Google releasing a large update today

Some real shit is happening right now.
I was looking for a specific niche and I see Pandora.net website, with Pandora.net URL slash something, having ABSOLUTELY 0 relevance with what I was looking for and out of curiosity, I clicked on that link and it redirects me to a shady site, with malware and hundreds of popup.
Of course, NOT pandora dot net website.
But presented in G as pandora dot net.

Seraphiel said:

Yeah, got this is identical to one of my websites. November clearly hit that site hard. Hasn't really recovered since!

Click to expand...

You can't recover.
You can increase site speed, buy "quality" backlinks, spend thousands in new content, disavow bad links and all the BS mentioned in G guidelines but you (we) will fail miserably.
Because you will never know exactly what caused the drop.
Play this game, where rules are unknown and every week changes, it makes absolutely no sense anymore.

RAP said:

Some real shit is happening right now.
I was looking for a specific niche and I see Pandora.net website, with Pandora.net URL slash something, having ABSOLUTELY 0 relevance with what I was looking for and out of curiosity, I clicked on that link and it redirects me to a shady site, with malware and hundreds of popup.
Of course, NOT pandora dot net website.
But presented in G as pandora dot net.




You can't recover.
You can increase site speed, buy "quality" backlinks, spend thousands in new content, disavow bad links and all the BS mentioned in G guidelines but you (we) will fail miserably.
Because you will never know exactly what caused the drop.
Play this game, where rules are unknown and every week changes, it makes absolutely no sense anymore.

Click to expand...

Indeed.

I'm sure it's the same as with Youtube where people claim to be "shadowbanned". Some channels, and websites for us, just gets "shadowbanned" for no obvious reason at all. From 100 to 0 over night. Doesn't matter what you do, when you're on the list - you are on the list.

Zbigniew said:

Indeed.

I'm sure it's the same as with Youtube where people claim to be "shadowbanned". Some channels, and websites for us, just gets "shadowbanned" for no obvious reason at all. From 100 to 0 over night. Doesn't matter what you do, when you're on the list - you are on the list.

Click to expand...

I've never thought of that but its a good possibility. Maybe the big boys just don't like competition and they have friends up in high places.

Sounds like a conspiracy but you never know. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are all at it.

This monster thread has turned out to be a 'cry me a river' not sure if BHW was meant for that and instead of trying to figure out what the latest G updates were about the only thing I read here is "I was hit..." even though some members including me had asked for some details without asking for the actual site or niche like what was your backlink profile, what was your on-page SEO, was the majority of your anchor text the exact much or generic? Noone replies.

If the only thing we do here is crying 'I was hit...' without sharing valuable info regarding on-page and backlink profile it'll get us nowhere. And no, you don't have to share your website or niche. And if you screw up by linking with exact keyword like most probably I did don't be afraid to post here. We learn from each other.

Another issue I just noticed with Google is that yesterday I was searching for a video on bonsai pruning ( yes, ) and then it lead me to a video from what I thought was in either India or Pakistan. But it had an English title so I click on it. Same again just now when I searched for some information about Adsense and it sent me to a Hindi speaking YouTube video. but with an English title. Surely Google and YouTube should detect its Hindi/Urdu, whatever and see that I have never searched in that language before?

bahus said:

This monster thread has turned out to be a 'cry me a river' not sure if BHW was meant for that and instead of trying to figure out what the latest G updates were about the only thing I read here is "I was hit..." even though some members including me had asked for some details without asking for the actual site or niche like what was your backlink profile, what was your on-page SEO, was the majority of your anchor text the exact much or generic? Noone replies.

If the only thing we do here is crying 'I was hit...' without sharing valuable info regarding on-page and backlink profile it'll get us nowhere. And no, you don't have to share your website or niche. And if you screw up by linking with exact keyword like most probably I did don't be afraid to post here. We learn from each other.

Click to expand...

BHW isnt the only place where people try to figure out what is wrong with their sites. Nobody knows anything and nothing has worked so far. This is why people are complaining under this thread the most.

