Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2021

[goodroi]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5046713.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 7:12 am on Oct 2, 2021 (utc -5)

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As we reach October we're gearing up sites for the holiday push through to the new year. Most of us have probably had our plans laid out for this coming quarter, and there's always a hope that Google's SERP changes are kind to us all.

Here are a few of the Google changes and threads worth noting in the past month or so that you may have missed.

Firstly, here's last month's Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

Brett noticed more exposure for Google making moves into auto industry ecosystem. [webmasterworld.com]

We've got more on Google changing titles in SERPs [webmasterworld.com] with a little clarification from the company, following the earlier confusion. [webmasterworld.com]

Although the search console reports seem to have delays built in as it refreshes, this last month it became a bigger problem, however, it's now fixed. [webmasterworld.com]

Just recently Google made a number of announcements on how MUM AI Model is changing its search. [webmasterworld.com]

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

How's your traffic holding up, and, importantly, your conversions? Let's discuss your observations on the Google algorithm updates and changes to the SERPs?

[Neohippy]

FYI, we did see a bit of a shift around the 2nd... Just kind of given up commenting every time it happens because changes seem so frequent now!

[RedBar]

October's improvement is continuing for my global site, yesterday, Tuesday, saw PVs precisely at our January to March average, direct traffic has increased considerably over previous months.

[ichthyous]

10am USA traffic shut off and down to almost zero for two hours...back to the same BS June patterns again. Is anyone else seeing this with their USA traffic?

USA traffic still way off for me, down 48% today at noon. Mostly due to the fact that my ranking has dropped for high-volume terms to my most important landing pages.

Traffic from Western Europe still far below normal, almost non-existent. UK remains strong, AU has reappeared but CA has vanished. With Google these days they always make sure that your traffic is never firing on all cylinders.

[yollo03]

I discovered that one of my competitors is using PBN, which seems to work, he keeps rising in the search. The only difference between me and my competitors is domain authority (they are above 60).

[ichthyous]

I discovered that one of my competitors is using PBN, which seems to work, he keeps rising in the search. The only difference between me and my competitors is domain authority (they are above 60).

I am convinced that a new competitor that is ranking like crazy across the board is also using a PBN. How do you discover it? My overall DA is 48, home page is 67, landing pages around 62. I'm far above them but they are pushing everyone out across the board. Another competitor has done very well since March, but they have a wide range of links from many sources. A smaller number of links but from a variety of sources counts for more than many links from fewer sources...even if those are high authority. Google clearly discounts repeated links from the same domain now.

[yollo03]

I believe once your DA is above 50 (definitely 60) you will see better results. The problem that it is relevant for now. They can tweak things whenever they want and change everything again. I did some digging as I couldn't understand why a domain that is running wordpress 5.6.1 (suggests it has been abandoned) came out of nowhere to the top. I then discovered the PBN by looking into the backlinks. He must have received a penalty that was lifted off.

Edit: it supports what others have suggested. Even if you don't change anything, once the algorithm decided to be in your favor you will rise in rankings. It makes you wonder whether there is really anything you can do aside DA that will actually change something.

I used Alexa SEO platform a while ago. For high volume keywords you need a certain DA to rank well (according to them). If you don't have that DA you can have the best content and it will get you nowhere.

[ichthyous]

For high volume keywords you need a certain DA to rank well (according to them). If you don't have that DA you can have the best content and it will get you nowhere.

In general yes, and this has always been the case with Google. However, I am seeing several competitors with lower DA ranking above me all the time now.

Seeing a return of the drop in USA traffic in the middle part of the day again. Starts in the morning and traffic remains very low for hours. Back to the old June patterns...

[yollo03]

I bet those that rank above you have only a few pages, right? If yes, you are penalized for poor site structure or duplicate content. The more pages you have the more screwed you are likely to get.

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

My USA traffic is varying quite wildly from day-to-day but overall is around its normal average however it is not generating anything much in the way of serious volume enquiries. The Middle East, for me, is very strong at the moment and along with the whole of Asia easily dominating my order books.

It has been like this for years and some of the proposed projects are simply mind-blowing in scale and cost.

[ichthyous]

I bet those that rank above you have only a few pages, right? If yes, you are penalized for poor site structure or duplicate content. The more pages you have the more screwed you are likely to get.

