Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2022

[goodroi]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5053055.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 8:36 am on Jan 4, 2022 (utc -5)

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Well, December seems to have been a mixed month of fluctuations, along with the month Google ran a Product Reviews Update. In addition, November's Core Update probably hit site traffic and conversions over the weeks in December.

Where does this leave us in January? Probably in a bit of a flux as the month can often start off quiet after the many holidays in December, and the ongoing fluctuations with the impact of the pandemic. Thanks in advance for your reports.

In the meantime, a very Happy and Prosperous New Year to everyone!

To business, and to keep you updated, here's a quick round-up of some of the Google news.

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

Google December Product Reviews Update rolls Out : "December 1 2021" [webmasterworld.com]

It's not specifically Google; Apache Log4j Zero-Day Exploit, "Log4Shell" [webmasterworld.com]
The exploit even has a mention by John Mueller [webmasterworld.com ]

Google also said the Google November 2021 Local Search Update was concluded. [webmasterworld.com]

Google Announces New Features and Tools For Local News [webmasterworld.com]

Let's look at the latest SERPs observations for January's Google SERPs Changes.

[ichthyous]

My traffic is still elevated, it's not bots and it's not inaccurate count. Traffic is higher across every hour of the day...the way it used to be. UK and international traffic is much higher, while USA is more stable but not much higher. I am mystified where it's all coming from as have not increased in ranking at all...in fact I am still slowly losing rank. I have lost 50%+ of the top terms I ranked on one year ago. Most were not highly competitive or high traffic terms, but they were very targeted and the cumulative effect of losing so much rank meant that my sales died a painful death from April onward, and especially after the awful June and July updates. I have not recovered much if any of those terms. If I do, it's for a day and then gone.

[RedBar]

So far this week traffic has been where I guessed it would be, yesterday was 138.3%, with country sources completely normal. Although the big conundrum is still are international trade bulk buyers going to place orders owing to the continuing very high seafreight rates?

For those who do not understand this I sell on an FOB (Free On Board) basis. The actual indigenous product price is still the same however the CIF (Carriage Insurance Freight) cost has from some countries increased 500% and some 1,000%. For my widget industry this means massive CIF cost increases, for instance a product with an FOB USD 100 cost, it's USD 20 CIF price is now USD 100.

The widget price has gone from USD 120 to USD 200. This is not an extreme example, this is for the most popular trade widget in the UK, widgets for other countries are very much pro rata.

If these huge increases remain expect to see a lot of outsourcing move.

[samwest]

@ixh - enjoy it while it lasts.

[Jez123]

Yesterday's traffic and today's SEMRUSH report shows that I may have reverted to whatever poor results I was getting last week. I suppose today will define whether that's correct or not but it's certainly a slow start.

Anyone else see a short lived reprive from poor traffic?

[ichthyous]

@Jez Looks like a huge drop in usa traffic this morning, but it's only 6am so hard to say. Every place else is zooming. One of my smaller competitors just leapfrogged everyone to the top after languishing for months. My ranking is still at a low and not recovering at all, but the traffic has been better, albeit low quality. The inquiries are all from clueless people with low budgets and highly unrealistic about what things cost so half the time I ignore or delete them without responding. That is a big contrast to last year this time.

[clarkjim]

Last year, Google did one update every 2.3 months, let's see how it will be

[mzb44]

Last year, Google did one update every 2.3 months, let's see how it will be

More like every week.

[ichthyous]

The new year traffic gains seem to be holding in non-USA traffic. But USA traffic is still highly throttled. Once again I'm slowly losing top 3/10/20 ranking terms... no recovery of the over 50% of top 3/10/20 terms lost since this time last year. Those are gone forever for any site with commercial intent, and that traffic is going to informational sites and how to articles. This new year bump in traffic is producing some conversions though, so that's one small thing to be thankful for...while it lasts.

[RedBar]

So far a much busier than average Sunday traffic even with 3 hours to run.

US traffic for me as normal but, I don't know why, something just doesn't feel right.

[EditorialGuy]

RedBar, it's a holiday weekend in the U.S., at least for some people. Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and a lot of things are shut down (e.g., federal offices, the U.S. Postal Service, banks, the stock markets, many if not most schools, etc., although stores and a lot of other businesses are open).

[yollo03]

Sensors are up again. Perhaps too many websites benefited from the recent updates so it's time to 'adjust' things now.

[RedBar]

Thanks EG ... more holidays!

Sunday was a 104.7% day and so far today after 13 hours I'm on 63.3% which is most unusual for a Monday with 70+% of the traffic coming from India, Czech, Kazak, Iran, Oz, S Africa all viewing pages and images as normal trade visitors would do.

