Google releasing a large update today

[dandan594594]

It's personal. They have an ID database. The "trust" is based on their ID system.

This is the key! The authors digital footprint, combined with topical expertise is a ranking factor. It's a whole new layer, not an update of traditional signals. Let's call it "Persona SEO". High ranking will require the usual quality content and strong links, but also a clear indication that the related persona is deeply involved with the subject.

Edit: Oh, and if want quick fixes use an "old post promoter" type plugin for freshness signal and remove affiliate plugins like AAWP.

 

[kava]

Why did seroundtable lost an insane amount of traffic with 15m backlinks and the author of posts is Barry Schwartz who is insanely popular ?

 

[dandan594594]

Why did seroundtable lost an insane amount of traffic with 15m backlinks and the author of posts is Barry Schwartz who is insanely popular ?

The majority of the content is user generated in the form of comments. The actual posts are quite thin.

 

[bahus]

The majority of the content is user generated in the form of comments. The actual posts are quite thin.

That's not exactly true, some articles generate a good amount of comments, some none. Same goes for thin content, it's a search engine news website, he gets to the point right away, it's unrealistic to expect him to write 1000+ word article related to SE news. Unless he wants to be a copy cat and include in each article useless things like what's google update?, what is google algorithm?, what do you need to know about Google updates? I could go on but I stop right here. Apparently this SHIT ranks, in reality, it would be VERY annoying to his reader. What Google calls it ... oh I remember BAD user experience. Hypocrisy at its best!

As for links, his website was hit years ago for links and he has learned his lesson as for the rest he has ZERO control, look how many times people link to his website on this forum ... a lot. And there is nothing he can do about it. Do you expect him to say 'please don't link to my website because I might get his by google ...'

A few days ago The Federalists lost their Google Ads account because of user comments (I think that they got it back after removing the comments section). Google should be smart enough and be able to see the difference between actual content and comments and rank a website on its content not comments. It just tells how biased they are, they go after one website and they are fine with trash comments posted on another (democratic) site.

P.S. This is just an example, I'm not trying to go into politics here.

 

[dandan594594]

That's not exactly true, some articles generate a good amount of comments, some none. Same goes for thin content, it's a search engine news website, he gets to the point right away, it's unrealistic to expect him to write 1000+ word article related to SE news. Unless he wants to be a copy cat and include in each article useless things like what's google update?, what is google algorithm?, what do you need to know about Google updates? I could go on but I stop right here. Apparently this SHIT ranks, in reality, it would be VERY annoying to his reader. What Google calls it ... oh I remember BAD user experience. Hypocrisy at its best!

As for links, his website was hit years ago for links and he has learned his lesson as for the rest he has ZERO control, look how many times people link to his website on this forum ... a lot. And there is nothing he can do about it. Do you expect him to say 'please don't link to my website because I might get his by google ...'

A few days ago The Federalists lost their Google Ads account because of user comments (I think that they got it back after removing the comments section). Google should be smart enough and be able to see the difference between actual content and comments and rank a website on its content not comments. It just tells how biased they are, they go after one website and they are fine with trash comments posted on another (democratic) site.

P.S. This is just an example, I'm not trying to go into politics here.

Exceptions can be found for almost any rule. I don't understand why this site is being used as an example, it's not as though we're all building websites about SEO. People need to concentrate on the niches their active in, and that also goes for analysis.

 

[bahus]

I don't understand why this site is being used as an example

Well, you replied why it lost traffic which is not exactly the case. To put things into perspective I wrote my comment. If you think that that website is a bad or irrelevant example you should have not commented on it in the first place and we wouldn't have this discussion.

 

[wolf3000]

"Disillusionment lead to departure. According to the NY Times’ profile, Ramaswamy grew disillusioned at Google and ultimately left the company as a result. “The relentless pressure to maintain Google’s growth, he said, had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing.”

