Google update again?!

[Zbigniew]

earlier you mentioned that you are focused on sweden market. are your rating changes based on only IP's from inside sweden or have you also checked your ranking based on IP's from US? if so, is the result same?

Yeah, I have checked with IP's from Sweden, US and one other European country. Same result.

 

[mackdaddy88]

yes, follow seo_selt model. it helps you increase your ranking.

What do you mean by 'seo_selt' model?

 

[fb3003]

Yeah, I have checked with IP's from Sweden, US and one other European country. Same result.

thanks for getting back to me.

What do you mean by 'seo_selt' model?

it was a sarcastic answer to the person who asked the question: how can I get my ranking back.

 

[Deleted member 36594]

You know, there's a reason why I said: "wait".

Let's all assume those who proposed these theories about "Google let authority sites rank better now" and "Authors of articles need to have credible background or certification to rank better" are true... then, it would have just been one of Google's 200+ factors for ranking websites. How can one new factor, of the 200+ ranking factors, immediately tank your website's rankings into oblivion?

If your ranking seems to have dropped and disappeared into oblivion you just have to wait for Google to re-evaluate everyone's website and finalize everyone's ranking again. Just like the analogy I gave about a secretary re-filing a cabinet of papers - let the secretary finish filing it. Not to mention that the update was only fully rolled up last Wednesday or Thursday... it still takes time for Google to re-evaluate the tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions/billions of websites for each keyword/phrase. And if the above proposed theories are true, your ranking shouldn't have fallen that deep, especially if you have good backlinks, social signals, quality content, .etc.

Now you may think, "No way, Sophie, then why are authority websites linking way better now than before?"

Well, because many money sites, PBNs, and such are making use of the practice of having at least 1 outbound link to an authority website! If so many people are doing this practice, wouldn't this update give them a bigger boost?

Also, how can Google verify if a blogger or author truly has a credible background? Everyone could easily fake it (with photoshop, fake text claims, .etc) unless if Google wants every webmaster to submit their qualifications via WMT to prove their credibility. And wouldn't eHow, WikiHow, and such websites be wiped out instead? Every Tom Dick, and Harry can contribute to eHow, wikihow, and whatever how articles... even QnA websites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Are these answers deem as "credible" sources? And any practising doctor who's into alternative therapies (e.g: Mercola, Dr Axe, .etc) would be on the front page now. And mind you, Mercola and even Dr Oz have all been warned by FDA to stop their nonsensical claims. So how's Google gonna just scan their website's credentials and let them rank well? Wouldn't this factor just backfire them? If you ask me, it is all the social signals and people linking back to them (backlinks) that are helping these websites to rank better. Another theory I can give is because they backed numerous claims with references (like Wikipedia), that may give rise to your ranking as the article would be deemed as 'credible'. Again, I don't know, we don't know, and no one knows until we try it.

Lastly, remember one member who shared about Google's patent about ranking latency? That is, whatever changes you make to your website wouldn't come into effect immediately; instead, it will take up to several weeks or months for it to come into effect. If this is true, then this algorithm update (think of it as a database refresh) would take several weeks again to fully re-evaluate everyone's websites. That's why I worry for those who make immediate changes to their websites right after seeing negative results, especially when the rollout wasn't even completed yet during that time!

Food for thought (and I'm wondering): this update could also have factors to combat against fake news as the U.S mid-term elections are right around the corner. Maybe that's why some people claim aged websites seem to rank way better than new websites?

I've seen client's website rankings for several keywords went into oblivion. Then came back to where it was; then down multiple pages, then back up again. And sometimes this drastic change occur within just several hours apart! Competitors too. That's why I wouldn't try anything for a period of time since the update was only fully rolled out last Wednesday/Thursday (just 4-5 days ago!).

P.S: It's the weekends, I'm tipsy. The above is just my opinion. Take it as a pinch of salt. Heeee!!!

 

[tjapado]

Seeing allot of ranking fluctuation still in google.NL. Even contact pages show up instead of the actual content that should rank. I agree with Sophie, while the update is done it's busy revaluating all sites.

 

[mtj85]

You know, there's a reason why I said: "wait".

Let's all assume those who proposed these theories about "Google let authority sites rank better now" and "Authors of articles need to have credible background or certification to rank better" are true... then, it would have just been one of Google's 200+ factors for ranking websites. How can one new factor, of the 200+ ranking factors, immediately tank your website's rankings into oblivion?

