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?

[superclown2]

I know what my websites are about. after all created them. I put in title tags that describe them.

Google changed the heading of one of them to match a h2 tag well down the page. Clicks on that page stopped dead.

Frankly I reckon this is just part of their drive to make people click on ads by making the SERPs look less relevant. The arrogance of this devious company is mind boggling.

[mzb44]

Google changed the heading of one of them to match a h2 tag well down the page. Clicks on that page stopped dead.

Frankly I reckon this is just part of their drive to make people click on ads by making the SERPs look less relevant. The arrogance of this devious company is mind boggling.

This is in line with the general theme of these monthly threads for some time now. Google is making updates that allow them to influence ads vs. organic CTR.

Basically they implemented a tool now they can anytime on-demand tweak to slightly reduce organic CTR and increase ads CTR.

They don't even need to mess titles up like in the above examples. Just display something slightly less relevant and more broad/generic but still passable.

Doesn't even need to be super heavy handed. Just 1%-2% organic CTR drop broadly over the whole web, barely noticeable on an individual site basis, but means hundreds of millions of extra revenue. They can do this on-demand to boost quarterly numbers anytime when needed.

But of course we just have to believe and trust that they would never abuse this because that would be unethical, and they would never do anything unethical. This is what some SEOs (even of this forum!) actually believe.

[superclown2]

they would never do anything unethical. This is what some SEOs (even of this forum!) actually believe.

"Over and over again we are pushing the envelope"
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, May 2012.

They are just carrying on the tradition, and will do so until forced to stop.

[superclown2]

As an aside it is interesting for me to see that my clicks from Bing on my main site are increasing every month. Over the last few years they have averaged less than 3% of my Google clicks but they are now up to around 10%. Maybe it's my SEO that's doing that, but maybe the public are waking up to how a great search engine has morphed into a greedy advertising agency.

[RareBit]

"Over and over again we are FILLING the envelope WITH WADS OF CASH"
Google 2021

[ichthyous]

Google has been rewriting page titles for a while...my home page title was literally showing only my name for years. I recently changed it back to the old title text and it updated to the full title immediately. It seems that Google is attempting to root out deceiving titles that do not reflect the page content, but it does so very poorly. I would also agree that it is probably another excuse to hammer CTR of organic SERPS. Having said that, my own search traffic has been increasing steadily for weeks.

Today my direct traffic is down 83% at 9:30am...USA traffic is down 42%. Australia traffic has returned to normal after a three day hiatus, and all my landing pages are performing. But still an 83% decline in direct traffic. If the pattern holds it will suddenly jump up later today...it's clear that Google turns on / off segments of traffic like a light switch.

[bebopandrocksteady]

"it's clear that Google turns on / off segments of traffic like a light switch."

They really do. It's pretty disgusting how they can turn the lights out on a business doing all the right things. One day traffic is flourishing and the next, it's dead. This has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with Google.

[yollo03]

@ichthyous, is your domain rating above 50 if you dont mind me asking?

[ichthyous]

@yollo03 48 why?

Today a massive drop in 'direct' traffic, and total USA traffic is down 33% at noon, UK down 21% 'Search' traffic is up 10% today and I have recovered some top 3 ranking. This appears to be another massive Google Images shakeup, which was the case in June, July, and the beginning of August but then turned around.

The scary thing is the complete lack of inquiries from new customers, despite traffic generally increasing this month. My inbox is full of SPAM and the occasional email from clueless people that I cannot serve in any way. I have not seen a summer this quiet since the recession of 2009-2010.with the exception of 2020 which was a special case. That has everything to do with Google I think, and it is quite worrisome. By comparison, Jan-March were much higher traffic and sales were on fire.

[yollo03]

Because certain keywords only rank well for a certain domain rating in my opinion. The higher your domain rating is the better you will rank. If you are trying to rank for a keyword that is above you reach, lets say 'snickers' for example then it won't work unless you have a certain domain rating. Only an example

[ichthyous]

Because certain keywords only rank well for a certain domain rating in my opinion. The higher your domain rating is the better you will rank.

