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]

the UK traffic is dropping dramatically.

Many UK businesses closed last Friday until Tuesday January 4th ... Assuming we're not locked-down!

For me UK traffic will decline to almost nothing Friday / Saturday / Sunday, if traffic is siilar to previous years Monday to Thursday next week should pick up and then dead again until Monday / Tuesday with nothing getting anywhere normal until Monday 10th January.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar this was never the case for my traffic in previous years. It always declines the week before Christmas but not nearly this much. Perhaps Omicron has everyone scared now. The stock market is dropping every day too.

[seomotionz]

@ichthyous Indeed this time of the year traffic do falls. But this year it's a bit much. <snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 3:12 pm (utc) on Dec 21, 2021]
[edit reason] Please stay on topic. [/edit]

[ichthyous]

Here is my December...today is even worse, with a 76% decline in UK traffic at noon, 26% decline in USA...25% decline in overall search. Straight line down since the beginning of the month. This is reflected in my ranking, which has been mostly down this month and now rests at the lows for the year again, with a few days where it recovered sharply and dropped again. Destroying everyone's traffic for almost an entire month is basically a declaration of war on Google's part against small business and content providers. This company lost ALL integrity now.

[ibb.co ]

[RedBar]

My 2021 UK PVs average is 6.9% today so far is 6.8% plus my traffic with 3 hours to go is at 64% therefore my global site is performing "as expected".

All my UK-focussed sites seem to be achieving their average today.

[samwest]

@ichthyous - the gap you have between clicks and impressions, when did it start getting that wide? I have seen the same pattern, but prior to April 1, 2021, those two lines were overlapping, now like yours, mine are a mile apart. Run your report back to 16-month scale and see if you see the same. Must have been an AI tuning for maximum fleecing.

[saladtosser]

@ichthyous that's pretty typical to what I see (information only) and I believe is caused by the google widget spam. People are clearly still searching at the same level (impressions), average position has improved or remained the same but the searchers are finding the answers from the widgets above/below so don't need to click onto sites.

I expect Google will start auto generating there own content for certain information very soon and after the first test then expanding that out over the course of a couple of years to cover all evergreen content.

Then they can remove any dependence on them *pesky* webmasters expecting free traffic ;).

[Jez123]

@saladtosser Surely if it's due to widget spam then ads will be suffering the same losses?

[Jori]

@samwest : like you, prior to mid-april 2021, my two lines were overlapping. Not any more.

[saladtosser]

Jez123, the widget spam is always below the ads, above organics, so won't be impacted?

We don't have ads in our information area, so organics are pushed down by widget spam rather than ads. This was never the case then widget spam started to infect information niches

If I look at commercial queries for a service I'm looking for, I see the same widget spam but 100% below the ads.

The AI kinda says, "Here are the best results for this commercial query (4 ads)".

If the user scrolls down further than the four ads then the AI kicks in and says

"Well, clearly, the user didn't find what they were looking for if they had to scroll that far. So let's put in a few widget spam blocks here to loop the user to a "similar" query, so they have to scroll down past an additional four ads. Hopefully, this time, they will click an ad so Larry Page can make rent this month ;)

[samwest]

@Jori - so it's pretty clear whatever happened in April is the culprit...now, what exactly happened in April? Super clamped here again today. Why would I expect anything else? Without Google's interference, we'd all be doing well by now, but they just can't let that happen. They must have it all for themselves. I seriously believe those punk googlers read this forum at their planning meetings and come up with more ways to confound webmasters, then have a good lobster dinner and a laugh.

[BigKat]

it's pretty clear whatever happened in April is the culprit...

April 8, 2021 Google announced the launch of a product review update:

[developers.google.com...]

Despite the algo update in April, I believe layout changes in the SERPS are also a significant contributing factor.

[Rndm]

One company that I work with is also experiencing major ranking swings on a daily basis. It is most noticeable in Search Console when you only select rankings. This seemed to start in April around the time of the Product Review Update. It isn't an affiliate site, but it does have a lot of in-depth informative content around their products and the situations in which they are used.

@ BigKat I said the same thing (above) a few pages back.

[yollo03]

It wouldn't surprise me if google employees visit this forum for a good laugh.

This is something I wrote in the past. John Muller said that if your website has a single page or very few pages selling something, you do not need an authority to rank well. This is true, I have seen new websites outranking big websites. The common denominator was very few pages in those websites.

He also mentioned that there is no point in making any changes over the holidays or weekends because the algorithms assess your website based on 'long-term.' My impression is that your website will not budge an inch until the next major update, which will be in many months ahead. If you were hit by the update the only way to recover by the looks of it is another major update.

source: [seroundtable.com...]

[BigKat]

I said the same thing (above) a few pages back.

