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

[Dooku]

@ichthyous, Usually direct traffic are people typing your url directly in their web browser url bar, or clicking your link from their bookmarks/favorites list web browser or bookmark app/service, or clicking a link they have from you in an email.

[RedBar]

With just over 6 hours of my Googleday to go I'm at 85% of my average weekday Page Views and Unique Visitors so hopefully the update has settled in my sector.

Interestingly our UK hotel / pub site traffic is definitely well above usual Sunday, Monday and Tuesday aveages BUT how much this has to do with the Jubilee celebrations later this week I obviously have no idea other than the live music calendar page being well-visited.

[ichthyous]

@Dooku I realize that Direct traffic includes people typing in the url. But there's no way that is all the is included under Direct. Google image traffic cannot be tracked as it passes no referrer so I suspect that web analytics just classifies it as direct. (I no longer use Google Analytics)

People typing the url into the browser bar is only a fraction of this traffic...which is about 22% of my total traffic on average. Could also be bots!

[MayankParmar]

A pretty interesting graph highlighting ups and downs caused by Google algorithm update, posted in SER comments: [uploads.disquscdn.com...]

[javelin]

@christianz thanks for that input. Helps to cure the curiosity.

The traffic you guys see dropping on English only sites is interesting. Keep us updated when and if you see it hitting other languages.

My traffic is near back to normal after yesterday. So... Thurs, Fri was great, Sat was above average, Sunday dropped like a rock and Monday began recovery.

[ichthyous]

Regarding the disavow file...I update it about 2-3x a year. I have a ton of shady .info sites and .id sites grabbing my images and posting them with links on transitory throw away sites...or on pages on sites that look hacked. I would rather that Google discounts those sites completely rather than risk getting hit by a penalty for these crappy spammy links. I have no idea whether it changes anything, but my site started to turn around in January and recover a lot of lost terms and I had updated the disavow file in November.

[Martin Ice Web]

So we got hit by the update yesterday. It took away another 50%.
It is very strange because we moved up several places and gained a lot of #1 spots.

I guess they reactivated the "buying intend" filter again.

[RedBar]

The last day of May and my global site had a 114% PVs and uniques day however the last few days and most weekends dropped my overall month to just below my expected average however weekdays were on average.

My UK hotel / pub site finished the month at 112.3% with just its highest of 2022. For the year so far it is 108.5% therefore if this continues an adjustment may be required. Most of my other sites (local) with much lower traffic levels were around their normal levels but I do have a specific one that has almost died even though it ranks well in the UK SERPs.

[Neohippy]

-15% WoW. UGC getting the hardest battering

[RedBar]

@Neohippy

What kind of UGC do you have, product reviews, forum-style or something else?

[ichthyous]

English language and W European traffic has fallen off a cliff this morning: USA -70%, UK -43%, CA -29% from an average Wednesday...zero visits from DE, IT, NE, and most other EU countries. Traffic has been awful since this update was announced, but it appears to be getting even worse...my home page has lost most of its traffic, which would imply a major penalty of some sort. I would think that's the case except that I keep gaining top 3 ranking spots. It's a complete mystery as to where all of the traffic has gone if I have more and more top 3 ranking terms?

I have zero UGC on my site...could this be a dialing up of the linkspam algo? My most important and linked to content pages are getting hit the hardest.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:40 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2022]

[RedBar]

I have zero UGC either, I just wondered whether it was technical UGC, general widget chit-chat or mindless chit-chat ... Does that make sense ?

[Neohippy]

@RedBar - mostly forum style. We have a bunch of editorial/informational content, but forum is our bread & butter, organic-wise.

[Neohippy]

Have also seen an increase in top 3 spots in ahrefs - but we mostly track editorial keywords there. I guess we're losing lots of long-tail, rather than any major keywords.

[christianz]

I am seeing changes in traffic this morning. My oldest and biggest site is +/- flat since before May update, remainder of the week and weekend will show where it goes. Second largest, the one where I disavowed aggressively, still battered - US/UK traffic fell of a cliff. German traffic up. (food for thought - all disavowed backlinks were pointing to US domain).