If your ranking seems to have dropped and disappeared into oblivion you just have to wait for Google to re-evaluate everyone's website and finalize everyone's ranking again. Just like the analogy I gave about a secretary re-filing a cabinet of papers - let the secretary finish filing it. Not to mention that the update was only fully rolled up last Wednesday or Thursday... it still takes time for Google to re-evaluate the tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions/billions of websites for each keyword/phrase. And if the above proposed theories are true, your ranking shouldn't have fallen that deep, especially if you have good backlinks, social signals, quality content, .etc.

Now you may think, "No way, Sophie, then why are authority websites linking way better now than before?"

Well, because many money sites, PBNs, and such are making use of the practice of having at least 1 outbound link to an authority website! If so many people are doing this practice, wouldn't this update give them a bigger boost?

Also, how can Google verify if a blogger or author truly has a credible background? Everyone could easily fake it (with photoshop, fake text claims, .etc) unless if Google wants every webmaster to submit their qualifications via WMT to prove their credibility. And wouldn't eHow, WikiHow, and such websites be wiped out instead? Every Tom Dick, and Harry can contribute to eHow, wikihow, and whatever how articles... even QnA websites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Are these answers deem as "credible" sources? And any practising doctor who's into alternative therapies (e.g: Mercola, Dr Axe, .etc) would be on the front page now. And mind you, Mercola and even Dr Oz have all been warned by FDA to stop their nonsensical claims. So how's Google gonna just scan their website's credentials and let them rank well? Wouldn't this factor just backfire them? If you ask me, it is all the social signals and people linking back to them (backlinks) that are helping these websites to rank better. Another theory I can give is because they backed numerous claims with references (like Wikipedia), that may give rise to your ranking as the article would be deemed as 'credible'. Again, I don't know, we don't know, and no one knows until we try it.

Lastly, remember one member who shared about Google's patent about ranking latency? That is, whatever changes you make to your website wouldn't come into effect immediately; instead, it will take up to several weeks or months for it to come into effect. If this is true, then this algorithm update (think of it as a database refresh) would take several weeks again to fully re-evaluate everyone's websites. That's why I worry for those who make immediate changes to their websites right after seeing negative results, especially when the rollout wasn't even completed yet during that time!

Food for thought (and I'm wondering): this update could also have factors to combat against fake news as the U.S mid-term elections are right around the corner. Maybe that's why some people claim aged websites seem to rank way better than new websites?

I've seen client's website rankings for several keywords went into oblivion. Then came back to where it was; then down multiple pages, then back up again. And sometimes this drastic change occur within just several hours apart! Competitors too. That's why I wouldn't try anything for a period of time since the update was only fully rolled out last Wednesday/Thursday (just 4-5 days ago!).

P.S: It's the weekends, I'm tipsy. The above is just my opinion. Take it as a pinch of salt. Heeee!!!

Yes, I agree. Like I already mentioned few posts back - even if this authorship is now a ranking signal it can't just sink the site. I mean, out of all ranking signals (what, 200?) surely it can't have that much weight? I still think this is a link-related update. And it will take some time to fully take effect.

Also, with this EAT thing will now google also evaluate every author on the internet? Or even a particular author on a particular website? SO it will have one database with all ranking parameters for all websites, and then another database for each person / author on the internet and evaluate them as well? And then merge the two databases and rank a site again using the 2 databases combined? I'm overgeneralizing here, but I hope you get what I mean.

So if 2 websites have same quality content and same amount of backlinks (hardly possible, but let's say it's possible) then this EAT authorship might make a difference in ranking. But I don't believe that just because of authorship one website can outrank another websites that has 10 times more links.

 

[Brighter Faster]

Yes, I agree. Like I already mentioned few posts back - even if this authorship is now a ranking signal it can't just sink the site. I mean, out of all ranking signals (what, 200?) surely it can't have that much weight? I still think this is a link-related update. And it will take some time to fully take effect.

Also, with this EAT thing will now google also evaluate every author on the internet? Or even a particular author on a particular website? SO it will have one database with all ranking parameters for all websites, and then another database for each person / author on the internet and evaluate them as well? And then merge the two databases and rank a site again using the 2 databases combined? I'm overgeneralizing here, but I hope you get what I mean.

So if 2 websites have same quality content and same amount of backlinks (hardly possible, but let's say it's possible) then this EAT authorship might make a difference in ranking. But I don't believe that just because of authorship one website can outrank another websites that has 10 times more links.

