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.

[seomark]

Massive fluctuations again this morning. In our affiliate niche we have a lot of high DA newspaper and blog sites with 'Top 10 listings' outranking dedicated affiliate sites. The Herald, The Scotsman, The Denver Post, The Mercury News all appear. A few previously top 10 sites just been kicked into the long grass - pages 4 and 5. It's happened before and reverted pretty quickly. But there is no let up in the volatility which has been on going for weeks - since start of December.

[ichthyous]

Very large increases in traffic across the board for the last two days...yesterday was up 30% and that included USA traffic. My ranking has barely budged though...gained back 4 top3 terms, lost them all the next day. My top3/10 ranking remains at less that half of one year ago. So if rank is not improving, then where is all the traffic suddenly coming from?

Also...a popular arts magazine just published an in depth article about me and it has yet to be indexed 5 days later...nothing. The on-page tags are correct, and the site publishes a lot of very high quality editorial using freelance writers, but it does not get indexed or rank well when it does. It's mystifying to me...

[renatovieira]

On my side, I see drops in the last two days and today the drop is getting even bigger.

[ichthyous]

@renato is that USA traffic or all traffic? Search or direct ?

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - All traffic. Search and direct. Since before christmas I had a great increase, probably benefited from an update. (My SERP's were above several of my competitors) - Since then high traffic until two days ago, that's when the drops started. And today the biggest drop.

[ichthyous]

@renato It's swinging wildly these days, but for me better than December, which was a disaster after the 3rd and then even worse after the 13th. I am focusing my efforts on anything but Google these days. Even if it does pick up now, it will vanish later...and my ranking and traffic is nothing near what it was one year ago...and that in turn was worse than before all the changes in 2020. Google wants to keep it all for itself, so keeping that in mind I am trying to diversify as quickly as possible into other methods of obtaining sales. Unfortunately, those other methods are not nearly as profitable as organic search leads.

[samwest]

I haven't budged from my page one position for years, but today I dropped 5 positions. Probably because I recently removed GA from my site. Seriously Gorg?
Now I'm going for hours without a single visit. Love their punitive, heavy-handed business model. Use our services or else!

[yollo03]

Personal semrush score 9.4, I don't see any radical movements but I have noticed I lost (temporarily I believe) major keywords in mobile search. I rank for these keywords in desktops but not in mobile. I have list of tracked (highly converting) keywords in semrush. My biggest competitor had 25% visibility for those words. In the past few days a smaller competitor jumped to 42%.

Edit: This is not just about authority. This website has been link building for a long time now in a very smart way, loads of dofollow from large websites. This may have done the trick. The website is old, more than 15 years.

[seomark]

I'm seeing big differences between mobile and desktop - the changes I refer to are on desktop where as mobile has been more stable. Interestingly i'm seeing irrelevant search results that dropped into our niche back in December appearing again - this is a gaming niche and i"m seeing UK Kent council local government websites, MS docs about how to set up a staging environment. Lots of random stuff. I suspect it will revert in the next few days.

[RedBar]

I'm seeing big differences between mobile and desktop

My niche SERPs is pretty stable BUT I am seeing loads of different test page layouts these past few days with some pages not even showing one advertisement and the results looking not only very basic buy quite often not too easy to read.

[seomark]

Don't want to speak too soon but feels like the desktop SERPs have settled back to something like they were yesterday for our niche at least.

[abcdefg]

Probably spoke too soon, as it's never going to "settle" as it used to. They seem to employ a new strategy to shuffle the contents constantly while keeping their favorites at the top. This way, it's less obvious to the public what they're doing.

[RedBar]

It's all come to a grinding halt this morning for me so far. The last 4 days have seen seen an average of 133.1% but coming up to 14 hours of my Googleday I'm struggling on 29.7%.

What changed G?

[Jez123]

I'm struggling on 29.7%.

About the same here. I assume the update is still rolling out or twhat we are seeing is the ghost town after an update.

[yollo03]

The lost keywords on mobile search have not returned. They do show on desktops. The page experience for mobile is good so not sure what's really going on. Any ideas would be welcomed.

update: this is only in US by the looks of it. All the 'lost' keywords show in UK and other places but have been removed from US.

