Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2022

[RedBar]

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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]

For me my Monday traffic was completely normal at 87.3% until about 22.00 UK time when it came to a crawl until 08.00 this morning resulting so far in13 hours only a 20% level. These troughs and peaks are utterly ridiculous and even moreso when some of my lowest traffic levels are at USA peak usage hours.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar I've been saying that all year, and I think I'm not alone. Is this the first time you are seeing this or simply restating it?

This is where the notion of throttling comes in...for me it means the completely manipulated pattern of googles referred traffic. We have all had websites for years...in my case two decades. USA falls through the floor many days during prime business hours, and I am starting to see signs that this has rolled out to all the English language markets. USA seems to be the testing ground since there is effectively no legislation and no will to stop Google from doing what it wants. It has to tread a bit more lightly in other markets which have governments that are gunning for US tech monopolies.

It most likely boils down to the fact that Google employs every tactic it can during prime business hours to ensure that it keeps all of the traffic with commercial intent. My guess is that it switches ad layouts to show far more ads and higher up the page. More widgets as well, and changing the placement of the serps.

I have been wondering why Google so prominently features Twitter carousels for searches now...is it out of some feeling of affection for Twitter's mission? There is some other motive, and perhaps it's just to squash all of the commercial serps any way it can. Bury the links between so many blocks of content that nobody will click on it. Drive revenue to Google ads through causing desperation on the part of businesses. I could be wrong, they may just include such a large Twitter carousel because they think it's relevant, but how many people actually use Twitter or care about extraneous third party tweets when they are searching for something?

In any case, the current traffic patterns are clearly just wrong and it's completely intentional. Whether or not actual caps on a domain's traffic flow are in place is another matter entirely. If I had a similar amount of traffic each day and to each section of my site I might be suspicious, but it's the opposite...traffic is varying wildly from day to day and secrion to section. Lately it's been a massive drop in Direct traffic (again) and a massive decline in visits to my home page (again). Instead the traffic is hitting lower level pages and out. That is what's causing conversions to vanish this entire year...they don't even circulate around the site. In my case they hit the page, save the main image and leave. I have an image based site so many are just stealing the images and that's it, not any real interest in anything.

[shadowlight]

This is where the notion of throttling comes in...for me it means the completely manipulated pattern of googles referred traffic. We have all had websites for years...in my case two decades. USA falls through the floor many days during prime business hours, and I am starting to see signs that this has rolled out to all the English language markets. USA seems to be the testing ground since there is effectively no legislation and no will to stop Google from doing what it wants. It has to tread a bit more lightly in other markets which have governments that are gunning for US tech monopolies.

It most likely boils down to the fact that Google employs every tactic it can during prime business hours to ensure that it keeps all of the traffic with commercial intent. My guess is that it switches ad layouts to show far more ads and higher up the page. More widgets as well, and changing the placement of the serps.

I have been wondering why Google so prominently features Twitter carousels for searches now...is it out of some feeling of affection for Twitter's mission? There is some other motive, and perhaps it's just to squash all of the commercial serps any way it can. Bury the links between so many blocks of content that nobody will click on it. Drive revenue to Google ads through causing desperation on the part of businesses. I could be wrong, they may just include such a large Twitter carousel because they think it's relevant, but how many people actually use Twitter or care about extraneous third party tweets when they are searching for something?

In any case, the current traffic patterns are clearly just wrong and it's completely intentional. Whether or not actual caps on a domain's traffic flow are in place is another matter entirely. If I had a similar amount of traffic each day and to each section of my site I might be suspicious, but it's the opposite...traffic is varying wildly from day to day and secrion to section. Lately it's been a massive drop in Direct traffic (again) and a massive decline in visits to my home page (again). Instead the traffic is hitting lower level pages and out. That is what's causing conversions to vanish this entire year...they don't even circulate around the site. In my case they hit the page, save the main image and leave. I have an image based site so many are just stealing the images and that's it, not any real interest in anything.

I agree I don't think its throttling directly, it just appears that way due to the reasons you stated above & that's why some people describe it as such.