My youngest site up dramatically today - up 50% WoW, but it's small and data is not very meaningful. It has few real human backlinks but has accumulated bunch of fake ones (as all sites do as they age).

So far looks like its all about who has more (fake) links. No ranking intelligence beyond that.

[MrSnuts]

@RedBar
I believe there are many reasons why google (and sadly a lot of its users) have abandoned forums in the past decade, I don't think google took a it as a competitive thing tho.
IMO the reason will rather be among the following:
- UGC tends to be of mixed quality (just think spelling errors, lack of proper source referencing, lack of fancy images...),
- the authors appearing as "RedBar" or "MrSnuts" can't be technically "trusted" as asked for in EAT,
- most forums didn't make the change to mobile well (mobile is con-longtext anyhow) and
- most forum operators missed the user interface design changes that came about (look around here... notice something?).
- UGC has a high risk of being fraudulent as far as copyrights are concerned, people used to grab & paste all kinds of text & images, while deeplinking from your forum bb-code to images started to be seen as a bad signal from some point on (too many sources to connect to, slow loading times, background traffics data privacy issues)

Its a sad evolution that UGC has been boiled down to unstructured social media groups, trustworthy influencers (*cough*) and product reviews, but that's what it is now.
There was/is a lot of unique and very informative content to be found in those forums, and its sad to see that can't be found via google any longer.
Even a ranting discussion on some ugly looking forum might have included just the piece of information you were looking for - instead you are looking at "people also asked" today.

What still ranks even tho its UGC are the super strictly-managed Q&A sites like StackOverflow, where an internal rating system & fierce moderation keeps the quality of content up.

@ichthyous
Concerning your question about direct traffic, depending on your tracking it might be that people who choose "open link in new tab" on google are counted as direct traffic, since its not the very same browser window that was previously filled by google. That might explain your observation of direct following organics patterns, too.

I'm currently seeing a slight <5% recovery on the EN site, no impact on the non-EN domains so far.

[javelin]

Today impression rates are stable for me, traffic is within norms. Nothing major to report. In the cyclone happening out there at least today I seem to be in the eye of the storm.

[RedBar]

Good points MrSnuts, I'd forgotten some of them.

(look around here... notice something?).

Whilst I understand what you're saying there has been a big transformation in the world of webmastering. I've been posting here since 2004, this is my 3rd re-incarnation, and without doubt the two biggest differences are easy to identify:

1. AdSense forum - When AdSense first started many of us tried and made good money, personally for quite some time I was earning USD 10K per month and there were many with smaller sites earning hundreds into the low thousands. When G changed all sorts of things with AdSense a few years back that forum simply died as publishers either removed AdSense or closed their sites.

2. 20+ years ago webmasters came here to learn and find out how to do things, we taught each other, we didn't go to schools etc, we were the inventors, experimentors and teachers.

How many members here actually create their own sites versus using WordPress and other CMS programmes? The vast majority of sites these days are "created" by non-code monkeys, they are told what to do and how to do it, they're not bothered about the success or quality of the site, that's not their job and they're not at all bothered, most are not at all interested in what any piece of coding does since they get a plug-in to do it for them.

Without a doubt at WebmasterWorld there are still quite a few old gits like me hanging around here but we are a dying breed yet still mostly a very successful breed.

Whooooops, I've gone off topic again:-)

[Alex_1729]

This has to be the most condescending comment I've seen here. Holy #*$!, I wasn't expecting this from an experienced member here hahah

[javelin]

How many members here actually create their own sites versus using WordPress and other CMS programmes? The vast majority of sites these days are "created" by non-code monkeys, they are told what to do and how to do it, they're not bothered about the success or quality of the site

I have to agree with this. I have not been around building sites as long as RedBar but there is wisdom in the words. Originally I come from a Linux world and code for me is more engineering, making machines work with electrical signals like automation and robotics. If people cannot debug simple java or understand a style sheet there is a serious handicap in their attempt to be online.

The point I like to key in on with Red's comment is "they are told what to do and how to do it". That hit modern SEO on the head. I mean stop and think about it. Who has seen the inside of G or any other engine to know its framework. People have "tested" against it but do we have access to the test itself and the environment it was tested in? Yet out comes a pouring of do this or do that to get results and the world eats it up.

