Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2021

[engine]

Well, October was a mixed bag of tweaks from Google in the SERPs, interspersed with a few announcements, and we're hoping November will not be a roller-coaster.

Firstly, here's a quick round-up of news in the past month that you may have missed.

For those tracking the update threads, here's last month's Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

Do you use Google Analytics? Google has said its completed rollout of the new Search Analytics API which, in addition to search performance, includes Discover and Google News data, along with Regex support to the query and page dimensions. [webmasterworld.com...]

Google has updated its search quality rater guidelines this 19 October, 2021 [webmasterworld.com...]

Potentially, we can all be on page one of the SERPs as Google in the U.S. has changed the mobile search to continuous scrolling. [webmasterworld.com...]

Had you though whether URL length affects ranking in SEO. Find out more here [webmasterworld.com...]

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

I've long focussed on conversion quality, but, obviously, need traffic in the first place. Let's discuss this, the latest changes, and how we might achieve better results.

[ichthyous]

Traffic was down yesterday, mostly due to a 40% drop in direct traffic. It's up sharply today across the board, but in very wide swings from hour to hour. The difference from peak to trough is 1100%...anyone else seeing this today? I hope it's not just the typical spike during an update then right back down.

[BigKat]

FWIW, Google just sent me an ad voucher. Google always seems to do this when they try to pull the rug out of your organic traffic with some big update that seems to hurt the honest/legitimate businesses while spam and super affiliates prosper. One thing about it, spammers won't pay to advertise and super affiliates like Amazon have their own following with little reliance on search engines.

The big Google holiday squeeze is upon us.

[headspace]

@ichthyous I've responded to your DM. I suspect the algorithms are now giving far more prominence to unique referring domains with high DA, TF(as opposed to just backlinks). Each sector probably now has a referring domain threshold, which you need to meet to keep traction in the SERPS.

[Soulofmonk]

GA Real-Time down for me(Update; now working fine)

[mzb44]

A relatively new site has overtaken me in many keywords, so I've checked up on it a bit.

It's a site with DR 80, launched 4 months ago. I am like, wtf, how is that possible?

Turns out it has expired domain redirects from a total of 6 expired domains. Over 30k referring domains total from the 6 redirects.

The 6 redirected expired domains were in the past very strong and very authoritative sites, apparently. The kind of expired domains that go for $20k+ at GoDaddy auctions.

All 6 exp domains were completely unrelated, no common niche / topic etc.

The new site to which all this was redirected to has over 10,000 pages of content in every niche imaginable: finance, social media, web hosting, antivirus, phone reviews, amazon affiliate, etc etc - everything under the sun.

It ranks for near-everything it targets. From some of the keywords it ranks for and I have knowledge of myself, that site probably makes more than $500k just from affiliate commissions alone. It also has display ads.

No sign of penalty, etc. it's shooting up into orbit outranking everyone.

--

I sound like a broken record here, but root domain authority > all.

If your root domain authority (not moz, etc. but however G defines this) is high enough you can literally do nearly everything others would get penalized for in a heartbeat.

This is the same mechanism why all those news sites rank for everything as well.

[MayankParmar]

Discover is dead

[RedBar]

My global site is quiet so far today however it's got to that time of year when N America does not want exported shipments from Asia despatching since they would arrive just pre and during the Xmas peiod, Europe still has another week or two to avoid that.

Of course this all assumes being able to even get shipping containers and for them to be discharged when they do eventually arrive and whatever extortionate cost is now being levied, hence trying to judge whether it is trade-related or G "whatevers" is almost impossible to tell. My best information comes from the widget sellers themseleves and how their sales propmotions are going.

For large project contracts they plough on regardless, completion delays are far too costly!

[topaz]

Yup...discover is KO'd. Lots of stale content on Google News too.
Signs of an update.

[elos42]

@mayank Are you sure discover is dead? I mean, discover traffic, for whatever reason, shows up as 'direct' in GA for me now, but shows up correctly in GSC

[mzb44]

I can confirm Mayank's observations.

The July core update finally got me into Discover, something that was a regular source of traffic since then.

Now it suddenly stopped.

Everything else ranks the same.

[aristotle]

The 6 redirected expired domains were in the past very strong and very authoritative sites, apparently.

