Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2021

[goodroi]

August is typically a holiday/vacation month in the northern hemisphere as people take time out to recuperate, and to prepare for a busy quarter, and 2021 is likely to follow similar patterns. Black Friday and cyber Monday, along with many other regional holiday dates usually have an impact on business in the quarter, as well as Christmas and New Year.

Looking back at the past quarter of Google's SERPs changes has brought the usual shenanigans, and winners and losers. Traffic, and most importantly, conversions, is a goal of publishers selling services and goods to business and to end users. Here are a few of the changes worth noting in the past month or so that you may have missed.

The Google and Link Spam: Qualify Links for Affiliate Links or Sponsored Guest Posts Update [webmasterworld.com] took quite a while to roll through, and it was probably a good four weeks or so of changes.

There were quite a few observations of note in our Google Updates and SERP Changes - August 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

Also, there was a Google Image Rendering Bug Causes Some Failures in Top Stories [webmasterworld.com]

Do you want to know how to control parts of snippets displayed in the SERPs "Data-no snippet" How to Stop Parts of a Google SERPs Snippet From Showing [webmasterworld.com]

There was also a piece about How to Remove Web Results From Google Search [webmasterworld.com]

Is it a penalty, or the result of an algo change. [webmasterworld.com]

Google changing descriptions in the SERPs have been going on for years, and here's the latest on the changes in our thread titled Update: Google Generating Page Titles on SERPs [webmasterworld.com]

Supporters forum (paid subscriptions) Google's NLP demo taken down and it's still available if you know how [webmasterworld.com]


Plus lots of other Google search and SEO topics [webmasterworld.com], and recent discussion in other sectors on WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

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

[vivektank]

Hello Team,

In August, all our "eCommerce" category keywords dropped suddenly. I checked my Google Search Console for "Security & Manual Actions" didn't get any penalty message from Google.

Please help me to find the actual reason & how to recover our lost keywords.

[ichthyous]

So sick of this crap with Google...another down day with my USA traffic starting the day -60%. Not one single direct hit by 10:30am, insane. My landing pages are showing the biggest losses...some have had no traffic at all yet today.

Note: I did make a major change to my image hosting, moving it back to a subdomain where it used to be last year (and image traffic was much higher). This could be the cause but I doubt it. I issued a 301 redirect for the content.

[ichthyous]

Ok what a weird traffic day...traffic soared later in the day and is now at normal for all countries, despite 'direct' traffic still being down 65% today. Search traffic is up 25%.

[frankleeceo]

I am seeing some crazy shuffling for short tail keywords that I monitor closely. A long time first posiiton legacy site that had its first place for more than 2~3 years is getting knocked around.

this is a site that hasn't updated for 7+ years, not mobile friendly, with HTTP, getting millions of traffic for this term. if sticks, it's huge in my vertical of interest

[NickMNS]

short tail keywords

Strictly speaking the term "short tail keywords" is not a thing, I assume that you likely mean a short "key phrase", that is made a up a few words. Long tail, refers to the statistical distribution of the frequency of searches, where few "keywords" or "key phrases" are searched frequently, and a near infinite number of "keywords" are rarely if ever searched for. Think of a skewed bell curve. The frequent searches are the body, and the infrequent searches are the tail.

While it is often true that long key phrases made of many words are more likely to be in the "long tail". A term such as "plwq" is also likely in the "long tail". So the term "long tail" does not refer to the number or words of the search term, but rather the frequency of searches. The opposite of a long tail search term, is thus best described as a frequently searched term. A short tail would suggest a change in the shape of the statistical distribution, and that is not likely.

[en.wikipedia.org...]

[frankleeceo]

Nick my man, you and your wiki lol. Here's what it means for you straight from whatever wiki article you linked to.

"By contrast, the long tails in the frequency-rank plots highlighted by Anderson and Shirky would rather correspond to short tails in the associated probability distributions, and therefore illustrate an opposite phenomenon compared to the Gutenberg–Richter and the Zipf's laws."

And yes I am describing a very unlikely event that is a major shift from what I saw for 2~3 years with the first ranking site shifted away to second positions. If something is starting, it's big.

[NickMNS]

Lol, that is funny... You did ctrl-F for short-tail and pasted the first thing you found.

FWIW, I'm not seeing any changes, traffic was a bit down as of Monday but otherwise steady.

[frankleeceo]

lol :) maybe I am overthinking this, I monitor this keyword for 5+ years (it's a two word broad phrase with 110k volume according to ubersuggest/semrush), the first place held its place for as long as I remember. My site bounces around position 5~15 for 1~2 years for this term.

Fingers crossed that I somehow get position 2 for this.

Without giving the domain away, the positions 1~3 all rank this legacy domain, and it is kookoo idiotic.

pos 0 answer box
pos 1: [?.com...] › ?dictionary › a.htm
pos 2: [?.com...] › ?dictionary
pos 2.5: People also ask
pos 3: [?.com...]
pos 4: something else
pos 4.5: sometimes Youtube
pos 5: mine

[BushyTop]

Seeing a drop this morning after some fairly steady incremental growth over the past few weeks.

[edited by: BushyTop at 7:35 am (utc) on Sep 9, 2021]

[BushyTop]

Seeing a drop this morning after some fairly steady incremental growth over the past few weeks.

[Auwuzela]

Google's main goal is to provide users with relevant information. Headlines that are too long may not be a good SEO practice. If you are using some SEO plugins that we are all familiar with, you will not be affected by all these . I've seen it two or three times. Someone posted about this content on Twitter and elsewhere. But Google wants quality, we just have to follow the requirements. Work hard to complete Title 1, Subtitles 2 and 3. It would be very helpful

[RedBar]

it os now 10.30 am UK time.

