Google Updates and SERP Changes - June 2022

[RedBar]

I am still seeing substantial movements in my widget SERPs, substantial equates to several pages for me.

Some pages, all of them big money keywords, are still MIA or so low they'll never see traffic BUT I have also seen some good money keywords returning to the first two pages in the past 48 hours however they have not driven any traffic whatsoever. Not only have I seen my pages returning I am also seeing other non-US business ones.

My new traffic levels are averaging even lower than expected and are now at 50% of just over a year ago.

Much of this I put down to G ads and type of device usage. Mobile users invariably view one page and gone and sometimes it amazes me they ever get to me even when on the first page with the huge volume of ads.

Fortunately my global site still has 50% desktop usage and this is because many trade industry users are desk-based and need lots more information and images than Joe Public does, in general these are my multiple page viewers.

[BigKat]

If there is anything we have all learnt about Google is that once a major update has been released then that's it

Maybe my blaming the core update is misguided. Despite Google's announcement the core update was completed, the SERPS were still in a state of flux. Was there a different update being pushed out at the same time? Also the expanding ad spammed layout changes choking off more buyer queries have done quite a bit of harm to our visibility. Regardless, we see bursts of traffic for short periods then Google just dies. This is highly suspicious since what we produce is unique and unavailable elsewhere. It almost feels like some datacenters have an incomplete set of results to pull from. Otherwise, it's a case of Google's typical traffic throttling on steroids.

[ichthyous]

Also the expanding ad spammed layout changes choking off more buyer queries have done quite a bit of harm to our visibility. Regardless, we see bursts of traffic for short periods then Google just dies. This is highly suspicious since what we produce is unique and unavailable elsewhere. It almost feels like some datacenters have an incomplete set of results to pull from. Otherwise, it's a case of Google's typical traffic throttling on steroids.

All of the above. Google has put a bag over our heads and is now spinning us round and round. The wild surges and cliff drops, the days where all of the English language traffic vanishes, the weird surges at night or early morning and then dropping to one visit for hours at mid-day...these are the result of multiple issues.

Google used the opportunity of the latest update to also change page layout and add a lot more ads and organic-traffic-killing items to the page. Google behaves more and more like a crime syndicate these days, taking every opportunity to hide its tracks and do more damage when the victims are least likely to notice or be able to tell one thing apart from another. They own the platform and it will only get worse and worse from here. We need competition and regulation and it's probably too late for most of us who can't switch to other methods of sales quickly or easily.

[RedBar]

Maybe my blaming the core update is misguided.

Nope, from your perception and knowledge it is perfectly valid since it affects you directly and you haven't a clue as to what has and why it has happened, like almost everyone else you are in the dark. What is it that Google is trying to achieve since all it would appear is to ever-increase its earnings.

Google is simply a classifieds ad site with a few freebie organic sites thrown in to tempt SEOers and those who cannot afford or justify AdWords. There is seemingly no logic whatsoever these days in its ranking of many extremely mediocre sites and, being honest, it would not surprise me one little bit if its algo actually penalises good sites simply because with several good sites in the SERPs it actually negates its AdWords push.

Will we ever see as an option Google Classifieds and Google Open as a search possibility? Very unlikely since the bean counters would start screaming very loudly. G does what it does extremely well however it does it for one enterprise only, G and its subsidiaries, not for me, not for you, not for anyone except when instructed to do so by government!

[javelin]

Google is simply a classifieds ad site with a few freebie organic sites thrown in to tempt SEOers and those who cannot afford or justify AdWords.

Very true. The shopping tab is where all of these things belong and was the original intent. Google itself has become redundant in that it now has two "tabs" full of pushing products. They should follow their own guidelines right? So much for that.

As for the update being finished / serps fluxing / recovery of any website / ect... after about two weeks what you see is what you get. If you have to go beyond that to see "recovery" then it is not recovery. If things require months to improve for your stats and traffic then you are ranking inside of the new algo. The old algo is dead.

The page layout changes we see now after the latest update should reaffirm that Google does not intend to change direction. The mantra "we care about search" ... okay sure whatever. So what do we do?

In reality when a service no longer provides its services we end our relationships with that provider. Yet here continually masses wait holding their breath for a reprieve. I ask again, what do we do?