I have no opinion on if they are tracking the author's profile overall, but they are certainly able to do such a thing. We know already that they do track authors on authority sites and discount links from authors with unusual backlinks out from their articles. That is why some links from Forbes are great, but most of the ones that you can buy are worthless from an SEO perspective... Google has identified authors whose links they should ignore.

So... yeah, it isn't that complicated for them to keep track of author profiles. Of course, it's easier to keep track of authors on specific sites than to try to keep track of all authors everywhere. It doesn't seem insurmountable though.

Also, you keep saying this is link-related, but it's more that you think links are Google's #1 ranking factor (almost certainly true) therefore a big shake-up in rankings must be related to links (not true). I haven't seen much evidence this is link-related. I've seen a lot of evidence that YMYL sites and health sites have seen a much larger impact than other sites. Trustworthiness of sites seems to tie together a lot of sites I've seen that have had significant moves. Trustworthiness encompasses a lot more than just author reputation... it could be ads, deceptive headlines, author information, and probably dozens of other factors that I can't think of.

 

[Corydoras007]

You know, there's a reason why I said: "wait".

Let's all assume those who proposed these theories about "Google let authority sites rank better now" and "Authors of articles need to have credible background or certification to rank better" are true... then, it would have just been one of Google's 200+ factors for ranking websites. How can one new factor, of the 200+ ranking factors, immediately tank your website's rankings into oblivion?

If your ranking seems to have dropped and disappeared into oblivion you just have to wait for Google to re-evaluate everyone's website and finalize everyone's ranking again. Just like the analogy I gave about a secretary re-filing a cabinet of papers - let the secretary finish filing it. Not to mention that the update was only fully rolled up last Wednesday or Thursday... it still takes time for Google to re-evaluate the tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions/billions of websites for each keyword/phrase. And if the above proposed theories are true, your ranking shouldn't have fallen that deep, especially if you have good backlinks, social signals, quality content, .etc.

Now you may think, "No way, Sophie, then why are authority websites linking way better now than before?"

Well, because many money sites, PBNs, and such are making use of the practice of having at least 1 outbound link to an authority website! If so many people are doing this practice, wouldn't this update give them a bigger boost?

Also, how can Google verify if a blogger or author truly has a credible background? Everyone could easily fake it (with photoshop, fake text claims, .etc) unless if Google wants every webmaster to submit their qualifications via WMT to prove their credibility. And wouldn't eHow, WikiHow, and such websites be wiped out instead? Every Tom Dick, and Harry can contribute to eHow, wikihow, and whatever how articles... even QnA websites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Are these answers deem as "credible" sources? And any practising doctor who's into alternative therapies (e.g: Mercola, Dr Axe, .etc) would be on the front page now. And mind you, Mercola and even Dr Oz have all been warned by FDA to stop their nonsensical claims. So how's Google gonna just scan their website's credentials and let them rank well? Wouldn't this factor just backfire them? If you ask me, it is all the social signals and people linking back to them (backlinks) that are helping these websites to rank better. Another theory I can give is because they backed numerous claims with references (like Wikipedia), that may give rise to your ranking as the article would be deemed as 'credible'. Again, I don't know, we don't know, and no one knows until we try it.

Lastly, remember one member who shared about Google's patent about ranking latency? That is, whatever changes you make to your website wouldn't come into effect immediately; instead, it will take up to several weeks or months for it to come into effect. If this is true, then this algorithm update (think of it as a database refresh) would take several weeks again to fully re-evaluate everyone's websites. That's why I worry for those who make immediate changes to their websites right after seeing negative results, especially when the rollout wasn't even completed yet during that time!

Food for thought (and I'm wondering): this update could also have factors to combat against fake news as the U.S mid-term elections are right around the corner. Maybe that's why some people claim aged websites seem to rank way better than new websites?

I've seen client's website rankings for several keywords went into oblivion. Then came back to where it was; then down multiple pages, then back up again. And sometimes this drastic change occur within just several hours apart! Competitors too. That's why I wouldn't try anything for a period of time since the update was only fully rolled out last Wednesday/Thursday (just 4-5 days ago!).

P.S: It's the weekends, I'm tipsy. The above is just my opinion. Take it as a pinch of salt. Heeee!!!

Nice opinion. Sounds solid though.

Your hypothetical time frame for the algo update of taking several weeks maybe correct. Let's wait and see. It sill been about 12 days since the update.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to do nothing at all for now.

