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.

[christianz]

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.

And even if his page is #1 for most visitors in most locales, googlespam can push him off the screen completely, especially on mobile.

[NickMNS]

@frankleeceo

Don't tell me that millions of people just as a group decided to stop search for a term

No what you are seeing is an artifact of the GSC reporting. Reports are based on "keywords" but Google doesn't show you all the keywords and doesn't even show you a random sampling of keywords. From so far as I can tell, they try to show you the widest range of keywords possible. The result of this is that some keywords, are dropped from report as other are added. Essentially what this means is that reporting of individual keywords in GSC is pretty much useless.

In addition to that, GSC reports keywords only when there was an impression. So if you appear at position 12, on page 2, but the user never scrolls to page 2, well that isn't counted in GSC.

The figure to watch in GSC is "impressions" if those are high or climbing, things are good, if impressions are low or dropping things need work.

[Markedd]

@frankleeceo This is something that I was afraid of to be honest. I felt for a while that there was some sort of a ceiling for some of my websites. Even if I continue to add new articles and they technically rank really well, most of the time at the top of the first page, the traffic to the website remained unchanged. That could only happen when articles are moved in some sort of rotation. I will try to force Google's hand with a higher volume of articles and see if anything changes (it will take months to see any results, if there's going to be any).

[frankleeceo]

@NickMNS

Nick my man lol. I am not talking about the 1000th place keywords that get 1~2 clicks. It's the top showing keywords that's top 1% percentile in traffic. It's not a rounding error that I am reporting/observing here, nor data accuracy issue. I know those exists and I mindfully avoid paying too much attention to those. So something like, 1000 clicks => 10, 99% loss. I don't think it's accuracy issue nor rounding error.

@Markedd
Welcome to the club. I think I observe what you observe. I first started noticing it many years ago, while plenty others die hard deny this.

My only recommendation though...focus on the users, make the best content & experience. At some point it's not about the volume of articles. And I think you are at that point.

And another ps. even at this point, your focus is overall traffic volume, start thinking in terms of percentages. It sucks to not have that rocket ship growth anymore, but if 1~2 new content every week gives 1% more traffic, it might still be worth it. After 1 year you would still have 50% growth. Cannabilization is natural. It will happen.

[Markedd]

@frankleeceo Thank you for your suggestions. I already had my expectations severely tempered ever since the 2020 Google update fiasco, but yes, that was the approach that I was going for this website this year. Little gains and see what happens every 6 months with the then-ongoing strategy.

[samwest]

Well, I am now #1 on my main keyphrases, yet traffic is off the cliff. Barely getting 200 hits a day. I guess rock bottom would be zero, and at the current rate, that's not far away. #1, yet essentially zero traffic. I have checked DDG, #1, Google, #1, tried incognito mode, #1, tried using Surf Shark from dozens of locations around the world, still #1, so it really must be some "other smoke and mirrors", or, the internet itself is in major failure mode. I have several other sites, some that use AWS and that are getting clobbered from what looks like daily DDoS swarms, even Cloudflare is slow, so what we may think is SEO related might actually be network-related. Let the Netscout map populate to watch the mess out there. This is what a cyberwar looks like and feels like in the pocketbook. If you're doing great, God bless you.

[horizon.netscout.com...]

[mosxu]

Very bad traffic

[ichthyous]

Traffic is becoming less and less correlated with rank. My USA and UK traffic has been considerably lower for more than a week, with intermittent 'recovery' back to normal every third day or so. Meanwhile my rank has dropped and now returned to where it was with no correlation to the actual traffic. In the past 8 days or so complete silence, so all the drops are taking a toll.

[longjohnbronze]

"Traffic is becoming less and less correlated with rank." - If I was Google, looking down the barrel of potential regulation, this is what I would strive for.

[Alex_1729]

I thought I was the only one. Traffic dropped significantly yesterday (and the day before), yet my rankings seem to have improved.

[Alex_1729]

Correction - my site has dropped a bit in rankings relating to list posts on digital products.

[christianz]

Traffic dropped significantly yesterday (and the day before), yet my rankings seem to have improved.

Look for increase in googlespam in recent updates. Googlespam is like entropy - it always increases.

[KaseyM]

Had a good couple of weeks but since Friday really struggling for traffic. Mad.

[ichthyous]

Increase in top 3 ranking terms today, yet my USA traffic is down 60% this morning. USA traffic has been way off for days now. To early to say how the day will end up, but search and direct traffic off by 25%-30%. Even referral traffic seems much lower...

[JesterMagic]

My site has been sliding 10% this past month and I am trying to figure out what has changed in the rankings.

One thing I notice in Google Search Console is that my Agg. CLS changed just for desktop. It happened on Jan 28 where it went from 0 to 1200 affected URLs in a few days and have stayed relatively constant. Mobile is perfectly fine ( so is green and 0) but for some reason desktop is not (it is red and 0.33) . These pages are older and have not changed in a while. The pages are responsive so no difference in the source of the page between mobile and desktop.

The CLS score for affected desktop pages is actual 0 when Google checks it. This error is the Agg. CLS which is Computed from the Core Web Vitals metrics over the latest 28-day collection period. Half the stats are marked Good and the other half is marked Poor (> 0.25) (you can see these stats when you expand the view in PageSpeed Insights.

