Google update again?!

Cshark said:

This is just the effect of unnatural/forced link building that are now getting reviewed through AI framework of google, and while some of you may have seen huge dip in the ranking due to manual action related to unnatural/forced link building, most of you would not know what caused such upheaval. ( Short note: Stay the hell away from PBN. Just my 2 cents)

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That really isn't what the August 1st update was about.

Revisiting a site discussed earlier in the thread, here's the semrush traffic for draxe. As with others in this thread, they continue to drift lower... down more than 90% from their peak. Of the 1.6MM organic traffic left, a lot of that is from branded search... they have a couple hundred thousand searches for their brand per month and still got completely destroyed in SERPs.

Doesn't anyone have any idea what is going on with these updates?

Brighter Faster said:

That really isn't what the August 1st update was about.

Revisiting a site discussed earlier in the thread, here's the semrush traffic for draxe. As with others in this thread, they continue to drift lower... down more than 90% from their peak. Of the 1.6MM organic traffic left, a lot of that is from branded search... they have a couple hundred thousand searches for their brand per month and still got completely destroyed in SERPs.

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Or heck, we all know how spammy the "buy instagram followers" niche is. But one of the top sites ranking for the bulk of the terms is Buzziod. If you check their site on Ahrefs, you'll see plenty of their own PBNs holding up the site. They haven't even bothered to hide their PBNs, and they are in a dirty* niche, but they've only grown over the months.

*Dirty as in a niche where you are very likely to be reported by your competitors.

Seeing lots of movements in the serps for the last two days. I am mostly using Google.de. Something is going on over there.

nakamura said:

Seeing lots of movements in the serps for the last two days. I am mostly using Google.de. Something is going on over there.

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Good or bad movement?

One of my sites was fucked really hard but the recurring visitors are high. So it would make it up a bit. Main keywords are still stuck on Page 2-3 now from oblivion. I checked my PBNs and all still indexed, no problems or whatsoever. I wonder because my other sites that used the same PBNs are still strong in Top 10. So there must be something wrong with the diversity links I built/bought for this site as I have checked my anchor texts, content, index etc they are all good.

Cshark said:

This is just the effect of unnatural/forced link building that are now getting reviewed through AI framework of google, and while some of you may have seen huge dip in the ranking due to manual action related to unnatural/forced link building, most of you would not know what caused such upheaval. ( Short note: Stay the hell away from PBN. Just my 2 cents)

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lol, My site isn't in the YMYL niche except I have one category where the product is to aid impaired people in their daily life. It's natural for me to write about it as the overall site is about similar products.
My site got hit late aug, dropped to a few hundred and now i'm back up to around 500 visits per day but main keywords that were ranking good took a good hit and it has been a google dancing ever since. Out of serps and in to top 20-60 back and forth for months.
The site got into Business insider, tech insider, lifehacks and many more authoritative sites and started to gain traction. Also quoted as expert advice for some of my articles on niche related sites, no pbns or other things built except a couple web 2.0's in the beginning.
Still the site is now dancing up and down in Google like crazy for these keywords. Now I will send some pbns and a few diversified things to see if I can't stabilize it.

Horrible experience and this site had just had jumped into my best earner spot
Updating articles, checking internal linking, backlink profile and disavow shit links and making sure I got a few authoritative links to my author page from respected sites within the niche.
So pretty sure pbns had nothing to do with it. I have been thinking about removing the whole section for that product that has a bit to do with medical aid but I mean its a lot of content, well written and it does convert well.

zobban said:

lol, My site isn't in the YMYL niche except I have one category where the product is to aid impaired people in their daily life. It's natural for me to write about it as the overall site is about similar products.
My site got hit late aug, dropped to a few hundred and now i'm back up to around 500 visits per day but main keywords that were ranking good took a good hit and it has been a google dancing ever since. Out of serps and in to top 20-60 back and forth for months.
The site got into Business insider, tech insider, lifehacks and many more authoritative sites and started to gain traction. Also quoted as expert advice for some of my articles on niche related sites, no pbns or other things built except a couple web 2.0's in the beginning.
Still the site is now dancing up and down in Google like crazy for these keywords. Now I will send some pbns and a few diversified things to see if I can't stabilize it.