I also agree about twitter carousels, if I wanted to see twitter posts.........well.........I would look on twitter. Same goes for image blocks, if I wanted to view a load of images, I would click on the images tab. For some search terms it may be useful for a few images to appear, if I searched for 'what does x look like' for example, but for a lot of others it just isn't relevant.

[Brett_Tabke]

> USA falls through the floor many days during prime business hours

Yep, it is all about the ads - not about the organic.

Day-parting is huge by advertisers. If they push 8 ads at you during work or drive time hours, that is going to - and does - impact organic results. They also manipulate answer boxes, map/shop/image includes in relation to ads.

For example, if an ad block generates X clicks in relation to X includes, they will mix up those includes (answer boxes, etc), so that it generates the highest click on ads. That results in a plummeting of organic click through rates as now organic can be actually on mobile page two for many people.

[RedBar]

Is this the first time you are seeing this or simply restating it?

Just restating it owing to the huge disparity, today after 19 hours I'm at 46.3%, barmy!

[javelin]

Google is doing its usual dance this week for me.... but its Bing that is pulling ahead winning every day. Here is whats interesting in the comparison.

Google will seem to have its favorite keyword sets, then after a couple weeks it will shift and I will see others tossed in and a few tossed out of what it prefers. Bing on the other hand is using a much wider spectrum from my site at the same time. There is less playing around and impressions / traffic is more consistent day over day. Why do I bring that up?

Back to the throttling issues. I know these are two different companies but anyone who has been around for any amount of time knows Google was not always like this. Rather than saying "where is the proof", note how many experienced SEO's are out there complaining about it. Something is off.

As I have stated before, obtaining the proof to this would require more information than we mere mortals can get our hands on. It would require a large group of sites collaborating data and having enough of it across years to show. Without that it will always sound like a conspiracy, or seem like, or be assumed. Its easy to blame the customer when the product is broken, in this case especially easy when its for monopolizing the serps.

[jimji]

Okey-dokey, I'd like to ask a favor, please. I decided to see what was the fuss by some folks in another thread having issues with sort of nothing but bad news style stuff being posted and so I started with the May Update double thread and am now here and I do tend to see a heavy dose of anti-Google sort of posts, but that is fine by me. I've actually gone head-to-head with Google employees and management, but that was a fair number of years ago and I do still sort of belong to an odd group of Google volunteers that have formed a sort of Outside Google meeting thingy. (Really don't know what to call it.)

You see, I am trying to indicate I have an open mind about all these giants in this industry, BUT what I can't seem to find in all these posts is some sort of chart style something that can graphically show ups-and-downs that could be better tools for educating people outside of all you professional types.

My view is the most important law of the land and the most important court of the land is the court of public opinion. You get the public into the fray and don't fret that governments or judicial folks might not be doing their best to thwart possible bad stuff by the giants in this industry. The public is the power. One million little people can sit on top of one fat cat and hold it down. But you've got to get that one million group and that can only be done if they understand the key points and this sort of business seems to require graphics that are easy to understand to educate those one million little people.

I'd bet the bank that some hotshot site out there has those graphics, but who can point me to that hotshot site? It is all well and good that you folks are letting off steam here with each other, but if you really want to get some change [IF change is necessary] then we have to educate those one million folks first. They will get the next one million and then it becomes a train that can't be stopped.

Then that court of public opinion goes into action and suddenly the fat cats have to pay attention, IF they are out of line.

I mean, isn't this about somebody is out of line? Well, let's prove it to that first cluster of one million little folks and we don't have to worry about the lawmakers or them judges.

Or am I just way too far into some dreamland and making no sense at all? I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.

Oh yes, and I bow and apologize if that hotshot graphics chart I am hoping to see and understand is already somewhere around this site. That would mean I haven't done my homework and some of you teachers are worse than any I ever had at them regular schools. By the way, "worse" means you are good; not bad. Well, one of you did hit me over the head with a pillow, but the sting disappeared quickly.

Maybe some of you folks should start a 'Little People' school right here to help educate the masses. You've got to have the masses, or the money wins every time. Learn how to educate the 'Little People' and then you can create change.

[RedBar]

This subject is going off-topic and deserves a new thread IMHO.

Or am I just way too far into some dreamland and making no sense at all?