No, they both have content...one has a lot of content and lots of IBL. The other one just has the same content spun over and over by location, and each location has risen to the top quickly. Totally fake and I believe due to a boost from purchased links.

[ichthyous]

My USA traffic is varying quite wildly from day-to-day but overall is around its normal average however it is not generating anything much in the way of serious volume enquiries. The Middle East, for me, is very strong at the moment and along with the whole of Asia easily dominating my order books.

It has been like this for years and some of the proposed projects are simply mind-blowing in scale and cost.

@RedBar It sounds like your service is no longer as relevant to US clientele. I just checked the high volume terms that dropped my USA traffic....the page layout has changed. Four ads at top, then map with four local results, then a block of "People also Ask", then the first place organic serp, then a huge twitter carousel, then the remaining organics at bottom of page. I suspect that since this is a place-name type search that soon this will be the norm with all place-name searches...meaning many more high-volume searches will result in much less traffic.

[RedBar]

It sounds like your service is no longer as relevant to US clientele.

Nope, there's a much simpler explanation ... the extortionate increase in seafreight costs to the USA by a factor of 10!

The industry simply is not replacing stock at the moment, they're all waiiting for the Xmas container rush to be over.

[RedBar]

For me traffic has fallen off the cliff edge today with hardly any multiple page view visitors.

Over the last few weeks I have also seen many, many visits by Singapore, Huawei Clouds.

Each visit comes from a different IP and I see they are listed as an abusive IP, does anyone have their full range for me to block? I've started on the ones I do have.

[Dooku]

Over the last few weeks I have also seen many, many visits by Singapore, Huawei Clouds.

I have the same shiite from huawei clouds and have blocked the entire 114.116.... range.
Here is their complete IP block ranges: [ipinfo.io...]

[RedBar]

Thanks Dooku, looks like I have found the same info:-)

[KaseyM]

Yesterday was my worst traffic day in years. Gulp!

[ichthyous]

Today is starting off as a train wreck, despite ranking being higher...USA down 31%, UK down 56%, UAE down 27% and so on. Many of my most important landing pages are down 30-65% if any visits at all. Google is changing the page layout significantly...adding more ads at top and throughout the page. I don't see users really liking such a disordered page, it's like going into a store and asking for one thing and being shown twenty other items before they show you what you asked for.

[renatovieira]

Huge drop yesterday. Today it's much worse.

[yollo03]

All competitors I am tracking are down today with only one exception, me lol I am in the same position as I was yesterday but the biggest volume keywords were targeted and pushed down the serps. Some low volume keywords improved. The algorithms constantly target high volume keywords

[bebopandrocksteady]

The past few days, traffic has been pretty awful. I was making a recovery after a June and July beating, and then pretty much lost it all back. We have a high-quality site (for real), never participate in link schemes, buying links, guest posting, etc. The only thing that makes sense is google's search results have gotten out of control, they have no idea what they're doing and just pulling levers hoping they get lucky. As a user of google, results are simply awful now. Try to learn about a product prior to purchasing and all you find are low quality affiliate sites that just copy a product description on a few amazon reviews. /vent

[RedBar]

Much more normal multi page visitor patterns for me today however still lots of bot activity hitting solely the index page then returning a couple of minutes later to the same page and that's it. I've been getting these from several countries for awhile ... anyone else?

[ichthyous]

Traffic remains very poor, although USA traffic was normal today while UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Brazil and others way down at -28% to -66%. Home page and landing pages still much lower, even though my ranking has been higher for most of this week.

[Dooku]

@Redbar, I see a steady growth of very obvious bot traffic. Together with this any remaining traffic coming from google is absolutely crap. Whatever is valuable traffic they(G) has already relayed to other sources, mainly their own environment.

This leaves a very distinct difference between all my other traffic sources which convert 10 times better at least (not exaggerating here!)

Also, on many of (but not all) of my websites I notice since about two months a heavy increase of google bot crawling the websites.
And I mean some times like clockwork, maybe 1 to 2 minutes difference on the hour and certain periods of the day much more frequent.
And also compared to last year the google bot is crawling weird pages and folders which are useless as if they are trying to get their hands on as much info as possible to determine how to squeeze the lemon even more.

[RedBar]

@Dooku

I am slightly perplexed as to the current set of bots other than they are new. 90+% of the time they only visit the index page and leave, many on a daily basis, is this simply to confirm the site is still active or not, if so do we actually count this as good bot traffic keeping their search engines / whatever clean?