In general yes, however there are competitors with DR one point higher than mine that are ranking higher than ever, and have risen to top five in sone of the old high-volume terms that I have lost in the same time period. I've lost 2/3 of my high volume terms since March...in some cases I am at position 70-90. They now rank at the top for some of those searches. I also see sites with lower DR than mine ranking at the top now. So it's not always the case.

The issue is that they are ranking because they write how-to articles about subjects, while I don't. My pages are simply thematic archives of images with plenty of text. Google has made the decision that the intent of all these searches is informational and not commercial, period. Well, that clearly is not the case since many many customers were hitting my site looking to buy before Google decided that it was the best arbiter of intent and no other choice is now offered. I am hoping that they roll back deciding the intent of every search somewhat, but it's not likely.

[yollo03]

Are the lower DR sites are relatively new websites? If yes, that explains it. These websites that are ahead of you in the search, do there articles have blog in the url or do they have a blog and you don't?

[ichthyous]

Are the lower DR sites are relatively new websites? 

No, they are established sites

These websites that are ahead of you in the search, do there articles have blog in the url or do they have a blog and you don't?

They are either sites like mine which also have a blog, or they are just e-zine sites, no e-commerce component. Clearly articles are what Google is pushing now...most of my high volume terms that had e-commerce sites ranking in the top ten until the March update are now completely flipped over to how-to articles or articles only with no commercial sites. Google has decided the intent for all of these searches, there is no mix.

But many people do perform these searches to shop too, and they haven't gone away. Google now wants the old commercial sites that used to rank to pay for ads to rank above blog posts. I would be happy to do so if it worked...I tried it and the Adwords traffic was so abysmally bad that I turned off all my ads. It's just a complete waste of money.

[yollo03]

I am not suggesting you to do it but perhaps having the blog on a subdomain might be better. So instead of yourdomain.com/how-to/ to use blog.yourdomain.com/how-to/. No idea whether this will even work or do more damage but that might separate the ecommerce from blog articles.

[EditorialGuy]

But many people do perform these searches to shop too, and they haven't gone away. Google now wants the old commercial sites that used to rank to pay for ads to rank above blog posts.

I just did a variety of product searches to check your hypothesis, and the top results were a mixture of manufacturer pages and e-commerce pages from major online retailers. (One of the searches also had a review in the top five.) As always, YMMV.

[ichthyous]

I just did a variety of product searches to check your hypothesis, and the top results were a mixture of manufacturer pages and e-commerce pages from major online retailers

How can you test my hypothesis without knowing the terms / niche in question? Answer is: you can't. The high volume terms I was ranking at the top on until March can be interpreted in a couple of ways...one with commercial / shopping intent and one with informational / learning intent. Before it was a mix of entries, but now no commerce to be found, just articles, top ten lists and how-tos.

@Yollo3 I don't have a blog and don't intend to get one. I sell very high priced items...think one sale a month and you have a good year. Sitting and writing top ten lists and silly blog posts copying the same crap everyone is pumping out isn't going to bring in the clients who purchase these items. The problem is that Google has decided the intent, period, and commercial sites are out. If I sat and pumped out the same how-tos and top tens #1 my customers would be confused because the brand is high end, and #2 I would attract a totally different user that won't convert to sales. I have thought about it, but sitting and writing useless informational posts isn't going to bring in the users that were searching for something to buy.

[engine]

For the record, Google says "The link spam update is now complete."

[twitter.com...]

[MayankParmar]

Has CTR dropped for anyone?

[mzb44]

Has CTR dropped for anyone?

Yes.

Mostly because of the force-rewritten titles.

Seems like Google wanted to remove webmasters' possibility to optimise for organic CTR. This was largely achieved through writing and testing different variants of titles.

I think the end game is to completely remove webmasters' control over this process and ensure Google alone has full control over CTR on the entire SERP.

[yollo03]

@ichthyous if you dont have a blog then enough websites need to mention you and about what you offer so the algorithms will know what you are offering.

I am noticing movements in the past 48 hours that the sensors are not picking up. Is anyone else noticing movements in their niche?

