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.

[samwest]

@ Nick - Then it is ridiculous to think I'm ranking at all. It's all smoke and mirrors. The results sure prove that out. I use incognito, VPN and our clients around the world do the same searches, all the same results. The only thing I've come to terms with is that Gorg is corrupted beyond all hope. From your comment and what we actually observe, they are great at hiding things and creating false realities for their own benefit. Got it.

[wowzim]

The deliberate and extreme throttling of traffic has been very obvious over the last week. Search engine traffic on Friday was down 87% week on week and it's only getting worse. The vice like grip that has been applied only appears to be getting tighter as each day goes by. Traffic plummeted around a week ago and shows no sign of recovery. Yesterday, it was as if Google had decided I should only be granted 3,000 visitors and any social spike was almost immediately met with a reduction in search hits. This kind of control is always obvious but not always bad. On one day I have 100 visitors at any one time for an entire 24-hour period, the next day it's 500 visitors constantly and the next 1,000. Yesterday, it was 10 visitors at any one time - consistently for the entire day.

[samwest]

@wow - either that or we are witnessing the death of the internet on several fronts. Not surprising with a cyberwar in progress. Netscout is on fire with DDOS attacks. That can't help. Cloudflare has gone crazy with its firewall, changing it on the fly, and suddenly it's not obeying our rules...clobbering automatic pass backs from payment processors. [horizon.netscout.com...]

[ichthyous]

@wowzim With that volume of traffic you shouldn't complain...this week I have seen hours where 1-3 visitors are hitting my site for 5 hours at a time. Google just turns off the traffic. Saturday eve and Sunday early morning it was a 70% drop to my home page, now suddenly recovering. UK traffic is off by 50%+ for days now. One day search will plummet, then next day it's direct traffic. My traffic never recovered to pre-April 2021 levels, before Google started this overt onslaught on everyone's traffic (they at least tried to hide it better before).

Let's face it, Google does not care about the quality of search results at all...it only cares about revenue, and it will cannibalize it's own search business by forcing ads down everyone's throats until they transition to a mostly Yout-Tube, mostly non-search ad based business model.

[christianz]

With that volume of traffic you shouldn't complain

Absolute numbers of visitors should not be compared between a high traffic information/infotainment site and, lets say, e-store of very expensive, very specific widgets.

The e-store site may make 5000x the revenue per visitor. Relative change is all that matters. That's why I only mention percentages in my posts when I talk about my traffic drops.

[samwest]

@Ich, yep, I consider it's a good day when getting more than 2 consecutive visits, so yeah, feel blessed @wow. Back in the day, it was 25-50 at a time, all day, every day, the same rank as today, less in fact, but now less longtail, image search, and much less AI and top loading. With my conversion rate, that's all the traffic I needed to be happy. Google wants to be sure you have nothing and yet wants you to like it. This is not how you build a community of happy users...but why care when you wield all the power.

[RedBar]

I suspect your main business which is related to certain "equipment"

@Dooku - Well, you could not be more wrong if you tried :-)

It is an enormous global industry involved with the smallest of household projects to internationally recognised develppments, commercial and governmental, it also encompasses many specialist wholesalers and retailers in every country, not just a few countries but every continent. The industry is huge, think oil industry size.

Granted not everyone is searching for my widgets every minute of the day like they may do the news however when they do want to know more about my widgets I can assure you that there is some serious competition out there from multi-billion Dollar companies such as Home Depot which I am sure you may have heard of?

[shadowlight]

Let's face it, Google does not care about the quality of search results at all...it only cares about revenue, and it will cannibalize it's own search business by forcing ads down everyone's throats until they transition to a mostly Yout-Tube, mostly non-search ad based business model.

I done a search the other day to try and find some information on something quickly and had to scroll right down to nearly the bottom of the page to get a result that wasn't a Youtube video! PAA every single one Youtube then the other results all Youtube, there was only one or two results at the bottom of the page that were not Youtube.

