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

[Alex_1729]

Seeing a few signs of higher traffic compared to yesterday. Could mean nothing, and I'll assume that it doesn't.

[christianz]

@Markedd

Shocking. It's a "search engine" that covers 80% of results with its own website and remaining 20% with a snippet designed to prevent navigation to any third party website.

Antitrust case has never been clearer.

[JesterMagic]

@christianz So true!

[Markedd]

@christianz The antitrust practices are essentially the only way Google does business nowadays. Slap on the wrist and moving on. The sad thing is that the snippets and some YouTube videos were on the second page as well. Google knows that people have moved to the second page now for legit info.

[javelin]

We are fighting for peanuts and cannot even get those.

[christianz]

Google knows that people have moved to the second page now for legit info.

Maybe that's why they don't implement a "Web" tab in the same way there are "News", "Images" and "Videos". Because in that tab they would be forced to give those "10 blue links" and too many users would form a habit of going straight to the Web tab.

[RedBar]

@christianz

DDG had huge growth during pandemic so its normal for this trend to cool off a little bit,

That is a very strange view to take. -11.5% is "a little bit" ?

Now if you were to say that overall traffic had reduced in the USA this year that would make sense with people generally being more careful / spending less.

I am now seeing a reduced traffic trend at -16.67% and I fear this may soon turn into a 25-33% trend as Google squeezes more and more advertisements onto the first two pages.

[ichthyous]

This update seems to have introduced a big degree of fluidity in the SERPS, perhaps that was the point. I am seeing huge inter-day surges and drops in traffic as a daily pattern now. My mornings start with traffic to my home page down 60%-80%, and USA traffic -50%-60%. Yesterday there was a surge in USA traffic that lasted about 8 hours that made up most of the difference. I could see that it started to taper off by the late eve. This morning, back down 80%. This is pretty frightening. Either it's due to wide ranging shifts in layout which change hour by hour, or an overall algorithmic suppression of USA traffic that updates periodically.

[christianz]

That is a very strange view to take. -11.5% is "a little bit" ?

I am talking about DDG number of searches per day trends. If I remember correctly (and I probably don't) they doubled over the lockdown years. -11.5% "cooloff" is nothing after that.

[ichthyous]

Regarding Google's antitrust issues and violations...we all know it, and so does the government. Even the public is starting to see it because of all the press. But nothing will get done by the Congress because they are beholden to all those tech industry donations. In this case I would say that the right-wing anger at the tech giants for supposed bias and censorship could end up benefitting the country in terms of building bipartisan support to act. If enough on the left and right are pissed some legislation might finally end up coming. All they have to do is look at Europe, the UK and Australia for guidance...but they will not break up Google, it would be almost impossible and the argument is that any other company is free to start it's own search engine and that Google just does it better.

[Markedd]

@ichthyous It's a bad argument, as you, me and we all know it. You can't be a competitor to Google because of its antitrust practices. And monopolies need to be broken apart. Apparently the last to be punished was Microsoft and it seems that the tech giants learned that lobbying will save their hides. It's clear that there's no stopping the Google train to ruin the web, so I am just curious how low does it need to go to reach some form of protest from mainstream media.

[ichthyous]

@markedd Exactly...but Microsoft getting punished was already a long time ago now. I think there is a feeling setting in that too much power has concentrated in the hands of Google, Amazon and Facebook, which control the flow of information and online commerce, as well as have a huge influence via social media. If the stars align a lot of momentum might build to deal with them, but they have become trillion dollar corporations with limitless resources to bribe congress and run ads 24/7 to scare people and obfuscate what is really going on....monopoly.

[ichthyous]

Do we have a name yet for the new block of 8 links to articles with huge images taking over the entire first page of mobile search now? My most important searches have been decimated as I am now ranking right under this block and only have one small square image.

