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.

[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.