Google Core Update September 2022

[ne0h]

---

System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5071217.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 10:24 am on Sep 13, 2022 (utc +1)

---

Another sudden update started rolling out for September core update.

[developers.google.com...]

Seriously...one after another...

[mzb44]

And you say that the serps right now are of quality?

If you have read my post, you know that I did not say this.

Google found a way to show "good enough" content (most of the time) but prevent genuine pure spam from ranking (most of the time).

Obviously this is imperfect and doesn't always work.

But apparently Google believes that prioritising big, established and authoritative sites is overall and on average better, than risking trying to rank the amazing niche site but accidentally also ranking junk.

[mzb44]

Now I find 10 mega sites and still cant find what i´m looking for.

This can also be a result of user engagement metrics.

Your average searcher sees a serp with 9 "no name" blogs and 1 established and known brand. They click on the brand because they recognize the name. They didn't even check out the other ones to see if their content is better.

Now, soon the entire top 10 is dominated by big brands, as the signal Google gets from users is that they want to see those kinds of sites.

[BigKat]

apparently Google believes that prioritising big, established and authoritative sites is overall and on average better, than risking trying to rank the amazing niche site but accidentally also ranking junk.

Agreed. I would add that this further demonstrates Google's inability/failure to actually understand the content they crawl and include those pages as part of a high quality/relevant SERP set. From my perspective, it looks like Google is ranking big brand sites as a fail-safe measure. Even with all the hoopla about BERT, AI, etc. Google's SERPS are shallowly relying on big brands to compensate for Google's failure to understand pages and match those pages to user queries. IMO, Bing is far superior in this regard which is why I don't use Google outside of my responsibilities at work.

The purpose of "search" is to find things one would otherwise not find on their own. Google falls flat on their face with this...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Yup, can confirm, new gibberish pages rank really well in my corner of the web.

My site doesn't seem to have lost any traffic due to this update, yet, but there have definitely been changes in the top 5 for topics I have to monitor frequently. Thankfully they are right behind me.

Gibberish: search widget modification procedure for a specific model, get page telling who makes it, how much profit they get from it, where to buy it and where their repair center is.... but I obviously just want to mod mine so I don't need any of that.... and they don't even mention modifications.

Dear AI - Modify does not = Repair! AI written pages evaluated by another AI = the results can only be as good as the winner, imo.

[cr1m]

Lol, I thought yesterday was bad (-60%), today is even worse, trend is looking toward -75% WoW. Thanks, Google

[shivasfg]

THank for update this update

[Alex_1729]

My main site (multi-niche, mostly informational) has gained about 15-20% in traffic, and improved SERPs since this September update started rolling out. I've made some changes since May when I lost about 65% of traffic, but nothing dramatic. Others seem to have experienced similar increases in traffic and rankings, specifically those who were hit in May. I have learned since May that multi-niche is frowned upon because I write about everything, but I still believe it's highly useful, helpful, and more creative and original than what is available. Still, I'm niching down a bit and specializing. How this will turn out I have no idea...

Perhaps this "helpful update" was just their Raters getting busy and rating these sites that were hit in May, and may occasionally do this again. After all, they said it's a continual update, and we were all getting that weird Seychelles and Philippines traffic. Google raters using VPN? Pure speculation I read about in Search Engine Roundtable comments, but it makes for a nice bedtime story I keep telling myself.

[chuviie]

My site is media e-commerce 17 years old, growing rapidly since I've added pagination to categories for mobile users. March-april on 2020 was amazing and after the 4th of May, it decreased by 15-20% every update; finally, after May 26th, it was 30% off, so for two years, it fell from 20k to 5k. Very competitive niche, with tons of free sites (not adult). 100/100 page speed.
So, pagination was changed to Ajax loaded ‘load more’ pages; some pages were rewritten with the scheme 5-7 top asked questions and 70-120 words answers, ai generated, manually edited, links were purchased on top pages and main page.
+15% up overall after this update, pages with a good link profile and rewrite gain 10-50%, rewrote but without links not gain at all.
Imho, google doesn’t want to spend time on hundreds of pages 2, 3, 50, and 90. Answers on topics should be correct, easy to understand, and helpful. Long reads are great, but not for every niche, site, or theme.
Content edit is a never-ending story similar to what wiki does; you need to add more links after each new edit - it’s an indicator that improvement was good and valuable.
Returning users is the most critical thing, and you need to do some magic for it.

[mosxu]

Lots of zombies,

Anything seems to be displayed based on profiled readiness to use a credit card of a profiled individual.

Not sure about helpful content claim.