As admirable as your dreams are unfortunately that is all they will remain. These days even elections are open to fraud and I am not solely referring to the USA, it can and does happen everywhere.

So long as there is an open business market the dog with the loudest growl, the biggest bite and the deepest bowl will invariably win until they are caught out. The public are not given a plebiscite between Google, Bing, DDG and Yahoo, the public usually chooses the FREE option and if that means giving-up some of their information they invariably accept that.

I am a massive critic of Google but at the same time it has done an incredible job this past 24 years even though I may not like some of it. I feel sure that even the founders never expected its power and influence to be so huge, I was there at the beginning and I can assure you no one's dreams were this huge and wide-ranging.

We all see the G algo failings from completely different perspectives whether one is a corner shop owner, a distributor, a wholesaler, a manufacturer, a global business, a writer or a publisher, we all view the search engines in different ways however the biggest problem for the past 20 years have been the bad actors, the cloners, the thieves, the scrapers ... Those who steal and make money from other people's efforts.

Do we need all search engines to create an "original / first" system of verification or has that one disappeared?

[BigKat]

the biggest problem for the past 20 years have been the bad actors, the cloners, the thieves, the scrapers ... Those who steal and make money from other people's efforts.

These bad actors are only enabled by Google who uses them to displace/demote original authors/businesses in the SERPS. I look at Google as the ringleader of these bad actors since bad actors are used (ranked) in such a way to drive advertising revenue. In my eyes, Google is the one receiving, ranking and profiting from stolen intellectual property.

From a user's perspective, there are so many ads that ranking organic trash will produce more ad clicks without turning off searchers. Original authors/businesses, competing against their own stolen content that Google is ranking, will either pay to be seen or fall by the wayside. There's no financial incentive for Google to create the original/first system you speak of since it would add additional burden on them while also taking away one of the tools/techniques they use to drive profits from ads.

In my industry, stolen content does not impact us nearly as much as domain crowding and the excessive ads/YouTube videos that also drive buyer traffic to big brands. By reducing/eliminating choice in the SERPS, Google has trained consumers that shopping online at Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. are the only options available. This has benefited both Google and those big box retailers greatly, at the cost of smaller retailers and manufacturers. Consumer spending is largely contained within this group which keeps the money flowing between these select companies who also feed Google with large advertising budgets.

[samwest]

Record spell of zero sales...the web has been going downhill for the past decade... I don't expect it to ever return. Other than dumping a truckload of cash into ads with little to no ROI, it's all an exercise in diminishing returns...now no returns.

[Dooku]

the biggest problem for the past 20 years have been the bad actors, the cloners, the thieves, the scrapers ... Those who steal and make money from other people's efforts.


These bad actors are only enabled by Google who uses them to displace/demote original authors/businesses in the SERPS. I look at Google as the ringleader of these bad actors since bad actors are used (ranked) in such a way to drive advertising revenue.

@BigKat, Looking at the first quote above about "bad actors" it always boggles my mind why people seem to confuse cause and effect, even though its very clear what the actual reason is. Maybe it's because the brainwashing.....eehhh I mean "training the google visitors" is really working?

[RedBar]

@BigKat

These bad actors are only enabled by Google

I totally agree, I'm not defending anyone / business in this respect. In the early 90s people were trying to predict how The Net would develop, some were semi-correct, many were way out, however I do not ever remember anyone suggesting that we would need to "register / copyright" all our published works and ideas, did they?

Maybe some of the big publishing houses who were used to this kind of "thing" had an inkling but even as late as 1999 / 2000 realistically the big brands were still not very interested in The Net, it was still primarily seen as a geeky thing and certainly NOT something one could easily carry around in a pocket or handbag.

[MrSnuts]

@jimji

You see, I am trying to indicate I have an open mind about all these giants in this industry, BUT what I can't seem to find in all these posts is some sort of chart style something that can graphically show ups-and-downs that could be better tools for educating people outside of all you professional types.

Just wanted to support your suggestion before it goes ignored,
I do share a lot of your points of view, and yes, if the "problem" cannot be visualized in a way that regular folks instantly understand,
there's little chance to make any change.
I do have my doubts if it is really possible to nail down a problem that seems worth noticing to the public, but I'd be up to at least try that.
Maybe in a separate thread, ad RedBar suggested?