Ramaswamy also told the Times that the quality and usefulness of search results on Google has been compromised by the focus on ad revenue. There are many in the industry who would agree. But a “relentless” focus on revenue growth is an inevitable function of being a public company. “It’s a slow drift away from what is the best answer for the user and how do we surface it,” Ramaswamy explained."

https://searchengineland.com/former...wamy-to-launch-new-search-engine-neeva-336200

Well well well, it looks like we may soon have a new alternative to google, however the subscription-based model ain't looking too good.

Is there a correlation between what this guy is saying and what we are currently experiencing right now with google and the messed up serps?

 

[bahus]

"Disillusionment lead to departure. According to the NY Times’ profile, Ramaswamy grew disillusioned at Google and ultimately left the company as a result. “The relentless pressure to maintain Google’s growth, he said, had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing.”

Ramaswamy also told the Times that the quality and usefulness of search results on Google has been compromised by the focus on ad revenue. There are many in the industry who would agree. But a “relentless” focus on revenue growth is an inevitable function of being a public company. “It’s a slow drift away from what is the best answer for the user and how do we surface it,” Ramaswamy explained."

https://searchengineland.com/former...wamy-to-launch-new-search-engine-neeva-336200

Well well well, it looks like we may soon have a new alternative to google, however the subscription-based model ain't looking too good.

Is there a correlation between what this guy is saying and what we are currently experiencing right now with google and the messed up serps?

Thanks for the link, interesting read, maybe sites that don't have (promote) google ads are pushed to the bottom of SERP ... Camouflaged G ads on top plus top ten sites on SERP promoting G ads ...how about that for boosting G ad revenue ... it's a win-win for G if you ask me.
Maybe I should put some on my site to see if there is an improvement ... right now I have none.

 

[Bim Zon]

google now treats users like puppets, products contain a lot of rubbish, and google employees know these things best. This is miserable.

 

[adit12]

"Disillusionment lead to departure. According to the NY Times’ profile, Ramaswamy grew disillusioned at Google and ultimately left the company as a result. “The relentless pressure to maintain Google’s growth, he said, had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing.”

Ramaswamy also told the Times that the quality and usefulness of search results on Google has been compromised by the focus on ad revenue. There are many in the industry who would agree. But a “relentless” focus on revenue growth is an inevitable function of being a public company. “It’s a slow drift away from what is the best answer for the user and how do we surface it,” Ramaswamy explained."

https://searchengineland.com/former...wamy-to-launch-new-search-engine-neeva-336200

Well well well, it looks like we may soon have a new alternative to google, however the subscription-based model ain't looking too good.

Is there a correlation between what this guy is saying and what we are currently experiencing right now with google and the messed up serps?

The subscription-based business not gonna work, people rather seeing ads than pay 10$ a month just for search engine subscription.

I think the only way to compete with google is by creating a non profit community based search engine, such as wordpress.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Barry Schwartz who is insanely popular ?

Insanely popular where?

Anyway, why did he lose traffic? Because all he's done in 20+ years is copy and paste the Google Webmaster blog. His entire blog is just Google announcements.

 

[sumitgupta1992]

Insanely popular where?

Anyway, why did he lose traffic? Because all he's done in 20+ years is copy and paste the Google Webmaster blog. His entire blog is just Google announcements.

Going by the same primitive definition, every site that exists on the Internet has copied and pasted something or the other.

 

[Escehas]

Going by the same primitive definition, every site that exists on the Internet has copied and pasted something or the other.

Not necessarily. There are websites focused on research and the info there is new to the entire world. Not that this would matter to Google in any shape or form.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I've found a common trait in top ranking sites after this new update.

Shallow content.

Well researched, 1000+ word articles are getting wasted.

I've been researching a technical subject for my own hobby projects and began to notice something similar in most top ranking sites:

1. First of all, the results suck. It's not what I'm looking for. I have to insert stopwords and use verbatim search to make the search work.
2. Very short articles.
3. Some look like spun text or written by non-English speakers with very bad English skills
4. Lots of noise on pages that rank high. Look like geocities shit.

