Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2022

[RedBar]

---

System: Continued from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5066671.htm [webmasterworld.com]

I am well-aware that it is a US holiday weekend however 20.00 hrs Friday UK time and my global site went into hibernation ... and I mean a traffic level whereby I could completely remove the site since it would be utterly pointless it being there.

As such I shall let it run until Wednesday to see if traffic does return by Tuesday evening US time.

[RedBar]

< moved from another location >


I was just checking my traffic stats for the past 18 months and it is simply shocking what G has done:

June 2022 v June 2021 was 69.2%

However who recalls the April/May 2021 update that caused all kinds of damage?

My June 2022 v Jan/Feb/Mar 2021 average was 50.9% therefore despite excellent rankings, new pages etc, I basically have half the traffic of just over a year ago.

Fortunately, insofar as my realworld business is concerned, even though some countries are still imposing Covid restriction etc, my widget trade fairs seem to be returning albeit at a lower attendance level. If things continue to normalise then it'll be back to the past for me:-)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:11 pm (utc) on Jul 4, 2022]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread splits. [/edit]

[Broaster]

Wow All my traffic is nuked, these past several months have been horrible, a year and half ago stopped recieving traffic from Discover, as well as Google news, now no more trafffic anytime I publish an article I do a complete title search after publishing and it wont even show up in google news unless I put sort by date

its as if im shadow banned, but have no clue why. Then I type in exact search terms to see if I can find stuff and none of the articles even cover the exact search term in fact some of them are not even related to that term its like the entire search is wack Google employees just playing around so they stay employee thats the only reason I see them fiddling with the search. they constantly update it so they keep a job while at the same time they get a high six figure salary us the blogger or website owners who rely on ad revenue from traffic suffer, they dont care as long as they keep their job.

sad stuff, it also seems like Bing and yahoo share the same AI program as google because my traffic from bing has halted as well around this update.

[ichthyous]

Whoa...UK traffic is gone completely this morning, after falling 25% yesterday. Anyone else see a big drop in UK traffic? CA is also at 0 today, and AU is -19%.

First time in 20 years I have had a day with no UK traffic. My UK traffic is about 20% of my US traffic, so it's just not possible unless there was such a massive shakeup in the UK serps that I was completely removed in the last 12-18 hours. Clearly there is no traffic manipulation going on here!

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:44 pm (utc) on Jul 3, 2022]

[samwest]

The mid-summer upswing should have started, but still in decline. Updates are always traffic downgrades in our universe.

[samwest]

Nowhere have I seen any credible source talking about Google "traffic throttling" in the form you are talking about.

Thanks for the laugh...

[christianz]

I am seeing absolutely terrible traffic in general, not just from UK. The SERPs are so awful its not even wroth analyzing them any more.

[Broaster]

No use in even bothering typing articles anymore if spend hours each day if I dont receive any traffic or make any money, this is scary, a lot of people livelihood depends on their traffic and adsense or PPC revenue, the google help forum offers no help either

[Logan22]

Missive decreases today. What a day to celebrate 4th of July....

[Neohippy]

@ichthyous - thanks for sharing your location rollercoaster - sounds horrific! Sorry, I didn't realise you weren't using GA.

What I'm really interested in is: has anyone seen a discrepancy between GA language and location reporting (e.g. substantial increase in traffic from USA location, at the same time as decrease in traffic from en-us language)?

[ichthyous]

I also confirm massive decreases today. Search is down 30% by 12:30pm, while direct traffic is down 55%. Of course, it's the 4th of July so USA traffic is normally down on this holiday...but why has UK CA and AU traffic all vanished this weekend and also today? Google is rolling out the new overstuffed-with-ads layouts to those markets too is my guess

[Jori]

What you all call "throttling", Google call it "fair share", or "allowed traffic". It seems they don't send you more than X users per day/week or month accordingly with :

- ammount of users your server can admit
- fair share of users allowed (they distribute the users for a type of keyword between websites, to test them or because it can't determine which is the best result)

We are put in a traffic pool, and we are not allowed X users per day or week. If by chance you have more users one day, it will be regulated in other day with a decrease (moving the needle in positions somewhere in the long tail keywords for instance).

For you to change your traffic pool, you must improve your website or wait for a Core Update. No more graduals improvements. At least for me (YMYL, finance).

This is arguable, and it's the throttling we see. Patterns so regular that you can predict, week by week, what will be your traffic (my case).

[RedBar]

- ammount of users your server can admit

Hmmm ... Insofar as mine sites' servers are concerned this is definitely not correct.

So far today with it being a US holiday, after 18 hours I have had precisely 50% of what I would describe as my average weekday traffic level. As expected US traffic is well-down so far at 50% ot its daily normal.

The traffic I have had looks good, and after the first 6 hours of mostly single page views, I have had a good broad spectrum of global visitors with multiple page views however it just doesn't "feel" normal, because of all the recent turmoil relatively normal is strange!

As the saying goes "one swallow doesn't make a summer".

[RedBar]

Interesting, 06.00 this morning and the switch was flipped on, 18.00 this evening, two hours ago, the switch was flipped off ! Bear in mind this is mid-day / afternoon US time, the roller coaster continues even on a holday.

Many years ago I seem to recollect a major update and the entire Plex went skiing and everything went horribly wrong, these days it seems to be the standard M.O.

[renatovieira]

Huge drop today...

[RedBar]

Huge drop today...

Do you mean Monday 4th? Over the years I have seen busy July 4ths and I have seen deathly 4ths but usually the traffic returns to normal a couple of days later. Tomorrow, Wednesday, will be the interesting one for me.