[RedBar]

Crazy fluctuations, yesterday 53%, so far today 71.3% with almost identical page views.

[malkhaldi]

anyone notice an indexing issue today

[rustybrick]

Yes, Google is not indexing new content this morning. It is widespread but not yet confirmed by Google.

[renatovieira]

@rustybrick - Here adsense and gsc are broken. All stopped.

[Tambran]

GSC broken for past 3 hours.

[ne0h]

GSC is broken.
Google analytics 4 (GA4) new tracking is stopped completely. I had to turn on the older analytics UA to check if something is wrong in my site. UA is working fine, fortunately.

AdSense earning today is almost zero per day with same traffic numbers

Something is seriously happening at Google.

It's completely abnormal. I wonder if its something to do with the messed up May25th update.

[Tambran]

Just noticed that Google analytics 4 is stopped. The old GA is working. AS reporting is almost zero.

[rustybrick]

Google is broken :)

[arjimika]

I really like this forum, because many tips and tricks are shared by the members here.

[ichthyous]

Here we go again...drops in traffic to my home page of 70+%. Big drops in all English language traffic...Canada and Australia almost zero some days, UK up one day down the next and USA perpetually mediocre and just trying to reach stasis. This is while my ranking is stable and even higher most days.

These drops to home page traffic are all 'Direct' traffic, not search. Traffic shifts to landing pages and lower level pages so it isn't gone completely, just hitting a different set of pages in bigger numbers that do not make sense (to me). Is anyone else seeing this happening on a regular basis now?

Im wondering if it has to do with the new blocks of four serps with larger images which resemble news articles? They have taken over completely on mobile and they are mostly from very high authority sites only. It appears to be a way to pack even more content on the page by showing two serps side by side instead of one linear scroll. I think designwise it makes sense and looks a lot better than the tiny square image used on regular serps. But if you aren't present there, you're cooked.

[AGOwen]

Hey all,

Anyone noticing again huge drop in Organic traffic? (-70/80%) from 16/07/2022 5PM GTM (KWs wiped out again)

I got hit by core update in June then in July I got back my traffic(didn't do any changes) and now again something even bigger.

This is not normal. This is pure manipulation...

(since 15th of July GSC Page experience displaying 0 impression even if my site 100/100 Mobile/Desktop

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld AGOwen and volcron

Anyone noticing again huge drop in Organic traffic?

Personally I do watch these ups and downs with incredulity as traffic seems to be switched on and off. My overall traffic is down since several of my top keywords have been obliterated meanwhile others are fine.

Daily PVs are varying from 100% of average to 49.3% yesterdaty and after 13 hours of today at 12%, yes, twelve.

They follow a government agenda.

We tend not to get involved with political conspiracies here simply because it can become personally abusive and that's not what we're here for, likewise we don't give legal advice, commentary sometimes however certainly not specific guidance.

Enjoy the ride since most of us are experiencing a serious roller coaster at the moment.

[Cindy_B]

Hello All:
I've been member here for years, but just started reading again a few months back, and hardly ever post. I'm a small seller of antiques and vintage online at a few of the big players (eBay and Etsy), and have my own site (never get anyone looking except me! :) ).

Wanna know the weird thing? Whenever @ichthyous is down, I get a few crumbs of sales on either one or both marketplaces. Just food for thought for you to put in the mix of what-in-the-hang-is-going-on-here. Just thought I'd mention it...don't know if it means anything.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is lower this weekend...my UK traffic has been following the weather trend @RedBar mentioned. Drops off a cliff all day on weekends, then suddenly makes it up in the late afternoon, early eve. Today UK traffic is down 71% though, and I hear it's a heat wave. Let's see if they show up later. We should all keep in mind that people are traveling a lot this year.

[RedBar]

Yep nice summer weather and the pub is heaving with a live blues rock band on, most of those won't be fit for anything later when they go home :-)) It's very noticeable with the localised UK sites I do that warm weekends see massive traffic drops these days. By massive I mean in comparison to their daily traffic average which may be a few hundred PVs, not 100+K etc.

We should all keep in mind that people are traveling a lot this year.

