Google Core Update - Sitewide Penalty

[subster]

Hey folks,

with last nights Google Update, I faced a strange effect which I personally never experienced before in al my years.

Completely all, literally all, Keywords I am tracking lost 1 - 7 positions in the SERPs.

Did anyone else experience such carnage with the recent Google update? Are there already any links/threads with more insights about the recent update and what it all was about?

Thanks a ton!

 

[Holzr]

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/another-google-update-on-its-way.1125647/

 

[spyguyzz]

not alone i lost some SERPS positions also because of the new update

 

[Automation Guru]

Yes I have lost a couple of spots as well maybe it will bounce back soon I hope..

 

[subster]

Yeah, but what I was talking about, was a sitewide drop for all possible kind of keyword combinations - all tracked keywords lost spots, not only the ones I built links to. Nothing too drastic, but still very odd.
So I conclude, that whether

a) the update affected the overall authority weight calculation
or
b) sites that have been caught for link building get a general penalty, not only for the overoptimized keywords like in the past.

I cared very much about anchor text distribution and used my main keyword pretty rarely for the built links.

Abstracting some possibilities for the outcome of the update here:

- It might have issued an Authority drop, instead of a particular keyword drop.
- Rich anchor tags might be more dangerous than ever.

 

[Viniyois]

a) the update affected the overall authority weight calculation

yes, most likely the website got lower 'authority score' and reduced the ranking of your keywords. It could also be temporary. Wait a bit

 

[subster]

Wow, everything points us to a heavy YMYL-centric update. Anyone else in the finance niche experiencing this kind of issues?

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Wow, everything points us to a heavy YMYL-centric update. Anyone else in the finance niche experiencing this kind of issues?

Yep. Everything you say so far applies to one of my sites. 100% white hat.

Same boat. Seems like the entire site got demoted. Definitely something about how they determine root site authority.

 

[subster]

Astonishing so far is that the traffic did not drop as much as expected. While the rankings decreased by roughly 10%, the traffic lost only around 5% from mean average. Seems other long tails or what else might have shot up and I dont recognize it yet.

 

[fb3003]

@subster what is the characteristic of the number 1 site in your niche for your primary keyword?! do you know what was its rank before?

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Here's another large financial site. Same pattern.

Someone said big brands weren't affected. They're wrong. These guys have $$$$.

Looks to me like Google is getting more and more into the financial sector. And you know what that means if you have a finance site!

 

[doinocuulong]

full of fluctuations

 

[subster]

Here's another large financial site. Same pattern.

Someone said big brands weren't affected. They're wrong. These guys have $$$$.

Looks to me like Google is getting more and more into the financial sector. And you know what that means if you have a finance site!

View attachment 116802

Yep, it almost looks like the sites without a webmaster with approved financial advisor plate are booted. LOL, Talking about smart algos.

 

[hippo123]

I am seeing more aggregators coming up in the serp. Instead of individual banks ranking for their own credit cards, we have aggregators that collate these credit card promotions/offers on a single blog post ranking.

Do you guys see this too? Seeing this trend across local serps, in different niches too.

-> Naming it "Google Aggregrator Update"

 

[Purush]

Its almost seeing like mystery story. keywords dropped but not visits.

 

[Nut-Nights]

I just shifted my penalized site to new domain All Good here.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I am seeing more aggregators coming up in the serp. Instead of individual banks ranking for their own credit cards, we have aggregators that collate these credit card promotions/offers on a single blog post ranking.

Do you guys see this too? Seeing this trend across local serps, in different niches too.

-> Naming it "Google Aggregrator Update"

I see Reddit 3x on the 1st page for a financial kw. And that's after they applied the "diversity" bug I mean algorithm.

 

[The Curator]

In the finance industry - the keywords are expensive and competitive, but now SEO for finance is largely gone unless you're going local...

 

[Kelowna]

We have many financial websites and see no real changes, maybe just a slight move up but could just be flux (Canada & USA sites). The only thing that sticks out big time is Google is big now on rewriting the titles of many pages

 

[ContentExpert]

Conduct a "content relevancy analysis" - something VERY FEW do.