Google Updates and SERP Changes - December 2021

[goodroi]

What has December got to offer us, I wonder. In an unusual move, Google announced a broad core update in November, just before Black Friday was due to hit. Many questioned this move, just before the start of a big online shopping season. Our November thread monitoring the reports indicated a mixed bag of results. As of this moment, the broad core update is almost complete.

In case you missed it, here's a quick round-up of some of the Google news.

Google Updates and SERP Changes - November 2021 [webmasterworld.com]

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

SEO video about targeting by Intent [webmasterworld.com]

Google has announced some new features for local publishers, and tools for reporters. [webmasterworld.com]

Podcast: Google Talks About The Future of SEO [webmasterworld.com]

Best ways to hide a site or pages from search engines. [webmasterworld.com]

Take a look at the other Google search and SEO topics [webmasterworld.com], and recent discussion in other sectors on WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Let's start the conversation and observations for December's Google SERPs Changes.

[RedBar]

Mere speculation on my part about Europe would be Sunday Xmas markets where they are open ... I know the one close to me in the UK gets 250+K visitors over 4 days ... Pure guess!

[samwest]

Another Sunday of absolutely zero traffic. Still on page one, yet nothing.

[samwest]

GA is so whacked out right now. Showing 126 visitors on the site. Matomo says 5. Now they'll just outright lie and deceive.

[Neohippy]

I suspect the only reason there's not much chatter (even though fluctuations seem high), is that we've all lost the will. I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing: G's profits are gonna rise again.

[RedBar]

Global site weekend traffic struggled to achieve its lowest-end expectations.

Localised UK sites on their backs, dead.

Hotel site traffic down BUT taken on a week's basis equal with the prvious 6 weeks and well up on the same period 2019.

[BigKat]

I'm seeing a spike in conversions from Bing, and I wonder if it's because they updated their algo or shoppers simply gave up on Google because the mess they are in? Converting traffic from Google is nearly non-existent for the last three days, which includes today (Monday). How can there be any real traffic when Google's search results return mostly Amazon pages? Maybe there are many others out there like I that don't shop on Amazon and will use a different search engine if they don't have some choices. I get Google is slow rolling a product review update but their search results are ridiculous.

[blend27]

On a small US targeted e-com site that usually gets about 200-250 visitors a day from Google, for the past several days we get no more than 14(most from South America) and NO SALES at All.

This is done every single year for the past 10 years or so & starts just before mid November. Then after Dec 16th sudden BOOST and some sales!

[ichthyous]

My traffic recovered in the 2nd half of the day. It appears that I lost 6 aged links from a DA75 site and that alone caused my traffic to plummet on Saturday. It's a professional .org site that I have been a member of for years but decided not to renew as the membership is very expensive. Big mistake...every time I drop high DA links the effect on my ranking and traffic is severe.

[samwest]

Twenty years online, no EAT. Twenty years online, everyone too afraid to backlink. Twenty years online on what should be a firehose of traffic, the www, and all we can still do is lament over the throttle. Meanwhile, neohippy is right, Gorgs profits will skyrocket...again. It is so incredibly disheartening to be beaten down again and again by the world's biggest traffic bully. Those of us around between 2000 and 2010 know what the good old days were like before they got too big, then broke it all to stuff their bottomless pockets. What's the use, we just pick up the crumbs they leave behind. Next will be the crumb vacuum update.

[Jori]

We are in a world of "grow or die".

I didn't invest in growing my business. Big mistake. But it's still possible, I still see new businesses coming in, but with huge investments... to buy content and to buy links.

[yollo03]

@Jori, there is 1 brand in my niche that owns 14 affiliate websites. They buy content and buy links. They make their money from advertising different companies on these websites. They charge 700 euros per month for. It's a good business and they earn well as you can imagine.

[RedBar]

Monday traffic at 71%, definitely the lower end of expectations.

My UK focussed widget site is now ranking extremely well for all keyword phrases on G.uk however it has taken 5 months to get to this level, BUT even though ranking #1 for the most sold widget in the UK it is driving almost zero traffic whatsoever ... and at the same time my global .com on G.com is getting some great enquiries for unusual widgets!

[samwest]

My question is where does all the volatility come from? ON one day, OFF the next. We all remember the days where you could set your watch by conversion regularity. This all started at the MayDay 2010 update. It's been downhill every day since. Extortion to buy useless ads, that's why we love Google so much.

