Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2022

[engine]

System: The following message was cut out of thread at: [webmasterworld.com...]

There's been a number of fluctuations in Google's SERPs during January, and Google was silent on any of these changes. We know there were changes because all the indicators, and the discussions showed that Google's ongoing tweaks continue. It may not have been a core update to report in January.

As usual, i'll start off with a quick round-up of some of the Google news and stories in January.

Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2022 [webmasterworld.com]

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

GSC Now Has Dedicated Desktop Section in Page Experience Report [webmasterworld.com]
Google Introduces New robots meta tag: indexifembedded [webmasterworld.com]
Google Video on Changing URLs to Enable Google Indexing [webmasterworld.com]
Video: Google on News Website Speed, Core Web Vitals, and Tools [webmasterworld.com]
Video: "Why are SEOs and Devs from different planets?" [webmasterworld.com]
New Google Search Console URL Inspection API [webmasterworld.com]
This story may have far reaching implications for Google Analytics users. Data Protection: Google Analytics in Breach of GDPR on Austria Website [webmasterworld.com]

Let's dive into the latest SERPs observations for February's Google SERPs Changes.

[RedBar]

Both SERP and traffic seem frozen today, there is no movement.

Clear all histories and cache, switch off and re-boot, my www is working :-)

[japsec]

Seeming frozen of SERP and traffic was the sign of page experience update.

[RedBar]

Frozen? I have no idea to what you are referring.

Today I am seeing frantic bot activity on all sites coming in from different IPs, user agents etc ... Is it something to do with the date ... 22.2.22 ? :-) Yep, loads of games to be had at 22.22 this evening :-)

[Broaster]

abcdefg

you are right, I also miss the good old days when you would type something in search and find exactly what you needed and it could be a small blog or a major site, now I type in keywords and no smaller blogs or independents show up its all major news corps on websites on the first page.

The stories of people randomly starting travel or mom blogs or niche blogs on cars, food, etc are long gone, they will need to have EAT, basically authority meaning are they rich and have a building and employees and make money and can afford to buy adwords, then you are an authority, most travel or bloggers blog on the run why would they need an office and building with employees to be an authority..

I typed in something and Vogue showed up for a topic that had nothing to do with fashion it was just some keywords and because its Vogue magazine I guess they outranked the niche websites who post about gardening.

They just had a keyword in the article and it already got top spot. This is whats strange with google, they basically control the narrative, back in the day they allowed people to rank and anyone could, now they pick and choose who they want. its a shame they would do this.

[christianz]

Traffic still going down but very gradually. Although the second half of today's traffic suggests it may get significantly worse for my oldest site.

@Broaster

Back in the good old days there weren't trillions of auto generated spam sites. And it was much easier to surface real independent websites in the SERP pages.

Today Google rely on AI filters for their quality scoring/ranking (including the absolutely evil EAT concept) and these AI filters are no smarter than AI generators used to spin up all those fake websites.

Therefore, they are not finding the real sites in the sea of fake sites.

Add the obvious profit motive with ads on serp pages, youtube etc, and helping their "friends" (priority publishers), and you get a situation where great niche sites are given equal value as fake auto-spun sites.

Interestingly, they are also implementing the EAT-mageddon in YouTube. For certain topics its now as bad as the web - things like news & current events.

Its like we are going backwards and soon we will only have a TV with one station - whatever Google feeds you + lots of unskippable ads.

[RedBar]

Today I am seeing frantic bot activity

I posted this above however now I am not sure what to do!

I have one url example.com/example.html

It is being hit from all over the world, many countries, many ips, many user agents, the lot ... I do not recall seeing anything like this.

It's not causing any issues other than curious intrigue and fascination for me.

Why have so many bots latched on to this specific url? I will tell you that it is not an in-demand product.

For this site I use the same htaccess deny ips HOWEVER it is a .asia ... Is that possibly the problem?

I do not have a problem with shutting it down if all it is going to do is generate garbage traffic.

[Broaster]

christianz

Its disheartening. I was making money on my blog from 2008 to 2011, I was able to quit my job and blog full time. Then late 2012 all my traffic vanished, no more traffic including google news. so I had to go find a job again, now im working but trying and hoping to revive my site but with all these updates makes it tough.

IT seems the only way to make money off adsense now is through YouTube.

Also if you tamper with your site it could end up hurting it, Google keeps changing its mind on whats a ranking factor one day may not be one the other, or what helps one day could be a penalty, they keep going back and forth, its confusing.

like with this disvow tool and AMP

Both are obsolete well AMP is likely to be obsolete soon, and you wont need it anymore but some people said they removed AMP and then it ruined their news sites and they no longer appear in the mobile news.

With Disavow they told us to disavow the bad links, but then tell you be careful what you disavow it could hurt you, and then they say well you dont need to disavow spam links the AI will know which are good or bad, an then now they say dont even use disavow anymore.

[Dooku]

Back in the good old days there weren't trillions of auto generated spam sites.

We did not have AI content writing tools back in the day........
Now we have morons like Adam Enfroy's blog who review the best 7 AI writing tools.

I hear that people are dropping article writers, freelancer websites and the usual Indian companies and switching over to these AI content writing tools. It makes sense when you can pump out unlimited number of articles at about $100 per month......much cheaper than outsourcing to writers.

