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

[christianz]

Traffic is awful today. For buyer intent keywords on mobile ads cover 100% of screen space. Some organic websites are hidden down below the fold between googlespam boxes, some of which themselves can cover entire height of the screen. You have to play "Where's Waldo" to find any websites that either didn't pay Google or are not Google themselves.

[ichthyous]

In looking at my traffic today I had a huge surge in everything except USA traffic. UK, CA, AU and Europe traffic is up between 46% and 811% depending on the country. Meanwhile, USA traffic is down 37% today so far...that type of traffic targeting is insane!

[Alex_1729]

Bounce rate pretty high today, while session duration record low for my multi-niche site. USA traffic down 15% compared to last week (which is about 50% less than before this update). Looks unnatural, very low engagement.

[RedBar]

Coming towards the end of my Googleday and my highest traffic since 21st May plus the most US business enquiries in weeks and weeks:-)

Now watch this recovery flounder !

[mosxu]

[mobile.twitter.com...]

To drive up “their revenue” …

What planet were these people on?

[javelin]

Im in the same boat as RedBar and ichthyous today. Traffic has almost set a new all time high. It looks like something got a kick in the pants across the board for us.

As for the Apple making its own search engine that was mentioned earlier, I agree that would do more for us than anything the government does. Seriously anything the government touches they just break. If they cant run a post office or dmv efficiently wth are people thinking to trust them with any *$%@ thing else?

[christianz]

Seriously anything the government touches they just break. If they cant run a post office or dmv efficiently wth are people thinking to trust them with any *$%@ thing else?

I think in Googles case we are already past the stage where regulation would make sense. You don't stop a bank robbery by regulating it.

[BushyTop]

Is anyone else noticing huge swings by the hour. I've started checking our rankings twice daily and I'm noticing huge swings. Even if I run checks an hour apart. For anyone concerned about results, I would suggest this is far from over...

[Jori]

Yes, huge movements in here also. This is a long core update...

[engine]

It's surprising how much instability there is right now. Originally, Google said the update would be complete within a week or two.
Well, I make this the final day of the two weeks.

[sem4u]

There is still a huge amount of movement in the rankings. This is the largest update I have seen for a long time.

[christianz]

Traffic is worse every day for 3 days. For oldest site it has been consistently awful since February 24th sneak-update, so it's just different shades of bad.

This May/June update specifically hit English language traffic for my other site. Don't know why they haven't applied the same greed-filter to my oldest site, since both rank for very similar keywords. I guess they still have some work to do. Every visitor that still falls through the cracks of their googlespam fortress and ends up on my site is lost revenue for them. So they better hurry up.

My oldest site gets decent type-in traffic and branded searches, so it will be more difficult for them to completely kill it. But they are trying their best.

[RedBar]

Well, I make this the final day of the two weeks.

Again, fingers crossed, I have just had the most stable 24 hours since pre-update, Tuesday was 115.3% and so far today my traffic is seemingly normal and consistent with regular visitors viewing single and multiple pages. Lots of single page views is always a bad SERPs sign for me.

I haven't checked my SERPs as yet however if this sticks for a couple of days I'll then have a look because if it begins fluctuating again checking them would be pointless.

[BigKat]

Observation since this update rolled out: Just over a 50% reduction in total conversions with an 80% increase in paid ad clicks/daily spend. One doesn't need to be a mental wizard to see this update is designed to dig deeper into our wallets by turning Google's users into click happy zombies. What's going on now should give me all the poor sales/ROI data I need to end Google's ads completely. We have single users clicking so many of our ads within a short period of time ( <5 minutes) it's as if Google is displaying our entire product feed to each user. Really, how can a user even click 20 product ads in two minutes? This is a complete rip off. I have a meeting later today to decide the fate, whether temporary or permanent, for the money toilet AKA Google Ads.

[Sissi]

@ /renatovieira

Thinking that core update and adsense are linked in non sense !
Keep hoping

[ichthyous]

What's going on now should give me all the poor sales/ROI data I need to end Google's ads completely. We have single users clicking so many of our ads within a short period of time ( <5 minutes) it's as if Google is displaying our entire product feed to each user. Really, how can a user even click 20 product ads in two minutes? This is a complete rip off.

I have complained to Google about the same thing...no clicks all day and they want to run out your daily budget so suddenly a bunch of clicks all at the same time...all one hit wonders that stay 5 seconds on the page and go. If you complain and they offer you credits you'll never actually get them. I have nailed Google so many times and they just blah blah blah you and try to get rid of you...if you insist they offer you a billing credit...I have yet to see them apply it once to my statement.

I have a small ad spend and I end up just turning it off because it's so useless...multiple clicks from areas outside of my target areas, and "exact matches" in Spanish for an English term. Perhaps if you have a large ad spend each month you can reach someone to address your complaints, but it's most just Indian call center types that are there to exasperate you and make you go away.

I can see from the ads competitors are running that they must find them ineffective as they run them for short periods and then stop. The reality is, Google is peddling a garbage product these days...the quality of the traffic from clicks is pure garbage.