As for other comments on forums
When it comes to forums I do not think G or seo caused it to die out. Forums were a child of the 90s and social media began to take over and the world became a 6 second sound byte. There are experts in everything today because of a 30 second youtube video LOL! Nevertheless some forums are still alive and well. Check out the Linux community it is still doing well.

[christianz]

Nevertheless some forums are still alive and well. Check out the Linux community it is still doing well.

There is a reason why we are having this discussion on WebmasterWorld and not some lame Facebook group or Reddit page :)

I have lots to say about the forums vs social media vs big online monopolies but it would take too much energy to write it down in a giant rant and it would steer this discussion further off topic.

[RedBar]

@christianz - Start a post for it, I'm fairly sure there's a specific widget demand for good forums however I don't think there are many widget subjects that would command multi-thousand PVs per day now.

Who has seen the inside of G or any other engine to know its framework.

I have :-) I was on the inside at AV when I suggested the idea of paying for classofied-style advertising and getting ranked above everyone else, there's no need to ask where G's AdWords came from. I, along with many others, was also headhunted by G to work on the algo which we all did, some in our spare time, I used to spend most weekends working on it trialling and testing all manner of things ... and all for free!

@Alex_1729

This has to be the most condescending comment I've seen here.

Truth and facts seem to be de rigeur target these days for many.

Let's see, I have no reason to doubt this however please correct if necessary:

[techjury.net...]

WordPress stats for 2021 are quite remarkable:

62% of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the US (Inc. 5000) use WordPress.
Over 500 new sites are created daily using the free version of WordPress.org
Seventy million new blog posts pop up every month.

As unusual as it may sound, WP owes this entire success to its active and loyal community, not just a single visionary CEO. In fact, WordPress.org doesn't even have a CEO — the project is entirely run by volunteers across the world.

There are currently over 455 million sites that use WordPress.

Therefore WP alone with its plug-ins powers 2 out of every 3 websites and that's before we even include the many other CMS sites with their plug-ins.

[ichthyous]

The 2nd half of the day yesterday traffic appeared to be showing a recovery, but UK traffic went in the opposite direction ending the day well below normal.

This morning UK traffic starts -85%, USA -43% and Canada -29% from an average Thursday. English language traffic is definitely being hit hard. Is anyone seeing a lasting recovery from this yet?

[Jori]

@RedBar : and you have me. I start to make my websites somewhere in 1998. But when DotClear, and after that WordPress came, I quickly used them. Because it was great, I didn't had to reinvent the wheel :)

Forums are dying, it's a fact. I used to manage I forum, with thousands of active members. I saw it dying, quite quickly actually, since the rise of Facebook, or, in my specific case, Deviantart.

[javelin]

@RedBar so cool you worked on G early on. The fact you didnt get paid for it royally sucks especially now.

@Jori

Forums are dying, it's a fact. I used to manage I forum, with thousands of active members. I saw it dying, quite quickly actually, since the rise of Facebook, or, in my specific case, Deviantart.

Being in art is like yikes! Talk about volatile topics and lower traffic per keywords, that ones tough. From what I can see the better forum sites today are technical fields where a lot of DIY goes on. The trouble is creating the knowledge base to attract people there to begin with.
-----------
Sites traffic today is on par with what is expected. No drops, no increases. Was steady yesterday and today despite Semrush being high yesterday and now cooling some today.

The one interesting thing that is increasing my visibility is more traffic seems to be coming now from other engines ranging from the Duck to even AOL. People still use AOL? Yahoo has increased as well as Bing. So while Google is sailing along im seeing gains in other places.

[christianz]

This morning UK traffic starts -85%, USA -43% and Canada -29% from an average Thursday. English language traffic is definitely being hit hard. Is anyone seeing a lasting recovery from this yet?

No recovery, if anything it keeps getting worse. I also observe the same - English language traffic is absolutely obliterated for one of my sites. I don't recall ever seeing that kind of language-specific traffic drop.