I think I found a common trait: they're penalizing you if you spend too much time on the page! Google wants you back on the SERPs so you see their ads again! Could Google be rewarding bounces?

In fact, I checked a site I manage that got destroyed in May and its top content, where people spend 60% of the time on site, got wasted in May update.

Google doesn't want users to stay long on sites! They want the users to return from the sites and view more ads.

Going by the same primitive definition, every site that exists on the Internet has copied and pasted something or the other.

That is so wrong on every level.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I think Google uses opposing paramters from update to update, to cause maximum harm against SEOs.

Last update they rewarded long posts + long time on sites.

Now they destroy sites with long content + long times.

If you rush out and fix the pages to join several articles into one, the next update destroys you again.

Their strategy is to destroy SEO so you must buy ads. It's been the case for a long time now, but now they've adopted this opposing update strategy.

So if you change your entire site now, the next update will waste you again.

There's no way to counter this. It's time to get lawmakers to break Google up. We need competition.

 

[dandan594594]

There's no way to counter this.

I'm making sure to always add a "quick answer" after intro paragraph, that sums up the topic in 40(ish) words to one grab snippets and two to mitigate the negative effect of people bouncing without seeing an answer to the query. I'll keep an eye for short content that's ranking, and see if they manage to quickly answer the question. Good idea to cover both long form and fast answer in same post.

 

[cooxer]

I've found a common trait in top ranking sites after this new update.

Shallow content.

Well researched, 1000+ word articles are getting wasted.

I've been researching a technical subject for my own hobby projects and began to notice something similar in most top ranking sites:

1. First of all, the results suck. It's not what I'm looking for. I have to insert stopwords and use verbatim search to make the search work.
2. Very short articles.
3. Some look like spun text or written by non-English speakers with very bad English skills
4. Lots of noise on pages that rank high. Look like geocities shit.

I think I found a common trait: they're penalizing you if you spend too much time on the page! Google wants you back on the SERPs so you see their ads again! Could Google be rewarding bounces?

In fact, I checked a site I manage that got destroyed in May and its top content, where people spend 60% of the time on site, got wasted in May update.

Google doesn't want users to stay long on sites! They want the users to return from the sites and view more ads.



That is so wrong on every level.

If this would be true I’d be a king of the serp rn. I have a shitty website with 1 min > on page time, 80% bounce rate and average of 500 words per page.

But I haven’t gained any benefits after update nor I lost previous positions.

 

[twinreal]

Same here, its false statement

 

[chlopzmazur]

Yeah there are some sites that were ranking good before the update and they still rank well after the update.

 

[Dreams411]

I've found a common trait in top ranking sites after this new update.

Shallow content.

Well researched, 1000+ word articles are getting wasted.

I've been researching a technical subject for my own hobby projects and began to notice something similar in most top ranking sites:

1. First of all, the results suck. It's not what I'm looking for. I have to insert stopwords and use verbatim search to make the search work.
2. Very short articles.
3. Some look like spun text or written by non-English speakers with very bad English skills
4. Lots of noise on pages that rank high. Look like geocities shit.

I think I found a common trait: they're penalizing you if you spend too much time on the page! Google wants you back on the SERPs so you see their ads again! Could Google be rewarding bounces?

In fact, I checked a site I manage that got destroyed in May and its top content, where people spend 60% of the time on site, got wasted in May update.

Google doesn't want users to stay long on sites! They want the users to return from the sites and view more ads.

I totally disagree with your theory. One of my sites that got destroyed had a bounce rate of 82% at the time, and all its contents are between 300-400 words, but it still got destroyed. It lost 95% traffic, and it is still losing keywords by the day. Nobody knows for sure what this update is about. People keep coming up with various theories that do not hold water. My guesses are:
1. Maybe Google mistakenly broke something and trying to fix it
2. Maybe this update has something to do with Trump's campaign
3. Or maybe Google intentionally designed the new algorithm to push down relevant sites in order for them to sell more ad spaces.