I do not fully have the answer to that, but I believe I do have part of the answer. The old internet is dead just like Google is. Today a good business model is needed which integrates real world services to a web presence. A more holistic integration of real world interaction, socials, and networking is needed.

So what about ranking in Google? It can still be done. My traffic is holding through this but I am not running ecommerce for an income. Landing consistent traffic today means targeting non commercial keywords, driving informational pages, and even here corporations are hitting hard. This though leaves little hope in conversions.

[ichthyous]

The old internet is dead just like Google is. Today a good business model is needed which integrates real world services to a web presence. A more holistic integration of real world interaction, socials, and networking is needed.

This is all true, and most of us know it already. The issue is that the internet as it stands now is dominated by monopolies that do not permit smaller players to advance in any direction. Google has choked off search, Amazon controls e-commerce top to bottom, and Facebook has reduced visibility on the platforms it owns so drastically that the only way to get seen is to pay to boost the posts. Smaller players simply cannot spend themselves into oblivion and compete with larger players on that playing field.

And if the ads were actually that effective none of use would be spending so much time here worrying about organic. I've tried google ads and facebook ads and neither worked well for my business...it brought in low quality traffic but not sales.

Other methods of advertising were always out of reach for small businesses...that's why Google killing of organic is really about killing off small business. I personally use email and partnerships with other platforms...none of it works remotely as well as organic search used to work (until this year) in terms of sales.

So what about ranking in Google? It can still be done. My traffic is holding through this but I am not running ecommerce for an income. Landing consistent traffic today means targeting non commercial keywords, driving informational pages, and even here corporations are hitting hard. This though leaves little hope in conversions.

Also true...but the issue is that many if us are ranking at the top and still not seeing any traffic. My ranking has improved for six months but the traffic has dwindled and conversions are at zero for over three weeks now. I have considered starting to pump out info articles on my topic...at least that way I can perhaps benefit from being seen for a wider range of searches again, but it most likely won't result in sales of my product and it will actual take time away from producing more of the product and marketing elsewhere.

[Brett_Tabke]

Well dang, most of the sensors are going off. SemRush...etc. I thought this thing was over with last weekend.

[RedBar]

At the moment I seem to be having as near a "normal" Friday as possible with PVs looking ok but somehow it just does not "feel right" and this is being seen by the lack of realworld enquiries from potential new projects.

Why do I say this? Specifically quite simply when new projects come onto the market I tend to see search references from several countries over a couple of days, at the moment this is not happening.

[ichthyous]

There is no normal anymore, just a constant state of flux. Google is very obviously throttling traffic country by country...my Australia traffic was relatively high, then a solid week of exactly 5 visits per day from Australia. I checked and Canada shows a similar capped pattern over the same period. Look at the graphs, it's astonishing the level of control:

[ibb.co ]
[ibb.co ]

Today Australia traffic is back and USA and UK are both down, as is Western Europe. During this time my ranking showed no major changes. The one constant is spam from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria and lots of E Europe traffic now. So much so that I am thinking of placing cloudflare challenges on some of these countries.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:41 pm (utc) on Jun 24, 2022]

[Brett_Tabke]

>Google is very obviously throttling traffic country by country

No indication that is true anywhere I have read. What Google does is that they roll these updates out to different data centers for testing. Those centers are in different countries. There might be 4-5 major algos running at the same time around the world. Yes, the "dance" still goes on to this day.

[datacenterdynamics.com...]

[ichthyous]

@BrettTabke Read your own forum, many of us here have posted about the totally unnatural pattern with traffic by country...USA and English language countries are the most throttled by far, but now it seems to have rolled out to other countries too. Look at the graphs I posted for CA and AU this week...is it natural to have exactly the same number of visits day after day from two different countries? Of course not...it's all manipulation.

[Brett_Tabke]

Leave the personal comments out of it - not here.

> totally unnatural pattern with traffic by country.

Which is exactly the misinformation we are trying to get rid up in these threads. It is all based on datacenter locations - nothing else. They could roll out an update to 2 or more data centers for a few weeks to test them out. Sure, some of that is language based.

And traffic patterns will look odd. Been exactly this way for two decades.

>throttled

Credible source? Anywhere?

[google.com...]

[RedBar]

Constant Flux - I think I coined that several years ago under another moniker :-)

The one constant is spam from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria and lots of E Europe traffic now.