Has anyone had this happen to them? These pages are mostly articles and we do not have any ads displayed on them. Nothing should be causing a layout shift.

[rustybrick]

Any of you noticing ranking changes offer product review related content?

[surnames]

re: traffic drop, you don't think that it could be that some people's internet time has decreased because a percentage of them are glued to the tv war news?
I'm talking mainly about US news media tv and US internet traffic. the news outlets are working 150% to keep you watching their coverage of the war.

[edited by: surnames at 5:40 pm (utc) on Mar 27, 2022]

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed however my global site is still maintaining its traffic with an average of 100.3% so far for this month. Our main UK site is up at 110.9% which has been a very pleasant surprise, its realworld takings are also doing well.

More significantly genuine re-stocking buiness bulk enquiries have picked up together with a few large projects being touted around all and sundry.

[renatovieira]

@rustybrick - Nothing on my side for now.

[Martin Ice Web]

Very big drop (-40% to 50%) since 2 weeks now. Serps itself doesn´t seem to have changed so it could be some super AI that is going wild.
We see A/B testing, where A is normal and B is very bad for us.

We can do whatever we want. Add content, pictures, videos (in high end quality) but we are still getting outranked by small little stupid websites. Just the opposite, it seems that all our content-rich sites have been hit.

[samwest]

The problem seems multifaceted. It appears that the problem is at least in part due to attacks on the infrastructure itself. The browsing experience in the past months has left much to be desired. Page timeouts, high pings, pages not loading on the first attempt, captcha everywhere. From my 400mbs connection, the web is damn slow. It's being attacked from every direction. If we have #1 listings and zero traffic, it indicates the road is blocked, and nobody can get to their destination on time. One system I am working on uses AWS and Rocket Chat, and that system has been backed up and wonky for weeks now. Over 24-hour delays on messages. As I said above, just watching Netscout, you can see the massive number of high bandwidth DDoS attacks all day. Even checking your DNS will likely show routers out of service or unable to report. I know, it's always that way, but try multiple DNS tools and you'll see this is getting worse. All of this, along with massive top loading by Gorg adds up to the perfect storm that is killing our site traffic. What are you seeing?

[horizon.netscout.com...]

[cybermap.kaspersky.com...]

[saladtosser]

Wow today for some of my searches im seeing position 1-6 all YouTube, I had to triple check i wasn't in the video section! Website traffic continues to decline and according to my YouTube analytics traffic from google to my channel has improved by 46% since this time last year! (informational)

[ichthyous]

I am seeing continuing increases in top 3 ranking, but English language traffic is weak. USA is consistently weak every day for about 10 days now, UK also lower most days but not as much. Today Canada is also off by 37%. The theory about the war in Ukraine having an impact might be true, but if so why not lower traffic from continental Europe? Also, why the sudden shift and decline...if it were news related it would be more gradual, not overnight.

The sudden declines in traffic following the same patterns indicates to me that it's all manipulation on the part of Google. They are once again experimenting with page layout and other ways to ensure that website don't get any traffic and they keep it all. I see some sites that were major competitors reduced to running ads for everything now...which is exactly what Google wants of course. They won't make any profit at $5 per click with all the fraudulent clicks too. I tried it last year...Google's traffic from adwords is pure crap.

[SteveWrz]

The search results are a NIGHTMARE right now. Some articles outranking my expertly crafted and unique experiences are some of the most AI spun auto generated total #*$! I've ever seen. One look at this and you can tell it was not written by a human and yet its outranking me in the results.

Like why do I bother? Why not just give in and buy some of the AI content crap? They're clearly winning and getting rewarded for it.

[christianz]

I had to triple check i wasn't in the video section

Funny that they even have a video section. Imagine you go search on google.com and get your usual 6 YouTubes. But that's not enough and you look for the "Video" section...

I can't wait till they add a special "People Also Ask" section. No need for actual web search section, what's a website anyway?

[frankleeceo]

How do you improve relevancy? 10X that People Also Ask For listing :). The most recent numbers have me wonder lol.

I feel the search engine is going the direction of infinite loops until Google can show a relevant answer on YouTube or Google Maps.

[saladtosser]

>>>>Imagine you go search on google.com and get your usual 6 YouTubes. But that's not enough and you look for the "Video" section...<<<

Imagine you go to YouTube, do a search and the first six results are web pages and people also ask/images instead of videos? Will that ever happen?

[abcdefg]

The crash is happening. AMZN is so desperate that it has sent me repeated "special rates" alerts months in a roll. Lots of durable goods are on sale on AMZN. Probably the goal is to get another 1 or 2 quarters in before the game is up.

Same with G. At some point, it'll only have military intelligence income

[ichthyous]

According to SEMrush I had a very large boost in visibility today, now passing or on part with my top competitor. Yet my home page traffic is down 71% and my USA traffic is down 56% so far this morning. Ranking really is not correlating with traffic. I wish I had the time and skills to analyze why, but I can't afford to hand Google more of my time, I'm busy looking for ways to diversify away from search. I have to say, social isn't much better. If you aren't paying FB or Instagram you will get nothing from those platforms either.

[RedBar]

Something happened on Saturday 26th March for me:

Global site 1-25 March 100%
The last 4 days 83.6% and today looking lower however enquiries stil good.

UK site 1-25 March 112%
The last 4 days 81% and, as above, today looking lower.