MrSempay
Regular Member
- Jul 31, 2014
- 270
- 189
Same here. It takes time, but it tends to last longer.
Another Google Update on It's way
- Thread starter SeoWrecker
- Start date
Same here. It takes time, but it tends to last longer.
RAYRAY7
Regular Member
- Nov 17, 2007
- 403
- 299
For the last several years, Google implemented a scheme to keep webmaster on the edge with constant updates. What I have learned after many years:
1 - Build lengthy high quality content
2 - Don't be caught in too many questionable backlink neighborhood
The update will come and go, to be replaced by another update. It is clearly an effective tactic to hide what is working.
We help create the monster and it is now acting like LORD AND JURY. Without webmaster's content the Google search results would be nonsense.
People sometimes forget that this updates are created by AI with very little human intervention.
FAST, PRAY, AND DO A LITTLE MAGIC OR WISHFUL THINKING, SO THAT THE GOOGLE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) FAVOR YOUR SITE.
1 - Build lengthy high quality content
2 - Don't be caught in too many questionable backlink neighborhood
The update will come and go, to be replaced by another update. It is clearly an effective tactic to hide what is working.
We help create the monster and it is now acting like LORD AND JURY. Without webmaster's content the Google search results would be nonsense.
People sometimes forget that this updates are created by AI with very little human intervention.
FAST, PRAY, AND DO A LITTLE MAGIC OR WISHFUL THINKING, SO THAT THE GOOGLE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) FAVOR YOUR SITE.
Brighter Faster
Junior Member
- May 12, 2018
- 152
- 227
I wouldn't read too much into the potato-type examples as far as this update is concerned. There were a number of examples of that kind of result from before this update.
I do enjoy finding these though... "how many legs does a duck have?"
moonshine7000
Elite Member
- Mar 4, 2013
- 4,357
- 4,008
Very accurate 20 ducks have 40 legs
NICE UPDATE GOOGLE. It seems google is into developing legs in potatoes, snakes etc.
i would search it just to test google algo haha
Kikerinka
Elite Member
- Dec 18, 2010
- 2,584
- 9,443
Interestingly enough, views for the last 48 hours on my two YT channels are down 25%.
Since most of my views on YT comes from Google, it makes me think that the update has also impact on rankings of YT videos in Google.
Anyone else noticing a drop in YT?
Since most of my views on YT comes from Google, it makes me think that the update has also impact on rankings of YT videos in Google.
Anyone else noticing a drop in YT?
RStar66
Junior Member
- Apr 11, 2019
- 164
- 105
My content that was hit in back in the March update has had a full recovery. I dropped from top three positions (had two of the top three rankings) for my targeted term with the local (country) modifier all the way down to page 2. I made some small content adjustments in an attempt to gain my rankings back, but could never get past #9on page one. Since this latest update I'm back with #2 and #3 rankings for my keyword with local modifier, but I've also now got #2 and #3 for my target keyword without local modifier on Google(dot)co(dot)za.
This really does make me think that they have rolled back on the core update from March.
This really does make me think that they have rolled back on the core update from March.
Preon
Senior Member
- Apr 6, 2016
- 992
- 1,724
I've found that a lot of old content that I previously beat in the serps are now back on top.
For example, i previously outranked a quora post on fishing which contained a total of 600 words. My blog post of 1400 words had been sitting above this for the last two months, but now the quora post is back in top spot and now also has the snippet.
I'm seeing this for many keywords, old forum posts, Q&A sites, reddit etc are now back in the top spot where I previously held the position.
This particular site is about 18 months old and is completely white hat with genuinely decent content.
Another site which is arguably fairly blackhat with quite a lot of shady links and cheap PBNs is completely unaffected so far.
A 3rd site which has 0 links, 30 articles and is about 4 months old has seen small gains, but it isn't really in a competitive position in the serps yet.
For example, i previously outranked a quora post on fishing which contained a total of 600 words. My blog post of 1400 words had been sitting above this for the last two months, but now the quora post is back in top spot and now also has the snippet.
I'm seeing this for many keywords, old forum posts, Q&A sites, reddit etc are now back in the top spot where I previously held the position.
This particular site is about 18 months old and is completely white hat with genuinely decent content.
