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

[saladtosser]

Well I was a winner in this core update in terms of improved average positions, but website traffic is down 32% and YouTube traffic up 37%. Looking at the serps my YouTube videos have overtaken my articles so guess that all makes sense! Still a shame we have to put in so much time into youtube (2k subs gets about 80p per day,so a lot of work for not a lot)

[RedBar]

core update rollout is now complete.

At this time yesterday all was looking good however this morning as flat as a pancake across all sites including normally bouyant localised UK sites. My global .com has turned into a one page hit wonder at the moment and US visitors have all but disappeared.

If it's complete then it's time to check my SERPs because this is not looking good right now.

[ichthyous]

If it's complete then it's time to check my SERPs because this is not looking good right now

SERPs are not correlating very closely with traffic. I am having very small moves in ranking this year, in a generally upward trend of gaining more top 3 / top 10 spots...but traffic is fluctuating wildly from day to day now. Checking the SERPs shows why...Google is adding so much to the page that ranking highly doesn't mean traffic. And Google is clearly constantly experimenting with layouts and features on the fly. People mistakenly assumed that the goal of Google's AI was to provide better results...it's actually to find the best ways to raise revenue and keep all the traffic while alienating as few people as possible. Many days the results just look like a jumbled mess...information overload.

[JesterMagic]

Great... why is it on the day early in the morning Google announces rollout is complete our traffic drops a further 10% that day. I hope it comes back and everything else that we have lost since Feb 24. Over this past year we are down about 40% in traffic.

[christianz]

Same here. Huge drop at 3AM GMT.

[RedBar]

SERPs are not correlating very closely with traffic.

I've just checked a dozen keyword widgets and specifically one of them has had a major movement from the first page to 102! This widget is currently in the top three USA sellers for 2021/2022. I'm pretty sure I have done nothing technically with that page or images, need to have an in-depth.

Overall traffic has improved from this morning however USA traffic is still extremely low v normal.

[engine]

Something I hoped would be fixed is the "Did you mean..."

It's now better, and no longer automatically shows the alternative of what "it" thinks I want. I wonder if it'll stay.

[Kratos]

Traffic, impression and ranking of one of our websites was high for our industry and it was growing as we've become an industry reference (a real reference without any black hat or fake crap as our industry is filled with).

This last update has noticeably slashed the traffic of this website for the first time. Our industry requires of safety protocols and knowledge that only a specialist (like myself) knows of. Health and safety is actually important in this industry.

The SERPs are now riddled with #*$!listcles that are written by people who do not have the specific expertise or any expertise, and who make stupid mistakes in their rehashed articles.

Their rehashed articles ranking also means that the Featured Snippets grab this incorrect information and are putting people's lives at risk.

I'm not complaining per se as this is the nature of the game and we're very well aware of content thieves and freelancers who write "reviews" without even having the product or being involved in the industry.

But this is the first time that I see the SERPs showing truly f*cked up results.

For example, I'm getting a lot (as in A LOT) of Indian websites for English results geolocated for the US and Europe. This all started when this update started.

I was googling two health conditions that I wanted checked up and the SERPs for US and Europe were riddled with Indian websites. It's the same now that the update finished. I'm mesmerized by the f*ckery going on.

While I know what has pushed these spammy websites up in results, I thought Google was supposed to fix this sh*t two years ago.

We also have other unrelated websites that do not deserve to gain increased rankings (for several reasons), and about 50% of them have shoot up in the SERPs and doubled their traffic (these websites truly do not deserve the boost in rankings while the other website that got slashed did deserve increased rankings).

Since I know what pushed up the rankings of our other unrelated websites (they're making us money now, whereas they weren't before the update), I'm mind blown that Google hasn't still dialed in their ability to discern.

It's a shame though that the one website that's a proven industry reference and has content written by true experts and links gained naturally due to being an industry reference and leader, has been slashed in the SERPs due to content mills gaining SERPs after this update.

[malkhaldi]

@Kratos + like always , spammy sites are top .

[ichthyous]

Overall traffic has improved from this morning however USA traffic is still extremely low v normal.

My USA traffic is -34% below an average Thursday today...meanwhile every place else is zooming. The traffic is abnormal though...most of my importsnt landing pages are way down, but visits to individual product pages are very high. Search traffic is up 40% but direct is down 72%. This is all very odd and I sense it's a way for Google to cover its tracks...send useless traffic to low level pages and meanwhile starve all the most valuable search terms that are likely to convert. That's why conversions are gone

[RedBar]

My US traffic today is at 50% of average with just over 3 hours to go.

[mosxu]

Reality kicks in… zombies are being slowly retired and the traffic is almost non existent…

Elon where are you?

[emperor2]

Still, 25 to 30% lower google traffic compared to last month. If the core update has been completed, no more hope :(

[Alex_1729]

Waiting to see if anything changes on my site. So far, 55% drop in traffic and keeps on dropping. Quite surprised if it turns out this way, as it's a very helpful site on which I worked a lot.

[Dooku]

Anyone else seeing a huge increase in spam and bot traffic, especially from Microsoft Azure IP addresses since this latest core update?