Now that's interesting because, without a doubt, the vast majority of my spam originates in the USA!

I have blocked about185 IPs over the years which seems to have resolved most of my compalints.

I know we all like to go down the manipulated route however I sometimes wonder with all of its experiments Google's testing actually conflicts with one another creating more conflicts / flux / conspiracies than ever however, at the end of the day, world MOBILE traffic at the moment is estimated to be about 58.26%, just look at the first page for almost any search and all one sees are ads, ads and more ads.

[javelin]

Look at the graphs I posted for CA and AU this week...is it natural to have exactly the same number of visits day after day from two different countries? Of course not...it's all manipulation.

Keep in mind this AI algo will update itself at times as well, albeit in minor ways. When an algo is updated across different data centers at different times it can be like Google has multiple personalities. Sometimes I think it has a condition like DID where different minds front lol.

Imo it can appear or feel like its throttled but its not. The underlying issue is being missed, or rather we see the effect without recognizing the real cause. For example search for a topic in Seattle and results can be different than the same search in New York. So localized search can impact things.

Try this sometime for fun. Search a few of your favorite topics at home on a desktop and then do the same with your phone while out shopping. Not saying it will change everytime with all keywords but it can impact things.

The real problem is categorization of content as weve discussed before. Example, commercial keywords to informational and all the ad placements now above and below the fold.

Pay attention to your impression rates. Are they decreasing? How many pages are getting results from Google Discover? What is the page experience rating (this can depend on people opting in for metrics). 5 hits of traffic I would probably count as bot activity and treat it like 0. Something else must be going on there.

[ichthyous]

Which is exactly the misinformation we are trying to get rid up in these threads.

It's not misinformation if it's based on observation of actual trends. If enough people are seeing the same trends they can't all be misinformed. Can any of us say we know it for sure? No, but that's the point of this forum...if we all knew it for sure we wouldn't need to come here and read each others observations.

It is all based on datacenter locations - nothing else.

The updates are rolled out to datacenters around the world sure, but nobody knows what kind of control Google has on a domain level basis...meaning not on the source but on the recipient domain. Google has been a black box for years and nobody has any clue of how it's all actually being handled. I am not stating that Google is intentionally penalizing me, or you, or anyone else on an individual level...but it sure looks like Google analyzes each site very closely and knows which types of traffic are most important, the intent of the site and the visitor, and what converts. Squeeze that most important converting traffic and you squeeze the site into paying for ads to recover that traffic. It appears that this is applied to sites with a commercial intent more than informational sites. I removed GA from my site last year for this reason...I am not handing them more info than I need to.

And traffic patterns will look odd. Been exactly this way for two decades.

No actually traffic patterns were remarkably similar from 2003-2020 for my site. Once Google took off the gloves and showed us all publicly that it intended to sacrifice organic search...that's when the freaky manipulated traffic patterns started. A traffic trend capped at the exact same number of visits from an entire country day after day is completely anomalous...from two countries even more so.

[ichthyous]

The real problem is categorization of content as weve discussed before. Example, commercial keywords to informational and all the ad placements now above and below the fold.

This would account for huge swings in traffic from day to day yes...and we are all seeing that. But not for a constant level of traffic from the same country day after day...let alone from two countries. There are multiple factors at play here...not just page layout and number of ads.

Pay attention to your impression rates. Are they decreasing? How many pages are getting results from Google Discover? What is the page experience rating (this can depend on people opting in for metrics). 5 hits of traffic I would probably count as bot activity and treat it like 0. Something else must be going on there.

No...look at my previous post this week and the graph I posted....impressions have been on the upswing for 6 months but clicks are stagnant. As the page gets loaded with more and more items that is understandable.

I get no traffic from Discover at all since I am not an article based site. My experience rating is currently:
100% URLs with a good page experience on mobile
100% good URLs on desktop
Pages are evaluated separately for mobile and desktop

[KaseyM]

Is realtime busted?

[Broaster]

Google news search is screwed up, ill do an exact title search and they dont even show that exact term, it shows multiple articles from a single source and none of them match the term and some of them are old articles, whats going on!

[RedBar]

@Broaster - I've been seeing that for awhile now, some of them are ridiculous and yes, many of them are 7-10 years old Pinterest garbage in my sector.

