Google Broad Core Update May 2022

Google Announces Update

[Brett_Tabke]

Core Update.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/05/may-2022-core-update

[surnames]

everything normal here up 4.7% on 7 days ago.

However Google says it will take 2 weeks to roll out.

[christianz]

No changes so far. Traffic terrible as always. Will this make it even more terrible? I don't know. As it has been with most if not all of these updates - its a choice between drop and stagnation. I already had some big drops so hopefully it will be stagnation this time.

[Broaster]

This sucks, I run a news blog and been in google for 10 years, and I saw some random spammy news with a wordpress favicon ranking and some aggregator spamm blog ranking in top stories how?

Makes no sense at all.

[penitentman]

Remember this rule of thumb with these core updates... Don't panic day 1 unless you are completely obliterated. Google claims these take 2 weeks to fully rollout but you should feel this update within 48 hours or it's not affecting you at all. Then wait for the dust to settle before analyzing your SERPS. Keep an eye out for a correction too. Sometimes these core updates have adverse affects and Google sees these signals and reverts. On a separate note, the PDF spam needs to be addressed in this core update because the Spam update of November sure as hell didn't. Good luck everyone

[Neohippy]

UK informational site with lots of UGC. Real-time currently about 2/3 of what I'd usually expect this time of day. Trying not to give into the fear just yet.

[Markedd]

So far I noticed a slight bump in traffic, but the keyword bleeding started again, so no idea where this will go. Let's see in a couple of weeks.

[carlweitz]

Hello everyone! So, as far as I see, my blogs were hit by this core update. On most of them, I didn't use the table of contents and they flew away (25% for now), one of them had and it is still doing okay without changes (maybe a slight down for 5%). So, IMHO you need big articles, with a good amount of h2,h3, +FAQ, and the chances you stay in SERP will grow up.

[carlweitz]

Oh, yes, just for your information, all my informational keywords are gone far away from page 1, and now what I see on page 1? Shops! :) I think there are no more informational keywords, only commercial! :)

[Alex_1729]

Informational site here, significant drops in traffic starting today, about 30% so far every hour. Keyword rankings also dropped in almost all categories. Yesterday was fine. Hopefully, they return as they did in December/January after the other core update.

[ljc2424]

Hey, a similar case here. The thing I've noticed is that I've lost 100% of my featured snippets. What's peculiar is I've either lost the snippet but only dropped to position 2 or I'm still in position 1 and Google no longer has a snippet in the SERPs for that term.

Have you looked at some KWs you were previously ranking as a snippet for?

[ljc2424]

Just commented about this but thought I'd reply direct, have you checked your featured snippets?

[Alex_1729]

If you're responding to me, I just checked and I seem to have lost most (if not all) of my featured snippets as well.

[ljc2424]

Sorry new to the forum and thought I responded directly to you but I may have messed something up.

I've checked a chunk of other sites and several have lost 100% of their snippets. I know of a few people who saw this back in November with no recovery. John Mu, of course, flatly denied it happening.

[twitter.com...]

[christianz]

I think those of us who are losing traffic, we need to focus on Making Great Content™ . That's the biggie we all missed...

[javelin]

Those who are losing traffic with information related sites I will say that I am in a different boat at the moment. My informational site has seen an increase overnight. Traffic is presently pushing what I would normally get in one day I have received since 9pm to 6am. So this is a big uptick for me.

Im not sure what the difference is between what I have and what others are doing but it is still really early in the game for this update. They have just begun and whatever we see should not be taken as the standard yet. We need at least 4 to 5 days to see the general direction of this one.

[Neohippy]

Thanks for sharing Javelin! Feels like people are always too busy celebrating to come here when updates are in their favour, so we get a v biased view - nice to see a bit of balance (even if I'm lowkey super jealous ;) )

[MayankParmar]

Yet another "core" update, but what is the point when Google would continue to favour media houses or sites built using expired links/domains while sideling us?