[BigKat]

I believe the volatility comes from ever changing search results that are customized for each user, which includes layout variations. I truly believe the purpose behind this is to maximize Google's revenue while maintaining some low level of advertiser and searcher satisfaction. The problem is it just isn't working for our company. Since Google's latest review update, our organic conversions have all but disappeared and the cost per conversion on paid ads have exploded. It's an unsustainable position that puts me in a box. Do we continue to spend money on ads and lose money on each conversion produced by Google? Do we continue investing time/money into organic SEO, with the best case scenario of ranking #1 and being 1/2 to 3/4 of the way down the first page of the search results? I just don't see any light at the end of this tunnel.

Going back at least five years, I can't think of one Google update that has benefited us as a company. The last update I recall benefiting our company was back when Matt Cutts was still working at Google and before he took an extended leave of absence before finally quitting. To this day, I believe Matt knew the direction executives were taking Google in and decided to leave for moral/ethical reasons.

[ichthyous]

Going back at least five years, I can't think of one Google update that has benefited us as a company.

Google made a decision that it needed to increase revenue at all costs and that meant prioritizing paid ads over organic, and making sure to stuff as much paid content on the page as possible. The writing was on the wall for me in 2010, when Google dropped my (and everyone else's) image search traffic 90% overnight.

As you mention, Google's current state of offering less and less reward for organic ranking and not being able to at least pay Google to recover converting traffic through effective ads is possible only because Google is a true monopoly.

That is exactly the reason why monopolies used to get busted in the USA, because they were in a position to profit handsomely to everyone else's detriment...which is exactly the case here. Google will continue along on this path until 1) some government knocks it hard and makes this position untenable, or 2) users start to abandon search in enough numbers that profits decline. A third option would be that some new technology disrupts the model completely...we'll all be gone by then.

[RedBar]

The writing was on the wall for me in 2010, when Google dropped my (and everyone else's) image search traffic 90% overnight.

Precisely and that was the moment my already suspicious attitude of Google's intention was confirmed and I stopped using all Google products except for AdSense until that also died for me. So many quality niche specialist and worthwhile sites immediately became unprofitable and died that year, it literally took only 2-3 months for it to happen.

[NickMNS]

The "reviews update" appears to be having a positive impact on my secondary website.

The site has always under-performed, and I've put little effort in trying to promote it. The main reason for this is that I could never get traction for the main content of the site, the secondary content would attract some traffic and even some links over the years. The main content is rating, reviews and stats for events (for a particular type of event). My ratings system was algorithmic, generated from the real world data collected about the events. As described, this may sound like just auto-generated crap, but it really isn't. The stats generated are useful and unique. We gather data across events and aggregate it to create a benchmark. Occasionally, event promoters have attempted to post similar stats on their websites, but those tend to fall short because there is no baseline. More proof that the data is useful, at a certain point I simply published the aggregated data, in the same format as the event specific data, and those few pages ended up getting all the traffic, because they weren't review or ratings just stats.

Since the update, I'm starting to see traffic to individual event pages which has never happened in any meaningful way before. Traffic is still low, very low but it is not zero. Moreover, these events had been cancelled because of the Pandemic, and some started again over the summer. But, I have been busy on other projects so the data hasn't been updated in two years.

It's all very strange... I probably should boot-up the ol'bots and start collecting data again.

[samwest]

Who remembers this creepy article? Larry's love letter. So much for any love for Gorg and they crawl into every aspect of your life. Empty talk of "love and trust" and "don't be evil". Didn't work out very well....for us, but I bet they are loving themselves. [theverge.com...]

[Rndm]

Interesting that many recent posts from the AdSense threads are the polar opposites of this thread. I don't know what this means (I do know this is a Google product), but it is interesting. Below are a sampling of those posts.

November was incredible, December is also great, but nothing like the last 2 weeks of November. Expected, I guess. It may pick up.

Still rolling right along here in the USA. October was very good. November was great. December has been similar to November so far (great), but it will taper off a week before Christmas.

November was a record month

[samwest]

@Rndm - unfortunately that's not our experience with Adsense. I guess it depends on your market and business model. We don't sell anything with a >500% markup that can finance top bids. It seems you do prove the point though, that it's all about paid ads and organic is basically dead. Sitting here this morning watching zero (and I do mean zero) visits for the past three hours.

[Rndm]

@Samwest+ I agree about the market and business model, but disagree about the organic portion of your comment. Why I found this so interesting is that these type of sites generally rely on organic traffic as Google does not like it when you run ads to get users to click on ads. However they could have strong social and direct channels not relying solely on organic traffic.

[samwest]

Since we have an adsense rep here touting the great success of adwords, as an experiment I have re-activated my campaigns. I'll let you know how it works out. If past experience is any indication, it will be like a trip to the casino. BTW - where do we find the $500 adwords credit?

