Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2022

[goodroi]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5057083.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 7:06 am on Mar 1, 2022 (utc -5)

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Here's our March 2022 Google SEO discussion.

Looking back at February's SERPs changes, it's been a relatively quiet month with lots of minor fluctuations, usually as the result of Google's tests and tweaks.

For completeness, here's a quick quick round-up of some of the Google news and stories you may have missed from February.

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

Google is rolling out the Page Experience update for Desktop [webmasterworld.com] which it says should be complete by the end of March. You'll also find GSC Has Dedicated Desktop Section in Page Experience Report [webmasterworld.com]
Google Talks About AI Systems in Search: RankBrain, neural matching, BERT, MUM [webmasterworld.com]
Video: Google on Migrating Hosting [webmasterworld.com]

Let's get started with the latest SERPs observations for March.

[Dooku]

I just found out that GOOGLE hires over 10,000 human quality raters

This is not new, it's a practice that G has been using for quite some time now.
However, what is making this rating system practically useless is the fact who is doing the rating work.
With that I mean the employees are from India mostly and I have over 18 years of experience dealing with companies from that location. Even if you give the "raters" a pdf work sheet, they have a very different mentality, which is culturally defined, towards what THEY feel about certain subjects, content and experience in those matters.

It is just impossible to compare how they do a job and how we do a similar task. Yes this might sound strange and I am not in any way or form discriminating a certain group of people. It is what it is and you can simply not change this, we are all different. The result of this is that what John finds a perfectly acceptable piece of content or subject will be frowned upon or simply not understood the same way by Samesh.

[freshpaul]

@Dooku

What a complete trash take. Disgusting.

[RedBar]

What a complete trash take.

In what respect?

I have been dealing with India since the 1960s, I have lived there on and off for almost 50 years, my main company boards consists in the majority by Indians, I am regarded as an Indian brother by all, however there are academic cultural differences between Western and Indian values and concepts.

Over the years I have made accidental faux pas and have been informed so, likewise I have had to explain why some things were not possible by potential Western suppliers. I can assure you things are a lot easier these days yet many differences do still exist.

Unless G were to give intensive training and instructions for G's requirements when evaluating websites, local preferences and attitudes are bound to occur. I have this conundrum regularly with my .cn Chinese sites ... I would prefer my Chinese office to use my website templates and designs however they insist upon using theirs ... I cannot complain, they are successful:-)

</offtopic>

[ichthyous]

Been away for a month and was not checking my ranking. It appears that things improved somewhat from around 2/18 onward in an almost linear fashion until early March. Gained back about 13 top 3 terms. No where close to where I was one year ago, but the first progress I have seen since early 2021. My pages in GSC all turned green during the same period...

[christianz]

What are they trying to achieve with the "quality raters" project anyway? To train ranking AI that will cause all the autogenerated spam sites look very "legit"?

So far it is obvious that AI approach is promoting spam. Backlinks contain much more valuable information on sites usefulness and quality. At least they used to, before 99.999% of them were between those autogen sites anyway.

[EditorialGuy]

I just found out that GOOGLE hires over 10,000 human quality raters who basically penalize websites randomly every single day

Google has been using quality raters for years, but not in the way you think:
[support.google.com...]

[bwnbwn]

Boy Google has really gotten bad. I did some searching looking for a trailer hitch for a new vehicle.
It is almost impossible to find a link or image that's not a paid link. I'm not kidding I stay away from paid ads.
I don't want to send Google a penny. BUT it's just about impossible to find a good link for my specific search that's not an ad.
It's bad AND GETTING WORSE. If your trying to make a living on organic traffic GOOD LUCK.
Google is no longer a search engine it's a PPC ENGINE.

[Dooku]

@Freshpaul, I am sorry to hear that. It is very clear that you have completely missed the point here.
Like Redbar has mentioned you only really get experience when directly dealing with different cultures face to face. Anything else is just guess work and not relevant.

There is no judgement here, it is just a description of actual experiences. I have MANY friends from India. I have visited them and they have welcomed me in their homes and companies, spent time with them on numerous occasions. Some of them I consider family, and they consider me the same.

My Indian friends also have opinions on "westerners" and we all laugh at typical stereotypes and can discuss and exchange views without being narrow minded. Maybe you should try that also?

[christianz]

Boy Google has really gotten bad.

They are so bad and giving so little traffic to real web sites these days that it really amazes me when they find ways to cut the traffic even further.

I am now increasing ad density for users who are coming from Google search. If it wasn't for the fact that many of my loyal visitors are using Google as branded search / site search, I would really go heavy on this and make the Google user's experience hell - the kind of ad-stuffed hell they are used to in Google SERP pages.

I think it is important to take steps against this tyranny and creeping destruction of WWW, however symbolic and non-consequential these steps might be. Another way could be advising users to switch to or educating on how to switch to different search engine.

[MayankParmar]

Google News indexing issues :/

[Mitchell Marsh]

where i can find latest updates in video format?

