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.

[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)

[samwest]

@ich... yeah, I ended that campaign immediately and will never go back. They violated my daily test budget, and my trust. They just flat out robbed us. Google might have Expertise and Authority but they have zero Trust.

[BushyTop]

Anyone else still seeing changes. I'm searching noticing different results by the minute.

[BigKat]

@samwest

Make sure you take a look at the IP addresses that clicked your ads. I've found some days half of the clicks we are paying for originate from Google owned IP addresses, and I'm not talking googlefiber.com IP addresses either.

I see others indicating changes in purely informational websites, with no ties to products whatsoever. Has Google slipped in another update as well? Of the pure informational websites reporting a boost, they are monetized primarily with Adsense. While I'm not surprised Google will stack the SERPS with those pages that earn Google money, these sites should not be impacted much by Google's product review update. Just curious what else may be going on...

[ichthyous]

@saladtosser Yes, the new layout is killing us all. One of my most important searches is returning:

Up to four ads
Local search block
--Three organic links - but one site has a sublink too
People also ask
Top stories (2)
-- My website as a single organic link, no pic / no sublink
Images block
--Two organic links
Related searches

Being wedged in that spot between top stories and images results in almost no traffic. It's clear that google aims to devalue organic links by placing them between much more prominent blocks of their own properties...people just skip right over it.

[Martin Ice Web]

@bushytop, yes we see rubbish traffic. By far one of the worst thursdays for years.
And looking at the serps it seems google is testing how far they can reduce quality till users will leave.

[ichthyous]

@samwest @BigKat I have said many times that I would gladly give Google a ton of my money if their ads were effective...they aren't. I have tried adwords on and off for more than a decade. The CPC is now ludicrous and reflects the fact that only the largest companies with money to burn on poor ROI campaigns can play in that space. Years ago the spam still existed, but the ads actually did refer some usable traffic. Now...pure garbage that clicks through and out in two seconds 65-70% of the time.

[Jez123]

@ichthyous - So... Where IS the decent traffic going if it's not ads and not organic?

My traffic is the worst today than it's been since I got hit with Penguin in 2012. Absolutely dismal. More than 50% down so far today (UK).

Thus far my traffic has been only slightly lower than usual (since the core update) but without the conversions - so, what's happened today?

[saladtosser]

>>>>So... Where IS the decent traffic going if it's not ads and not organic?<<<

Its staying on Google because there is so much info there you don't need to click off, information wise anyway, buying like most people they probably go straight to e-bay or Amazon to bypass the google spam?

[Rndm]

The majority of what I do is PPC management for a large company that owns a lot of companies. So I work on a lot of campaigns in a lot of industries (primarily b2b). There are industries and even niches within industries where AdWords is not effective. There are others where the ROI is mind blowing (think million dollar accounts won). I am not by any means saying it is the answer for most, but I am also here to say that it can be a very worthwhile channel with a positive ROI.

[samwest]

After my quick ad test, I found a nasty side effect. Apparently after reopening and restarting an ad campaign, and just as quickly closing it, I have now slipped several spots. Worst week in history.

I too have given loads of money to Google over the years, but this looks like petty pullout revenge SEO. I would put nothing past Gorgs punitive AI.

[Jez123]

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done? It feels like a penalty and appears to be getting worse. Impressions still within the norm but very few clicks and forget about conversions. It's brutal this side of Christmas.

[RedBar]

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done?

The simple answer to that question would be no however I do have some observations relative to my widgets.

On my global .com site a very high percentage of pages rank in the #1-3 spots yet some pages, which were probably the very best in my sector, struggled to be in the top 30 meanwhile some very low quality "competitors' " pages ranked extremely well for some bizarre reason.

This update appears to have rewarded my high quality pages and promoted them to the #2-4 positions.

Obviously this is pleasing for me however it has seemingly not driven any extra traffic so far. I'm going to have a good few hours this weekend to examine what has happened to competitors' sites or whether I am the ONLY beneficiary.

So, short answer no idea, longer answer, page quality boost ?!?!?!

[Jez123]

longer answer, page quality boost ?!?!?!

Or page quality penalty?

[RedBar]

Or page quality penalty?

Probably equally, I'll know better once I.ve had an in-depth this weekend, my fingers-crossed hope is that apart from a quality page boost is that there is also a thin-page demotion.

My definition for a thin-page is simply the keyword titlebar, the keyword image and a couple of lines of the keyword on-pagedescription ... Fine if that's all one wants however nothing meaty / in-depth.

[samwest]

Looks like this is happening across the board. No traffic or sales for days now. If its an update, let's call it The Grinch update. Keep in mind, there are no updates, it's all just rolling psychopathic AI behavior. The billionaires win again, while the lil serf chiluns get no shoes for Christmas guv'nor.

Don't you just love Google?
Merry Christmas.