The amount of articles being pushed out since the last 2 to 3 years through these tools has skyrocketed. Churn and Burn is now the norm.

[mosxu]

Guess what zombies are back.

[JesterMagic]

@Dooku, completely agree with your statements about AI. It's a flashy marketing term companies like to use. Just like the metaverse is now.

[christianz]

Apparently there is page experience update rolling out but that seems like non-event, compared to the general unannounced ranking changes I have seen since Feb 14th. Maybe I am more affected than others.

All my sites are down, regardless of page experience (one of them is 100/100).

[engine]

FYI @christianz you missed it Google Rolls Out Page Experience Update for Desktop [webmasterworld.com]

[EditorialGuy]

Back in the good old days there weren't trillions of auto generated spam sites.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the good old days," but huge sites like CNET and TripAdvisor were profiting from SEO spam many, many years ago. Their strategy was to create zillions of empty keyword-driven pages that invited users (or searchers) to "Write a review."

I don't know about CNET (which had plenty of actual original content), but I'm pretty sure that TripAdvisor wouldn't have gotten off the ground if Google hadn't tolerated and rewarded its strategy of "create pages for keywords now, offer UGC later."

[samsseo]

We're seeing an increase of around 16% in Google Organic since this morning (CET) vs previous Wednesdays. We have 100% 'Good' Desktop Page Experience scores for our main traffic pages (hundreds of blog posts), so I'm assuming the Page Experience update has kicked in. Anyone else seeing this?

[Broaster]

Dooku

I remember reading about the AI writing tools, but it was Reuters and AP using them, they were computer generated articles for news flashes and updates. It was insane, Associated Press a credible site was dishing out articles updates quickly using an AI

So basically people who are independent and have to write a long article detailed and put in the work for a few hours suffer and do all that for nothing

now you got spam bloggers who do this for adsense or pay per click $$$ got a hold of lower level AI technology and are using it

Ive seen these articles, they make a lot of weird typo and sentencing and rank high.

I saw an spam blog in top stories the site is a year old, and they already had 70,000 articles or more, and over 350,000 backlinks.

Some spam blogger using AI was stupid enough to cry on google help forums lol, he posted that his blog wasn't getting traffic anymore and then when he posted it on the forum one of the members said you got a spam blog, he even posted his earnings on the adsense section he was making $25,000 a month! he had a high cpc like $1.25 so each click was generating him at least a dollar.

He was crying because all that money was no longer coming in and his traffic died after 1 year, so the google algorithm finally caught onto him, for some type of violation but he was dumb enough to post his spam site with spun content to google and they penalized him.

[Broaster]

EditorialGuy

Remember Livestrong? that was Lance Armstrong site and they were pretty much dishing out spam articles on health very low quality too and would rank so highly because it was considered an authority since it was lance armstrongs so people would backlink

I don't see livestrong in the top 5 spots anymore when searching for health stuff. I think the algorithm for doctor and health stuff punished them as not a medical authority


But they were making bank off adsense in the early days, and just like CNET they were filled with adsense, ads and links to affiate products.

[saladtosser]

On the plus side if Russia takes over Europe we will be dealing with Yandex not Google going forward! jk

[Markedd]

@saladtosser Funny thing, since a couple of days ago, I get pretty much no spam email on my websites. What a coincidence..

[RedBar]

Understandably all my European sites are quiter than usual today however my global site is at the moment looking normal but I do not expect this to continue.

[christianz]

Huge drop in traffic. Bigger than any core update I can remember.

[abcdefg]

@christianz

Here, too. Halved from G. Normal from other sources.

Presumably, G either doesn't like my anti-war podcasts completely separate from my sites or thinks I'm pro-Russia.

I have no doubt that G can link everything together. The only thing required is the will.

[ChokenBako]

20% down on my side after a 10% drop last week. Letīs see how deep it goes...

[christianz]

@abcdefg

My sites are in entirely apolitical, "family friendly" niche, although there is a component of UGC - comments sections, which sometimes can contain some spicy stuff.

@ChokenBako

I have almost identical numbers. This is absolutely extreme for a site like mine which receives very stable traffic and has been around for ages.

[abcdefg]

My site is also apolitical. Not even UGC (comments hidden by default).

However, it's clear that we're not American.

[EditorialGuy]

Our European travel site's Google traffic (and traffic in general) were down slightly today, with most of the decline coming from Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe. I'd say that's pretty understandable, given the circumstances.

[Markedd]

What in fresh hell is Bing doing? I searched for some ways to increase my wireless signal and the first page was half covered by an entire article stolen, I mean copied from a website. There are almost 400 words. We keep saying that Google is bad and all, but the competition is just as vicious.

[saladtosser]

Hmm seeing my traffic cut on half again yesterday and today, assumed everyone was busy watching the news!

[christianz]

Hmm seeing my traffic cut on half again yesterday and today, assumed everyone was busy watching the news!

Unfortunately its not the case. My direct traffic is the same. My Google traffic is being destroyed like Ukraine.

[RedBar]

I was genuinely surprised that yesterday my global site achieved precisely 100% average PVs.

Lots of my usual, targeted single PVs today with the UK much higher than normal so far, Europe lower, India and China average at the moment.

[Casanova]

traffic drop by more than 20%, america brazil germany and all others