[edited by: yollo03 at 2:50 pm (utc) on Jan 21, 2022]

[Neohippy]

Since Dec: on the one hand, they've started giving us traffic on some key YMYL terms, and we're appearing more often in Discover.

On the other hand, quite a few new pages haven't been indexed, with many not even crawled (even after submission through GSC).

Do you trust us or not, Google?!?!

[eriky]

I did see some new designs pass by. Overall my ranking is going up and up. I'm completely white hat and focus on offering the best content more than on SEO, so that's comforting. I outrank some more spammy/douchy sites and that brings in like 30% more traffic this month. In fact... I'm enduring a full-blown DDoS attack on my website and I'm suspecting some disgruntled, black hat SEO website is doing it to hurt my rankings. There's no other motive I can think of. Luckily I've been able to withstand it with ease (partly thanks to Cloudflare).

[renatovieira]

I see high spikes in traffic on totally irrelevant pages on my site. This morning it looks like quality traffic is starting to pick up. The weird thing is that G drives so much traffic to very unimportant pages. Some adjustment is certainly taking place.

[RedBar]

The weird thing is that G drives so much traffic to very unimportant pages.

How do you qualify "very unimportant"?

My popular widget product pages obviously have more traffic than my less popular however my profit margin on these pages is much, much higher since I have far fewer competitors and I have the widgets available.

Of course this will all depend on your subject matter:-)

[renatovieira]

@RedBar - My main site is about weather forecast. This morning I had high traffic spikes on pages from small and irrelevant towns in Tanzania, Colombia, Chile, Kenya and many others. This is unusual. These locations are not having any particular weather events to attract so many users at the same time on the same page.

I keep seeing anomalies with high traffic right now. I don't know if it's a fix or an update.

It's pretty weird after 3 days of drops.

[RedBar]

@renatovieira Earlier this week I was doing some research on specific mobile phones and looking for reviews, G kept giving me links to Indian and Pakistani sites. Nothing wrong with the sites, simply unexpected results I thought.

[Markedd]

Something major happened because my main website dropped like a rock (25-30% in keywords and traffic) over the night. And my competitors as well. Semrush shows very depressing data and the traffic does confirm it. Looking forward to see what Google cooked this time.

[Markedd]

Either Semrush needs to revisit its core functions or the numb nuts at Google just hit everyone.

[abcdefg]

G has decided that it wants to be the new yellow page. Although to be fair, FAN aren't doing better, either.

It is the reckoning of QE ad infinitum, and these companies are all clutching at straws now. I personally see Amazon cutting lots of the less profitable products out of their catalogue. A small tool that I need is out of stock everywhere.

[RedBar]

Yesterday ended at 91.7% however just seemed slow all day. and again today it seems sluggish but "is it that time of year" ?!?!

One thing is for certain though, the pub / hotel site today is quiet BUT the restaurant had a great lunch service and the the "new UK norm" bars are very busy at the moment ... It's cold outside so they're all warrming-up inside :-)

[bebopandrocksteady]

Glad to see others talking about semrush. I see the same thing and it's not matching up with real-world results. Shows myself and 98% of my competitors got crushed. According to GA, we were up 6% compared to last week. I've checked a couple of the positions it shows I took an L on and it's not accurate. Pretty sure it's a bug, or they coincidently grabbed data at the exact time google had some weird anomaly or temp shake up.

[RedBar]

Very surprised to see on a Sunday traffic at 118%, I can't think of the last time I had such a busy Sunday, all sources etc looking completely normal.

Must check my SERPs to see if I've "improved" somewhere.

[ichthyous]

I saw an increase in ranking and a drop in USA and UK traffic today...both search and direct

[RedBar]

My global site's long-term average is 55% desktop views, yesterday Sunday, it was 57% therefore not too much difference yet my traffic was 122.7% ... I have to say that I was expecting a higher mobile level to explain the traffic increase. All areas and sources were normal and, here's the kicker, for my usual top 3 ranked ketword pharases, some have actually lost positions on the .com desktop SERPs.

I have found trying to check the .com mobile SERPs from the UK as "challenging" ... Anyone else?

[renatovieira]

I see significant drop this morning. Adsense with very low conversion. All very quiet. Every monday is slow, but today is much more.