[Brett_Tabke]

>Google news search is screwed up

They did update it yesterday:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[mosxu]

Buyer traffic is mainly branded traffic this is why they brought performance max campaigns most of conversions come now from own brand terms ads at a high price and less organic.

They even replace popular search terms with a brand can’t even type the term anymore. Auto suggestions drop down box is where all the ready to buy searchers disappear.

The strategy is too keep about 3 players making money from ads feeding them with ready to buy searchers and the rest of us get clueless personalised searchers at the same price.

[RedBar]

Precisely, it's been going this way for years and for those companies with massive marketing budgets it's been a relatively simple transition from one platform to another where they find their target audiences. For smaller business trying to break into those markets it's a far harder decision to make if they want to compete in the like-for-like FMCG arena, competing in one's own town / region is one thing, country-wide and internationally is altogether a different animal.

[javelin]

@ichthyous here is some fuel for you. Google traffic breakdown this past week compared to competitors (this is typical for me from week to week).

Basis of my comparison is as follows... We know Google controls approximately 70 to 80% of global search (some claim as high as 90%). Whatever that real number is, the point is all other competitors fall into much smaller volumes. So lets look at my stats.

Fri - Google wins by 10% ahead of other serps
Thurs - Google wins by 2% ahead of others
Wed - Other serps win by 30% lead in traffic
Teus - Other serps win by 40% lead in traffic
Mon - Other serps win by 45% lead
Sun - Other serps win by 45%
Sat - Other serps win by 45%

Whats my point? While it may take a collective to beat Google results understand this collective controls a very small portion of total search globally. My site is by no means a joke or nonexistent. These numbers are a result of two things.

First I saw some time ago how irrelevant Google was making itself and no matter how hard we try you simply cannot change what goals they have implemented. Secondly I began to focus more on trying to understand other search engines, what they wanted, and how they work. In doing this the results from Google actually improved with time.

So the sad part to this story. With Google controlling such a large portion of traffic what they offer in organic results is a joke. My site is informational and ranks well for its class. I always prefer to pit Google against others than Google to Google like ichthyous attempted earlier. I say this simply because its easier to see if something is actually off with how things are being run.

Yes something big is amiss with Google, but specifically what is hard to tell. Despite their slogan of caring about search one thing is clear they care more about the money than their roots of organic results.

[ichthyous]

Secondly I began to focus more on trying to understand other search engines, what they wanted, and how they work. In doing this the results from Google actually improved with time

@javelin Google brings in ~88% of my search traffic. All of the others combined are negligible. From what I see the others mostly just follow Google's lead. There is nothing on earth I could possibly do to bring in more traffic from all the other search engines combined that would come close to what I have lost from Google. If so, it would require a nother large investment in time that might be better spent elsewhere. But I will take your advice and look into how to optimize better for other search engines. It may also just be a matter of what content you are serving up. My content is not lengthy articles so I am falling further behind.

One interesting observation from my GSC panel. The top search phrase which brings in clicks to my site is my name. This used to be perhaps twice as much as the next search term....now it's about 4x.

[RedBar]

My content is not lengthy articles so I am falling further behind.

One thing that stands out in my sector is the quantity of same'ish templates with very thin content and poor images to the extent they are now easily the dominant pages making probably 75-80% of the top 20 SERPs irrelevant for the top 10 keywords..

Tweaking pages is also very difficult since G does not seem to be updating nor adding new stuff at the moment other than news etc.

[christianz]

@javelin

I find it hard to bring myself to optimize for Bing when they send me 50 times less traffic than Google and are copying all the anti-web googlesapm features from Google.

But maybe I should - there is no downside to trying. Perhaps I should start with setting up Bing webmaster console.

[javelin]

@christianz and ichthyous

I find it hard to bring myself to optimize for Bing when they send me 50 times less traffic than Google and are copying all the anti-web googlesapm features from Google.

But maybe I should - there is no downside to trying. Perhaps I should start with setting up Bing webmaster console.

Allow me to go around the world real quick to tie this all back into impacting Google rankings

I agree you both need to assess whether or not it is worth it for your content. In my case being articles it is easier to achieve. Nevertheless I decided to do what I did for diversification due to Google going to pot. So I will answer a few points you guys made about other serps.