[Manana]

The only thing that makes me admire Google at this point is the precision with which they plug the good traffic, not letting up even a drop of it on plebs' sites.

I briefly had some semblance of converting traffic in November for a couple of weeks and it didn't take long for Google to plug it entirely, ENTIRELY, with one update and I'm back to zero. Incredible.

[BigKat]

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done?

I think the core update is just one of many smaller updates that have followed since. Giving evidence to this is the product review update that will take a suspiciously long time to complete (four weeks - ending at the end of the holiday shopping season/December). Layout changes, including new ad placements, have also impacted organic traffic. Evidence of this is Google's recent addition of paid ads appearing in the local pack which has pushed out more free listings. For example, a local pack that once had three free business listings now has two paid listings and one organic listing located at the bottom. To highlight Google's greed, the paid ads in the local pack are much farther away from me then the free organic listing that appears on the bottom.

For me, both as a consumer and professionally, Google is becoming incredibly useless. In Google's relentless pursuit of money, relevance, diversity (choice) and end user benefits are disappearing and even non-existent for some queries.

[samwest]

Going to run a Fakebook ad for 7 days, says the budget is $14...we'll see about that. It will be the old bait and switch. Big tech is the biggest money scammer on the planet, acting as a bridge troll for what should be an open public resource.

[samwest]

Does anyone else see the "single file" traffic pattern? I never have more than 1 visitor on the site lately. It's as if the AI only allows one visit at a time. Looks like total zombie traffic is back in force.

[ichthyous]

No, but I have noticed that since this update was announced my USA traffic has been hammered..it starts the day -50%+ and ends the day down about 10-15%, with traffic only really recovering at 7pm or later. Most of the day in the doldrums. Hardly any new inquiries from customer since Thanksgiving weekend. I do think the Omicron factor and all the talk of inflation is scaring the crap out of people. I also lost 6 nice aged links from a high DA site that were up for maybe 15 years. Site redesign...now I get one nofollow link which is useless

[RedBar]

my USA traffic has been hammered

I've just checked my last 7 days stats and my USA is within 0.2% of this year's average! Sure, overall traffic is down since it's that time of year for me, post 10th January 2022 will be my real telling time.

[seomess]

Traffic down, no sales. Worst December since 10 years. Good job Google!

[ichthyous]

@RedBar It's funny, Google has been constantly assaulting my USA traffic since March. The periods where USA traffic is strong are few and short lived. UK traffic has been very strong all year...it's half of my USA traffic over the last three months, which is very odd considering that USA has 6x the population. USA traffic is perpetually suppressed and throttled now.

[samwest]

I really wonder what they did this time. The effect is 100% zombie traffic. Google has got to be raking it in in their push to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra, ultra, ultra-rich. Worst week in 20 years, under $100. Google will say "you should be happy with our crumbs and Ramen noodles for Christmas" this year. Joy.

[ichthyous]

@samwest We are all wondering. On the Thanksgiving weekend I had 9 new inquiries in 48 hours...since then about 4 in total. The periods with zero converting anything last weeks now. I've lost 2/3 of my top 10 ranking terms since March and it's not improving at all...one day up, then back down. Many will go out of business from this as everything is accruing to the few very high ranking huge mega corporate sites now.

I am putting all my energy to moving to a new business model of acquiring sales elsewhere and Google search will become a much less frequent source of business. Most of us will need to reorient away from Google permanently.

[JesterMagic]

Yeah traffic has slipped over the last 2 days. Never had a lower Friday in recent memory and 40% off last years Friday at this time. People also asked and other Google widgets are killing us along with traditional media posting articles about every single topic and now ranking for it.

[samwest]

I always related updates to being similar to a bubble sort, but that was back during the Google Dance days. During the sort, total confusion, but once the sort was done, things always seemed to clear up...until the next "update", with less and less "stable SERP time" in between. I thought updates were now "rolling" on a continual basis, or maybe they just said that as cover...can't trust much coming from the plex these days. Kinda miss Matt Cutts the Robo-spokesman. >20 years on and less transparency. Nice. This zombie traffic mess continues. Not a single conversion today, again.

[webdev29]

Can we call the period of November / December of armageddon for the ecommerce (Eu market) ? clearly yes ....
On the businesses I follow, I could see 3 small brands literally divide their turnover by 5-8x. This period was always positive in terms of conversion and since the November update, I see a ridiculous conversion rate, unqualified traffic and always more and more ads in the SERP.

[NickMNS]

@Samwest

Kinda miss Matt Cutts the Robo-spokesman.

From 2019: [youtube.com...]

[samwest]

Thanks for that Nick...
I'm still grasping at straws to figure out what is going on.
One odd issue I found while double-checking my signup forms. I notice the Captcha logs show a sudden appearance of failures starting about 11/13/2021, before that date, zero failures, but after that date, a LOT of failures. It looks like a serious behavioral change in visitors who hit my signup pages. Does anyone else see this?