Another site which is arguably fairly blackhat with quite a lot of shady links and cheap PBNs is completely unaffected so far.
A 3rd site which has 0 links, 30 articles and is about 4 months old has seen small gains, but it isn't really in a competitive position in the serps yet.
Thomas Shelby
Power Member
- Jan 3, 2013
- 635
- 366
what niche are you in? congratsView attachment 116751
Holy shitttttt i wake up and check my ahref and
This is way beyond my expectation !!
Zedcov
Senior Member
- Dec 24, 2018
- 973
- 488
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4947706-9-30.htm
This is a long post but if you're suffering from a traffic drop, please read.
I am writing this post in order to gain more information on what is happening in the SEO space with Google right now, and to help members get a better grasp on the state of SEO in 2019.
After being active in this forum for a few months (lurking mostly), I have come to the conclusion that in 2019 the way our sites rank in Google have less to do with us making SEO changes and more to do with factors outside our control.
This is why.
Here you can find screenshots of my site traffic from December 2018 to present day: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/1aW686p...]
Here you can see the biggest algorithmic change to my site by month: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/Cpvaljy...]
Some background: After the big medic update in October my site lost 30% traffic.
I took a deep hard look at my site and I had to agree with Google, my site wasn’t as optimised for SEO as it should be and my rankings lowered. I wasn’t paying attention and was just coasting along while others sites were improving.
I waited a few months to see if things would change but they didn’t. So in December I joined Ahrefs/SEMrush and took action on my site.
I did all of the following:
* removed 35% of pages from my site that were causing bloat and no organic traffic
* created a whole internal link building strategy to ensure every page had at least 3 relevant internal links to each article (you can see the results of this below)
* upgraded to HTTPS
* installed a CDN with cloudfare
* got my website load time down from 3 seconds to less than 1 second
* got my Google Page Insights up from 60 to 85 on mobile and 60 to 99 on desktop (see photo)
* changed web host to reduce my TTFB from 2.2 seconds to less than 400ms.
* decreased bounce rate by 10.40% (photo below)
* increased average session duration by 44% (photo below)
* Increased pages/session by 23% (photo below)
* updated older articles
* wrote articles about super relevant things and during these months I got quite a few relevant backlinks from high quality sites.
I did not hire anyone or do any black hat marketing. I have no manual penalties and never have on any of my sites.
After making all these changes in December and early January I made no other major SEO changes to my site.
You can see my on-site website performance increased after these changes were made: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/wAIfhVC...]
Here is my Page speed insights: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/6a2fJjT...]
I could post my TTFB and response times to show they are under 500ms but I think you get the point.
You need to ignore sessions/new users/users/page views as the comparison is from current day to November before changes were made, and at current day I’ve lost quite a lot of traffic. As you can see my site has -22% less users NOW after making the changes above.
Since making these changes the following has happened to my site:
December = 34% increase
February = 11% increase
March = 22% increase
April = 14% decrease
June = 46% decrease (and going lower)
After doing all that my website is 22% lower than before I made any of these changes and its going lower. Today is not over and I’ve lost another 20% on yesterday which was a 40%- down.
I’m not here to bash Google because for the past 5 years I’ve been able to make an income because of their platform and I’m thankful.
But for me after listening to what Google has been saying for the 9 months, following Ahrefs/SemRush/Brain Dean and the other big players in SEO, after the improvements I've made to my site, I don't get how I'm doing worse. My site today is better, faster, updated, more relevant and has more relvent backlinks today than pre 2019.
How can I have 4 months of great increases followed by a huge thud that knocks me lower than before I improved my site? That doesn not make sense unless Google is using something to rank sites that I don't know about (if I missed anything do let me know).
I’m an info site and I run no adsense, I don’t sell products and less than 1% of my entire site has affiliate links. No pop-ups or email forms.
I’m not doing any of the newb things like having dozens of external links on the home page or anything like that. It’s just an info site that is 6+ years old. Of all my competitions I rank #2 in terms of PA and DA for my site overall. I'm the second oldest site in my niche with the second best backlink profile based on Ahrefs and Semrush.
With these experiences, I believe something wrong with the Google Algorithm, or they are ranking sites using new metrics that nobody knows about, in which case it would be wonderful of them to tell us.