There is a lot of staycation in the UK this year with many refusing the booster jab plus which country can they, or not, go to. I suspect if the USA were to drop its vax mandate that the US would see a huge influx of UK non-vaxxed visiting relations. For instance my family has been unable to see their 90+ year old relatives for more than 2 years.

[Tambran]

Dropping vax and other health checks is a travel booster yes.

[engine]

Now that the indexing issue is resolved for a couple of days, for those that were suffering from this problem, has it recovered?

[ichthyous]

Traffic was very high across the board Sunday from 8am right to the end of the day. Every region...North America UK Europe, Australia, Middle East. This weekend I had numerous new inquiries..more than in the preceding month.

[RedBar]

So far yesterday and today I've seen more of what I call "big hitters". Whereas many visitors only view to get brief / pertinent details of a widget, big hitters come in and can spend several hours and go through 50-200 pages reading and downloading images and I never know from where they are coming and when. For instance this morning I had one such hitter for an hour from Saudi Arabia going through and downloading all my widget details for Saudi Aranian widgets which, I assume, he probably never knew existed.

This has been my "normal" pattern for 25+ years therefore hopefully a bit of normality may be returning ... Fingers crossed.

[cr1m]

Also seeing 70-80% decrease across our English-speaking markets. One thing I also noticed is that crawl stats report shows crawling also decreased by 60% on Friday, July 15th. Can't think of a reason why it could have hit all of our content that bad.

[John Mu Clone]

Another one of my website gone.. 70% drop ... Keywords literally dissappeared like may update. Never recovered. No shaddy tactics used in this website as well. And dropped keywords replaced by some random YouTube videos and AI generated content which has like 0 EAT...
Now what am i supposed to do..?! How am i supposed to beat these AI or inaccurate content (reporting to google no help)

[RedBar]

@cr1m Anything to do with this?

[webmasterworld.com...]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld John Mu Clone

[cr1m]

@RedBar, might be, but not sure. My current theory is that it's all connected - Google update caused issues with content indexing and while some websites lost most of their content (virtually, but not really) the ranking algorithm also dropped them out of SERPs. I have no other explanation why our top performing content would instantly drop from positions 3-5 to 15+, and less popular pages just drop out of the first 100. We're looking into what could be fixed on our end as well, but since the same issue happened to other websites as well, then I believe it was Google behind that drop, not a specific technical problem.

[John Mu Clone]

@RedBar Thank You For Welcoming

[John Mu Clone]

@cr1m my top performing pages (were in top 3 position) literally disappeared from the serp.. Not dropped to 15+ position, just disappeared..
i am fine if google dropping my site because of low quality or shaddy backlinks but it makes me puke when i see that my dropped article replaced by some random AI article having info accuracy of 0.1%, then google ranking algo don't make sense at all.
nowdays, its like google just doing a lottery, randomly dropping websites, replacing them with some random sites without checking anything.

[javelin]

Well well well... interesting occurrences this week already and its only Monday.

Over the past days bing has been feeding me traffic nicely, still is. Google did decline post last update but it was erratic in that the data made no sense beyond that. Example impression rates have very little deviation from day to day, rolling keywords like it was playing to see what it liked on a slot machine.

Today Google has come out roaring with a boost in traffic matching Bing at a 50/50 split. Note I am counting Bings ownership of Yahoo traffic to make that number.

Side note for RedBar. Earlier in another thread I posed a question of what is better, adding more content or adding less while building internally allowing the algo to work with the site trying to build stability. I have nothing concrete yet obviously but I am taking that approach since I asked that question because, why the heck not? This is not an income for me anyway and Im curious. I will keep you guys up to date with what happens down the road.

My reduction of adding content is by 75% since the update. At the moment I have seen significant improvement with Bing.

[RedBar]

what is better, adding more content or adding less while building internally allowing the algo to work with the site trying to build stability.

Wow, that's a loaded question for which there seems to be several possible answers and my last point 3 is the real conundrum.

1. Adding new conctent to existing well-ranking pages (positions 1-20) does not appear to do any harm.

2. Adding new pages I have already tested and so long as they're not highly competitive terms seems to have been ok using my standard template layout, in fact I had one brand new page come straight in at #15 after 3 days. Ok, it's not a high value keyword widget BUT it is an important widget in specific global regions which can be very significant.

