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?

[bebopandrocksteady]

samwest, it is my understanding that other than small accounts that do not qualify for ads, youtube let's the creators decide ad placements they show.

[renatovieira]

G Real Time completely down. Did anyone else notice?

[MayankParmar]

Google Analytics realtime broken for some folks.

[Rageboi]

Yes! Analytics real time down.

[yollo03]

It must be back up.

[DjDidier]

I actually thought here was a webmaster forum and here you discuss various topics such as updates.
Instead of that, they talk about vaccinations here.

I want to speak about the updates and the rankings the last 2 years.
Spam content pages that are brought into the top 10 with many links and that redirect to full page ads.

Text deserts that are full of different keywords often even in several languages. So there is no content available only incoherent texts with words in rows.

Large publishing houses that rank with texts that are poorly researched and that only rank because the websites have very strong links.

Since Covid, Google is about quality? Really? I think it's mostly just about links or a certain link proximity to big websites. And before that, quality played a much bigger role.

When you look at the rankings, what do you see ?

[frankleeceo]

supercycle reset = world war?

Anyways, I am surprised that I do not see much impression change with the new mobile 40 results on first page change.

So maybe people do not scroll down on mobile as much as I thought they would have.

Started a new job - moving from B2C to B2B, hopefully, I will gain more insights. I realized...brands got their own troubles too.

[edited by: frankleeceo at 10:50 am (utc) on Oct 19, 2021]

[vivektank]

G real-time working fine on my side. But I saw a huge fluctuation in the organic traffic. The previous week, was very good but this week Google gave us shocking. I think some Google update is ongoing.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Djdidier, i Confirm your observation. german serps are a mess right now.
Stupid and silly Websites rank over content.
Even food suppliers rank in tech verticals.

[DjDidier]

@Martin Ice Web
Thanks for your reply.
Have you noticed this so far only in Germany or also in other countries?
What is your explanation for this?

[not2easy]

I apologize for any disruption that the removal of off topic posts might have caused, it is not always easy to determine where things start and end. It would be helpful when things go off track to hit that Msg# button of the first instance and report it. That helps others, and greatly helps your volunteer staff to keep it useful.

We do have a Foo forum [webmasterworld.com] for topics unrelated to ongoing discussions ;)

[Martin Ice Web]

@Dj,

my guess is that These are little penalties for Website errors like 404er, brocken pics ...
And Google Sets far to much in link Power and authority. if Google would put more weight into content , the serps would be much more better.
But authority overrides all other factors. But i think that Google is not able to distinguish between good and bad content.

[yollo03]

Its not just authority. High DA sites were hit with whatever google rolled out. This is also not about content either or page experience. It's something else that I honestly have no idea.

My only guess is that certain backlinks that had high authority were reduced so that caused big drop in rankings.

[OldFaces]

I'm surprised no1 is talking about the missing data from yesterday 10/18. Check your Google Analytics. Drilldown per minute.

Analytics is showing 0 data from 7:53am-8:09am Pacific 10/18/21 during the Real time outage.

[not2easy]

There is a thread here: [webmasterworld.com...] about the GA delays / missing data.

[OldFaces]

Hey not2easy. Yeah I posted there too. I debated adding here but I thought 1.) Worthwhile for more folks to see about this issue in this active thread, and 2.) thought it was good to get us back on track about Google and not pandemic/economic stuff...but alas I see you might have cleaned up those posts :)

Anyhow, sorry if I am spamming the threads. Not my intent. Feel free to delete :)

[OldFaces]

Eh I can't edit my post. Just want to say that I did get confirmation that GA did not collect data for a number of websites from 7:27am and 8:30am PDT on October 18, 2021. See [webmasterworld.com...] for

[yollo03]

I was hit quite hard with the recent update. I am counting on future updates (that have been frequent) to rectify it. I would like to know if others were hit hard and whether you believe it may related to this: [seroundtable.com...]

[KaseyM]

Still lower here after these recent updates - back to pre-COVID levels really.

[ichthyous]

Still lower here since September 14th, but traffic is not as drastically bad as last week. USA traffic is down 6-12% daily instead of 30%. My landing pages were seeing losses, and are slowly recovering. This while my top 3 / 10 rankings are declining again. Overall, my traffic is still at 2020 pandemic levels...the March-June updates just killed my site.

[samwest]

Less than 100 bucks a week now. Gorg has us right where darpa wants us, penniless.

[DjDidier]

This week it hit some websites I've been watching for years for their quality. These sites have lost up to -60%.

