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]

Traffic seemed like it was going up late last night. Wake up this morning, back to a crawl...

[bebopandrocksteady]

^usa traffic

[yollo03]

Major shuffling in my niche. Major converting keywords were awarded to extremely high authority sites in my niche. Previously it was basically any high authority sites that could grab a piece by brief pages. Now only extremely high authority sites are highly ranked for these keywords but they do not necessarily provide what people searched for, they are just in my general niche.

What it might mean that a new algorithm has been launched that has re-evaluated these keywords and assigned them based on a very superficial generalization of the niche. if this spreads (maybe it already was), some websites will fall between the cracks and will be annihilated overtime.

[yollo03]

Everyone must be doing exceptionally well if it's that quiet here.

[RedBar]

I think they've mostly given up having realised that no matter what they do it's simply not worth the hassle any more ...

IMHO, unless one has a unique product on a well-constructed site, a brand new site in G is almost impossible to rank and especially so on a global scale, locally this can still be done relatively easily.

[yollo03]

@RedBar, the only thing I noticed that jumpstarts websites is gov links. But even then a new factor was added. Unless google decides to provide some insights it's a dead end. I think new websites that accumulate backlinks fast might have a chance.

[Soulofmonk]

For the past few days, new posts are not getting indexed, GSC is showing Discovered, but not indexed. :( It's a 5-year-old website with 1M impressions daily(100K organic traffic). Unique content, +1K words, but still...not indexed. SAD! 😞

[Soulofmonk]

If I update the old articles, Google is updating them with new tweaks, but new articles are not getting crawled/indexed. I checked the server, no issues there. It's been a week since the new article was indexed. A 7-week delay in index has never happened, -- [prnt.sc...]
:(

[mzb44]

Everyone must be doing exceptionally well if it's that quiet here.

I think they've mostly given up having realised that no matter what they do it's simply not worth the hassle any more .

We are having one of the most volatile months in terms of (unannounced) updates and serp fluctuations but one of the least active monthly threads.

People are just tired of repeating the same thing on and on.

This is now the new normal and feels like there's not much else to report on it on this forum.

"major shuffle in my niche, something is up" - yeah, sure. Like it was the case 3 days ago. And 5 days before that. And a week before that.

It's just how it is now and people stopped caring or expecting it to change.

[yollo03]

No, high authority websites were never downranked in my niche until very recently, hence the major shuffle remark.

[ichthyous]

Traffic was higher and more stable for a while, until today. A jump up in rank is coinciding with a big drop in traffic from all english language countries. Search down 25% at 3pm and direct down 38%. I am not bothering to spend time investigating whether it's because of page layout or # of ads on the page...Google will do what it's going to do and so will I.

[RedBar]

Google will do what it's going to do and so will I.

Precisely, G likes to feel it knows everything about everbody's trade / industry / subject / etc however it can be very, very wrong ... They are merely looking at data and attempting to categorise many sectors to fit-in with their assumed "perfect" data patterns and they could not be more wrong in trying to fit so many subjects into their perfectly designed "slots".

My family business is now 181 years old, I have been doing this 53 years, Google has zero concept of how my industry works, I have seen university graduates come and usually leave quickly simply because my industry, and many others, does not conform to their educated and expected "standards".

When these grads get out into my realworld in the middle of nowhere India, China, Africa or Brazil they suddenly find their "calculations" are usually worth zilch since this is actual full fat cost and education time, all their preconceived notions are gone.

Likewise with G, they have taken ALL the easy to evaluate and conformist subjects and mostly done them pretty well but just look at how many people it has taken and how long and that is for relatively simple subjects in comparison to what many industries do.

We now have what we have and unless there is a massive shake-up for whatever reason, we have to live with it but unless you have a great new in-demand product don't bet your house on making many waves at the moment.

[mzb44]

No, high authority websites were never downranked in my niche until very recently, hence the major shuffle remark.

I wasn't aiming my comment at you. I was speaking in general re: why these threads are getting less active even though things are more volatile than ever.

Also, in regards to this comment of yours: Depends how you define 'high authority' sites. Just sites you check in ahrefs etc and show a high score there or we'll talking about the real authority sites like the mainstream big brands? There is a huge difference here.

The shuffle is real and no one is safe. And it's seemingly random and unpredictable. Is why people post less here. There is not much else to be said unless you just want to repeat yourself.