[renatovieira]

As I suspected. After the may update, heavy traffic for a few days and today comes the huge drop. Coinciding with Barry's last article. Nothing new so far :-|

[BigKat]

if you have a large ad spend each month you can reach someone to address your complaints

Just as you, Google has never addressed my complaints nor issued a credit based on any issues I have raised. There's little recourse to recover wasted money.

I can see from the ads competitors are running that they must find them ineffective as they run them for short periods and then stop.

I believe this is a factor in what we are seeing with so many users clicking many of our ads in a brief period of time. Organic results are so poor in our industry that users are encouraged to click product ads. Advertisers are dropping, likely because they are seeing the same poor results from users clicking on multiple ads. This leaves fewer ads for Google to display, so they fill the void with the ads from what advertisers remain. Also placement of ads seems to be expanding to the point of pure spam, increasing the cost per conversion. Being in a small industry, this places a heavy burden on those who remain. Hopefully we will be departing this afternoon - I had it with Google a long time ago.

[pawas]

Highest Tuesday traffic ever, but RPM is down about 10% from average.

[malkhaldi]

something wrong with google analytics "rubbish data "
anyone notice

[Markedd]

Not rubbish data, but an unsettling amount of Raterhub traffic. Not that I mind my content being rated by human beings. But I never saw such a huge amount of traffic from Google's human reviewers. Every update is weirder than the other, I swear to God..

[christianz]

Just an observation - for the site that lost English traffic I noticed that most of the losses are due to "de-snippeting" - Several thousand top 3 positions have gone from featured snippet (1st position) to completely de-listed (1 -> Lost, according to Ahrefs). So one day Google thinks they are so great they deserve 1st spot and featured snippet, the next day they decide these pages are so bad they don't deserve any place in the rankings at all.

If I remember correctly, someone else was complaining about de-snippeting here as well. I would understand if they moved those pages from 1st + snippet to 2nd, 3rd, 10th (no snippet) etc. Not from 1st to completely deranked.

Meanwhile, the same content in German translation is not just retaining ranking but improving in ranking. How sensible!

[Alex_1729]

If I remember correctly, someone else was complaining about de-snippeting here as well. I would understand if they moved those pages from 1st + snippet to 2nd, 3rd, 10th (no snippet) etc. Not from 1st to completely deranked.

Yes, that's me and at least 10 other people across SEO forums have experienced their snippets removed. Just like your reasoning, I concur - it's not normal, it's not natural, and looks more like it's a bug than any kind of algorithm ranking. This is the main reason I keep thinking they'll fix this. Maybe not now, but sometime soon. Perhaps things just need to settle.

I had something similar happen to me in December, although that was a slow drop over time, and only a slight one, but still the website started recovering only after the update was done. As far as I know, this update is still going.

[RedBar]

All was cruising along nicely for me until about 18.00 UK time but since then all visits have been single page views and mostly from from the USA ... Strange.

[ichthyous]

Like @renatoviera and @redbar my traffic fell off a cliff at 10am sharp. UK traffic is down 46% and USA is down 28%. For me since the update these drops have been reflected mostly in Direct traffic (down 51% today) and to a lesser extent search traffic, down 15%. Many days I see this and reverses again later in the day (after work) and cuts some of the losses.

As many of you have noted, this appears to be Google experimenting with more ways to skim the cream leave us the leftovers. I have not had one conversion since the 29th. That's not just summer doldrums...summer is typically one of my busiest periods. This is mostly just traffic manipulation on a mind boggling scale if you think about it. I also do believe that the war and economic uncertainty have a lot to do with it right now. I'm hearing from bricks and mortar businesses in my field that they are having a full blown crisis in sales this year.

[christianz]

I concur - it's not normal, it's not natural, and looks more like it's a bug than any kind of algorithm ranking.

Yes - it can't be due to change in the regular, continuous ranking (quality, relevance, backlinks, EAT etc), because it would have to be gradual - from 1st + snippet to 5th, 10th or 25th etc.

It is either some kind of penalty flag that got triggered (could be applied per domain, because German version I have on different domain de.****) or bug / error / unintended consequence of some big changes they did as part of the core update.

As far as penalty - I have never done anything black hat or even gray hat. But it still could be many things, like negative SEO, perceived on-page over-optimization etc.

[RedBar]

I'm hearing from bricks and mortar businesses in my field

'Tis Wednesday night here now and I'm off for some beers soon with quite a few people in associated widget trades to mine therefore I'll ask around just how busy their new enquiries are, however I do know many are struggling to get enough staff for current projects etc.

[javelin]

Traffic running steady here all day but not as high as yesterdays record breaker.

When is the "last day" of this update actually going to land, or has it? I feel a cliff coming up when that technician hits the update button LOL!

[Jori]

Best day in 8 months today. Not reflected in adsense at all.
My traffic jump a bit at the beginning of the core update, it started to faint away these days, and it gain force again starting yesterday, confirmed by today.

What a rollercoaster...

[engine]

Google has announced that the May 2022 core update rollout is now complete.

[twitter.com...]