When I search on Google today I do get directed to the right pages so I don’t think Google is broken totally, but something is going on with their algorithm and updates that doesn’t make much sense.
This drop has killed my site’s revenue by 90%, the revenue it made would be enough to cover a family with 2 children. I am lucky that I still have other income steams (a digital marketing agency) so I can still put food on the table and I’m fairly young with no children. But now I need to get more clients as I’m living pretty thin if things stay the way they are.
But there’s are people out there with children and bills to pay and this has is how they feed their family. I cannot imagine what they are going through.
I’m not saying Google should not make changes to search, they have to do become better and stay #1.
But in the eyes of most web masters (based on the comments in this forum, SEOroundtable and other SEO forums I don’t think I can mention) most people have a negative perception for the Google Search term.
And that should not be the case, admins and Google should be on Good terms because they need us just as much as we need them.
I think this can be resolved by Google letting us know what their algorithm changes are focusing on so people like me and others who depend on their website to feed their family, a chance to make a living.
Saying it’s a board update which doesn’t relate to any one thing doesn’t help a single webmaster, and pretty much leaves Google off the hook, which is why they say these types of things.
As a web admin I am sitting here thinking what can I do to improve my sites rankings, I honestly think the best thing I can do is to do nothing and see what happens in the next update, based on all the comments of websites going up and down on this forum.
If the level of communication between web admins and Google does not improve, I don’t think Google is going to dominate search in 10 years.
Google is isolating the people who made their search what is it, I think when you start burning us without advising us on how to improve our sites with better information you’re in a dangerous place.
I don’t want Google to roll back the changes or give me my traffic back, I know I'm not entitled to the traffic and I don't want it give to me, I want to do the best I can with my site so I get the traffic I deserve. But in order to do that I need to know what caused this huge drop of and how I can remedy it.
I don't think I'm alone in this either. So Google, can you please start communicating with us better and become human being rather than being cryptic and distant.
I have the following theories based on what I've seen and experience in the last 9 month:
1. Google is using something to rank sites that most of us including the expert don't know about.
2. Google search is broken. This is based on my site seeing high surges in traffic after making positive SEO changes, only to be at record lows today
3. Google search is fixed. The past updates that shot my website up were algorithm update that made search worse, and the latest algorithm update fixed them. But if this is true that means Google made errors in past updates.
4. Roll out is not fully rolled out and everything will go back to normal. This is the least likely theory based on how many people are seeing huge drops based on sentiment online.
It would be great if more people posted what they did and what changes they have saw so we can get a better idea on what we are dealing with. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll do my best to answer.
This is a long post but if you're suffering from a traffic drop, please read.
I am writing this post in order to gain more information on what is happening in the SEO space with Google right now, and to help members get a better grasp on the state of SEO in 2019.
After being active in this forum for a few months (lurking mostly), I have come to the conclusion that in 2019 the way our sites rank in Google have less to do with us making SEO changes and more to do with factors outside our control.
This is why.
Here you can find screenshots of my site traffic from December 2018 to present day: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/1aW686p...]
Here you can see the biggest algorithmic change to my site by month: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/Cpvaljy...]
Some background: After the big medic update in October my site lost 30% traffic.
I took a deep hard look at my site and I had to agree with Google, my site wasn’t as optimised for SEO as it should be and my rankings lowered. I wasn’t paying attention and was just coasting along while others sites were improving.
I waited a few months to see if things would change but they didn’t. So in December I joined Ahrefs/SEMrush and took action on my site.
I did all of the following:
* removed 35% of pages from my site that were causing bloat and no organic traffic
* created a whole internal link building strategy to ensure every page had at least 3 relevant internal links to each article (you can see the results of this below)
* upgraded to HTTPS
* installed a CDN with cloudfare
* got my website load time down from 3 seconds to less than 1 second
* got my Google Page Insights up from 60 to 85 on mobile and 60 to 99 on desktop (see photo)
* changed web host to reduce my TTFB from 2.2 seconds to less than 400ms.
* decreased bounce rate by 10.40% (photo below)
* increased average session duration by 44% (photo below)
* Increased pages/session by 23% (photo below)
* updated older articles
* wrote articles about super relevant things and during these months I got quite a few relevant backlinks from high quality sites.