A Youtube video may have provided the info but by the time you are forced to watch two non skippable ads (30 seconds or so each), then listen to someone waffle on for a few minutes (or longer and possibly more ads) before you get the info your actually looking for, well that is far from quick, its a pain in the ass! Plus I was wearing headphones so did not want to watch a video regardless!

I hope that legislation passes where they are prevented from doing this.

[saladtosser]

>>>Let's face it, Google does not care about the quality of search results at all...it only cares about revenue<<<

Unfortunately this is there LEGAL obligation, anyone who's waiting for google to prioritise anything over profits needs to freeze themselves in a cryogenic chamber and wait for hell to freeze over, because its not happening anytime this century! ;)

[samwest]

^ a somewhat disingenuous, out-of-context reply to the OP me thinks...but true enough. Gorgs greed is their downfall.
I cashed out at the top last November, doubt it will ever get back there...so perhaps hell will freeze over.
I may be wrong, but at least I now have clear conscience in knowing I'm no longer a part of them.

[Dooku]

@Redbar, then you are lucky! :-) Then I think most people working in that industry already know where those "specialist wholesalers" are to be found and are not dependent on G like in most other sectors. It's a little like with people who know where to source the best series of special Nichicon caps. And although the market is huge the buyers who need those caps know the best prices are NOT to be found in webshops listed in G :-)

I hope that legislation passes where they are prevented from doing this.

Do not despair......the very sign that G is squeezing the serps with increasingly completely ridiculous layouts and widgets is actually a sign on the wall. Inevitably there WILL be a tipping point at which no more increase in revenue is possible........that is when google is done for because they do not pay out dividend on shares. And we will have the best seats watching them go down that slide........

[japsec]

At the moment there is abnormal, unusual bot activity in the site. That might be a sign of something coming big.

[Neohippy]

Just doing some competitor analysis, and I'm starting to wonder if algo updates work like they used to, or if G is doing more refreshing of quality 'scores' for individual sites at separate times?

Seeing plenty of movement, but nothing at consistent times... Like site A's traffic has a strong change starting on x date, but site B's traffic didn't change until y date, and site C not till z date. Just pondering...

[SteveWrz]

These last two "updates" have hit my biggest site particularly hard. I had almost recovered from the first one, but the second one came through, took everything away and more.

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong and Google's not about to offer any assistance. I play by their rules, focus on content, engagement, and site speed and they continue to smack me around. How much longer can this go on?

[christianz]

@SteveWrz

What you described is exactly my situation. My biggest, oldest and best site (with highest engagement and most direct visitors) constantly battered with every update. Feb 24th was biggest beating in years.

It is no wonder that the web platform is stagnating. It's because people can't find you in the web platform, thanks to Google.

[ichthyous]

43% drop in USA traffic so far today. This is on a day that my ranking didn't change at all. Every other country is up, but it's been up so much that I am wondering if this is just bot activity that my analytics are not identifying correctly.

[RareBit]

Well, it has taken a month but all my 1st place positions have finally come back. (I got hammered on the 20th/22nd Feb)

[renatovieira]

Very and very slow today...

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is way off the last two days...yesterday closed -24% and today starts -43%. My home page is -47% and direct traffic is -54%, even though search is up 30%. It's early yet, but drops this large usually portend a bad day, and I did lose multiple top 10 ranking terms again today. Google can't decide if my site is in favor or not it seems...meanwhile the same site that Google has pushed upward since 2020 continues to go higher.

[Dooku]

@ichthyous,
- Get Hrefs for ONE month.
- Run the domain of that competitor in Hrefs, then click organic keywords.
- Note down all his keywords that you also rank for.
- Take one of those keywords and enter it in the Hrefs keyword tool.
- You will see a list of 10 to 20 domains ranking currently in G for that keyword.
- Click on the domain of your competitor and for that keyword you will see all the domains that have backlinks pointing to the website of your competitor.
- Filter that list to show ONLY dofollow backlinks.
- Than sort the column for high to low DR.
- Than take note of ONLY the domains above 50 or 60 preferably(70, 80, etc.) because THOSE will have the power to move the needle.
- Than check all of those urls to see where and on which page that competitor has his backlinks.
- Create your own backlinks on those domains/pages or copy whatever they are doing.

