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.

[ne0h]

And officially I lost around 3k visits per day since the update. And it will not recover since it's almost a month now.

Take a look:

[imgur.com...]

[BigKat]

@javelin

When isolationism forces many dogs to compete for kennel space in the end as there are fewer dogs the revenue will dwindle. Its complete stupidity.

I see things differently. Those in the kennel you speak of are not businesses, but consumers. I see it in my industry where Google ranks a Chinese manufacturer's products that are resold under a half dozen different brands. These brands selling on Amazon push competitors out of view on Google searches allowing Google to limit consumer choice so that their spending ends up at Amazon which in turn returns a portion of that money to Google with massive ad spending. In the oligopoly we are operating in, controlling/directing consumer clicks (Google) and spending (Amazon) is the purchase cycle these market leaders derive their profits from. So long as these players control the consumer, they can do as they please and easily attain profit targets when working together. Small businesses, that want to jump in the kennel, will be chewed up alive unless they have very large margins to use as band-aids.

In my opinion Google is dead. There is nothing we can do about it nor anywhere we can presently turn to. Google will get exactly what it wants in the end but it will begin its downfall at the same time. These kinds of policies do not promote growth.

Google is not struggling financially and logged record revenues in one of the most challenging/difficult years in history (Covid pandemic). Those struggling/dying are B&M stores that sell product along with small businesses that can't afford the extreme costs of participating in the pay to play environment Amazon and Google constructed to control consumers with. What is dead is consumer choice, and I fear there is little we can do when consumers have been herded like cattle and placed in the oligopoly's pasture to graze.

While I hope you are right that Google will get what's coming to them, I fear it will not happen. The policies you speak of definitely do not promote growth, but instead promote more control over consumer clicks, their spending and the ever increasing costs we independent businesses must pay to reach consumers.

[ichthyous]

I was going to respond to @javelin, but @BigKat beat me to it. I agree that it's not Google that is dead, they have record revenue quarter after quarter. It's WE that are dead...the businesses that survived and prospered online for years. This has to be seen as a problem for the society in general as these monopolies have literally made it impossible for small business to exist online. Whole swaths of medium and small business will disappear, and good middle class livelihoods with them. It will all concentrate into fewer and fewer hands of large companies that can pay to play. Social media seemed like a bright alternative for small players at first...but it has become 100% pay to play as well.

Yesterday and today traffic is way down, after only one relatively decent day this entire week. This is while my ranking has improved nicely this entire week. According to the trackers I have recovered much of what I lost in 2021...but the traffic is just not there

Once again today, it's traffic from the English language countries that is being hit - USA -32%, UK -40%, AU - 30%, CA - 0 visits. But I got plenty of this today:

China
Thailand
Russian Federation
Venezuela
Jamaica
Uganda
Taiwan
Pakistan
India
Indonesia
The Philippines

[RedBar]

My traffic improvement has continued this afternoon UK time therefore I decided to check my SERPs and firstly I am seeing completely new layouts with images and even more ads, even the results look like ads now for me!

Some of my, and competitors, MIA pages have returned, mostly between positions 20-60 and I am also seeing even more double-linked Pinterest pages ... Whatever G may say this thing certainly is not finished in my widget sector.

[Martin Ice Web]

Yesterday was the worst day since panda launched. Todday we are starting with -68%.

[Neohippy]

@Ichthyous - you talk about location traffic a lot... Have you looked at traffic by language at all? E.g. if US location traffic is down, is en-us language also down by a similar percentage? Just asking because we've noticed some discrepancies that make us wonder if there's a bug in GA location tracking * shrug *

[RedBar]

What are they doing?

I had 30 hours of completely normal traffic from 12.00 UK Wednesday until 18.00 UK Thursday and then the switch was flicked off UNTIL 07.00 UK this morning, Friday.

This traffic pattern is so unnatural surely they realise we know this or are we actually considered as disposable non-entities to simply do as we're told and not question anything?

[engine]

I reported earlier that Google is no longer indexing complete pages from major sites. [webmasterworld.com] Well, that's still the case today, and google is not finding the content and, therefore, is not displaying it in the SERPs.

Unless this changes, it's a less-effective search.

[Brett_Tabke]

>the same trends they can't all be misinformed

Sure it can. If we have seen nothing else from the politics of the last 10 years, is that if you repeat something often enough, some people start to believe it and other people will make up theories to fill in the gaps.

