Google update again?!

[MRM94]

Also noticing some extreme drops in traffic. Last months one of the many websites I manage dropped 66% percent traffic in one day from one major keyword and has slowly declined about an additional few a day. What is weird, the website I manage and do the least on that content is blowing up. Is domain credibility on individual pages becoming a thing now? Does freshness on a page being updated no longer matter as well?

 

[alexzeto]

Google is Killing me!!!!!! Make it stop!!!! https://i.imgur.com/8foONbi.jpg

 

[dlyhai]

A huge of drop in my health niche ranking second time

 

[mtj85]

Seems that google now treats "wikihow.com" as trusted source of medical information for some of the queries that I monitor.
This negates the "relevancy" thing (if there is some focus on wikihow.com then it's "everything"), because wikihow.com is one of the most generic sites on the planet (like wikipedia), covering everything from A to Z, but google somehow treats it as relevant source of medical information.
Not only that, but what about EAT then? wikihow.com indicates no authorship on the article, however the articles are supposed to be reviewed by experts.
Really strange things.
I still think, as i stated many times already, that this EAT thing and authorship is to distract SEO world with what is really going on in the back. One, or several factors for serp algo cannot have such huge impact on serps. It's either they altered really important factors weights (like links), or they altered a really big number of other signals. The effect was huge and it cannot be just because of 2 factors....

 

[Carpacchio]

The effect was huge and it cannot be just because of 2 factors....

I think the consensus has always been that the August update was about a lot of different things (as Google themselves stated with their "broad" core algorithm change).

The question is how significant of a role EAT plays and, if significant, how Google evaluates EAT.

 

[Zbigniew]

I wrote previously about how two of my sites tanked, while one got a boost.

The one that got a boost is complete trash, but I forgot to mention that it was rejected mobile index and a few days ago I realized that none of the pictures on the whole site is working in IE and Chrome.
It's still amazing how it could have received a boost and the others got tanked. Bounce rate is like 90%, pictures not working, theme is outdated, low quality everything and God knows what.

This has been a mystery since August. I hope I will sometime in my life get to know what this update actually did and aimed for.

 

[starki]

Seems that google now treats "wikihow.com" as trusted source of medical information for some of the queries that I monitor.

Now, that's a bad joke since Wikihow if full of wrong, outdated and incomplete information on health topics and most non-english stuff is auto-translated. A lot of their medical content is simply copied from webmd, mayoclinic and so on, often 1:1 copies with slightly different wording. Maybe prevents worse, since their really self-written topics are the worst. I mean, they even have topics like https://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Self-Piercing-at-Home (may kill someone trying) or several outdated/incomplete pages on cancer cures (I wonder how their "expert reviewers" ever approved this) or this https://www.wikihow.com/Understand-Hormone-Replacement-Therapy (oops, we forgot the different cancer risks for EPT and ET). If that's authority, just having a strong brand, good luck to all visitors taking their "medical advice" for real.

 

[The Curator]

They should call this the 'Big Boys' Update...

 

[NO-CLUE-SEO]

Should call it "fuck the little guy update"

 

[starki]

The main problem I see is that the big guys are often not the real experts. They are jack of all trades average quality, not bad, but an example: A customer, health/medical, invited to international conferences as a speaker and beyond any doubt an authority in the real world with awesome scietific reputation. Doesn't care too much for the internet, doesn't publish online a lot, the homepage has like 10 pages. In-depth, very specific, but just a few long pages. Neverless Google WAS clever enough to rank him high on page 1 for years. Now there are sites like daily newspapers outranking him, even the mighty health authority "Stylecraze" took over on a few terms.

Are they totally bad results? No, but their content is barely scratching the surface, rehashed stuff, interviews with people real experts wouldn't consider experts, it's more entertainment than serious information. But maybe that's what Google wants, shallow, entertaining, easy to consume, information fast food on big brand domains. McGoogle's

 

[mtj85]

This has been a mystery since August. I hope I will sometime in my life get to know what this update actually did and aimed for.