3. The real conundrum, why am I and many others seeing high value keywords being severely downgraded or removed altogether from the Google SERPs plus added to this why are so many poor quality cloned sites with very similar templates suddenly appearing and ranking so well?

For this I have absolutely no answer whatsoever at the moment. If they were original and different quality pages it would be understandable but for so many extremely similar templates of poor quality signifies to me that something's gone "wrong" in MY widget sector. Honestly I do not know if similar is happening in other widget sectors.

Therefore my solution to my conundrum is that I have nearly completed a brand new 70 page site using one of my already proven templates and, quite simply, I have created a cut-down, much briefer site, with all new images but based upon the layout that has suddenly taken over the high value keyword spots. This site does not compete head-to-head with my in-depth global site, it is actually designed for the retail visitor who requires immediate and accurate information.

Will it work? It's now mid-July, should all things happen as in the past, it should be nicely indexed and starting to rank by end-August and by Sept / Oct theoretically ranking well. If it has very little success come November I shall probably remove it or move it sideways to a local widget site.

This core update appears to be very selective in my sector seemingly promoting specific retail widget pages in the USA, my SERPs in other countries so far have not seen such drastic movements.

[BigKat]

Anyone else seeing keywords bouncing around (also completely disappearing) in the SERPS right now? Looks like another update going on with another round of long periods of dead/no traffic from Google.

[RedBar]

FWIW I don't feel it's another update rather a dialling-up of the constant state of flux outside of the top 1-3 incumbents.

[Martin Ice Web]

Big losses since sunday. Nearly 50% again after recovering last week.
Could be holidays but last week were holidays, too. So it seems another update started on sunday.
And i have the feeling that it has something to do with click depth of pages.
So we have a unattended site (nearly no extra information beside manufacturer information). It is a plain site. 2-3 categories and then the item pages -> click depth max. 3
This site went up!
Our main site is muich more integrated. Lots of information, pictures and further links. Much more categories ( better for users ). Better readable ....
But click depth of items are mainly 5-7.
This site went down.

And if i look at current serps. All the sites are very plain. Little categories. Little information. Only some items. Click depth 1-2
In most cases this sites are for amazon affiliate programms. Mainly fake testamonial sites with links to amazon.

[cr1m]

Blessed be the day! Seeing our pages come back to top positions where they previously were 5 days ago. Hourly traffic over last 4 hours seems also to be back to our previous levels. I guess Google fixed something on their end?
How is everyone else who lost traffic doing today?

[jaybusa]

On 7th July traffic was down nearly 50% for single day now again from last three traffic is decreasing, can't figure out what's happening. Is it due to google update or any glitch from Google side as few days back someone from Google team tweeted about glitch.

[Neohippy]

FWIW, we're down about 20% since around the May 25th update; been pretty consistent since.

[samwest]

Still #1 on page one, below all the 'googage', and yet traffic just keeps slowly dropping.

[EditorialGuy]

Still #1 on page one, below all the 'googage', and yet traffic just keeps slowly dropping.

There are a lot of things going on besides Google updates. For example, there's a PhoCusWire travel news story out today that says:

"Last-minute reservations for flights within Europe were down 44% from 2019 levels as of July 10, according to new research by travel intelligence specialist ForwardKeys. Summer bookings from Amsterdam decreased 59% from prepandemic levels and those from London dropped 41%."

Now, that's a very specific market (air travel, and specifically last-minute air travel), but the numbers are still dramatic, and they do suggest that consumer confidence may be shakier today than it was even a few weeks ago. Which wouldn't be surprising, given issues with inflation, the falling euro, etc.

[samwest]

@EG - this has been ongoing for over a decade. Googage is defined as 'ads blocks', 'image blocks', 'Shop for [term] blocks', 'People also searched for blocks', etc, etc, etc... Gorg spams their own search page.

[EditorialGuy]

@EG - this has been ongoing for over a decade.

My point exactly. SERP clutter with ads, answer boxes, etc. is nothing new, so if your Google traffic is steadily dropping despite a #1 ranking, it's a reasonable guess that Google isn't the only factor (or maybe not even a contributing factor) in your current decline.