Nowhere have I seen any credible source talking about Google "traffic throttling" in the form you are talking about.
Show me any case study, or blog post talking about such a phenomena.

[ichthyous]

This traffic pattern is so unnatural surely they realise we know this or are we actually considered as disposable non-entities to simply do as we're told and not question anything?

We ARE 'disposable non-entities' to a trillion dollar monopoly. What actual power do we have? Everyone just says "Oh well, it's not like you paid for it to begin with" or "you're just being out-competed now" or "Google is a corporation, it's not there to give away freebies". Have you actually read the comments on articles which have covered this topic? There is very little comprehension of the problem and very little sympathy for online businesses. They don't understand at all that without our sites and our content Google has no product. Perhaps next step will be for Google to manufacture the content itself...just as Amazon is cutting the throats of its vendors by targeting their products and copying them.

@NeoHippy I can clearly see that English language traffic is most affected, as I have been reporting since last year. This is not new, but just getting worse. Traffic from english language countries vanishes on a daily basis, then returns. USA is perpetually low, UK is generally strong but will suddenly plunge 30-50% in one day, AU and CA take turns dropping off a cliff or vanishing entirely...sometimes both on the same day. I don't use GA anymore, removed it from my site.

[edited by: ichthyous at 3:28 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2022]

[RedBar]

Have you actually read the comments on articles which have covered this topic?

Absolutely however trying to get others to discuss this seems almost impossible but it ought to make a great thread if everyone chipped in although just how many have any real interest in this? Realistically it is as important as, if not more important than, this thread.

[christianz]

Traffic near multi year low and looks like going lower every day. For such pathetic traffic levels I am seeing relatively high bounce rate, which could be explained by overall very poor SERP relevancy, thanks to this completely botched "update".

I see Google is still trying to push out this already failed algo. At some point they should give up and then we may see some improvement.

It is not easy to give up when they have invested so much in this change and it may mean job loss for some of those responsible. So they will try and try and try.

[BigKat]

This will go down in history as one of the worst weeks for Google traffic/sales I've ever seen. I have nothing good to report. Despite some flux in the SERPS this week, we've seen no improvement in conversions. Keywords that searchers would use to find our products have vanished and not returned. On that note, have a great weekend everyone and a great 4th of July to those in the USA.

[javelin]

Nowhere have I seen any credible source talking about Google "traffic throttling" in the form you are talking about.
Show me any case study, or blog post talking about such a phenomena.

Part of the problem in being able to "prove" this has less to do with conspiracy issues and more to do with compiling enough data. Using just a few data sets would not be compelling. This would require many people volunteering their data for a real case study but that... 1 hasnt happened and 2 not many people are so willing to surrender that.

Absolutely however trying to get others to discuss this seems almost impossible but it ought to make a great thread if everyone chipped in although just how many have any real interest in this? Realistically it is as important as, if not more important than, this thread.

This may be the best way to approach the issue rather than using a case study. A more open source way of bringing information to the table so many different eyes can see what is taking place. Part of the power G and others hold is the fact we have no real "forum" for the masses to review information on the level that G does daily.

I certainly believe that traffic is throttled. I will go beyond this and say that further information is included and also excluded based upon bias for xyz topics or agendas. This too has been seen. Its no longer a question of if these things happen but rather to what degrees they take place.

[topaz]

-80% here, and hurting.

[ichthyous]

Traffic was bad this entire week except for M and Fri, which were average. I checked and traffic is actually higher than this time in 2021. I was feeling the awful effect of the March 2021 update all summer last year but I still managed sales. This year no sales at all... not even inquiries about pricing. Not from anywhere in the world...no USA, Canadian, or UK inquiries. Nothing from Europe or Latin America either. I just went one month with two new email inquires and a couple of phone calls. It's as bad as the worst of 2020 when the pandemic hit and worse than after the 2008 financial crisis. Google has just found a way to kill off the business. Mind you, I keep climbing and climbing in rank this entire year.. the opposite of last summer when my ranking deflated like a balloon.

[edited by: ichthyous at 4:34 am (utc) on Jul 2, 2022]

[System]

The following 10 messages were cut out to new thread by robert_charlton. New thread at:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:21 pm (utc) on Jul 4, 2022]