Horrible experience and this site had just had jumped into my best earner spot
Updating articles, checking internal linking, backlink profile and disavow shit links and making sure I got a few authoritative links to my author page from respected sites within the niche.
So pretty sure pbns had nothing to do with it. I have been thinking about removing the whole section for that product that has a bit to do with medical aid but I mean its a lot of content, well written and it does convert well.

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I don't think it's about PBN links either. I've read about loads of cases where the sites have been white hat.

Just like then, I still haven't seen any obvious pattern to why sites got hit 1 of August. The only thing most of them have common is that they have written articles (even if it's just been a few articles) about either health or finance.

It's been both old and new sites, sites with superior and inferior link profiles, sites with quality content and with poor content. I've seen sites with good reputation getting hit. To me, it just seems random with no correlation to quality of either links, design or content.

We will probably never know exactly what happened, thus we can only speculate.

I think it's one of these two:

1.) Google decided to shake up the SEO community, for one or another reason. By causing panic and confusion they will create better quality on the web and more diverse techniques for SEO. Either to make webmasters improve the SERP by optimizing their sites, or to get more money through Adwords. In other means, websites got hit pretty randomly for whatever purpose.

2.) Someone/something got messed up in the algorithm. It has happened before. A mistake was made and the only way to repair this is by changing other things in the algorithm, hence why nothing came back to its original state.

What's weird for me is that two of my sites tanked on the 1st of August. However, 10-20% of my keywords went back up after a few months. These keywords that went back up are heavy buying keywords, something like "best protein powder" - but keywords like "can more protein give you a bigger beard" and "how to sleep better at night" are still tanked.

I am observing a couple of big sites that got hit in my niche and it's like watching someone bleed to death. Whatever they do, they keep on losing traffic every month. It just goes down slowly..

zobban said:

Horrible experience and this site had just had jumped into my best earner spot
Updating articles, checking internal linking, backlink profile and disavow shit links and making sure I got a few authoritative links to my author page from respected sites within the niche.
So pretty sure pbns had nothing to do with it. I have been thinking about removing the whole section for that product that has a bit to do with medical aid but I mean its a lot of content, well written and it does convert well.

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What are you looking for in your internal linking structure?

I don't make my points based on assumptions.

While you people speculate, I know for fact that the focus will still be on "unnatural link building".

It will take time for the algorithm update to take hold of the situation and stabilize but Google will deal with "Unnatural link building".

And I'm not singling out PBN which has, still now, been marginally hit across niches ( yet a lot to come in the days ahead).

I'm talking about any type of links that are not built naturally.

I'm not sure how updated you guys are with your research and insider info but let's hope PBN works for you for the long run.

I'll anyways keep my eyes out when the mass-slaughter begins.

The Curator said:

Wrong assumption - seen white hat sites (no pbns or linkbuilding) get hit...

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Is it even worth building a new website at the moment?

Cshark said:

I don't make my points based on assumptions.

While you people speculate, I know for fact that the focus will still be on "unnatural link building".

It will take time for the algorithm update to take hold of the situation and stabilize but Google will deal with "Unnatural link building".

And I'm not singling out PBN which has, still now, been marginally hit across niches ( yet a lot to come in the days ahead).

I'm talking about any type of links that are not built naturally.

I'm not sure how updated you guys are with your research and insider info but let's hope PBN works for you for the long run.

I'll anyways keep my eyes out when the mass-slaughter begins.

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Whose speculating - I've see white hat sites without linkbuilding get pushed down. Your assumptions are just as good as everyone else's here...

Martinsee said:

Is it even worth building a new website at the moment?

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ALWAYS have plan B websites waiting. You could also try to expand into a shoulder niche - I've seen a client jumpstart their rankings by doing it...

Cshark said:

I don't make my points based on assumptions.

While you people speculate, I know for fact that the focus will still be on "unnatural link building".

It will take time for the algorithm update to take hold of the situation and stabilize but Google will deal with "Unnatural link building".