At this point, I am convinced nothing will change. It's impossible to grow and survive as an independent (whitehat) online business.

[christianz]

Thanks for sharing Javelin! Feels like people are always too busy celebrating to come here when updates are in their favour, so we get a v biased view - nice to see a bit of balance (even if I'm lowkey super jealous ;) )

If I remember correctly, javelin has reported gains for several months, so its just more of the same massaging that Google is doing. If, by accident, your site fits some cookie cutter AI mould of what a "good website" should look like, you may ride a wave for a some time, before they change it again.

Whatever the journey with ups and downs for each site may be, the end destination is zero Google traffic anyway. Unless, like MayankParmar mentioned, you are big media house or some other type of "trusted source".

[Alex_1729]

@ljc2424 I'm fairly new as well, but I have no idea how to reply or quote in this forum. Nor can I vote.

Anyways, I doubt Google can just like that remove all the snippets when I have high-quality original content, with heavy-on SEO as well. Doubt they will just do 180° on me when I've been following all the rules and tricks. I'm expecting something similar to the December experience, just less pronounced. If I'm wrong, then everything I've learned about Google Search is incorrect, my critical thinking skills suck, my SEO knowledge is bad, and Google is as terrible as I've been reading on this forum from some members. But, I tend to be positive and hope for the best.

Thing is, not just are my snippets down, but most other rankings as well that weren't #1. So, I don't see good reasoning in Google ranking me high all consistently, only to be dropped completely.

[KaseyM]

Continuing to shave off 5-10% of traffic every week. Yesterday seemed worse.

Very nervous about the future.

[ljc2424]

@Alex_1729, I'm with you! No idea how to reply to particular posts/quote etc.

[longjohnbronze]

Right now, we're seeing substantial increases over Thursday last week (+15%) but it doesn't look right: Bounce rate is slightly up while pages-per-session slightly down (which make sense together), but the average session duration is substantially lower. I also double-checked the latter per hour of the day to correct for regional behaviour since we have a global userbase.

In any case, I doubt the traffic gains will last. Within a week or two we'll be back to our "assigned traffic volume".

[ichthyous]

I am seeing a BIG decline in USA traffic today...similar to the one day blip last week. USA is down 56% and search is down 30% at 11:30am. Once again my most important landing pages are down 70%+...it's always the same landing pages that get hit too. I see this at least once a week now, and it usually bounces back at the end of the day, or next day.

This is the result of on-page changes I assume...i.e. loading the pages with too much crap so that organic results get pushed down. I would be panicked, but my SERPS actually improved overnight so I am thinking it will last 12-24 hours again. Otherwise if this sticks it will be very ugly.

[westcoast]

Large, 25 year old informational/entertainment/education site.

Right now trending down around -10% for a Thursday.

It's early so fingers crossed. We have made *significant* best-practice seo and site quality improvements over the past 12 months.

Good luck all.

[RedBar]

I'll be boring and say all looking normal / average at the moment. In the past May updates have usually seen some major shake-ups therefore until we get into the second week of June I'll keep checking for possible movements.

[Robert Charlton]

Mods note..

Sorry new to the forum and thought I responded directly to you but I may have messed something up.

ljc2424... welcome to the forum, and sorry for your confusion about replies. The forums are going through some redesign and rebuilding as we speak, and your issue is one that I believe will be addressed. During the change-over, some of the specifics I'm posting here may change as well.

This post is replying also to Alex_1729, who has posted similar confusion about the interface.

Currently there is no dedicated "Reply" to a specific post in WebmasterWorld's interface... You use either the "Post Reply" key at the top and bottom of each page of a thread , or you use the "Quick Reply" box at the bottom of each page. "Post Reply" provides a visible "Editor" function with built in keys above each window... and also there's a text link to the "Style Codes" page at the top left of the edit window.

If you use the "Quick Reply" box, though, you won't see any Help links until you've previewed your post using the "Preview" key, which is at the bottom left of the text window.