[ichthyous]

The reason these forums are becoming less active is simply because Google has become so unpredictable and the changes are coming too often and on so many levels. That is intentional on Google's part. There will never be a chance to prosper in any real-long term way again from Google search, and people tend not to spend time on things where there is no possibility of a return.

[Neohippy]

100% agreed with recent posters. Oh how I miss the days when we could go: yes, there was definitely an update and looks like it was primarily about authority / links / EAT / speed, etc...

It's just #*$! unfathomable now

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic now! Has anyone noticed something similar?

[mzb44]

The reason these forums are becoming less active is simply because Google has become so unpredictable and the changes are coming too often and on so many levels. That is intentional on Google's part. There will never be a chance to prosper in any real-long term way again from Google search, and people tend not to spend time on things where there is no possibility of a return.

I mean, honestly it even makes sense.

All the big brand sites are never affected by this, so users are happy (remain oblivious to the shuffle).

Everyone else gets shuffled, demoted, promoted, demoted again, etc. to weed out the marketers and made-for-SEO / affiliate / ads sites.

Problem is this does also affect smaller but legitimate sites too. But again, because the big brands aren't affected, both G and users don't care / don't see everyone else getting trashed.

[yollo03]

@ichthyous, one of my best affiliates at the time received a huge boost from google (about 3/4 years ago). His website was dominating high-volume converting keywords. When that happened he looked into selling his website. He was paid very well by a brand that buys websites. About 3 months after he sold the website plummeted in the rankings and never returned to the top spot again (to this date).

Moral of the story: If you have an affiliate website or anything but ecommerce and you receive a massive boost, find a buyer as soon as you can, get paid in accordance and start all over again in a different niche or move on to something else. You need angel investors to survive nowadays.

[TeresaD]

My traffic is either being throttled, has flat lined or my users across all platforms can count.

They say a picture says more than a 1000 words

[i.imgur.com ]

[KaseyM]

Traffic is dead today - oh boy.

[RedBar]

Hmmm ... Thursday a good traffic day, today Friday, everything on its back across all sites even localised UK.

[renatovieira]

I stay on the third day with heavy traffic. Direct clicks have multiplied, while Google's organic clicks are stable... These last 3 days are bizarre...

[yollo03]

@Kasey, did you notice a large drop in backlinks in gsc?

[bebopandrocksteady]

@renatovieira - bot traffic? country of origin?

[renatovieira]

@bebopandrocksteady - Real traffic. My AdSense revenues are high too. The origin is worldwide... niche: weather forecast

[bebopandrocksteady]

👍

[bebopandrocksteady]

usa traffic is the worst i've seen yet. Could it be the holiday weekend? Let's hope. ;-|

[sofie77]

I also agree. All the changes make you tired and you give up. Nevertheless, I would like to get rid of one thing that I do not currently understand.

Since October 26th the traffic has dropped a bit by about 15%. This is annoying, but not as bad as the following.

Normally, visits to our websites have resulted in a registration in our communities or in the shop. But now almost nobody registers anymore to the community or shop. I compared this period with the last 20 years. We've never had anything like this before.

It looks as if Google somehow cut of our main important visitors. It's crazy. I can't find an explanation. Technically nothing has been changed.

[RedBar]

My country traffic sources are still at their usual levels but overall traffic volume levels are down with October looking to be the 3rd lowest of the year marginally beating May with September being the lowest.

Insofar as my realworld business is concerned large scale projects are continuing, quite simply they cannot stop because of incredible seafreight rate price hikes BUT shipments and enquiries for standard wholesale import B2B products are down considerably. Many of these big importers are "hoping" that these seafreight rates will go down however I cannot see this happening unril well into next year simply because of demand and the global positioning of those vessels ... Many ports have container ships queued up at anchor unable to discharge, there is not a short term fix.

Consequently prices will rise owing to shortages plus the increased current seafreight cost increases.

I speak weekly with my largest B2B clients and in each country they are all adopting this attitude therefore I have absolutely no doubt as to why my overall traffic levels are currently lower.

Therefore before accusing G ensure your criticism is fully justified, everyone know I am not a G defender however at this point it may be unwarranted if you are dealing with realworld products.

And ... believe me I have never done this before, only this week I bought the requested electronic Xmas presents whilst stocks were still available :-)

[bebopandrocksteady]

the tools do not reflect, but something happened on 10/29. down 31% and even some of my competitors took an equal loss. come on google, what are you doing? there is no rhyme or reason for this. we have done nothing wrong, not even bought a single backlink or done a lick of black hat, let alone white hate. we just create high-quality, helpful content for our readers. very disappointing.