And I'm not singling out PBN which has, still now, been marginally hit across niches ( yet a lot to come in the days ahead).

I'm talking about any type of links that are not built naturally.

I'm not sure how updated you guys are with your research and insider info but let's hope PBN works for you for the long run.

I'll anyways keep my eyes out when the mass-slaughter begins.

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There are 1000 posts just like this from 2011-2018. Yet here we are all these years later and the “slaughter” hasn’t happen. You’re don’t seen very bright.

Cshark said:

I don't make my points based on assumptions.

While you people speculate, I know for fact that the focus will still be on "unnatural link building".

It will take time for the algorithm update to take hold of the situation and stabilize but Google will deal with "Unnatural link building".

And I'm not singling out PBN which has, still now, been marginally hit across niches ( yet a lot to come in the days ahead).

I'm talking about any type of links that are not built naturally.

I'm not sure how updated you guys are with your research and insider info but let's hope PBN works for you for the long run.

I'll anyways keep my eyes out when the mass-slaughter begins.

Click to expand...

I am unsure of whether you guys are affiliated with some low-flying junk link sellers, or trying to prove a point through gang-bang responses to establish you guys know-it-all.

@The Curator, keep your views to yourself, or maybe try find people that are too desperate to buy it. I ain't buying it. Your problem is you appear to know too much. Like I said, I don't believe in assumptions because it's the job of the illiterates that are left with nothing but to assume things and ponder over it. That said, I can safely assume we don't concur on what is leading to recent ranking loses across the spectrum. And I don't know how to quantify the value behind " I've see white hat sites without linkbuilding get pushed down", which amounts to nothing.

@blinggam, wake up and read the comments on this thread before making a ludicrous comment. Are you smoking cheap pot these days?

@Zbigniew, Trolling is a good way to build up post counts but sadly it doesn't offer any concrete value to the community.

The Curator said:

ALWAYS have plan B websites waiting. You could also try to expand into a shoulder niche - I've seen a client jumpstart their rankings by doing it...

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blinggam said:

There are 1000 posts just like this from 2011-2018. Yet here we are all these years later and the “slaughter” hasn’t happen. You’re don’t seen very bright.

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Zbigniew said:

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Have no affiliations with link sellers - just calling out your obvious assumptions that conflict with others on here including myself - but since you say so let's close the thread down because it's all about shitty links and that's it right? I wonder how everyone on every damn seo site has been trying to figure this out since last fall but you cracked it easily. Retarded...

Cshark said:

I know for fact that the focus will still be on "unnatural link building".

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No, you do not "know for fact" that the August 1 update was related to unnatural link building. How could you? If you have data, I'd be really interested to see it.

I've seen no evidence to support that claim. I've seen quite a lot of evidence that would suggest it is unrelated to that. For instance, it does seem quite clear that YMYL, and particularly health, saw a much greater impact from this than other niches. Since unnatural link building occurs in every niche, I wouldn't think updates focused on that would disproportionately impact these niches.

Also, don't you sell links? Were your clients' sites been hit badly in August of last year?

I do think recent changes were about links. The updates from the end of February and beginning of March definitely seemed focused on low quality links. This thread was about the medic update from last year though.

This has long been cracked. To be honest, I could end this discussion right here with references that are highly valued across SEO community but I won't. I really want to but don't see a point here discussing SEO with someone that is lacking logic.

I'm retarded if it makes you happy. Peace out.

The Curator said:

Have no affiliations with link sellers - just calling out your obvious assumptions that conflict with others on here including myself - but since you say so let's close the thread down because it's all about shitty links and that's it right? I wonder how everyone on every damn seo site has been trying to figure this out since last fall but you cracked it easily. Retarded...

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Brighter Faster said:

Also, don't you sell links? Were your clients' sites been hit badly in August of last year?

The updates from the end of February and beginning of March definitely seemed focused on low quality links. This thread was about the medic update from last year though.

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I don't sell low quality links, and none of my clients sites have been specifically impacted with the links we got for them.

I wasn't talking about the medic update. I was only focused on what's happening now and what's to come next. I believe it must have been an oversight on your part.