Yeah, me too.
And at the end we will find out that the update was mostly about links again, as always.
My site tanked so hard, twice. Never seen this before. It's now about 70% down in traffic. Literally all keywords tanked, and I think that the drop is on domain-level, because I can't see any correlation in keywords other than having the same domain.
Even in google images my site is nowhere to be find for images that I previously ranked high. And even for images that were watermarked with "for more info visit my URL". Instead, autogenerated MFA sites are ranking high by taking my images.
And these sites are not even keyword related, they're just jumbo-mumbo sites with all possible keywords with images. Checking their backlink portfolio shows that they have strong links from authority sites (they're in most cases dropped domains, this is the reason why they have good links). So again good indication that links (and not so much relevancy) is really important and was probably the main focus of this update.

Not from 1 to 10, my site went from 1 to N/A on lots of keywords, while sites sitting at page 10 are complete unrelated crap with good backlinks and maybe 1 mention of the keyword...


HAS anyone done any new backlinking on keywords that dropped? Any recovery? Do links work?

 

[starki]

New links don't seem to help, but this relevancy/authority thing maybe related to links anyway. What I see a lot at the moment, next to the usual big brands: Freshly repurposed expired domains of small hospitals/health professionals/doctors/health equipment companies with just a a handful of fresh health related articles ranking on page 1 for competitive terms with 4-5 digit volume. They are less than a year old, sometimes just a few weeks and quite a few obviously weren't meant as money sites, but are part of a PBN. These domains don't have loads of links, but all from sites on the same topic.

 

[Zbigniew]

I did a little test.

I published an article on one of my sites that were hit (that has good backlinks, articles, bounce rate and so on). The site writes a lot about health, but also about fashion and other things. The article I published is unrelated to health. A couple of days went, it was indexed after like 4-5 days. N/A in rank, though.

I deleted the article. Bought a new, fresh domain and published the same article on it. It's now ranking place 33 after 2 days.

Like I thought initially in this thread: Google are talking out of their bleached buttholes when they said that nobody has been punished and that undervalued sites has received a boost. My whole domain is obviously devalued.

Backlinks surely has a part in this, but I am unsure exactly how much. It's an interesting thought someone had about a couple of websites in each country being "ultra authority", and the farther away you are from these sites - the deeper you fall in rankings.

The 3 sites I am talking about in this topic are all Swedish and this is a sample of their backlink profile:

Site 1 (Boost in ranking): Mostly spammy links from US - guestbooks, forums, web 2.0's and crappy PBNs
Site 2 (Tanked): Swedish web 2.0's, Swedish guestbooks and forums and some high quality swedish PBNs
Site 3 (Tanked): Mostly high quality sites linking in. Some are really strong, relevant and hard to get.

I think it's more about domain age and amount of backlinks. Less about quality and relevance, at least according to my 3 sites.

 

[Carpacchio]

I did a little test.

I published an article on one of my sites that were hit (that has good backlinks, articles, bounce rate and so on). The site writes a lot about health, but also about fashion and other things. The article I published is unrelated to health. A couple of days went, it was indexed after like 4-5 days. N/A in rank, though.

I deleted the article. Bought a new, fresh domain and published the same article on it. It's now ranking place 33 after 2 days.

Like I thought initially in this thread: Google are talking out of their bleached buttholes when they said that nobody has been punished and that undervalued sites has received a boost. My whole domain is obviously devalued.

Backlinks surely has a part in this, but I am unsure exactly how much. It's an interesting thought someone had about a couple of websites in each country being "ultra authority", and the farther away you are from these sites - the deeper you fall in rankings.

The 3 sites I am talking about in this topic are all Swedish and this is a sample of their backlink profile:

Site 1 (Boost in ranking): Mostly spammy links from US - guestbooks, forums, web 2.0's and crappy PBNs
Site 2 (Tanked): Swedish web 2.0's, Swedish guestbooks and forums and some high quality swedish PBNs
Site 3 (Tanked): Mostly high quality sites linking in. Some are really strong, relevant and hard to get.

I think it's more about domain age and amount of backlinks. Less about quality and relevance, at least according to my 3 sites.

You mentioned, though, at the start of your post that you ranked a new article on a new domain after 2 days. Wouldn't that point to it being less about domain age and backlinks? Did I misunderstand you?

Thank you for your input. Appreciated.
While I do realize that there must be a "real" person/business behind each website (and I'm sure that google can look at the info) I still do not believe that only by adding an address and an author one can fix the site. Not to get your hopes down, but your ranks are probably fluxing due to volatility that we are observing for the past 2 months? Just my guess though. Would you care to report in few day to see if it stabilized?