[Atomic]

I am finally seeing the improvements I was hoping for from the HCU. The high authority query squatters I watch have lost some ranking. Not all of them and not for every type if query certainly. There's still a lot if improvement needed.
But they're not gone which is disappointing. And there are new AI horror shows ranking well somehow for high value queries. It defies explanation. Each one is a counterfactual to a claim that quality content and site design are paramount. BS!
Even so I am satisfied to see some of these pages dropping. I was worried there that they'd remain because of their massive authority. And the content is actually pretty good. I can imagine that content is more difficult to identify as problematic. I am also certain that Google cranking the dial to 11 is going to mean collateral damage. And my heart goes out to each of them. I hope they can claw their way back.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Well that was quick! 6 year old 200 page small niche informational site. Search impressions dropped 40% on the 12th. It was part of a test case however and this might be relevant. starting about 3 months ago an attempt was made to boost the ad revenue and ended up involving aprox 25% of the pages.

What was done was an analysis of search console to find partly transactional queries that pages were ranking for. On those pages additional content about the item in question, including a link to a well respected major affiliate program, was added. Pages remained 90% informational(not product related at all) aside from a section, 2-3 paragraphs, which were slightly transactional(according to queries ranked by search console!).

It worked - Ad CPC increased and the pages received a slight increase in traffic.

On the 12th those are the pages that were hit hardest by this algo update. All pages lost traffic but in the order of 8% for the pages that were not updated and 45-50% for the updated pages. A quick check and those pages no longer rank for those partly transactional queries. The site seems to have gotten punished for becoming more helpful and profitable at the same time.

My "main" site wasn't affected but this little one got skewered!

[Yagnesh Aegis]

Core Update effect - Seeing a massive drop in SERP and traffic. My site is well updated as per Google search engine norms and algo..norms but it's down.

[Jori]

I updated my website, around 25% of it.

With the core update, I'm up +30%

What have I done? Simply put the focus on the content. Adapted my content to what users are actually searching (user intent).

Hope it will stick, I still have a lot to do.

(finance niche)

[RedBar]

Apart from a couple of lowish weekend days my traffic seems to have returned to pre-May levels and is generating many more realworld enquiries.

[BigKat]

At the moment, it looks like we took a huge hit (around 40%) in traffic. Since most of Google's traffic is garbage, this has not resulted in a noticeable difference in conversions (sales). Google's relevance in our industry, in the products we sell, continues to become less relevant each year. The last orders I looked at came from Bing and DDG.

Since this core update started rolling out, I've seen a massive spike in crawling from AWS IP ranges. Anyone have any idea why we are getting heavily crawled by AWS? I'd love to block them, but we've had sales originate from AWS from some commercial customers.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Lost 40% on the 12th, gained 45% on the 14th.

... and that's why you don't rush to make changes right after a drop.

[renatovieira]

Today is certainly going to be the worst day since starting my main site. Bulky drop today. So far since morning, more than 50% drop.

[Athedian]

I know Google Ads is not the same as SERP, but I've always had this theory that it's somehow interlinked based on the site data that Google has tracked and kept. Regardless if both are on totally separate algo, this core update totally messed up the Google Ads in the sense that errors of server 500 and random "Google Ads can't complete your request right now" keep showing up for the last two days.

And the fact that even if I had traffic coming to the site with no significant decrease in numbers, the conversions in general totally tanked over the last two days, the clicks for the Google Ads went through the roof for two days and somehow "recorrected" itself afterward (basically it's fluctuating randomly), and the fact that somehow Google couldn't show indexed pages that had content and the site still got visitors PLUS the fact that the site dropped to pos. 4 for certain keywords for three days and back up to pos. 3 yesterday and back down to pos. 4 today just showed me this is one big sh-- show right now...

[McMohan]

Mayhem in search results in the last couple of hours. Across sites and niches

[Soulofmonk]

50% drop in 3 days, 30% on 12th, 15% yesterday, 5% today :( My site had a 20% up move in the helpful content update, but this core update has been brutal.

[sk7411]

Looks like a May core update reversal lol . These Core updates makes no sense at all because the site that surged in some update goes down with the release of a new one and vice versa without making any changes at all.

[RedBar]

Looks like a May core update reversal lol

That's what my traffic numbers seem to suggest too!

Monday to Wednesday all three days above May average and way up on June and July with Thursday at 191% going back to PVs of more than a year ago, in fact my busiest day since 30th Augusr 2021

I suppose G will pull the rug again at some point!

[Martin Ice Web]

Since yesterday we have +35% traffic. And it seems to be engaging traffic. Conversions seems to run in the right direction.
This is a on focus site. The other site with plain item description has a hughe drop.
Finally it seems that good work will be rewarded.
I hope this sticks.