[Dooku]

There is no such thing as a "G product review algo update". The fact that G explicitly mentioned this so called update will take 3 weeks to roll out.....really(?) is because they can not lie about it or deny it as every major SEO tool will see the obvious stats for that 3 week period. I can see the weird stats also very clearly.

This so called update is just a 3 week squeeze during the highest e-commerce turnover of the year for many businesses(or should be). They just label it an algo update while G is closing nearly all useful traffic and keeping it inside their own environment. If this works as G intends than you can expect such a squeeze during more seasonal periods with higher than usual turnover.

If you think about it, how is G even going to be able to evaluate all the new rules for product reviews that they described in their new "how to write product reviews" guide? Any thin content website can easily circumvent this and make their thin content reviews look like very extensive quality reviews (not going to give any actual methods here!). But I am sure many of them are already at work in "repairing" their thin content websites.

All the usual items G has placed on the first page of the serps like "people also ask etc...etc..) are a passive kind of squeeze on organic traffic. This latest "product reviews" update is an actual active squeeze where G literally closes the traffic faucet for entire regions and industries during the best period of the year. This is not paranoia, this is real....data does not lie.

[ichthyous]

All the usual items G has placed on the first page of the serps like "people also ask etc...etc..) are a passive kind of squeeze on organic traffic. This latest "product reviews" update is an actual active squeeze where G literally closes the traffic faucet for entire regions and industries during the best period of the year. This is not paranoia, this is real....data does not lie.

@Dooku This is speculation on your part. I speculate that Google does this all year long, not just at holidays! Traffic patterns that used to be more steady now swing wildly hour by hour...the peaks are the same but the troughs are reduced to almost zero at some hours...that was never the case before Google started throttling traffic like crazy and adding so much crap to the page on the fly.

My USA traffic is perpetually under assault, there are very few days where either the home page or most important landing pages of my site receive good traffic at the same time...one always seems to mysteriously drop. And the international traffic from Canada, Australia, and Western Europe (read: rich countries with actual customers) swings wildly now...one day normal, the next gone completely.

Finally, and the worst thing IMHO...the traffic you do get is not the same quality. It produces no inquiries and no conversions. The inquiries I get now are from clueless people with low budgets who don't even read what's on the page and ask stupid questions...sometimes I just delete them without responding. I would love to know how Google is managing that...but I guess if you have a trillion dollar MONOPOLY it's not that hard.

[samwest]

We all know why they are doing this and why now. This is something you'd expect from a heartless tyrant like Jean-Emanuel Baptiste Zorg. Fire one million.
[youtu.be...]

[BigKat]

Can we call the period of November / December of armageddon for the ecommerce (Eu market) ? clearly yes ....

Rest assured the USA is also participating in this Armageddon event as well. I suspect small ecommerce sites, which are heavily dependent on Google, will start dropping like flies in the first quarter of 2022. The big national and international brands will easily absorb the added sales from less consumer choice by pushing more high margin goods produced in low wage countries with few worker protections.

They just label it an algo update while G is closing nearly all useful traffic and keeping it inside their own environment.

In our industry it seems Google is attempting to keep buyer traffic within the Big Tech/Big Box club. Many buyer intent keywords are loaded with Amazon product pages, Amazon category pages and Amazon affiliate websites at the top while big national brands are sprinkled in beneath. To view small business offerings, including small specialized businesses, one must go to page 2 or even 3. Just like previous updates spanning a period of years, I don't see anything positive for small businesses who sell goods as even paid traffic from Google performs poorly. How Google names these updates really doesn't matter anymore because I see it as lip service for updates that are simply focused on harvesting more money out of economies.

[webdev29]

It's crazy to see this phenomenon of "valve" on a large scale in small e-commerce. Literally, after a certain hour you get the impression that "someone" is cutting the juice. And surprisingly, this happens at a time when historical statistics show high conversion rates.
This phenomenon combined with the abnormal movements in the SERP for several weeks (you can check semrush sensor by example) confirms the theory that google is able to manipulate the SERP to adapt it to the search intent in its favor (ads clicks, google shopping etc..). Let's bet on a strong increase of Alphabet's financial results in the last quarter of 2021...

[yollo03]

I believe google PR made a mistake. This is the real core update. The product review update must have been the first update they rolled out and then the core update.

I saw that many had old errors resurface in the console. Because they are known in the community (as opposed to many others) google said they are looking into it. There is nothing to look into. It happened to me every time during a major update, not only core.

[BushyTop]

SEMrush sensors through the roof again in the UK...

[Jez123]

@BushyTop - Hopefully a roll back on this ridiculous crap.

[sofie77]

I've been seeing big shifts since Saturday. That just pulls you down...

[BushyTop]

@Jez123 I hope so too.