I did not hire anyone or do any black hat marketing. I have no manual penalties and never have on any of my sites.
After making all these changes in December and early January I made no other major SEO changes to my site.
You can see my on-site website performance increased after these changes were made: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/wAIfhVC...]
Here is my Page speed insights: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/6a2fJjT...]
I could post my TTFB and response times to show they are under 500ms but I think you get the point.
You need to ignore sessions/new users/users/page views as the comparison is from current day to November before changes were made, and at current day I’ve lost quite a lot of traffic. As you can see my site has -22% less users NOW after making the changes above.
Since making these changes the following has happened to my site:
December = 34% increase
February = 11% increase
March = 22% increase
April = 14% decrease
June = 46% decrease (and going lower)
After doing all that my website is 22% lower than before I made any of these changes and its going lower. Today is not over and I’ve lost another 20% on yesterday which was a 40%- down.
I’m not here to bash Google because for the past 5 years I’ve been able to make an income because of their platform and I’m thankful.
But for me after listening to what Google has been saying for the 9 months, following Ahrefs/SemRush/Brain Dean and the other big players in SEO, after the improvements I've made to my site, I don't get how I'm doing worse. My site today is better, faster, updated, more relevant and has more relvent backlinks today than pre 2019.
How can I have 4 months of great increases followed by a huge thud that knocks me lower than before I improved my site? That doesn not make sense unless Google is using something to rank sites that I don't know about (if I missed anything do let me know).
I’m an info site and I run no adsense, I don’t sell products and less than 1% of my entire site has affiliate links. No pop-ups or email forms.
I’m not doing any of the newb things like having dozens of external links on the home page or anything like that. It’s just an info site that is 6+ years old. Of all my competitions I rank #2 in terms of PA and DA for my site overall. I'm the second oldest site in my niche with the second best backlink profile based on Ahrefs and Semrush.
With these experiences, I believe something wrong with the Google Algorithm, or they are ranking sites using new metrics that nobody knows about, in which case it would be wonderful of them to tell us.
When I search on Google today I do get directed to the right pages so I don’t think Google is broken totally, but something is going on with their algorithm and updates that doesn’t make much sense.
This drop has killed my site’s revenue by 90%, the revenue it made would be enough to cover a family with 2 children. I am lucky that I still have other income steams (a digital marketing agency) so I can still put food on the table and I’m fairly young with no children. But now I need to get more clients as I’m living pretty thin if things stay the way they are.
But there’s are people out there with children and bills to pay and this has is how they feed their family. I cannot imagine what they are going through.
I’m not saying Google should not make changes to search, they have to do become better and stay #1.
But in the eyes of most web masters (based on the comments in this forum, SEOroundtable and other SEO forums I don’t think I can mention) most people have a negative perception for the Google Search term.
And that should not be the case, admins and Google should be on Good terms because they need us just as much as we need them.
I think this can be resolved by Google letting us know what their algorithm changes are focusing on so people like me and others who depend on their website to feed their family, a chance to make a living.
Saying it’s a board update which doesn’t relate to any one thing doesn’t help a single webmaster, and pretty much leaves Google off the hook, which is why they say these types of things.
As a web admin I am sitting here thinking what can I do to improve my sites rankings, I honestly think the best thing I can do is to do nothing and see what happens in the next update, based on all the comments of websites going up and down on this forum.
If the level of communication between web admins and Google does not improve, I don’t think Google is going to dominate search in 10 years.
Google is isolating the people who made their search what is it, I think when you start burning us without advising us on how to improve our sites with better information you’re in a dangerous place.
I don’t want Google to roll back the changes or give me my traffic back, I know I'm not entitled to the traffic and I don't want it give to me, I want to do the best I can with my site so I get the traffic I deserve. But in order to do that I need to know what caused this huge drop of and how I can remedy it.
I don't think I'm alone in this either. So Google, can you please start communicating with us better and become human being rather than being cryptic and distant.
I have the following theories based on what I've seen and experience in the last 9 month:
1. Google is using something to rank sites that most of us including the expert don't know about.
2. Google search is broken. This is based on my site seeing high surges in traffic after making positive SEO changes, only to be at record lows today
3. Google search is fixed. The past updates that shot my website up were algorithm update that made search worse, and the latest algorithm update fixed them. But if this is true that means Google made errors in past updates.