And you are wrong, @splishsplash did or is doing right now a research on this subject and asked other members to send their sites for analytics so he could put together at least part of this puzzle but there is still no standard answer to what went wrong.

Why dont you send your sites over to contribute?

c,

gwarftron said:

Another issue I just noticed with Google is that yesterday I was searching for a video on bonsai pruning ( yes, ) and then it leads me to a video from what I thought was in either India or Pakistan. But it had an English title so I click on it. Same again just now when I searched for some information about Adsense and it sent me to a Hindi speaking YouTube video. but with an English title. Surely Google and YouTube should detect its Hindi/Urdu, whatever and see that I have never searched in that language before?

Click to expand...

A few months ago I have had the same problem, English title, and Hindi speaking dude. Got rid of it by reporting them to YT for being misleading. Give it thumbs down, post a negative comment like' WFT, if you use English title SPEAK English AS%$#LE'. It worked for me as I no longer see this kind of garbage in my feed no matter what I search for on YT and it tells you how to manipulate YT ranking no matter what language a video is in.

neonmint said:

BHW isnt the only place where people try to figure out what is wrong with their sites. Nobody knows anything and nothing has worked so far. This is why people are complaining under this thread the most.

Click to expand...

Crying and complaining without sharing useful info will get you nowhere. This thread is a testament to it.

As for:

neonmint said:

And you are wrong, @splishsplash did or is doing right now a research on this subject and asked other members to send their sites for analytics so he could put together at least part of this puzzle but there is still no standard answer to what went wrong.

Click to expand...

That so-called research is too broad, anyone could have come up with those points no matter if the update was 2010 or 2020.
Last but not least

neonmint said:

Why dont you send your sites over to contribute?

Click to expand...

Why the F would I do that ... we can share valuable info and keep our website(s) private. And I did reply in that thread pointing him to well-known QUALITY sites that were hammered by May 2020. Plenty of data to analyze if you ask me.

The problem is no one knows whats going on with this update, there is no information from G. Even SEO experts don't know. To make matters worse everyone has their own theories.

Okay, I have found that updating the content and making them better, and changing the published date works. Include a proper author bio, include sources, citations. In GSC check your pages, click on a page then check the keywords for that page. You will see all the keywords that page is ranking for, now check your page to see if it's relevant to the keywords, if it's not then you need to tweak it, try to include relevancy of all the keywords into your page. If its an article make it longer, 1500 to 2000 words.

Screenshots of some of the pages where the content is updated.




This is my experience with this update and I am seeing some positives, I am not expecting to be back where I was before May 2020, as this is a new update and its different from the last one. Some of the pages are competing against youtube videos, ad space, and Pinterest. Looks like G is pushing its own properties higher and there are far more ads on the search.

oh about the content, I make sure they read well, not using tools, but reading them out and if it does not sound right I change it, not something G will look at, but it's for better user experience.

Trashing content.

I am also going through pieces of content that don't attract traffic, in GSC I look at the last three months, and if a piece of content has no traffic or under 100 clicks then I trash them, for me it's not worth improving them.

This looks like it's getting worse for me. My site is almost EMD blue-widgets.org.uk. had just got to page 1 for 'blue widgets' before the may update, slowly dropped down page 2 then last week after seeing improvements (slight) slipped to page 3. Last night, thrown down to page 7 for it.
Most other phrases have stuck at the moment or seen slight drops but I'm expecting the boot to be finally put in today and everything gets bombed. At a complete loss. What info do people want me to share?

But I do not understand why my thin content is ranking on position 1 while big posts are dropping in rank and they are replaced by thin content form other sites.

Kash007 said:

The problem is no one knows whats going on with this update, there is no information from G. Even SEO experts don't know. To make matters worse everyone has their own theories.