So I see four huge ads to start, with five sub links and telephone numbers, etc. Then Google local, then this new block of 8 articles, after that a carousel of Twitter posts, then one Serp sandwiched in (usually me)...this serp is ignored as it's hardly noticeable. Then people also ask, then three more serps, "refine this search" block, Google shopping ads etc.

This changes in order from search to search. One thing that I have noticed is that the same sites are given huge listings with multiple large images to call attention. My site gets one small image no matter the position. The effect of this visual treatment is to emphasize those serps no matter the position, and when you add in the block of 8 articles you have no chance of getting found even if you are top 3. This has spread through all of my most important serps, so I would have to become a publishing platform to get found.

[saladtosser]

>>>Do we have a name yet for the new block of 8 links to articles with huge images taking over the entire first page<<<

Google spam, it makes you wonder what they will do with their time when they take over 100% of the real estate, spam their own spam maybe?

[stoneman30]

Hi all. Quick update. My rankings are continuing to stay. I am not seeing huge swings like before. I have seen a little volatility since I last reported on Monday. Things are definitely not back to where they were before the update, but I am no longer 80% down (as I was over the past week). I'd say I'm down about 20% pre update.

@Lisa01 - I made 0 changes to my site. My first reaction was to start making updates. I have several friends who did. I, for once, just sat back and waited. I'm glad I did. Since Monday afternoon (when many of my rankings came from 100+ back to the 1st page), I have gone onto a few pages and removed some ads for a couple of pages and worked on site speed for them, too. Just to see if they would give me a further boost. Otherwise, I'm waiting at least 1 more week before I start monkeying a bunch with it. I was seeing crazy ranking swings for about a week - lose 100+ places, have my home page rank for every money keyword on my site on page 8-9, then the money keyword pages came back. It was strange stuff.

I still think the results are trash in a lot of places. I have started using DDG and even Bing for some of my personal searches as some of the results now in Google just stink. I have several family and friends who are not in this business say they even noticed the change and are having trouble finding what they are looking for on Google. That can't be good for them. In my industry, Amazon and Target are #1 and #2 now for nearly almost every single e-commerce term....even though they only have the low quality products in my niche and the true experts are buried at the bottom of the 1st page, page 2 or are no longer in the top 100. Not a good search experience even as a user.

[RedBar]

Shenanigan

noun

A playful or mischievous act; a prank.
An underhanded act or deceitful remark.
Nonsense; humbug; deceit: as, now, no shenanigan about this.

IMHO G has now become utterly pointless for organic results. It is now 00.30 UK time, prime time USA and my traffic is almost zero. All my long-standing big keyword pages have either been demoted or completely and utterly disappeared way past the 100 SERPs results.

I am seeing a 9 year old Pinterest post push me off #1 for MY EXCLUSIVE widget, it has one awful image, period, I have several HQ images and full widget info etc, it's an effing joke however it's by design so that users click on an ad . . .

G is only interested in a sales SERPs, nothing more, nothing less, organising the world's information disappeared years ago, manipulating for sales ads is its only interest.

[ichthyous]

I am not seeing big demotions in serps...in fact the serps remain fairly stable on a day to day basis. I'm doing a little worse than before the may 25th update, but nothing to be alarmed about.

So then, why the 50% drop in traffic to my home page? Or the 30+% drop to many of my most important landing pages? They are still ranking as before. It's because of on page changes at Google. The number and prominence of ads is bigger, and for my most important searches Google has rolled out a huge block of links to articles now. So if you include Google local, Google images, related searches, suggested articles, Twitter carousel, etc then nobody is going to click on your site link hidden in between all of that. Google is also strongly pushing informational articles in a broad range of searches that used to shoe a mix of sites and bring me lots of business, and that just got a lot worse with this update. Good for publishers, terrible for ecomm.

What could Google's real (not stated) motivation be for deciding the intent for every search for us, rather than returning a mix and letting us decide for ourselves as before? After all, the serps used to display a nice mix of informational and commercial sites for 20 years. The motivation is to starve the commercial sites and force them to pay up.