Optimizing for other engines is not that difficult when you look at how long you guys have been doing this. Things that Google ignores they pay more attention to when it concerns on page optimization. So it will be like stepping back into time a little bit with a few different nuances but not difficult. Its likely most of the work is already done and there if you kept good habits going.

A huge key is definitely getting signed up and set up with each providers version of Googles GSC, ie Bings webmasters tools. I actually like Bings version better than Googles and a bonus is Bing gives a built in keyword search with very basic metrics. Use that tool to help cross reference with Ahrefs or your preferred flavor of research tool. It has a full blown SEO tab which helps analyze your site for Bing specifically and Google does not have anything like this.

One of the reasons why search seems minimized from these other sources is in part lack of optimization but also a lack of opting into the platform. For example submitting pages to index and showing you are participating. The traffic that comes from these locations can be good quality with some effort.

I do not always show my cards here in how I think, but if you guys remember me discussing in a thread creating activity on a site to show Google analytics and asking if this activity will help Google ranking? I had always suspected this is true due to what happened to me.

Bret Tabke confirmed the historical manipulation tactics that people would try to use to boost Google ranking. What if you didnt have to manipulate it? By not being so focused on Google alone and generating some activity from these other serps it in the end I believe aided my Google rankings significantly. Keep in mind I use no link schemes and have never built a link on this site. I use keyword systems alone. We each have our ways.

Its something to think about. With ecommerce it will be different. You may need to break away from a traditional shopping cart system and consider pages for items that lead to a point of sale. If you have thousands of products this is not ideal and likely will not work. Nevertheless the idea is to create as much page copy rather than your information being stuck in an item database. Just my thoughts but.... may the force be with you lol

[Broaster]

@Redbar yes its been like this for a year in google news, I remember over 3 years ago people were complaining and then they fixed it so a lot of people were getting traffic and then they went back t what seems like shadow banning where you can only find your exact term or title when you put sort by date and then most of the articles you find are old or irrlevant to your search without putting search by date.

@Brett
I hope they fix it, its still showing the same, I wonder how long that update will take for google news. all I know is my ten year old niche news site that doesn't cover politics has been wiped out, only can find my articles in sort by date, before id type in a few terms it would show up in news and even before Id get my articles in top stories but that was over a year and half ago, haven't received a lick of traffic from google news in over a year.

[RedBar]

Traffic is still there, one weekend, two sites:

Global site Saturday was average, Sunday 38.7% and it strggled to get there and had zero interaction with potential clients. For those who work Monday to Friday do remember not all countries have your working hours and days.

UK dedicated hotel / pub site with a festival weekend Saturday + 175%, Sunday +219% driving the highest traffic figures of the year and also the highest income of the year.

Whilst we expected increased traffic to the UK site it was still surprising considering that, realistically, it is a local event and just who was looking at the site as several thousand who passed through the venue and were enjoying themselves? After years of organsing this event every time it exceeds all expectations, more money than ever was raised for the charity and in 15 years we were again blessed with the best weather.

So, one site down, no realworld business, one site up, loads of realworld business. Talking to Joe Public over the weekend was very interesting. Saturday night was a pre-pandemic night seeing people we hadn't seen since early 2020. Sunday saw loads of families supporting the charity and enjoying the weather however many did make the point that they were being much more careful with their spending "just in case".

My realworld international trade enquiries are down substantially this year and I know, in India which is my widget world's 2nd/3rd largest supplier after China, in some major supply areas that in excess of 1,000 small / family factories are closed at the moment, this is the reality at the primary end of current global consumption therefore it is not surprising so many sites in many industries are experiencing reductions apart from all the Google ads and update.

[ichthyous]

Sat and Sun were both average, but Monday is down massively so far. Search is down 31% by 11am, and USA is down 52% from an average Monday. My visibility increased according to the trackers I use...

Also seeing big drops of 50% or more for many of my top referring countries on a rolling basis from June 13th-17th...Australia, UK, Canada, UAE, Germany...in some cases (UK and Germany) the traffic bounced back after about 4-5 days, in other cases it has has remained at the new lower level. Has anyone seen this big drop in mid-June?

I checked this morning on desktop and many pages are starting with a block of product ads or 4 text ads, then local, one organic link, a huge twitter carousel, people also ask block, one organic link, image search, videos.... It changes upon each search.

[saladtosser]

So many pay wall news articles, why does G include these its so annoying for the user!