FYI here... the "style codes" page is at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/help-v6.cgi?cat=ubbcodes] [webmasterworld.com]. UBB Style Codes are kinda like basic html code for posting in forums, using square brackets "[" and "]" instead of html carats "<" and ">".

Conventions for replying...
Note the informal convention we use for replying.... we copy and paste the specific section of a post we're replying to, and we highlight quote in start-quote and end-quote tags... "blockquote", I think we call them. It gets kind tricky if you are using quotes after a link, and I'll skip that for now.

Some members like to use @username to address a recipient. I tend not to like that format because it may limit discussion too narrowly, and because not everyone has consistent usernames across all social media... so this can confuse things beyond WebmasterWorld.

There's also a general "Help" link which is currently almost completely hidden, at...
https://www.webmasterworld.com/help-v6.cgi?cat=help [webmasterworld.com]

Hope this helps. Sorry for the interruption. Normally we don't discuss moderation in threads, but I'm seeing enough new members that I thought this would help. Thanks for everyone's input.

[not2easy]

Apologies for more off-topic information, I hope it might help our newer users.

Regarding Snippets changes, Google just posted up information about "How to Control Your Snippets in Google" - Information here: [webmasterworld.com...]

For our newer members who would like more information about the forums' settings and features - See our welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] page.

[javelin]

@christianz

If I remember correctly, javelin has reported gains for several months, so its just more of the same massaging that Google is doing. If, by accident, your site fits some cookie cutter AI mould of what a "good website" should look like, you may ride a wave for a some time, before they change it again.

I understand the frustration to the AI issue and if you notice I have posted about that at length in different conversations. Yes I have had gains, but no my site is not cookie cutter. I actually have many different sites just like others do. So allow me to detail more of what I am doing, or what I am seeing.

My other sites, one is ecommerce, is and has remained flat as well as losses within the past history. We all like to complain and yell at Google, I get it. Nevertheless I became curious as to what is happening. This curiosity caused me to explore and experiment.

The latest experiment is a site on a topic I know very very well and is purely research driven. I used wordpress instead of Drupal (my old favorite) and began to write. I stripped the site to be as clean and neat as possible but still allowed for basic design and images to be used.

Beyond this I focused on keywords only, I have done zero link building. I came up with a format that I use creating keyword bubbles around topics and a way to target them. All I will say is that no keyword stands alone just as no single page today will stand alone in this modern Google.

I discovered that links matter far far far less than what people would ever believe. Content does in fact matter more. At least this is true on sites where heavy content is possible. This would not be easy to render on an eCommerce site with products. Thus begins our bigger issue.

While this research site has performed exponentially well there is not a way to drive the same depth or width within products. The idea that Google is driving those who sell to use their ad systems I believe is proven, not just a theory. Meanwhile AI while a problem it is not the site killer that many believe it to be just yet. The problem is that one day it will be if the issue is not fixed right now.

What I do see is that SEO has changed and too many are stuck in old ways of doing things. I really do not know how else to say it. There is no one way anymore. Each platform will have its own needs, niche, approach to marketing, keywords or links, or ads, whatever that thing or things are the SEO person behind it needs to find that thing.

It is a unique problem that has no single answer. Each word on my site is written by me and not AI. It is definitely not cookie cutter. By the way I do have sites that were trending badly down. Yet with this experimentation I can now better understand how to approach solving some problems and things begin to improve.

A lot more went into this than people seeing an occasional post. You gotta dig brother... keep digging.

[ichthyous]

I would add that anyone who has a site with a basically commercial intent is just not going to get the traffic they used to get. The wide swath of keywords I was ranking on up until the end of March 2021 have now mostly been allotted to informational searches, and it has never reverted. You now get results with multiple how-to articles before the first site that sells anything appears.

I could start to get that traffic back if I sat and wrote how-to articles all day...but would that traffic be targeted? It wouldn't help me sell more product, it would only help me if I were willing to run ads on those pages? I would be a waste of time to try to convert people seeking information into customers of products if their original intent is not to shop to begin with.