[BigKat]

Anyone else seeing a huge increase in spam and bot traffic

Yes, but not specific to Azure IP ranges. It's common for us to see this during and after a major Google update. I feel it's possible Google disables/loosens security features that block bots from crawling their index so computing resources can be allocated to push indexes to various datacenters. Also the added bot traffic can be useful to Google in obfuscating traffic losses from an update and cushion initial public outcry.

[Alex_1729]

I feel it's possible Google disables/loosens security features that block bots from crawling their index so computing resources can be allocated to push indexes to various datacenters. Also the added bot traffic can be useful to Google in obfuscating traffic losses from an update and cushion initial public outcry.

Is that what explains the SEMRush sensor today?
[semrush.com...]

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing much higher non-usa traffic again today. UK / AU / CA / EU and Asia are all unusually high...meanwhile USA is -60% at 10am! The same thing happened yesterday....USA traffic is low until the early evening and then suddenly rises.

I believe that Google is throttling USA traffic in the extreme because they know they can get away with it without any government oversight or opposition and because it's the most profitable market in terms of ad spend.

Alternatively, could we be seeing the reduction of traffic in our respective local markets? It would make sense that Google would reduce traffic in a site's home market to force ad spending, while allowing unrelated traffic through so that it appears that traffic hasn't been reduced completely.

ALT B - the high level of foreign traffic is mostly bots.

In any case, with my USA traffic perpetually throttled Google has effectively killed off my business. I am only getting inquiries on rare days when Google appears to remove the throttling for about 12 hours....then I get multiple inquiries in a row and off again. It's been this way for a while now...since mid 2021

[RedBar]

Whilst Thursday's traffic was just above average my USA PVs were 33% of average continuing with lots of single PVs. Likewise today the USA is at 50% and yet again more single PVs which in itself is very unusual.

My traffic just does not feel right, it's unstable and especially when considering this I posted yesterday:

one of them has had a major movement from the first page to 102!

5 other companies formerly on the first page have also been demoted to 50+ for this one specific widget, now that's more than coincidence! One is US and the others are non-US.

[BigKat]

Is that what explains the SEMRush sensor today?

Google may have missed financial targets with the core update and released a different animal to accommodate the core update's economic shortcomings?

[Markedd]

@christianz I agree, Still high volatility and the keyword bleeding cuts new positions every day. This update is not done.

[universenet]

From day to day google restarting search engine, they have for sure power button for make off on,but mostly is in initializing mode

[malkhaldi]

As i can see and check many keywords , update not finish yet
they lie when they told us it is Done

[christianz]

In the past years I cannot remember a google "update" with so many disappointed webmasters across the internet/forums and so many useful, legit, 100% white-hat websites either heavily demoted or wiped out. To be honest, I don't think there is anything left to say about this.

I will report if I see any meaningful reversal or deviation from current path which basically leads to zero discovery / new users coming from google. Soon all my google referrals will be branded searchers. Branded search in general is becoming more popular as more regular people figure its impossible to find anything useful with this glorified yellow pages / youtube proxy and you have to reference specific sites.

The more "AI" they inject in their ranking the more #*$!ty their results pages get. Must be some kind of catastrophic brain-drain in the company - nobody with more than 2 brain cells left to put brakes on these clearly failing, clearly idiotic ideas.

[javelin]

Traffic is looking good here. Yesterday it was like someone tapped the brakes on everything. As of this morning it was flowing in really well and has maintained throughout the day.

[RedBar]

Friday just crept over my weekday average but USA numbers were down again. The interesting number is that this week has already exceeded the two update weeks so maybe my traffic is getting back more to "normal" however realworld business enquiries are down again and I am being contacted by more and more global widget producers looking for potential orders. I can foresee many widget factory closures along with other industries.

[mosxu]

“I feel it's possible Google disables/loosens security features that block bots from crawling their index so computing resources can be allocated to push indexes to various datacenters. Also the added bot traffic can be useful to Google in obfuscating traffic losses from an update and cushion initial public outcry”

If they do it is a fraud and we webmasters must go to police!

Enough with the bots and other illegal practices!

[ichthyous]

Checking GSC I see impressions have trended higher for 6 months now, average position is also higher but clicks remain stagnant. CTR is lower than ever. I can only surmise that this is due to more items being loaded on the page? I am now seeing an additional block of articles with big images taking up half of every page now...often this is just a repeat of the same informational articles from the same sites that already appear as regular search results above it...pointless. I am even seeing some sites listed in local, then in the search results, then in the block of recommended articles all on the same page. Google is clearly pushing informational sites above anything commercial in an effort to starve commercial sites.

[ibb.co ]

[javelin]

Something odd is definitely occurring. Normally my impression rate will have some fluctuation from day to day. Over the last few days while traffic has remained steady my impression rate has been nearly identical. It looks like a flat line. Not that it means anything, its just odd to see.

Bing on the other hand gave me a massive boost in the impression rates. Not sure what happened over there.

[ichthyous]

Something is definitely going on this morning...I haven't had one visit to my home page yet today, nor to most of my most visited landing pages. It's early yet but an 88% decline in direct traffic, 21% decline in searches and a 37% decline in USA traffic compared to an average Sunday. Today will be a write-off unless it somehow reverts and bounces back later in the day.

Since the update there have been few actual strong days and even fewer conversions. In fact the last date I had anyone serious inquire about anything was right before the update was announced. Even spam seems to be much lower.