As you requested (seems semi-stable so far at about 60% of previous traffic, up from the devastating 80% hit we took after the August update):

 

[fb3003]

I did a little test.
....
I think it's more about domain age and amount of backlinks. Less about quality and relevance, at least according to my 3 sites.

when you say amount of backlinks, are you talking about total backlinks based on URL or total back links based on referring domains?

 

[Zbigniew]

You mentioned, though, at the start of your post that you ranked a new article on a new domain after 2 days. Wouldn't that point to it being less about domain age and backlinks? Did I misunderstand you?

You are right and you didn't misunderstand me, I just wrote it in a poor way.

The keyword is only on page 3 and it's a non health-related keyword. My theory is that my other two domains that tanked are evaluated much harder since they are in the health niche. So I would think the amount of backlinks matters more for those in health/finance.

when you say amount of backlinks, are you talking about total backlinks based on URL or total back links based on referring domains?

Total backlinks as in referring domains.

That and domain age is the only reasons I see for one site getting a boost and two others tanking. Literally nothing is better (or even good) on the domain that got a a rank boost. Not even Googles services liked the site that got a boost.

I could be completely wrong, though. It feels like I'm reaching for every possible theory available to get an understanding to what's happening.

 

[mtj85]

@Carpacchio
Looks much better, I hope it fully returns to normal ranks for good. Happy for you!
My traffic has now decreased to traffic levels on December 2013 (-70% overall), the drop at the end of september seems to be permanent too. And every day I lose 2 or more tracked keywords in my tracking tool. And by lose I mean dropping to N/A, completely disappearing. Doesn't seem to stop. I am bypassed by all kinds of websites now, including wikihow.com and quora.

Has anyone that was _penalized_ by the update been selling guest posts on their sites?
How about outgoing links profile?

 

[mcshammer]

I wrote previously about how two of my sites tanked, while one got a boost.

The one that got a boost is complete trash, but I forgot to mention that it was rejected mobile index and a few days ago I realized that none of the pictures on the whole site is working in IE and Chrome.
It's still amazing how it could have received a boost and the others got tanked. Bounce rate is like 90%, pictures not working, theme is outdated, low quality everything and God knows what.

This has been a mystery since August. I hope I will sometime in my life get to know what this update actually did and aimed for.

Any improvement for your good sites yet?
Just seems to be getting worse for me, 28% keyword drop and organic traffic down 16%. Two of my competitors, with awful sites have remained sideways throughout, very frustrating.

 

[Zbigniew]

Any improvement for your good sites yet?
Just seems to be getting worse for me, 28% keyword drop and organic traffic down 16%. Two of my competitors, with awful sites have remained sideways throughout, very frustrating.

One of them didn't and the other one did, for a bit.

At the end of September a couple of keywords started to come back. Both traffic and revenue increased. My bounce rate went from around 50-60% to 89% all of the sudden as well.

The keywords that did increase started dancing the last couple of days, so rankings have gone down a bit again.

 

[Signal512]

This update is a bit weird. Weird in the sense that I had websites with (what I call) clean backlink profiles and some with blatantly spammy. Some of my spammy sites now perform better than the non spammy ones. No rhyme to it.

One non-spammy site in particular lost zero traffic or rankings but content is slow to index. I’m the past articles posted to this site usually indexed and ranked somewhere within 3 to five days.

Nothing I’ve posted within the last 10 days has been indexed. The website is over 8 years old and is relevant to the content posted. All of the articles on the site are hand written by me covering topics that I have significant knowledge of. All the posts are 4000 words or more.

When comparing my content to those listed on the first page mine is almost always more thorough and accurate. I spend days analyzing the junk on the pages, their keywords, backlinks, product or subject depth and accuracy. I don’t post anything unless I am pretty well convinced I can rank with little to no backlinks or that my content is just more accuarate.

It sucks seeing 500-800 word spam posts listed at the top with big throbbing red arrows pointing to golden “buy now” buttons.

I don’t get it.

For anyone who had taken a big hit I hope for the best and I’ll certainly post my findings here if I uncover anything helpfull.