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?

[ichthyous]

Another massive drop in USA traffic this morning...down 54% by almost noon. Search is down 29% and my main landing page is down 37%, despite not losing any ranking! Google has killed my sales with this for most of 2021, it's really awful.

[yollo03]

@ichthyous, did you lose several backlinks in the search console? I believe there was a re-evaluation of the backlinks profile.

[frankleeceo]

maybe google started rewriting your title or fixed your competitors.

[ichthyous]

@Yollo03 No, in fact backlinks went up. USA traffic still down 30% by 3pm and search is down 17%. According to SEMrush my home page has a rank of 67, and the landing pages in the low 60's. But it's also showing the number of toxic backlinks as very high. Last time I checked on SEMrush perhaps two years ago it was LOW...now it's high and "potentially dangerous" at 9% of all links. Not sure if I am the victim of negative SEO but it just looks like the same random scraper sites that come and go rapidly, but SEMrush is recording them more quickly now and counting them.

My impression and clicks in GSC are dropping steadily again for weeks...the increase through the 13th was short lived:
[ibb.co ]

[Martin Ice Web]

After 7 days of very good and converting traffic, it started yesterday with rubbish traffic and today traffic is down by 50% again. I think it is a roll back from update on 24/25.

[RedBar]

Global site September 2021 v Augsut 2021 PVs -18.9%

Normally it would be +15%, this has resulted in the lowest month of the year ... in September !?!?!?

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is atrocious today, -36% and getting worse today. AU has joined the party, but has been down for most of September...UK and elsewhere remains strong.

All of you who keep saying that Google is pushing up high DA sites, sorry but it's just not the case. SEMrush has my site at 48, my home page is 67, landing pages low 60's. Yes I am losing ranking for the last month again, after never having recovered from the March - July decline.

From what I see, Google's new AI is just determining for us what is relevant to the search and what isn't. For searches that could be either informational or have commercial intent in my niche, Google's AI has removed all sites relevant to a commercial intent and has replaced these high-volume searches with 1) how-to articles, 2) How to videos, 3) free stock photo sites and the like. It's not that I am losing out, it's me and all of the similar sites that actually sold a product. It hasn't changed back and is getting worse...it's spreading like a cancer across all the high volume terms that used to bring in traffic.

Google has determined the intent on a per-search basis and now anyone previously ranking with any e-comm is far down the list. I can see that this is probably just a strategy to force more commercial / sales oriented sites to pay under the pretext of "we are providing the most accurate information that our users want". These customers used to want my site for 20 years, and it changed overnight this year (the signs started in 2020 actually)...customers still want my site when Google briefly allows them to see it, so that excuse is just pure BS. It's just Google's pretext to squeeze businesses for more revenue, period. This has left me with much much lower sales volume since April, so it's basically game over if you expect to get any converting traffic from Google organic anymore.

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

I'm seeing strange data on a 3 month old site that is already ranking well in D/B/G/Y, hardly any real traffic yet plenty of repeat daily bot traffic.

What is even more strange is that it's a UK-focussed site but only 15.2% of that traffic is from the UK, all my other UK-focussed sites have a minimum 90% UK traffic.

Question ... Is no one in the UK searching for these widgets these days ? At the moment inexplicable to me.

[christianz]

Traffic is down, progressively since September 25+. Looks like the annual high value Christmas season traffic cut-off was enabled early.

Google gotta get that sweet sweet holiday revenue!

[BigKat]

It's Manufacturing Day here in the USA and what better way for Google to celebrate then to give rise in their SERPS to Chinese produced goods sold on Amazon? So much for Google celebrating in our industry.

Together with the National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute, Manufacturing Extension Partnership Centers, and federal agency partners, the Manufacturing USA network celebrates the manufacturers who make the products that keep us safe, enrich our lives, strengthen our economic and national security, and provide countless opportunities for our communities and workforce.

I can see that this is probably just a strategy to force more commercial / sales oriented sites to pay under the pretext of "we are providing the most accurate information that our users want".

When I shop online, I rarely go to Google. They have made it so difficult to find products, Google is probably the last place I go. I'm sure there are many others like me which is why despite having a 90%+ search marketshare, their product search marketshare continues to deteriorate. I think these updates, which appear designed to do precisely as you said (make Google more money), also erode consumer confidence in using Google to find products. Because of this, I think Google's marketshare of product searches will continue going downhill.

[bebopandrocksteady]

USA Publisher here. USA traffic is awful Sept 30 and Oct 1. It's strange because, for example, semrush doesn't seem to picking it up. Which makes me wonder, is USA just sleeping? of course, that'd be best-case scenario seeing a 30% drop

[christianz]

Semrush does pick it up. Its 8.7 volatility for USA

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/5049080.htm [webmasterworld.com]
7:12 am on Oct 2, 2021 (utc -5)