What I'd like to see are visuals of Google SERP layouts before and after April. That alone may shed some light on what people are reporting. I do recall Google updated how they calculate CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) in April and noted it would be reflected in core web vitals. To what degree this change in calculation may have impacted the SERPS, I could not say. A local update occurred that same month which impacted us more than anything.

[System]

The following 3 messages were cut out to new thread by engine. New thread at: goog/5054443.htm [webmasterworld.com]
10:28 am on Dec 23, 2021 (utc 0)

[topaz]

my discover traffic evaporated when the product reviews update started rolling out on dec 1. they announced it was finished rolling out yesterday-and my discover traffic returned.
Not the first time I've noticed this with updates.

Seems like it is the rollout itself (to all their servers and data centers) that affects the surfacing of some new content, and not what's in the update itself.

[ichthyous]

@samwest Looking back I see another period of similar divergence starting in early April and lasting until mid September. Then the gap closed until early December. I do not have discover traffic and the product rating update would not affect me. My ranking since the beginning of December has been lower and it isn't bouncing back as it usually does, but more than anything I see this lower traffic as the result of all the ads and widgets loaded on the page

[Neohippy]

FWIW, our clicks/impressions lines were overlapping until the July update - that's when impressions started climbing higher for us *shrug*

[Neohippy]

Still having indexing problems. Two new pages (def not thin), manually submitted multiple times since the 14th, still not even crawled.

[samwest]

Not to be off-topic, but has anyone noticed that Youtube is showing ads on non monetized account videos? They apparently take ALL the proceeds. I just posted a video two days ago, it saw a nice one-day surge, then dropped like a rock. Same thing they do with web pages. Now when I pull up my video, I am presented with ads, yet I'm about 2000 viewing hours away from monetization (I WAS monetized for 10 years before they started the villainous sub & view limits). What a scam.

[Abaros]

Not to be off-topic, but has anyone noticed that Youtube is showing ads on non monetized account videos?

"YouTube to begin putting ads on non-monetized channels but won’t pay creators"
[9to5google.com...]

[RedBar]

I am really surprised ... It is 2 days before Xmas ?

75% of my Googleday and 65.3% of my average PVs and it's been similar all week, so far at 86.4%, I've never seen this in the 4/5 days prior to Xmas.

[KaseyM]

Is anyone doing well out of the recent updates? We should be flying high this time of year but are down. January and February gonna sting.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing a stunning decline in traffic...UK is down 83% today at 3:30pm. USA -40%, Canada -49%, Germany -23%. Search is down -48%, direct -42%. I have never seen drops like this ever in 17 years. Holidays normally result in -15%, not these numbers. What I am seeing is my competitors also losing ranking tremendously just like me, with only two of them...the two largest that have not been hit all year, now owning it all. All of the ranking has gone to those two and everyone else has declined a lot. I have even been removed from some local searches now, which was stable all year.

This is not a normal holiday pattern at all...is anyone else seeing this large a drop? It's been getting worse and worse since ~ December 13th and I am wondering if this is some sort of penalty?

[ibb.co ]

[samwest]

No improvements here, traffic never exceeds 2 visitors - drip/zombie traffic again. Like I said, even the video algo is doing the same clamping. The first day, straight up, next day, straight down. Thanks Abaros for that, I figured as much. They are billionaire content thieves, while we starve, literally. Scroogle says - "Christmas is a humbug!"

[christianz]

"YouTube to begin putting ads on non-monetized channels but won’t pay creators"

Good!. Let them make the platform as insufferable as possible. So that normies finally start look for alternatives. The dislike counter removal is another step in this glorious direction.

Now lets see how many not-for-profit creators/organizations leave YouTube because of this.

I do understand that Google have rights to extract some value from this because it costs ton of money to stream videos. But still.... they could have covered these not-for-profit account losses with for-profit account gains.

[yollo03]

Although they said they finished rolling out the core update (thats what I call it) I am still seeing big movements in my niche. I assume minor updates are being rolled out.

[System]

The following 3 messages were cut out to new thread by engine. New thread at: goog/5054522.htm [webmasterworld.com]
12:54 pm on Dec 24, 2021 (utc 0)

[ichthyous]

Google has given me a nice Christmas gift. I am continuing to drop ranking like a stone...as of this morning I have lost 51% of my top 3 ranking terms, 27% of my top 10 terms, and 37% of my top 30 terms compared to one year ago. I am now at an all time low...I haven't had such a low visibility since my site was much smaller many years ago.

There is no apparent reason for this that I can see, but I am seeing many of my smaller competitors also losing ground while a couple of competitors are now ranking for all the terms. I checked one and it had zero presence until July of this year, when it suddenly skyrocketed and took over all the placement. It has been gaining ever since. The other one is a major corporate owned site that has been around for years and rarely ever declines. They are both big spenders on adwords.