Okay, I have found that updating the content and making them better, and changing the published date works. Include a proper author bio, include sources, citations. In GSC check your pages, click on a page then check the keywords for that page. You will see all the keywords that page is ranking for, now check your page to see if it's relevant to the keywords, if it's not then you need to tweak it, try to include relevancy of all the keywords into your page. If its an article make it longer, 1500 to 2000 words.

Screenshots of some of the pages where the content is updated.
View attachment 138355
View attachment 138356
View attachment 138357

This is my experience with this update and I am seeing some positives, I am not expecting to be back where I was before May 2020, as this is a new update and its different from the last one. Some of the pages are competing against youtube videos, ad space, and Pinterest. Looks like G is pushing its own properties higher and there are far more ads on the search.

oh about the content, I make sure they read well, not using tools, but reading them out and if it does not sound right I change it, not something G will look at, but it's for better user experience.

Trashing content.

I am also going through pieces of content that don't attract traffic, in GSC I look at the last three months, and if a piece of content has no traffic or under 100 clicks then I trash them, for me it's not worth improving them.

Click to expand...

Semi confirm this. Just updated a couple of articles. I'd say around 50-60% saw slight improvements. Nothing crazy just a little uptick.
I don't personally think it's the solution or cause but that is just me.

Personally I am still convinced it has to do that google changed from preferring long too preferring shorter articles. In a way giving articles that are more relevant with less "fluff" a boost. But remember SEO is very "niche" dependant, so it doesn't mean this is the reason your site tanked either.

Kash007 said:

The problem is no one knows whats going on with this update, there is no information from G. Even SEO experts don't know. To make matters worse everyone has their own theories.

Okay, I have found that updating the content and making them better, and changing the published date works. Include a proper author bio, include sources, citations. In GSC check your pages, click on a page then check the keywords for that page. You will see all the keywords that page is ranking for, now check your page to see if it's relevant to the keywords, if it's not then you need to tweak it, try to include relevancy of all the keywords into your page. If its an article make it longer, 1500 to 2000 words.

Screenshots of some of the pages where the content is updated.
View attachment 138355
View attachment 138356
View attachment 138357

This is my experience with this update and I am seeing some positives, I am not expecting to be back where I was before May 2020, as this is a new update and its different from the last one. Some of the pages are competing against youtube videos, ad space, and Pinterest. Looks like G is pushing its own properties higher and there are far more ads on the search.

oh about the content, I make sure they read well, not using tools, but reading them out and if it does not sound right I change it, not something G will look at, but it's for better user experience.

Trashing content.

I am also going through pieces of content that don't attract traffic, in GSC I look at the last three months, and if a piece of content has no traffic or under 100 clicks then I trash them, for me it's not worth improving them.

Click to expand...

You are removing content? I did that once on an ecommerce website back in 2016ish. I deleted around 80 product pages that I decided to no longer stock, each page had about 150 - 200 words on with unique images. It was a huge mistake and my website started to drop a lot from that moment

I have kept up with the post from the start but I have not given any information, here is my experience.

I have noticed one particular thing about Google. They do not care what you claim your page is about, they decide for themselves. In the past keywords were so specific and 'buy KEYWORD' and 'KEYWORD for sale' yielded very different results. Google understands too much now and targeting a specific keyword seems to be a waste of time. The same shops are in the top 4 for all the keywords now.

After this update, I started working on a new shop in the same niche. I went for an easy keyword 'best place to buy KEYWORD'. I am on page 3 now, my page title contains the keyword and my 400 word homepage contains it twice. Every website that ranks above me does not mention this longtail keyword at all.

Interesting how things change. It seems like if you are in the top #3 you are banking for everything and everyone else can just f@£$ off. But where does this leave you with anchor text? My original shop has very white hat anchor ratios and the keyword does not even appear in the top percentages on majestic. My competitors have very different anchor ratios to one another, some are heavily optimized with keywords while others are like mine with mostly brand, url and generics.


Before the update I was #4 for a nice keyword and I had successfully been climbing the ladder very steadily, the update dropped me to #7, for the last week I have been #5 which was promising, but today I dropped to #7 again!