Could this be Google rolling out some special English language artificial (un)intelligence-powered natural language (mis)understanding algo + more direct answers/snippets/widgets etc in English?

If that is the case, I don't understand why only one site seems to be hit so hard.

[christianz]

Forums are dying, it's a fact. I used to manage I forum, with thousands of active members. I saw it dying, quite quickly actually, since the rise of Facebook, or, in my specific case, Deviantart.

Deviantart is definitely no bad guy in all of this. It and smaller sites, platforms, apps are what made WWW great. Google is attacking all of them. Their moronic AI thinks its all low EAT, low quality, thin content, it doesn't understand these types of niche platforms and it discounts it all to the same level as auto generated spam and scrapers who copy & paste content from them.

For Google its either YouTube or some big media news/editorial/reviews site, everything else is just "low quality", not EAT.

Best of all is scraping direct answer from some of those sites and adding giant PAA block below it. Plus ads on top. That's Google these days.

[Alex_1729]

@RedBar
I never said most people don't use WordPress. I'm saying that just because most people use WordPress, that doesn't mean that most of them are stupid :). I'm not sure what kind of dealings you've had with others, and sure there will be some "non-code monkeys" as you've said, but they're at least trying something. They just don't want to learn code, or want to spend time on other things. On the other hand, some people are just not meant to learn code, and they never will be able. Luckily, there are devs out there who will gladly charge for this.

In any case, if WordPress didn't make it easy for people to make it online, it wouldn't have been used so much. It's a great thing - it's useful, easy, and free. The fact that there are more and more of those people who are completely out of their element, or just don't want to try hard, is a sad thing. But like I said, at least they're trying something. Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit lol

[renatovieira]

I waited a few days before posting anything here in the heat of the may update. I had an increase between 10-15%. For now, of course... What's puzzling me is that my AdSense CPC in april was low, and in may it dropped even further and now in june it's almost close to $0.01.

In short, my traffic had a good increase and my earnings evaporated...

Is anyone else here noticing an insanely low CPC these past 45 days?

[javelin]

I'm saying that just because most people use WordPress, that doesn't mean that most of them are stupid :). I'm not sure what kind of dealings you've had with others, and sure there will be some "non-code monkeys" as you've said, but they're at least trying something. They just don't want to learn code, or want to spend time on other things. On the other hand, some people are just not meant to learn code, and they never will be able. Luckily, there are devs out there who will gladly charge for this.

Wordpress is awesome for some things, poor at others. I love it for freedom of time with less dev overall. Where it is poor at its job can be seen as so much is kept out of reach that you cannot play with. Compare with Drupal where each part can be poked and prodded. Thus the argument of code monkey to non code monkey.

Where does it all really matter in terms of what we do and why we are here dealing with SEO? CMS systems are generally bulky and know Wordpress is light when compared to other CMS. Nevertheless, consider how if 2 of 3 sites are running Wordpress that is a huge bulk of websites that are on the same system which creates a wide minimum speed standard. The more add ons you place like social buttons the speed deteriorates, ect ect. There is not a lot you can do to change how these parts interact.

The SEO add ons like All In One SEO are pretty weak. The tools give scores without being able to grade the quality of what is actually done. The paid add ons for the full version is no better. Thus it creates false positives for people who are new to these ideas giving a false sense of security. In other words these great tools cannot replace old school education and testing.

Keep in mind this as well. Companies like Ahrefs do pretty well at what they do, at least historically. With each core update I believe they lose ground on their accuracy in scoring a site. I see many that score really well but have very poor traffic, this should not be. Those which poor scores have higher traffic and trashy link profiles. Why? Google has changed and Ahrefs is not up to date on what is actually happening. We still use them because it is among the better benchmarks out there.

My point is that RedBar is not wrong in his assertion. No one should be offended by the comments. Rather there is a lot going on out there today and those with less experience are at a great disadvantage. I would be willing to bet a streamlined html page coded out of Microsoft Word with targeted SEO could beat any Wordpress site in rankings simply due to how CMS is now so standardized. The web has become a chunky monkey with all these systems.

I dont have the experience of RedBar in this, yet knowing what I do know I can see things that those who lack the experience or expertise will miss and that gives an edge.