If these domains really were very strong and very authoritative, why would their previous owners allow them to expire?

[mzb44]

If these domains really were very strong and very authoritative, why would their previous owners allow them to expire?

This happens all the time.

Just take a look at GoDaddy auctions. You will find at least a few of these every month.

Also mid-tier authoritative domains pretty much on a near daily basis.

Projects get abandoned. Businesses can go bankrupt. Site owners can also die.

[mzb44]

In the overwhelming majority it's bankrupted businesses or defunct non-profits.

Their websites may have been authoritative form a SEO metrics perspective but that doesn't mean their businesses were successful or that the owners understood the value of their sites' SEO metrics.

Sites of dead people are also not that infrequent.

A friend of mine even registered an expired domain of a nation's US embassy. They used .org instead of .gov and some functionary probably forgot to renew. It made a really well-earning pure-spam affiliate site. Ranked like crazy. Still ranks like crazy even after like 4 years.

I once saw the domain name of a well-known tech news site on GoDaddy expired auctions. I can't say the name as it's against the rules here, but it was a name everyone from here would instantly recognise. The auction went as high as $100k within 12 hours but someone told the owners (or they figured it out) and they fortunately renewed it. (it gets auctioned while it's still in grace period)

Sometimes people really just forget to renew, as weird as this sounds, but it does happen.

[bebopandrocksteady]

surprised it's not mentioned yet. google announced a core update rolling out later today. wish everyone the best. hold on tight!

[RedBar]

surprised it's not mentioned yet

Really .?.?.? I guess many are like me and can't be bothered any more since whatever one changes there is most likely little one can do about it IF one is already doing everything correctly ... IF one is NOT doing "stuff" right, why not?

Watch the spamming sites, they'll show one the way forward :-)

[mzb44]

Good luck to everyone.

Historically, the winter core updates used to be the harshest and then you saw some relaxing/rollback after the next ones in spring or summer.

[aristotle]

The 6 redirected expired domains were in the past very strong and very authoritative sites, apparently. The kind of expired domains that go for $20k+ at GoDaddy auctions.

If they really are worth $20k+, the owners should have sold them and collected the money rather than letting them expire.

Actually I doubt that these domains are worth much at all. They very well could be domains that professional spammers abandomed after google applied penalities to them.

[bebopandrocksteady]

@redbar nah, i think the core update news is just hot off the press lol.

[Jori]

I'm holding very tight... I did a lot of changes in my websites, improve general speed, content, an cleaned negative seo as much as I could, let's see how it goes.

[mzb44]

If they really are worth $20k+, the owners should have sold them and collected the money rather than letting them expire.

We cannot look into the mind of every person and see what they were thinking or weren't thinking when they did or didn't do something.

Yes, what you are saying is certainly how you or me would have done it, but seems like not everyone thinks the same?

Keep in mind that not everyone who runs websites is a professional SEO. In fact, probably most aren't.

There are many websites that over the course of time have, for example, naturally acquired a lot of backlinks without their owners even knowing anything about the importance of links, or SEO itself.

For some reason some of these sites get abandoned, shut down, or just simply (and yes, this does happen) forgotten to be renewed.

Actually I doubt that these domains are worth much at all. They very well could be domains that professional spammers abandomed after google applied penalities to them.

Certainly many of them are.

But definitely not all. Occasionally, you will see a perfectly legitimate expired domain that previously was an authoritative website.

It is very easy to look into this yourself by checking out some sites that track previous expired domain sales. Some of those domains really are great and get auctioned at very high prices.

It's easy to dismiss all of this if you have never dealt with this kind of SEO before. But I really encourage you to try and check this out a bit before judging too quick. This is a part of the SEO world that is often overlooked by most of us white hats. But it definitely exists (and thrives).

[RedBar]

I've never been a domainer as a busiiness sector however I have sold some names for $20K-100K, none were bought with this in mind, I have also let 300+ names expire, good widget trade names, simply to see if anyone else could make them work for their business.

Good names are available for the regular price if one uses a little imagination. I wonder what kind of creative accounting some companies use to justify their inflated name purchases and, in all seriousness, does Google actually take any notice of these type of links or is it just spammers / domainers who perpetuate this myth?