4. Roll out is not fully rolled out and everything will go back to normal. This is the least likely theory based on how many people are seeing huge drops based on sentiment online.
It would be great if more people posted what they did and what changes they have saw so we can get a better idea on what we are dealing with. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll do my best to answer.
- Feb 23, 2011
- 7,591
- 746
I often see this comment thrown around, "build whitehat", usually by people that do not understand what whitehat actually means. Pure whitehat means you are not doing any kind of link building to your site at all. By Google's own definition, any form of link building, be that guest posts/editorials at $500 a pop or 50k automated blog comments for $10, it is all the same to Google - you are trying to manipulate your site's position in the SERPs. That is not to say that a link is a link is a link, obviously higher quality links will be safer and/or more effective than spammy links, but both types still qualify as blackhat in Google's eyes.
Ultimately, what Google wants you to do is sit around twiddling your thumbs waiting for your site to rank solely based on its "amazing" content, because Google has scared you into believing "content is king" and away from blackhat, and when you get tired of waiting (because you are not going to rank for any meaningful keywords with 0 backlinks) it will happily point you in the direction of its Google Ads as the only other alternative.
fb3003
Elite Member
- Aug 14, 2015
- 5,035
- 3,500
what is the difference between google.de and google.com (when you check with a US based IP address)?
interested to know if majority of your backlinks are from germany IP addresses or outside of Germany? and if you are seeing any correlation because of that. thanks
Dominicano
Regular Member
- Apr 7, 2010
- 201
- 74
Anything related to health or nutrition is showing 2 results of healthline.com, 2 results of wedmd.com and the next 3 to 4 results to amazon.com...
Basically, 3 to 4 sites are dominating the page 1 results, which is really stupid, IMHO.
Most product reviews searches are showing in the top 4 spots amazon.com...
This is not just ridiculous, it is also unhelpful to most searches. When I want to buy something from Amazon or check some Amazon reviews I go straight to Amazon, as I suppose most shoppers do.
Does Google know that most Amazon reviews nowadays are manipulated = FAKES? Aren't they the smartest people? Well, they should know this by now and stop showing Amazon in the top spots once and for all...
It is as if Jeff Besos and Google became partners... WTF?
If the people behind Google are so smart I assume this is not going to stay this way, and more changes are coming in the following days...
Basically, 3 to 4 sites are dominating the page 1 results, which is really stupid, IMHO.
Most product reviews searches are showing in the top 4 spots amazon.com...
This is not just ridiculous, it is also unhelpful to most searches. When I want to buy something from Amazon or check some Amazon reviews I go straight to Amazon, as I suppose most shoppers do.
Does Google know that most Amazon reviews nowadays are manipulated = FAKES? Aren't they the smartest people? Well, they should know this by now and stop showing Amazon in the top spots once and for all...
It is as if Jeff Besos and Google became partners... WTF?
If the people behind Google are so smart I assume this is not going to stay this way, and more changes are coming in the following days...
Last edited:
- Apr 15, 2017
- 2,314
- 3,081
My main website's serps changed today!
A lot of authority sites on page 1.
Big niche affiliate sites gone to page 2.
Most queries are unanswered. You have to read everything to get to the answer you are looking for
My website lost information traffic!
Gained money keyword rankings. I can live with that lol.
I may lose the money keyword rankings tomorrow.
Let's find out in the next episode of S E O
A lot of authority sites on page 1.
Big niche affiliate sites gone to page 2.
Most queries are unanswered. You have to read everything to get to the answer you are looking for
My website lost information traffic!
Gained money keyword rankings. I can live with that lol.
I may lose the money keyword rankings tomorrow.
Let's find out in the next episode of S E O
Mohamad Zidani
Power Member
- Nov 17, 2016
- 530
- 65
Daily mail 50% drop in Search traffic, could be a fake news update?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/7466306?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/7466306?hl=en
oscilay
Power Member
- Oct 30, 2013
- 605
- 498
I call this fake news!
crissdinesh
Regular Member
- Jul 7, 2018
- 462
- 281