Since the update here is what I have done:

Registered my business in Google via letter.

Obtained a ******** reddit link

Registered an 0800 number

Placed my business address and phone number on my website (there was no address or number for my website anywhere until about 5 weeks ago)

Learned about EAT and posted 5x large 1000+ articles about my niche (+ above with my contact details).

Obtained more reviews in google, facebook and trustpilot.

Registered my business on yelp and yell

Created a pinterest (This seems to be Googles CRACK)

Ramped up social media posts with lots of likes


my EAT was non-existant before the update, now my shop looks far more trustworthy, yet I just can't get back my #4 spot? Seems strange, however, it is early days as it has only been 5-6 weeks.

This thread is way too negative, y'all complaining and crying.

Solution:

Be a GOD in PPC....Your skills will never fail you and will serve you for years to come.

Today is the first day since May 4th where I have gained more keywords than lost. Also I see a small improvement in traffic, about 15%. I guess now it will take another 4-6 months for the whole traffic to come back...

Kash007 said:

The problem is no one knows whats going on with this update, there is no information from G. Even SEO experts don't know. To make matters worse everyone has their own theories.

Okay, I have found that updating the content and making them better, and changing the published date works. Include a proper author bio, include sources, citations. In GSC check your pages, click on a page then check the keywords for that page. You will see all the keywords that page is ranking for, now check your page to see if it's relevant to the keywords, if it's not then you need to tweak it, try to include relevancy of all the keywords into your page. If its an article make it longer, 1500 to 2000 words.

Screenshots of some of the pages where the content is updated.
View attachment 138355
View attachment 138356
View attachment 138357

This is my experience with this update and I am seeing some positives, I am not expecting to be back where I was before May 2020, as this is a new update and its different from the last one. Some of the pages are competing against youtube videos, ad space, and Pinterest. Looks like G is pushing its own properties higher and there are far more ads on the search.

oh about the content, I make sure they read well, not using tools, but reading them out and if it does not sound right I change it, not something G will look at, but it's for better user experience.

Trashing content.

I am also going through pieces of content that don't attract traffic, in GSC I look at the last three months, and if a piece of content has no traffic or under 100 clicks then I trash them, for me it's not worth improving them.

Click to expand...

it seems that lately you have been doing lots of onpage optimization. do you go to GSC and have google index those page or just let google take its own time and crawl it again as they see fit?

aidanlcfc said:

This looks like it's getting worse for me. My site is almost EMD blue-widgets.org.uk. had just got to page 1 for 'blue widgets' before the may update, slowly dropped down page 2 then last week after seeing improvements (slight) slipped to page 3. Last night, thrown down to page 7 for it.
Most other phrases have stuck at the moment or seen slight drops but I'm expecting the boot to be finally put in today and everything gets bombed. At a complete loss. What info do people want me to share?

Click to expand...

what happens when you search for it using an IP from US ?

fb3003 said:

what happens when you search for it using an IP from US ?

Click to expand...

not in the top 100 in US, although 'blue widgets uk' was in about the same spot

worth saying the phrases that got tanked last night seem to have come back to where they were so hopefully it was just a blip but after what has been happening recently I take it more of an early warning

So my personal experience.

5 Sites (same niche) - (variations between each other, different writer) - (All 5 clean sites (Hand-coded, no templates, no WordPress)) - Content Prior google update: ~ 2300 words
(ALL 5 DROPPED. 60%) - Pagespeed insights: > 95/100


After the google update,
All 5 sites improved content to 3000-3500 WITH SUBSTANTIAL content. like, really, really substantial. (Content, is not just dropped like text.. but each 500 words has it's own "section" on the page.)

1 site recovered from the google update going higher, the other 4 stayed the same (60% loss average). (The very first site that I updated the content to is the one that recovered and surpass its traffic before but
the other 4 stayed the same (the procedure on each one of them it's the same.), just 1 recovered.

Conclusion: I don't know what else to do to recover the other sites, the procedure is the same.