Just a bit of observation in my part of the web since the May/June core update.
Market: USA, Lead Gen, B2C, 100% inhouse, then we qualify and distribute leads out to our partners.
Website: +/- 300 pages of detailed and very thorough information, with great EAT.
Business: Trademarked business and domain matches, LLC, registered with state, etc.
Stack: WordPress, home grown theme, focused on speed and core vitals. 99-M/100-D CWV scores. CLS was the biggest metric we improved upon, dropping it to 0.
Tracking: Popularity and exposure is tracked primarily through SEMR, GA on the site as well, including the recording of conversions.
Results since Core Update: +70% traffic and conversions for the first 45-60 days, which in our market is roughly 350k visitors per month. (from the 200k or so previously)
Changes since early August 2022: Nothing in terms of our site, but G, being the all-knowing, has now added more widgets to the serps where we gained the most conversions.
All speculation - take from it what you will, or nothing at all. :)
From August 2021 or so through now, I focused on keeping the content as fresh as possible with frequent existing content updates, new images, (all below the fold for load time) etc. We do publish new content fairly regularly, but stopped at +/-300 pages to focus on improving what we have, including many more outbound links to sources, others with authority on the subject matter, etc. We do add 1-2 new pages per month, but that's all for now.
It's my opinion that the updated content, increased speed and CWV metrics being at 99/100, etc - helped considerably. I also placed a bit more relevance on keeping the existing content was updated, the author profile, and EAT through partnerships with industry professionals who review and help with authenticity, thoroughness and authority.
Our user engagement metrics improved with more interlinking, related content, etc. Users however, tend to find the answers on the page they land on and for those who need our service, move to our conversion funnel. Conversions increased right along with the general traffic for the first couple months after the update which caused me to spend more time looking at the serp layout for various keyphrases. Many included more featured snippets up thrugh August 2022, which is always a good visitor for me.
That said, G seems to have learned that these specific phrases and such were bringing us conversions (Thanks to GA conversion tracking) and I began noticing more widgets, local results, occasional map, images, videos, and PAA in the same serps. The featured snippet seems to have gone away for several again and organics are pressed just a few hundred pixels lower on the results screen. This is all desktop mind you, and on mobile, you'd be lucky to find an organic link since they are on page 3 of scrolling.
Just my experience with the core update after +2 months of watching the results.