From Google's perspective, even if these now stsrving businesses try paying for ads for just a short time and quit (because as we all know here, the ads are useless trash and a pure scam) it's a win for them. All they need is a constant stream of victims. That is the reality of Google's business practice and motivation...it's classic monopolistic practice because they don't need to compete and they don't need to provide a service that actually works well. Only a major major competitor will force Google to provide that through competition for a better service.

Google is dead...consider it a side show at best now. They have declared their intention to kill off all organic traffic from their site and so we all should be focusing on other ways of reaching real customers. You can focus all day on reaching the top in Google but that no longer provides much of a benefit.

[EditorialGuy]

What could Google's real (not stated) motivation be for deciding the intent for every search for us, rather than returning a mix and letting us decide for ourselves as before? After all, the serps used to display a nice mix of informational and commercial sites for 20 years.

Because the average searcher isn't looking for a "mix." He or she is looking for results that match his or her search intent. If I search on "Widgetberg" with the intent of finding general city information, I don't want a bunch of hotel booking pages. Similarly, if I'm interested in a new ink cartridge for my 1960s-vintage cartridge fountain pen, I don't want pages about the history of fountain pens, how to use a fountain pen, or why fountain pens are better than ballpoints--I just want a source of ink cartridges.

There's nothing nefarious about trying to match search results to user intent, a.k.a. trying to offer a better user experience.

[ichthyous]

Because the average searcher isn't looking for a "mix." He or she is looking for results that match his or her search intent.

@editorialguy. The problem is that Google is assuming what the search intent is, and it's wrong. If we all used to have tons of customers searching for something to buy, and now those customers are only shown endless how-to articles and listicles then that is the mismatch.

Google is actually doing the opposite of its stated goal for these searchers isn't it? It's disregarding all of those searchers who aren't looking for another how-to article.

Keep in mind that the terms I am referring to can be interpreted in various ways...i.e. if you search for "xyz photography" now you will only get shown dozens of how-to articles crowding out the serps. In the past you got articles, sites selling photography, photo organizations etc. Clearly all those former customers who did used to use these terms before March of 2021 to find physical products aren't being well served what Google is trying to shove down their throats now...so the "Google is just trying to help us by matching intent" argument doesn't really work for these types of searches. But Google intentionally pushing searchers away from commercial sites sure does help to fill their pockets.

[carlweitz]

@Brett_Tabke
I guess I still have rollercoaster ride with my keywords. A week ago visits were back, now it's flat. As I mentioned before, all informational keywords are shown as commercial intent.
Visitors from Google, minus 50%

[EditorialGuy]

The problem is that Google is assuming what the search intent is, and it's wrong. If we all used to have tons of customers searching for something to buy, and now those customers are only shown endless how-to articles and listicles then that is the mismatch.

If the execution isn't perfect, and if progress isn't always linear, that doesn't mean the goal is wrong.

I miss the good old days of ten blue links myself (and I especially miss InfoSeek with its instant indexing), but most of the time I'm not Google Search's target audience.

Back on topic: For the searches that I watch, there hasn't been a whole lot of drama with the May Core Update. It would be interesting to hear Google's estimates of how many searches, sites, etc. have been affected, but apparently we aren't getting those numbers this time.

[malkhaldi]

Everything changed after this update, I did not understand yet what is required for , bad results when searching, the number of visitors in Google Analytics is incorrect
When I log in to real time I see that there are 4 visitors from the Google search engine, but there are actually 20
I hope they reconsider it

[KaseyM]

Seeing big movements at the start of this week. Traffic nowhere to be found. Down ~25%.

[christianz]

Craziness continues. Yesterday I was at new multi-year low. Today was still terrible, but I have seen my sitewide snippet removals (from 1st position + snippet to removed from index completely) reverse for some pages - going from no ranking whatsoever to 1st position plus featured snippet or image pack.

If this actually becomes a trend, it would support the "glitch" theory - that this was happening due to some technical idiosyncrasy. But that's wishful thinking....