[samwest]

I do have a product, and it converts well even on tiny volumes of traffic. I have never bought ads to promote ad-filled pages. If AdWords works like it did pre 2010, I'll be very surprised. Don't worry mods, I'm headed over to the AdWords forum.

[BigKat]

The writing was on the wall for me in 2010, when Google dropped my (and everyone else's) image search traffic 90% overnight.

We never received much image traffic, but we did have a lot of specialists within our industry who referenced our products, studies, documentation, etc. by linking to the appropriate pages within our website. When Penguin was released in 2012, many of these links were removed and we lost a lot of referral traffic as a result. Penguin ultimately left consumers more reliant on search engines to find information and businesses more reliant on search engines as well since they lost a substantial amount of their referral traffic. The chilling effect Penguin had on the freedom of information remains a noteworthy point in history which helped to reinforce Google's dominance in search.

Since we have an adsense rep here touting the great success of adwords, as an experiment I have re-activated my campaigns.

Be very cautious samwest. Our cost per conversion has skyrocketed, and I'm currently waiting on a meeting where I will recommend the suspension of all Google campaigns at least until their intentionally long rollout of the product review update is over. Even major "core" updates are completed in a fraction of the time as this review update which I find fishy. This update by Google seems like nothing more then a huge cash grab which is why they are taking so long to roll it out. IMO, the success people are reporting with Adsense is a direct result of the poor ROI on Adwords - part of the great cash grab going on right now.

Despite the substantial volatility in Google's search results, conversions from Google's traffic remain scarce. We don't have hours or days where a rush of orders arrive from Google as it has been near dead since the review update launched. Visitor time on page has dropped (bounce rate increased) though our conversions from competing search engines have increased. Since what we produce/sell are not gift items, my initial thoughts are consumers can't find what they are looking for in Google and are going elsewhere.

[NickMNS]

Why I found this so interesting is that these type of sites generally rely on organic traffic as Google does not like it when you run ads to get users to click on ads. However they could have strong social and direct channels not relying solely on organic traffic.

Let me chime in as one of those people that has seen benefited as an AdSense publisher. My traffic is nearly entirely organic and my revenue comes exclusively from AdSense. I have seen a >80% increase in organic traffic for November, vs November 2020 and as a result a similar increase in revenue. The idea that "organic traffic" is dead is ridiculous. But user intent is everything. I run an informational website. People come to it with the intent get some information about some entity, I deliver that information with my content and then the user leaves.

On the other hand if you run an e-commerce website, then user intent is different, typically Learn, Browse, Buy. Learn is similar to the intent of my users, so you should be able to do pretty good with organic, but that likely wont lead to much in terms of conversions. Buy, will likely fair far worse organically, because here Google can easily extract value from the users as they arrive to search, paired this with your competitors trying to scoop up those users by buying ads.

So yes organic works great for informational type queries, but I doubt that you could depend on that approach if you are an e-commerce website.

[samwest]

That didn't last long. 52 Impressions. 2 clicks, $11.50 or $5.75 per click. It's criminal.

[ichthyous]

@samwest Uh huh...if you let that ride you'll see that:
1) They're one hit wonders that hit one page and leave in 10 secs or less
2) A lot of the clicks are from non-targeted or even excluded locations
3) Not a single one converts
4) If you complain to Google about it they just have Indian call center customer service reps call you non-stop and refuse to credit anything

Google Adwords are useless crap, a total scam, and an insanely poor way to waste an ad budget

[Jez123]

My CTR has dropped over the last year. How is everyone else's that's affected by the core update? I know google say CTR isn't a metric but I don't believe that for 1 minute. The only changes that have been made to the site affected, other than maintenence over the last year, was price increase to keep up with the difficulty of getting raw materials and rocketing costs of materials. Could this be the issue?

[RedBar]

Wednesday is usually one of my busiest days but to see a precisely 100% PVs day is very unusual, not one PV less or more for my global site however the UK localised sites are way down even though they all rank extremely well.

Will week commencing 20th December save (m)any High Street shops?

[saladtosser]

Jez123, Our traffic continues to go down month on month for the past year even with new content added daily and positions 1-3 (number one for most queries).

We know why this is and put it down to the google widgets being placed above ALL results in our area now, even if your number 1 your actually number 4 now because of these widgets that take you round and round the serps!

Most of our searches now look like this:

1st position - Google image search widgit
2nd Position - People Also Ask widgit
3rd Position - 4 Youtube Videos
4th Position - Our website
5th Position - People Also Search For Widgit
6th-9th Position - Others Sites
10th Position - Related Search Widgit

Also interesting to note on mobile the PPA, PASF, YouTube widgets and the rest are COUNTED as organic listings reducing the number of 3rd party websites to 5 on page one for most of our searches. (Information site only)