[StupidIntelligent]

I added this on Barry's site also.

Seems like a failed recovery of the June Core update hit on one of my sites.

[i.imgur.com...]

[ichthyous]

Sensors are up again. Perhaps too many websites benefited from the recent updates so it's time to 'adjust' things now.

Exactly...my USA traffic has dropped like a stone for the last two days, and I am starting to bleed more top 10 terms. Soon I won't rank on anything anymore. Interestingly, one of my smaller competitors has leapfrogged above everyone else...so perhaps there is hope for smaller independent sites still. Mine was doing better, but the old traffic throttling has returned in force for USA traffic.

[yollo03]

I believe the page experience is coming to desktops (it is due next month) a bit sooner. I suspect the recent updates are in preparation for the desktop core web vitals.

[Martin Ice Web]

Very big drop since sunday. Conversions from google traffic has dropped like a stone, while amazon conversions climbed significant.
And again the current serpe interface looks like someone spilled over the desk. google was great in having a small and clean interface but this is nonsens.

[RedBar]

Monday started with 145% and already 70% so far today therefore I've dragged-out some old data and this is very similar to previous years, even 2021.

It will be interesting to see if this continues.

[BushyTop]

Looks like theres an update on GSC for core webvitals. Our looks different this morning at least.

[morele3223]

Google is showing worst result day by day, Nobody know what they wants except money

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is reverting back to the December crap results. Unusually low all day then a big spike of fake traffic out of the blue which results in nothing. Meanwhile UK is back to 50% of my usa traffic levels, for a country 1/5th the size. Google definitely is manipulating USA traffic more than any other market...gee, I wonder why? Perhaps because their lobbyists have everyone on the payroll here and they know there will be no meaningful opposition to their manipulation any time soon?

[RedBar]

Google has a massive presence in the UK now and has just announced this further USD 1 billion office expansion:

[cnbc.com...]

[StupidIntelligent]

One of my sites is about a sport called cricket and today lots of terms popped out of nowhere ranking. Guess which country? Moldova - which has no idea it's even a sport, most would know it as an animal.

Anyone who claims Google know what content accuracy is, or if it can even guess what goes where is spewing horse crap.

[RedBar]

Well ... Did you do a search for Moldova Cricket ? ... It does exist ! :-)

[samwest]

Zombie / trickle traffic is back and has been for over a week. Still on page one but never more than 1 visitor at a time and zero buyers, which pretty much follows. Amazing how good they are at throttling us to less than 2 dollar-a-day incomes. It's clearly intentional.

[HarvardJoe]

I agree in most ways to this post. Traffic to a website has changed or evolved a lot since its beginnings. It's not just about getting more links, but more about quality content that gets talked about online with backlinks and offline. I find that writing experienced based very deep blog posts based off of deep research and books draws a lot of links as opposed to me just going out there and linking to my site or hiring workers to do that.

Also, I spend a lot of time on .edu and .gov sites, enjoying them and linking to my site page as topically appropriate.

[RedBar]

I wonder how long this will last? Good traffic again Tuesday at 131.3% and so far today 87.0%

The sources, queries and paths are all normal but, as yet, not driving many new enquiries however this is not unusual.

All my SERPs look normal.

[HarvardJoe]

RedBar. Hmm, traffic seems to depend on the niche and time of day too. Example, eBay gets high traffic right after work and on Sunday evenings. Saturday people are out. Albeit on Cellphones now though, it's changed drastically in ways. Cheers

HarvardJoe

[RedBar]

@HarvardJoe ... Thanks however I have been doing this since 1993.

[mrkhalilaslam]

Are these continuous fluctuations will ever be ended now? OR this is now a part of their algorithm and strategy. SEOs everywhere are not talking about this may be due to their agencies' business except this forum.

[Markedd]

@HarvardJoe Please read carefully some of the posts here. The issue is not that most of us don't get top place in Google searches, because some of us do. And yes, that can happen due to good content, proper link building and so on. The problem is that Google hijacks the first page with its own properties and on the mobile, you can clearly see that there are no organic pages at the top at all (you need to scroll quite a bit to reach them). There's also the stealing of content that's then displayed as snippets and the newer implementation that's being 'tested' is to show a far larger portion of the page on Google. So, despite being the best, you get less and less every passing day, while Google gets more and more of your own money. Now, we also need to address the other major issue and that Google will put spam above good content from time to time (more often lately), just to stir things up and make you buy some adwords.