[abcdefg]

Try Google it

[RedBar]

Global site traffic Mon to Thurs this week at 109.8% and 104.6% for the month so far ... that's the "good" news, the downside is that genuine global business enquiries have disappeared and I do not mean down a bit or a lot, I mean gone altogether.

It does not matter a jot if you rank #1 if the bulk purchasing importers / wholesalers have no confidence in their specific market(s). For the first time since 2008-2012 I am seeing regular customers make mixed shipment loads as opposed to single product items thus indicating their overall actual product sales are down.

[Dooku]

indicating their overall actual product sales are down.

@Redbar, a recession is looming in the EU, USA and even Asia markets due to the current situation next door.
Any market where real value is produced is now feeling this (not the online "Instagram" products.....for now)

[RedBar]

@Dooku, I agree and since I have been through this several times over the last 6 decades it'll most probably follow a similar pattern. The large in-progress projects will continue, some of the smaller to medium-sized will be put on hold, the basics of my industry will continue but at a lower level since there is always a basic demand ... And that's about all I can forecast at the moment!

[ichthyous]

Absolutely massive 30% drop in search and 41% drop in direct traffic by 5:30pm today. USA -43%, UK -53%, even India is down -36% and that is never down. Anyone else seeing this?

[KaseyM]

Drop since Thursday.

[ichthyous]

The massive traffic drop continues....down 60% for both USA and UK at 11:30am. Search is down 51%. My ranking is heading higher across the board for the last week

[frankleeceo]

@ichthyous, if I read correctly. Higher ranking, lower traffic, if search volume hasn't dropped.

Or traffic drop together with ranking drop?

[ichthyous]

@frankleeceo Yes correct...a massive two day drop in USA and UK traffic from both search and direct, while my ranking increased. It can only be search layout shenanigans. Maybe testing a new layout or who knows. I am focusing on other things now, Google is not getting as much of my attention as it used to so I didn't bother to check and see how the mobile and desktop layouts looked. The traffic started to recover yesterday eve and today looks relatively normal...direct is still down a lot but too early to tell.

[Arora_Khan]

That's why my site down

[RedBar]

My global site's traffic was well down on Friday at 71%, Saturday was average and Sunday well above average resulting in the first 13 days at 100% !.!.! Today has started well with a notable increase in Eastern European traffic and realworld enquiries have started again.

UK-focussed sites are generally on average with the busiest one actually at 106.5% at the moment and, interestingly, it is also trading much higher than usual for this time of year. This is a traditional B&M business not an online trader.

[Neohippy]

15% downturn at the weekend; looks like it started on 10th/11th (UK informational site with lots of UGC as well as editorial)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I suspect personal data collected about you may impact how your sites perform moving forward, if it already doesn't.

Without being able to link actual sites all of our discussion is fast becoming useless. We could try to help a site owner with generic suggestions ad-nauseum but if they posted a dumb tweet 9 years ago, for example, maybe it's them, not the site.

[christianz]

No improvement since the Feb 24th massive, gigantic drop across all my sites. The "emergency EAT switch" theory seems less likely every day.

Its more likely just garden variety "lets reduce traffic from those small website owners even more" type of update or yet another completely failed attempt at reining in auto generated spam sites. Laughably, they haven't made any progress in this fight since 2020.

However, its not all bad news for everyone - apparently russians might be lucky - they might ban YouTube country-wide. If they also ban Google search, the country might actually end up gaining more from this than losing from all the sanctions combined.

[saladtosser]

24th February slapped our website down another 6ths months, luckily we have been doing YouTube a couple of years now and that keeps growing year on year, website dies year on year but the same content on youtube grows years on year, go figure!

[christianz]

website dies year on year but the same content on youtube grows years on year, go figure!

I think the reason is obvious what's not obvious is how they can still get away with it.

If it wasn't for instant answer functionality, they would probably serve you YouTube video for queries like "how much is 2 plus 2". And some influencer would give you awesome 15 minute video on this subject.

[frankleeceo]

@christianz

lol.

It's more like.

Ads 1: Number 1 2+2 provider
Ads 2: Do you know 2+2
1 Organic: Times article about 2+2
People also ask: 4 lots of 2+2 variations. Like. how does 2+2 work, can I 2+2, where is the best to 2+2
YouTube Video for next 3 positions. A cute girl talk about 2+2, a nerdy guy talk about 2+2, and maybe a science channel talk about 2+2.
Wikipedia on 2+2.
Some major content farm network for next 3 positions (well well known ezines with billions of views).
Close it with people also search for related 2+2 queries like 1+2, 1+3,

That's about the SERP nowadays.

[rustybrick]

So whatever happened on Friday was short lived?

[RedBar]

So whatever happened on Friday was short lived?

For me yes, Monday was 100.3% which is higher than a regular Monday but obviously within my weekday average.

I'm not seeing much movement within my established / evergreen website SERPs however new pages and especially so new sites seem to be almost impossible to gain any traction whatsoever and this has been on-going for far too long.

They're not sandboxed simply kept behind to force ad sales IMHO.