[JesterMagic]

Google has been rewriting titles forever but there latest attempt in the update does produce some laughable results which unfortunately is at the expense of webmasters and lower clicks to those pages.

Looking at the rewritten titles does point to how Google's AI doesn't comprehend the content or titles at all and they have A LONG WAY TO GO before even it can begin to understand what is written.

Still at least in our niche, page titles by some sites are extremely click bait. Instead of rewriting these titles, Google they should just push it lower in the search results.

I would also say Google Discover feed on my phone has the same problem. 75% of the content shown is garbage (titles, long winded content that in the end has no new news, and too many ads). I've started to visit sites directly for news now instead of dealing with the mess that is Google Discover.

[renatovieira]

Huge drop today. Here we go again :-|

[ichthyous]

Has CTR dropped for anyone?

Not for me, it's stable within a range...but that level is less than half of what it was in 2019. 2020 decimated CTR and it never improved.

My Impressions and clicks inched upward every day from Aug 9-21, then fell off a cliff from Aug 21 - Aug 24 and are right back where they started.

GSC reporting 100% green pages on both desktop and mobile, and 99.9% good urls in user experience. I spent a lot of time on that, but it hasn't helped to improve my ranking at all...zero.

As a laughable aside...today for one search for a high-volume term, one site has THREE urls ranking in the top ten results. Two spots are devoted to the same article listed twice, then below that the home page for the same site. You would thing it would be relatively easy to stop that from happening, and the article listings don't appear to be anything special. I think the freshness factor has a lot to do with it, so sites that constantly publish a lot of crap articles every day are getting multiple spots.

[edited by: ichthyous at 12:56 pm (utc) on Aug 25, 2021]

[ichthyous]

Huge drop today. Here we go again :-|

Yesterday was a big drop for me for specific segments, but ended the day stable. Today the direct traffic seems to have returned and the UK traffic, but USA traffic is down 60% to start the day. It may catch up by day's end. 12-24 hour mysterious drops in traffic for certain segments are the norm now.

[southernguy]

As an aside it is interesting for me to see that my clicks from Bing on my main site are increasing every month. Over the last few years they have averaged less than 3% of my Google clicks but they are now up to around 10%. Maybe it's my SEO that's doing that, but maybe the public are waking up to how a great search engine has morphed into a greedy advertising agency.

My search volume from bing on many sites now exceeds 25% and it (continues to increase) I am also getting more and more traffic from Ecosia and DDG. No one I know uses Google anymore, most have switched over to another search platform because of the obvious irrelevant results and the annoying people also ask boxes.

[ichthyous]

My search volume from bing on many sites now exceeds 25% and it (continues to increase) I am also getting more and more traffic from Ecosia and DDG. No one I know uses Google anymore

Wish I could say the same. In the last 28 days Bing provided 2.4% of my search traffic, DDG 1%, Yahoo Search 2.3%. Google properties combined provided over 94% of search traffic. I know one person that uses DDG, and nobody that uses Bing.

[RedBar]

Across all sites since lunch UK time it has been unusually quiet for me to the extent some sites at 18.00 have not reached 25% of their daily average ... Very strange for a Wednesday.

[MayankParmar]

Google's title update working as expected [imgur.com...]

[NickMNS]

I'm seeing a massive increase in traffic. It started on the 22, when I was up almost 20% from the previous week. Yesterday I was up 25%, and today I was up 40 to 50% for most of the day but in the last few hours I've seen an increase (hourly) of nearly 300%. I'm up more than 70% on the day.

The traffic looks normal, that is, it follows a typical pattern, same geo distribution, same landing page distribution and the increase is coming Google (organic). But based on the posts here it looks like things are quiet. I would be very surprised if this was the result of the title update.

I've had a new website scraping some content and posting links could that be the cause?

[RedBar]

Lower levels of traffic across all sites yesterday with none reaching their daily average, in fact one site had 41% of its average and the previous lowest in August was 59.8% also on a Wednesday. This site has 96.7% UK traffic.

Overall though all sites have had a good month until yesterday, is it all going to fall apart over the last few days?