Yestderday my global site had normal traffic patterns / levels until between 22.00 / 23.00, and since then mostly single page views and also much reduced traffic levels. 12 hours of this so far and if it were tto continuw for another 12 hours it would be -80%!

Obviously this is not a normal pattern for me / anyone.

[Markedd]

@Auwuzela Welcome to Webmasterworld, but I do have to say that you have no idea what you're talking about. Google's main goal is profit and there is huge amount of proof that it doesn't give a rat's ass about relevancy or quality. Just read a few posts on this thread ffs..

[RedBar]

Google's main goal is to provide users with relevant information.

It certainly did from 1998 until about 2005/6 but then things began to change and by 2010 it was very evident that G's priority was scraping sites to derive maximum profits. One only has to look at their profits ever since then to realise that all Google has done is extract information meanwhile turning itself into a paid-for advertising platform. Correct adverts can be shown however correct SERPs results are very frequently balderdash ... That was being polite:-)

If you are using some SEO plugins that we are all familiar with,

Whilst WYSIWYG progammes are useful to many you will find here many who rely on their own skill and expertise.

[EditorialGuy]

Whilst WYSIWYG progammes are useful to many you will find here many who rely on their own skill and expertise.

There's no reason why you can't enjoy convenience *and* edit code manually to your heart's content (e.g., by switching from design to code view if your authoring program has that feature).

[RedBar]

(e.g., by switching from design to code view if your authoring program has that feature).

Absolutely but just how many would do that? I bet a very minute percentage since that would take all the "ease" out of what they're doing:-)

I have to admit I learned coding in the 90s whilst using Dreamweaver. I used to construct, watch what happened and then experiment manually altering the code and then when I had any issues I started doing it all manually by the late 90s.

I tried WP once and even though I could edit what I liked I absolutely hated the code bloat and lighter weight pages were needed much more in the earlier days as you know. I used to have a maxim of 100K per page including images for many years.

[yollo03]

I updated old articles from 2016 - 2018. The content is updated in the serps (changed description and titles too) but the date next to the articles remain 2016 - 2018 in the serps. I have last updated in the articles. Is anyone experiencing something similar?

[Neohippy]

SEMrush high for the 2nd day in the UK. Yesterday was better than average for us on a Thurs, feels like something's going on.

Oh, and Yollo, that's a pretty common issue; Google just shows whatever date it fancies (I think the official line is: if the page hasn't changed enough, they still use published date instead of last modified - but I've seen plenty of egs where the content's been completely reworked, and G still chooses published date. It's maddening, but I don't think there's much that can be done about it (aside from deleting & republishing, which prob isn't the best idea?))

[yollo03]

I thought that might be the case. Do you have an idea how long passes before google will ignore the modified date? Is it 6 months, 1 year etc. ?

[BushyTop]

UK looking messy in our vertical. Lots of irrelevant pages being ranked over relevant ones.

For us personally, we have pages ranking for product that isn't relevant. Looks to be inherently tied to authority. Our pages with the most inbound links seem to be supplanting those pages with less links, even though the content is more relevant to the search term and, of course, the product on those pages is what the user is looking for.

[KaseyM]

Huge drop this past week or so - hope I've found the bottom!

[ichthyous]

since then mostly single page views and also much reduced traffic levels. 12 hours of this so far and if it were to continue for another 12 hours it would be -80%!

Yes, many of us have reported the same thing since the March update, but it really got bad in June. These days I have just accepted that there will be sudden, inexplicable, and very steep drops in traffic for periods of the day...usually prime sales periods. Usually USA traffic only in my case. Some are theorizing that Google is effectively shifting traffic to their ads during this time by either showing more of them on the page or demoting organic listings which might effectively compete with ads.

[yollo03]

I think there is a correlation between the domain ranking and that theory. From a certain domain ranking you are untouched by this behavior. I believe it is a domain rating above 50 but not 100% sure.

[RedBar]

For me yesterday's numbers ended-up at about 70%, weekend levels, across ALL sites including UK-focussed ones.

Today is trending very similar across all sites.

I need to check my SERPs to ascertain what they have done now!

[Markedd]

Let me give you an update on how rigid and stupid Google currently is. I created a new article recently which saw great success on the social media. And I mean it is being quoted on hugely popular websites and the traffic is great from these sources. I check Bing, DDG, etc and I see that the article is at the top of their first page, obviously. But not on Google, no, they know better (it's not even indexed). I have to stay in limbo for 10 days until Google decides I deserve top spot. In the meantime, big websites can create garbage articles and it takes 1 second to get to the first page where they sit forever. And there was this guy a bit above saying Google focuses on value and quality. I am still not over it.

[yollo03]

Websites that were penalized for God knows what several months ago have recovered. The recent update probably reviewed past penalties.

[BushyTop]

We’ve seen More drops this morning. We’re losing positions quickly atm.

[yollo03]

@Bushy, if some of your competitors were brought back form the 'dead' from the recent update it explains why you are dropping. Check if this is the case with you. For me I experienced a minor drop, nothing significant yet.

One of the top competitors in my niche has poor core web vitals, really poor. If it is a ranking factor it might affect the 'peasants' and not the ultra-authority sites.

[rayankhaled]

SEMrush spikes again this morning 8.2 / 10

[yollo03]

Yes, a major update is being rolled out (no idea what). Check your rankings. To me it looks like a mini core update.