 24 tonne container loads only since it is the only "economical" way to do it.

Whilst the www allows everyone to see my widgets across country borders when purchasing them it is way beyond the average person's investment and precisely why importers and wholesalers still exist in my industry all over the world.

[ichthyous]

What I am seeing is generally quite a bit higher traffic than June and July, with zero conversions. Google also always finds a way to make sure you are never clicking on all cylinders. One day my home page will plummet, the next day one of my most important interior pages will plummet and home page recovers, next day UK traffic plummets, and currently all my traffic from Australia has vanished for two days. Lately my Aussie customers are the highest conversions I have...UK and Europe are not spending and USA inquiries have all suddenly become low budget shoppers. Is it possible that Google can even weed out those with the highest income demographic?...I wouldn't be surprised. On top of that we have delta variant fear and those who are vaxed are traveling more.

[yollo03]

@Redbar, domain authority. These are probably sites with authority above 85 or around the number. #AuhorityRules

[mzb44]

I think most of you are aware of the title rewrite update. I would still suggest you check out some of the examples, if you haven't already:

Here: [twitter.com...]

And here: [twitter.com...]

And here: [twitter.com...]

And here: [twitter.com...]

And here: [twitter.com...] - L O L - Google literally rewrote "President Joe Biden - The White House" into "Vice President Joe Biden - The White House".

And here: [twitter.com...]

And here: [twitter.com...]

There was also an example where Google rewrote the title and used the actual site URL.

Something like: how-to-get-strated-with-writing-your-blog-20210816 <-- This was the actual title in the serp.

Sure, they seem to have manually fixed some of these after they were reported, but it's interesting these happened in the first place.

---

I can draw two main conclusions form this.

1. Google REALLY thinks it knows better than webmasters and users in general

Seems like they decided to rewrite the titles of half the internet. They even rewrote the title of whitehouse.gov which was absolutely fine by any standard. Not even ultra authority gives you a pass.

I think this is in line with the current Google philosophy that webmasters and users can't be trusted / webmaster trends and user behaviours should be ignored and Google should just force its own thing on everyone.

This is why we're seeing sites with good user signals, great links etc. still hit - Google sometimes just ignores to follow regular signals and decides instead that it knows better what kind of content users should be reading and arbitrarily demotes / promotes categories and types of sites regardless of regular web signals (ux, links, content etc).

2. The quality of Google updates is generally low

It's incredible that this obviously extremely terrible and low-quality update got pushed live.

The only reason it's very obvious now that the update was really low-quality is because it involved the title tags. It wasn't as abstract as the things they do during a core update, for ex. You can see the quality of the update much more clearly now.

So what makes us think all the other updates aren't equally as bad and low-quality and have an equally high fail rate?

What if a lot of the reports we read on this very forum of sites getting hit by core updates with webmasters swearing their sites are legit and great... are actually correct? And they got hit by "accident" like how Joe Biden was made the Vice President by Google.

If this is the average quality of a regular Google update, then we're all fcked.