[BushyTop]

Nice work @MartinIceWeb

We've seen some growth too... although we haven't had the conversions that you're talking about... fingers crossed were slightly behind and were due.

[RedBar]

And it seems to be engaging traffic.

@MIW - Yes, this has been very noticeable for us, genuine business enquiries plus the ever-consistent USA retail enquirers of "Where can I buy this?" when this supply link is provided for them exactly above the enquiry form!

[EditorialGuy]

So far, both the HCU and the September core update have been uneventful for our editorial travel site.

Our Google traffic has been held steady or increased on most days since the HCU was rolled out (which is a pleasant surprise at a time of year when we're usually sliding gradually toward the pre-Christmas doldrums), but the overall picture hasn't changed much. I have noticed more volatility than usual for individual top-performing pages in the last few days, though.

[Martin Ice Web]

@BushyTop, still There a Short times of very low traffic every few Hours. But overall traffic is up.
Conversions changed from single item sales to bigger Shopping carts. And commercial purchases/inquiries are back. They were vanished with HCU.

@redbar, we have done some serious quality Updates to our shop. Honestly i have to admit that we had some old „Styles“ online.

[mac09]

Bi G claims that they will showing only 2 results from one domain I can call this "shrinking".

Older websites who have good ranking, get organic traffic drops but nobody can explain it.......neither John Mueller or Mad Cutts....or you will get the answer from MOZ Rand Fishkin- nope....they telling you having one domain and subfolders and it's normal that google now showing only 2 results form your domain in the serps...

Some websites using multiple subdomains - can not say if this method is working today in 2022.

But I see some websites getting multiple serp listings from their one domain site.
Check Tiffany rings, first google page full with different rings pages (Tiffany ecommerce site) = categories/ category pages.
Check danklok media; multiple topics pages coming up on first page I think they are category pages too, check danlok; he comes up with different domains and his social media profiles. You se eon this example how google is showing you different serp results.

Big site (one of the wefd members) = byrdie, please read seo studies, they dominate organic traffic in the beauty/cosmetic niche, they have enough capital to paying expert journalists who write for them, but you can learn from such sites how they achieve user experience.

Why google is ranking category pages multiple times in serps and higher , but normal pages not (max. 2 results in seeps) it's not logical for me.
It's a good opportunity making category page seo or with multiple similar domains claiming multiple seeps estates, like this example:

podcasts+ videos= mynamemedia
guides= mynameguides
blogs (multiple topics) = mynameblogs

But I can not say if you need different social media profiles for each of the domains? Some websites have multiple domains but one social media profile for their main page, then you must posting from your other domains to your social media profile too.
Multiple domains is more to work, multiple wordpress setup and customizing, more costs on web hosts (different and fast web host each with minimum of $9 monthly billing):

When you can do this method with one domain it's much easier to handle and more cost effective.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

When you can do this method with one domain it's much easier to handle and more cost effective.

and more risky. All your eggs are in one basket leaving you vulnerable to the whims of the search gods.

A friend of mine just watched the site he worked hardest on, was most active with and was most proud of get smacked HARD with this update while two smaller sites he built but largely left untouched got through the update unscathed.

He's disillusioned about it too.

[mac09]

Sgt_Kickaxe:

yes this is an interesting point of view. Not having all eggs in one basket is a good idea.

But you see sites like Tiffany, danlok, byrdie (ok, they are wef members) not get hit by google. Ok danlok has multiple domains...

It is so when I start with my online business, my main domain hast multiple topics -I doing content curation (category pages)
Then another similar name domain for guides (as example, articles), another for media (videos and podcast).

The catch with the guides and media domain is at the beginning they have thin content like 5-6 articles on the guides domain and 4-5 podcasts and 4-5 videos on the media domain I be afraid that it will looking too "thin" in google eyes, it's a lot of work for me.
Dictation not works well, it produces to many confused alien words, so I must complete write the script myself for video and podcasts.

It's a double time consuming work, write the script then record it, with this you can produce 1 podcast and 1 video a day + content curation on the multi topics blog.

I have a very tight budget and not know how I can make this work more flow more easy and effective using ai writer? It I too risky that this will in google eyes low quality and I not get much traffic.

But hire writer to write for me 3-4 articles each week for $9 that I be over $100 month -way too much for me.
So I'm looking for a solution to fix this - a twist.....or using only content curation...

Then I have twitter Facebook and Instagram too, posting 2 times a day. All this is a lot of work.
I think content creators who have success have money to outsource these tasks- I can not.
Do you have a tip for me to make all that more easy and effective to work ?

Happy weekend to all here !