[mzb44]

does Google actually take any notice of these type of links or is it just spammers / domainers who perpetuate this myth?

It's not a myth, though.

Using expired domains as a link spam strategy - if done right and, yes, with some luck - absolutely works. This is a real thing and is happening today.

Yes, most of these sites will eventually get penalized. But the spammers are perfectly aware, they have the next domain lined up and ready.

I suspect it takes some time for Google to catch on and penalize them, but sometimes this can take quite a while. If you are lucky enough you can rank even for a few years before you get inevitably penalized. If you targeted the right keywords you could have made a fortune in this time.

While this thing is indeed not very widespread, it's much more frequent than many in white-hat-only circles are willing to admit.

[engine]

Buckle up!

For reference: Google Broad Core Update Released: "November 2021 Core Update" [webmasterworld.com]

[webdev29]

Ok, so the core update is officially being deployed. On our side, our turnover (ecommerce) has collapsed to the point where our ads budget is more important than our revenues ! 80% loss ATM ...

[yollo03]

I think they should call the core update the 'Santa Clause' update. All webmasters that were naughty in the past year will get punished (LOL).

On a serious note, good luck to everyone. These core updates are becoming more and more extreme.

[aristotle]

mzb44 - It must have been at least ten years since I looked at a domain auction page or visited a black-hat forum, and I'm very skeptical of claims of success related to either of these areas.

I've always preferred to spend my time working on my own sites, and I pay very little attention to what other peopl do with their sites. So far this has worked out pretty well for me.

At any rate, I'm not going to discuss this any further, as I need to be doing some other things.

[mzb44]

mzb44 - It must have been at least ten years since I looked at a domain auction page or visited a black-hat forum, and I'm very skeptical of claims of success related to either of these areas.

I've always preferred to spend my time working on my own sites, and I pay very little attention to what other peopl do with their sites. So far this has worked out pretty well for me.

At any rate, I'm not going to discuss this any further, as I need to be doing some other things.

Yes, everything you say makes sense and I agree. I don't do that stuff either.

I understand you are skeptical and it makes sense if you haven't looked at those things at all in 10 years.

But you did take time to challenge my claims which are based on my real world observations from 2021, based on just your opinion on a subject you didn't look into in 10 years. (I'm just saying... you know. Not trying to be cheeky here.)

As such, I do encourage you to take some more time and actually check them out, even just out of pure curiosity or just entertainment to see how some can blatantly abuse Google guidelines and get away with it. I promise you it's very real.

[christianz]

Absolutely disgusting that they had to release this just before Black Friday and Christmas. This has nothing to do with improving quality of search.

[bebopandrocksteady]

usa here. rollout day 1 seems fairly slow and uneventful (not complaining). agree or disagree?

[HereWeGo123]

@bebopandrocksteady

Both. I can see why it's quiet here -- there is not much volatility in the SERPs, at least not yet, and not throughout the day. However, with our specific KWs and site, there was quite a bit of volatility throughout the day. In fact, we began feeling it within 4 hours after the announcement was made that the Update began rolling out. We're a relatively new site, hitting 1-year mark next month. We sustained natural organic growth and saw a 30% uptick after the July broad core update, but more significantly, began seeing at least 75%-100% growth month after month since then, through various unconfirmed updates. To some capacity, it felt too good to be true to rank at the top of SERPs for various KWs so quickly and compete with giants in the space (wellness) -- with barely any links, PR -- purely expert-based content in the wellness space. I anticipated for months that there has to be some sort of “course correction” with the next broad core update, because we rose way too quickly, almost seemed unfair. So I tried not to get married to our rapid organic growth. So with today's update, we saw this so-called “course-correction” and dropped noticeably for many KW sets -- back to mid-summer positions that we sustained on or around the July update. So essentially, all the consistent gains we saw beginning after July were reversed today. It's unpleasant, of course, but not the end of the world. We're not going to have a knee-jerk reaction and immediately go and try to fix everything. We have our list of tasks cut out for us regardless that we were slowly working on in terms of improvement, so we'll continue to stay the course (but perhaps maybe expedite some efforts). This isn't our first rodeo. We operated other sites. It's just this wellness website is new in particular.