These changes have been going on since last year but never as much as the changes this week. Mostly following the same principle. Old and good sites that know their subject are being replaced by Pinterest, Amazon and big publishing houses. Which are mostly stuffed with ads and or have lousy, superficial articles.
I think Google has found a new way to generate revenue

[BigKat]

Old and good sites that know their subject are being replaced by Pinterest, Amazon and big publishing houses. Which are mostly stuffed with ads and or have lousy, superficial articles.

I think Google has found a new way to generate revenue

This really isn't new in the retail space. For years Google has stacked Amazon product pages at the top of the organic SERPS which forces competing product pages to spend on ads. Adding to the problem is Amazon also runs ads and simply outbidding them is not enough with the favor Google gives Amazon. In our case, Google primarily promotes our Chinese competitor's Amazon product pages while our domestically made product pages struggle to be seen in Google without first paying a toll for the visibility via ads. Needless to say this makes it difficult for highly specialized domestic small businesses to be seen by American consumers when Google has leveraged free organic domain crowding for Amazon to herd much smaller businesses into paying for ads.

[mzb44]

Old and good sites that know their subject are being replaced by Pinterest, Amazon and big publishing houses. Which are mostly stuffed with ads and or have lousy, superficial articles.

This is the underlying theme of the last 2-3 or so years.

Google is heavily favouring mainstream, established authority sites. Most turn out to be news sites as those are the ones with the strongest link profiles.

Before anyone retorts that Google always ranked those sites higher - yes, of course it did, but the last 2-3 years they went overdrive with this.

Before, if you had a small niche site that was genuinely good and a real expert in its domain, you could outrank big publications with generic content very easily.

Today, this doesn't matter. Any big news site can post some random 500 words post made by some intern and it will almost always instantly outrank everyone else.

These big news sites (and the SEOs working for them) are of course aware of this.

This is why all these sites are churning out all kinds of low quality and shallow content spam these days in any subject imaginable: baby clothing, best online casinos, iphone reviews, Bitcoin buying guides, best webhosting, law mowing guides, pet food recommendations, best summer slippers, pencil reviews, etc etc. - all of that just shallow pure spam, but Google loves it because it's posted by big authoritative and trusted sites.

[ichthyous]

Google is heavily favouring mainstream, established authority sites. Most turn out to be news sites as those are the ones with the strongest link profiles. Before anyone retorts that Google always ranked those sites higher - yes, of course it did, but the last 2-3 years they went overdrive with this. Before, if you had a small niche site that was genuinely good and a real expert in its domain, you could outrank big publications with generic content very easily...This is why all these sites are churning out all kinds of low quality and shallow content spam these days

Yes, this is right...they are churning out so much crap content on every possible topic exactly because Google has handed them the traffic across the board. The number of IBLs to any smaller independent site doesn't matter so much, it won't outrank anything these large sites churn out. I am also seeing the same mega ecomm sites at the top now over and over. Thank god Amazon doesn't offer what I sell, but lots of other large corporate sites are in the space. The effect on my image traffic is particularly strong...it halved after the March update. Now only major media and news sites ranking at the top unless the image is unique.

[Neohippy]

SEMrush actually looked quiet yesterday (UK), but we experienced a noticeable drop :/

[mzb44]

Yes, this is right...they are churning out so much crap content on every possible topic exactly because Google has handed them the traffic across the board.

I wouldn't even mind necessarily if that content would actually be high / expert quality. But all these sites are fully aware of the advantage they get from G these days and are literally employing some of the cheapest freelancers to produce that content for them. There is no objective reason for these sites to pay 10x for great content, while borderline acceptable is good enough, as they'll rank anyway.

We are seeing and are going to see more content quality dilution across the web. Mainstream big sites everywhere with 400-500 words $0.01/word outsourced freelancer content in any topic and niche imaginable.

I remember some examples of the above were shown to JM and while ago on Twitter and he replied with "so you want us to rank some affiliate site instead?" - uhm, yeah, why not? If the site / content deserves it? Why would you not rank it?

He basically admitted they rather rank content spam from big sites because those sites are "trusted" or something, than potentially great content but from smaller and unknown sites.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic turned off at noon today...it's now 3pm and 3-4 visits per hour since noon. I'm seeing 45-70% declines in traffic to my landing pages today. I had one new inquiry this entire week...one. On a more positive note, I am suddenly seeing more traffic from DDG and a bit more from Bing...update or people just getting sick of Google ads?

[renatovieira]

On my side, yesterday there was a small improvement after a month and a half of stagnant traffic. Today it seems to have improved a little more. The most curious thing is that AdSense earnings drop, while traffic has improved. The zombies' return? :-|

[RedBar]

Today, Sunday 24th, my traffic is totally dead across all sites and coming up to 15 hours of my Googleday, averaging between 10-15% of daily traffic levels.

Have I missed something somewhere?