 

[xplosiv]

My site has taken a hefty hit from this "update", but I really don't see why. I have only a small number of PBN links, but I often take days to write well researched and quality written content. Yes, I know people think that their content is the best, but in my particular niche which is overrun by crap affiliate sites, it is the only legit one with true information on a particular class of products.

I also talk a lot of self improvement and confidence, etc. The site also has plenty of organic links from health sites, and other great self improvement websites.

A lot of my keywords have disappeared out of the top 100 and been replaced by all sorts of completely irrelevant content in the SERPs, even pages that just mention the keyword are ranked higher than mine. I will give a week or so to see what happens and then hopefully we can get to the bottom of this. Fingers crossed that Google just fucked up again and this shit is undone.

 

[maltiya]

Latest google update hit very badly. I don't know what to do rather Just wait and see....

 

[xplosiv]

Latest google update hit very badly. I don't know what to do rather Just wait and see....

This looks similar to the hit my site has taken.

What niche are you in? What kind of links do you have?

 

[fb3003]

......... even pages that just mention the keyword are ranked higher than mine..

can you please run pageoptimizerpro analysis on your site and competitors and see where you are as compared to those crappy sites? it seems google is caring more and more on onpage keyword usage than before (in particular across H tags)

 

[drogon]

Nice

On August 1, 2018 Google rolled out one of the biggest algorithm updates I’ve ever seen. It was huge and many sites saw significant volatility across categories and countries. The 8/1 update followed similar broad algorithm updates in March and April of 2018, which also caused significant volatility across the web. I wrote a 2-part series covering those spring updates, which you should definitely read. Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed this was a broad core ranking update just like those updates.

Many sites across the web have been impacted by the August 1 update and Google estimated that it would take over a week to fully roll out. That seems to be correct, as I’ve seen a number of sites see much more impact Monday into Tuesday of this week. Also, Google confirmed yesterday that the update has fully rolled out, so it did take about a week.

Nice copy and paste LOL: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/august-1-google-algorithm-update-analysis-and-findings/

 

[mtj85]

I have no opinion on if they are tracking the author's profile overall, but they are certainly able to do such a thing. We know already that they do track authors on authority sites and discount links from authors with unusual backlinks out from their articles. That is why some links from Forbes are great, but most of the ones that you can buy are worthless from an SEO perspective... Google has identified authors whose links they should ignore.

I don't think they go to such extents. Any proof of that?

So... yeah, it isn't that complicated for them to keep track of author profiles. Of course, it's easier to keep track of authors on specific sites than to try to keep track of all authors everywhere. It doesn't seem insurmountable though.

I agree that it's possible and doable for google (since they have huge amounts of resources), however at the end of the day - spending so much processing power and storage to track all people across internet and use their data to rank a domain seems unreasonable. At the end of the day a domain is ranked, not a person.

Also, you keep saying this is link-related, but it's more that you think links are Google's #1 ranking factor (almost certainly true) therefore a big shake-up in rankings must be related to links (not true). I haven't seen much evidence this is link-related. I've seen a lot of evidence that YMYL sites and health sites have seen a much larger impact than other sites. Trustworthiness of sites seems to tie together a lot of sites I've seen that have had significant moves. Trustworthiness encompasses a lot more than just author reputation... it could be ads, deceptive headlines, author information, and probably dozens of other factors that I can't think of.

Links are highly likely still a #1 ranking factor! I'm not saying that each change is a link related change. But given the magnitude of August's change I would say it's link related as they most likely carry most weight and changing something related to links would have the most impact. Of course they could also tweak other stuff, but it would not cause so much flux, unless they tweaked 20 parameters at once.

Are you suggesting that authorship is now a major factor that can sink a well-established website with quality links over night? Or perhaps that a site with links from high authority sites will now be penalized and deranked 10 spots for having above the fold ads? Seems too drastic. Ranking people and websites - what's next? Ranking a college that gave an author the degree to establish whether his expertise is top level?

What's more EAT of a website is most likely mostly based on links from high authority sites and not from authorship. If many high authority sites link to your site you must be some kind of authority, don't you agree? It's how voting in real world works, too. I could easily brag on my "about us" page that Stephen Hawking reviewed my articles and link all articles to his linkedin profile with "rel=author" tag. I am exaggerating and simplifying on purpose, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Again, at the end of the day we're ranking sites, not people.
And yes, they could easily focus on YMYL sites alone with this update. I'm sure they have all the sites on the web classified within their niches and they could only shake the links from within specific niches, so this proves nothing.