My "old style" bot traffic used to come in and download many pages, sometimes entire sites, 2-3 times a week, those are all banned now by me. Are these single page visits to the home page not worth worrying about at present.

Single page visits to "specific-widget-page.html" I have no problem with since I know that is usually people researching their intended widget purchase and I'm the #1 source for this.

I feel that for my widgets, for which G has zero interest, all the potential traffic even when ranking at #1 is mostly syphoned off by the plethora of ads, images and videos before one even sees a genuine search result, in fact these days being #1 almost means nothing on a global basis, on a local level sites can have a much better result.

What is very evident from some recent genuine business enquiries I have received is that people / companies are searching way beyond the first few pages of probably all the engines to locate something other than ads / local / images / videos.

[ichthyous]

Despite rising in the rankings for another day, traffic is now disastrously low. Search is -49% this morn, USA traffic is -61%, UK is -70% at 10am. They've been rolling out the page changes with so many new ads and features that organic is almost useless now. I don't see how this will not affect users as the page is just a jumbled confused mess. Most people simply do not want to click ads that are shoved in their face, so I can't see that they won't start abandoning Google search with so much garbage on the page. Why is Google devoting so much of 1st page results to Twitter posts?

What is very evident from some recent genuine business enquiries I have received is that people / companies are searching way beyond the first few pages of probably all the engines to locate something other than ads / local / images / videos.

This is not evident in the slightest in my business...with these page changes my traffic is trending lower and lower since September 13th...a straight line down, now culminating in periods where traffic is at a complete halt every day. The overall result will be a huge reduction if they stick to these layouts. Right now Google is testing user retention...let's see how many ads we can throw at them before they leave completely and another search engine. If their testing finds that people are turned off and leave then they might back off, but thus far that has not been the case. Basically, Google is free and people are used to it so they'll put up with whatever mess Google throws at them.

[RedBar]

This is not evident in the slightest in my business.

I have absolutely no doubt that we all experience completely different situations simply because we are nearly all approaching it from different angles with different goals. For want of a better description I am an OEM producer in several countries seeking bulk (Full container load) buyers only and, in a lot of ways, completely useless for searchers except for product information and actual availability.

It was fairly evident that G et al would have to use the ads route since, all things being equal, just how many times can a generic but popular widget be written about differently? I certainly would not want to become involved in the box moving game, too much hassle and also too boring for me I would guess. I really enjoy all the projects and supplies I have become involved with over the past 50+ years and so, too, do many of our staff.

[yollo03]

My backlinks dropped at the same time the rankings dropped. I only lost rankings for converting keywords, pushed down to position 80. What mattes is the number of impressions and not rankings itself. My impressions are down 40% today, huge. I hope in the next few days it will recover.

[ichthyous]

Traffic yesterday was insane...starting off extremely low, then suddenly surging for the rest of the day: [ibb.co ]

During this surge I had three new customer inquiries, more than the entire previous week when traffic was just awful. Today traffic is at mostly normal levels...how long will that last? Google's new norm is having your traffic vanishing more than 50% of the time, there is no more relying on any stable period of traffic from Google.

[yollo03]

The recent update they rolled out, at least for now has nothing to do with authority. Some high DA sites dropped a lot but I am not convinced (yet) this is permeant. It will take a few days to tell and they could roll out more major updates.

It's also unrelated to core web vitals as really poor sites are still ranking well.

[ichthyous]

@yollo03 This is 100% about changes to the page layout and the amount of crap Google is loading on the page. They are simply experimenting with us all 24/7. You can believe that the absolute sh!t show results this week where people are losing 50%+ of their traffic due to organic results getting buried are going to be rolled out as the norm soon enough.

Google is just making sure that they don't scare away too many users now. If Google finds that it makes more revenue loading the pages with ads, videos, etc. than it loses from disgruntled users leaving, then it will be rolled out worldwide. It had a massive impact on my traffic so I see this as game over for Google organic sooner rather than later.

We are now at the point where the huge tech monopolies are just free to do whatever they want to optimize their profits, no matter the cost to society. That includes Google, FB, and Amazon. Nobody is able to stop them, certainly not the dimwitted US members of Congress, half of whom are on the lobbyist payroll from these companies anyway.