[ichthyous]

@Dooku Thanks for the useful advice, it's helpful. I can already do backlink analysis with SEMrush in a limited sense (I canceled my paid account). Issue is that the competitor publishes a lot of long-form articles and is not e-comm. The articles have attracted good quality links, but I am not an informational site...my site is basically a huge archive of very high-end fine art and the goal is sales. We are not really competitors in terms of our products but unfortunately the keywords used to reach both our sites overlap quite a bit. Until which point I am willing to devote my days to writing long-form content they will continue to outrank me. I don't see the point of that now as Google isn't sending the traffic anymore anyway. Just because he is rising in ranking, does not mean that he is getting the benefit of traffic...just like the rest of us. After a few discussions I am seeing a better strategy being creating video content for YouTube than long-form written content for Google search. If my business declines enough I will have time for both ;-)

[frankleeceo]

Seeing some testing patterns, looks like an upcoming move soon.

[Markedd]

I saw a very strange thing happening, so perhaps people smarter than me can explain it. I have posted an article some time ago and a few days ago it has gained some traction, reaching up to 200 visits a day. I checked where it was on Google and surely, it was the first organic result. What's interesting was that the traffic suddenly dropped to 4-5 visits a day and I was calmly thinking that the article is still moving in the SERP. But I was wrong, it's still there, solidly at the top. The visits were all organic from Google, weren't from News, so I have no idea what's going on.

[Jori]

Maybe you just lost long tail traffic. Look at the keywords of the page in GSC.

[Markedd]

@Jori Thank you for your reply. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, the long-tail keywords were unaffected. I can only assume it's some weird Discover thing, I don't even know what's Google doing nowadays.

[NickMNS]

so perhaps people ... can explain it.

See my post at the bottom of the last page (3). Just because you see it in position 1, doesn't mean that others see in that position.

[RedBar]

Very unusual traffic this week so far varying only by 1.5% with PVs.

Insofar as the SERPs are concerned my main global site seems normal using G USA however using G UK specifically, in general, most non-co.uk sites have been removed or demoted 2-3 pages leaving it 90+% localised therefore unless one knows how to search internationally, assuming that's what someone wants to do, then they'll only get limited UK-only results.

I do also see similar results when using other specific country sites using their languages, mostly localised result, therefore I am considering reviving some of my old country-specific domains to serve those markets.

[Markedd]

@NickMNS Then I guess there's no actual way to verify where you stand in the SERP, right? These last two years feel like a fever dream.

[NickMNS]

Then I guess there's no actual way to verify where you stand in the SERP, right?

Yup, by design. It creates information asymetry. GSC is probably your best best, but it is far from perfect. You can be sure that the information provided in GSC is accurate, the problem is, it is far from complete.

[en.wikipedia.org...]

[frankleeceo]

@Markedd

The best one to guage your position is through traffic & traffic alone.

I personally use GSC as an opportunity research tool / troubleshoot tool. Because it's far from complete, it's not worth it to lose sleep over :).

In you case, you lost 97% of traffic to that page, so yeah you lose ranking for the page almost completely across most keyword spectrum/intent. I won't do too much analysis over it other than seeing who over took you.

And though, some people hate me for this, but I observe this over and over and over. When you lose keywords to a page, if your site health remains intact. The "traffic quota" allocates to other pages of your site. So don't only dwell on what you lost, pay attention to what you have gained in return.

Keywords / Positions are all very fluid on an individual level. I see -100% on keywords set all the time, but quickly observe a +600% to others just because Google somehow likes my sites for those other terms. But overall site traffic will have much much less volatility over time.

Some of my keywords chart are insanity with -100% drops (in clicks & impression) often Quarter over quarter. But overall site traffic never ventures off +/- 5% range. Lol. Don't tell me that millions of people just as a group decided to stop search for a term. lol. Sometimes I laugh when I look at the data.

[edited by: frankleeceo at 3:28 pm (utc) on Mar 24, 2022]