 

[xplosiv]

Okay, I just noticed a BIG fucking problem with my site. I've been snooping around trying to figure out what's going on with this, and it might or might not be the problem. However, I was doing a site:mywebsite.com lookup on Google to see what was coming up, and strangely enough noticed a whole bunch of random images showing in the results. This was odd enough, I remembered seeing some fiasco from the YOAST team a few months back but thought it was all good, because my site didn't show any drops (until recently).

Anyway, I looked through the search console, and it looks like 1400 images were "processed" on the 5 of August, which just so happens to be when I saw a massive drop in traffic.

I'm not that technical of an SEO, but I know this can't be good. I've used the purge tool they created, but is this unusual? If anyone else has been hit and sees a huge number of images showing up in the sitemap let us know.

Also, I found this on the Yoast blog from someone who is having the exact same issue as me.

--------------

Hi! thanks for the plugin to purge and the new update. My question is about I am finding some images like this after doing google search images: https://www.mysite/postname/imagename
I am posting here an example:
https://jesuscaballero.com/monserra...e-sintra-wedding-photographer-nikki-sam_0067/

Do you know what is this? I have never found any before the purge plugin, thank you for your help!

---------------

 

[wpbacklinks]

Also, I found this on the Yoast blog from someone who is having the exact same issue as me.

--------------

Hi! thanks for the plugin to purge and the new update. My question is about I am finding some images like this after doing google search images: https://www.mysite/postname/imagename
I am posting here an example:
https://jesuscaballero.com/monserra...e-sintra-wedding-photographer-nikki-sam_0067/

Do you know what is this? I have never found any before the purge plugin, thank you for your help!

---------------

Same here... I am also using Yoast.

 

[JamaicanMoose]

Also, I found this on the Yoast blog from someone who is having the exact same issue as me.

--------------

Hi! thanks for the plugin to purge and the new update. My question is about I am finding some images like this after doing google search images: https://www.mysite/postname/imagename
I am posting here an example:
https://jesuscaballero.com/monserra...e-sintra-wedding-photographer-nikki-sam_0067/

Do you know what is this? I have never found any before the purge plugin, thank you for your help!

---------------

That was an issue with the plugin 2 months ago. The last couple of Yoast updates have resolved it.

Make sure you have the latest version... then go to Search Appearance -> Media -> and select 'Yes'

 

[helll0a]

Trustworthiness of sites seems to tie together a lot of sites I've seen that have had significant moves

I am running a quick test for one site to increase trustworthiness by adding privacy policy and other pages that a business in the client niche should have regardless of the size. Currently the website does not and still ranks on the first page. Will update.

 

[xplosiv]

That was an issue with the plugin 2 months ago. The last couple of Yoast updates have resolved it.

Make sure you have the latest version... then go to Search Appearance -> Media -> and select 'Yes'

View attachment 106715

I actually recall doing this months ago and fixing the problem soon after finding out about it. My attachment redirects were already enabled.

I don't have too many images that actually link back to the site anyway, if I have images for decoration they are not linked at all.

What really concerns me are the URL's that are showing up in the SERPs, I don't know if this is a yoast issue or not (like the example I post earlier)...

Image URL's in the search results for my site have this structure (not my website, just an example):

https://jesuscaballero dot com/monserrate-palace-sintra-wedding-photographer-nikki-sam/monserrate-palace-sintra-wedding-photographer-nikki-sam_0067/

The URL structure SHOULD be like this:

https://jesuscaballero dot com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/whateverimage.jpg

I have no idea how or why these pages exist, as far as I recall my images aren't "attachments" in the regular world of wordpress (i.e. you click on the image to enlarge, or view a full size version of the image), since I only have them displayed with no links, or links to another page or website.

Since this "should" have been fixed by an update from Yoast pretty quickly, is it possible that anyone who is having this big traffic drop also check to see manually whether these pages are showing in the SERP's?

Who knows, this could be some major retard glitch that's flown under the radar and now catching up with us. I assume the majority of folks here have WP set to update automatically to avoid hacks and things of that nature, so its possible.

 

[majky538]

Now i know where the drop came from. For example, one of my article blog lost 50% organic google traffic, some site with just one image on page and keyword in description is ranking in TOP 5 i went from 5-10 to 20-30, anyway domain site article publishing activity in past time was low, maybe no new backlinks, no https.. my god google

As i look at mentioned article it's ranking TOP 1 for one word longer long tail keyword where full keyword density is really low, just one word has better density, the main keyword gone away. Some possibility, algorithm just try too look for authority less "spammy" content, analyzing text, synonyms etc which is more natural.