[christianz]

Do you mean Monday 4th? Over the years I have seen busy July 4ths and I have seen deathly

Every holiday and during big events they tend to roll out more anti-web features in the SERP pages, hoping they can hind behind the holiday/news headlines.

This drop is just partly related to July 4th, but mostly direct consequence of anti-web changes in the SERP pages.

[EditorialGuy]

Our information site had an excellent July 4th weekend, with decent week-over-week increases in Google traffic. I have no idea why. Maybe people were avoiding heatwaves caused by climate change by browsing the Web from air-conditioned bedrooms and coffee shops? Whatever the cause, it may or may not have been related to anything Google did. Google rankings are just one variable.

[renatovieira]

@RedBar - I meant today, july 5th. Yesterday (4th July) I had heavy traffic. My site is about weather forecast. This niche doesn't take a vacation...

[samwest]

Quite frankly, these update threads have developed the odor of a fine limburger cheese.

[RedBar]

Limburger! Do they allow you such delicacies? :-)

Update threads should be a snapshot of what different sectors are experiencing at that specific time therefore it's an impossibility for all sites to be affected in the same way however general trends may be observed ... Now whether anyone can do anything about lower traffic levels when one's site still appears to be ranking well is altogether another thing.

Whilst creating a site these days is very easy for many SEOing it well is more "difficult" however, IMHO, this is not where the problem lies for most of us, quite simply we do not know the in-built bias / weighting Google applies to localisation and nationality.

In my experience of localisation in the UK G seems to do a fairly good job in my widget sector and so long as the site is organised well there ought to be no issues. The problem then occurs when it comes to a national or international audience. Not everyone's products are lightweight and easily posted / couriered and for those many businesses like mine all search engines have mostly become a horrible mish-mash of good / totally irrelevant results.

Insofar as informational sites are concerned it must be a nightmare for the SEs now, flagrant copying / scraping is so rife even at the so-called "top level", almost makes it impossible for SEs to differentiate the original from the plagiarists. In turn to try and combat this the SEs turn to brand names for the trust factor even though the brand itself is more than likely a plagiarist too ... I have top-level journalist friends who openly admit to what their briefs are, how many words and how much they will get paid ... Most times they have no choice but to copy.

A lot of Joe Public has lost trust in the SEs and revert to friends / forum / FB / local experience, recommendation and advice.

[ichthyous]

A sudden, precipitous drop in USA traffic overnight...starting down 76% this morning. Traffic to my home page was -33% yesterday, and -44% so far today. I am stable in ranking and gained a few new terms, but the traffic literally vanished

[BushyTop]

Traffic and SERPs seem so turbulent. Search doesn't stand still now. What I find as strange as anything is that our personal movements don't mirror those of everyone else's anymore. Some days the sensors are quiet, but we're seeing loads of movement.

[RedBar]

It's just gone 16.00 on my Googleday and things look normal! PVs, uniques, sources ... Let's see how long this lasts?

[ichthyous]

My "ranking" is rising strongly and I am regaining top 3 terms almost daily. Yet yesterday my USA traffic fell off a cliff and was off by -14%, UK also -14%, AU - 29%, CA - 60%. I put "ranking" in quotes because I think that the concept is outdated in this new world of rank being disconnected from actual traffic.

Then from 9pm-1am a big surge in USA traffic and two conversions. Then this morning USA is right back down -48%. My direct traffic is -66%.

We can quibble all day about whether throttling exists and what form it takes, but there is a serious and egregious manipulation of the traffic going on by Google and it updates now almost on an hour by hour basis. There is a reason good converting traffic from the most important converting regions is suppressed all day long, then mysteriously spikes late in the eve...that is not a normal traffic pattern for my site for the last 20 years.

I myself don't really think that Google has an absolute cap on traffic per domain. It's more likely that Google is reverting to running fewer ads in those hours, or changes the layout to not include as many ads and widgets so that more organic traffic flows through. It would require monitoring the traffic pattern for many sites all day long and comparing that to the Google page configuration across many searches in many markets. I don't think anyone will be performing that study any time soon, therefore no comprehensive study or report to verify or debunk this hypothesis. Google has us all by the sack and that's that...it's very hard to provide a definitive survey of all of these types of manipulation.

[renatovieira]

Since 4/july, drop after drop. Very and very slow today...

[RedBar]

Wednesday my traffic was at 95%, so far today it is very quiet yet genuine realworld enquiries have picked up. Most interesting is that I've just done a 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months traffic country of origin and there is hardly any change whatsoever. It is the same top 3 countries with an almost identical percentage of traffic.

My traffic in a year has halved yet my sources are for all intents and purposes, prroportionately the same, that does not seem right to me at all, somehow I have lost half my traffic equally across the entire globe? How can that be?

[renatovieira]

This morning I noticed a small drop. But now I see a very huge drop. Did anyone else notice?

[RedBar]

For me a trend would now seem to be emerging with a 65% Thursday and realistically -60% v the beginning of 2021.

Comparing my long-term most popular keyword pages v this month and I am seeing several changes and most evidently is the fall of my widget trade's most popular widgets. These are global trade bread and butter widgets therefore I need to check my SERPs to ascertain whether any non-US businesses rank now for these keyword widgets.

If there are very few non-US businesses in those SERPs shall I be forced to conclude this is not only an algo update but a major shift in USA SERPs ranking policy?

The conundrum would then be why are so many US businesses seemingly being hit as well?

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira Yes traffic has been poor since the weekend of the 4th, with Tuesday being the only exception for me. Today looks like another big drop. This entire week my direct traffic has vanished entirely, dropping 56% yesterday. It's mostly traffic to my home page, which is inexplicably down 40-56% for no reason