Google Update - May 27th 2022 - What I Have Noticed

Maybe sending traffic can help anybody site . Thats what i noticed .

From my side I only see crash after crash, from this update I don't think my site will recover.

I will give it 3 months at the most, publishing 1-2 two articles per week, if at least the traffic keeps up, I will sell.

Luke22 said:

I don't know guys, but according to Semrush after June 22( a bit early to make any assumption but...) my projects start to gain keywords again, unfortunately it only according Semrush, analytics still shows red numbers. It may be a sign that we can see some nice recovery soon

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My Keywords also start to regenerate. Slowly, but it is a good start. Since the Update, I usually watch on GSC every morning and in the evening for changes. The last days it was like +1k in the evening and -1k Keywords in the morning and that day for day. Today I have for the first time since the Update 1.5k+ Keywords. It could be an anomaly, but we will see in the Future.

My traffic and the impression have doubled, but I am at this moment nowhere near the traffic I had before this Update. Don't know why I always speak of an update, it is more like a Google Core downgrade...

I have also discovered some things in the last Days.

Let's say you had a featured snipped in the past, and it ranked for different keywords on Position 0 which is the best you could get. I think Google has refined the featured snippets, and you don't Rank on this position like before. It might be a subjective feeling, but for me it looks like that, when I look at the SERPs and compare them with my old Featured Snippets before the Update.

To test this I stole yesterday a snippet from a competitor just to see what would happen. It was a keyword I had before, and I compared it with other search intents I used in the past just to see if I am ranking on position 0 for the exact same Keywords like it was in the past. Unfortunately it didn't.

The search intent for these Keywords is 99.9% the same, and the answer in the Snippet was also the same, but it had two keywords less which were before the Core Update important.

Another things I discovered:

• Rich results for products are not offered for pages with multiple product variants. ← This is just copy and paste from a SEO site. I have not the Option to test it because my website is 100% informational.
• Hyphens are better than underscores

“Until now, the view was that hyphens and underscores were equivalent in URLs. In 2016, John Müller had stated that Google did not care which of the characters was used in URLs.

But apparently that is not (anymore) correct. In the latest edition of Google's SEO podcast “Search Off the Record,” Gary Illyes said hyphens in URLs are preferable to underscores. Google uses parts of URLs to understand the content of pages, he said. A component called a segmenter would separate URLs at Google. But because the Internet and things people write about often contain an underscore, Google can't simply separate them here. So a hyphen shows Google more clearly where a separation of URL segments is possible.“

Sorce:
Wikipedia uses underscores, and I have seen other sites in the past which had underscores, too. Maybe the other sites had these like forever, and I'm just looking at the moment too accurate in the SERPs, but I had a feeling that some sites copied that URL format not that long ago.

RAP said:

I do not know if you are a SEO guy or not. But there are MANY people in the same situation.

If SEO was as used to be (or works at least), you could have AN IDEA, more or less, maybe, why your site has been tanked.

OR

There was a notification in your GSC.

Now, EVERYDAY, I read people has been tanked without a reason and they do not why (yes whitehat / clean / well established sites as well).

And I guess those SEO gurus do not know why.

And they are / will not be able to recover any sites with their "SEO tricks".

I say this because I am not a SEO guru (cause I do not want advertise myself) but I am EXTREMELY skilled (20 years in da business) and if I am not able to recover / understand why / how to move, those gurus are on the same boat.

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I do like the assumption that Income School made in their last video.
Maybe google get smarter in understanding of search intent and article content.
Maybe a lot of sites lost their kwds which was not related to content, but gives a lot of visitors.
In that case it make sense why they don't explain what was changed and what need to be looked at.
And their explanation fits well in that case

Just maybe...

RAP said:

I do not know if you are a SEO guy or not. But there are MANY people in the same situation.

If SEO was as used to be (or works at least), you could have AN IDEA, more or less, maybe, why your site has been tanked.

OR

There was a notification in your GSC.

Now, EVERYDAY, I read people has been tanked without a reason and they do not why (yes whitehat / clean / well established sites as well).

And I guess those SEO gurus do not know why.

And they are / will not be able to recover any sites with their "SEO tricks".

I say this because I am not a SEO guru (cause I do not want advertise myself) but I am EXTREMELY skilled (20 years in da business) and if I am not able to recover / understand why / how to move, those gurus are on the same boat.

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Believe me... Those who think they know it all are just link sellers (they have to, to get more business, or being in denial so they can continue fooling clients to sell their 'linkbuilding services'), or just "gurus wannabe" who know nuts and probably got their knowledge by stealing from others and acting as if they know it all (these are the types who only make $1 per day, or are making bank because they copy their competitors' strategy [or being shared here] and act as if it is their own strategy).

Many of those who are ACTUALLY in the SEO (maintaining their own sites and clients) will know how WTF the past 2 years have been since the COVID updates, and especially after this core update. The ultimate case is those who just 'got lucky' but luck won't last long... When they lose out, they be the one crying and going around asking what happened without a single idea about the basics of SEO, or what the past algorithm updates were about.

SEO is not dead, but Google is obviously trying negatively affect organic search results. Just look at how they've tweaked the entire search engine results... Just look at the search results layout now - 4 paid ads, shopping ads panel, videos panel, people also ask panel, and so many other panels. And how they keep releasing 'unconfirmed updates' and shuffling results every week is a sign they are trying to push small businessowners or affiliates to go for paid ads with them. SEO, in the future, will just apply to big authority sites or webmasters with a huge budget. Many have agreed the recent core update is a middle finger to all whitehat webmasters. Now we're seeing websites with aI content ranking, or ranking via blackhat backlinks. Just look at your GSC now and look at your "performance" tab - notice how wide the impression and clicks are now due to the layout change.

Yet, these 'gurus' will still go around defending that SEO is alive, and mock those who said SEO is hard. That's the biggest joke.

It has come to the point I don't even bother answering or entertaining these 'gurus'. This is the reason why I don't bother replying to any of them, and now you know why (not directed at anyone here as of this post).

edit: Not being negative or pessimistic, but these are facts. Those who are reading this and have been years in the SEO business.. you need to ask yourself - have your traffic and revenue been the same as compared to before? And do you think link sellers would be truthful about the future of SEO when it is deteriorating over time? That's like a general telling his troops not to give up and there' hope, when they are ultimately losing the battle with factors against them.

AliceInSEOLand said:

Believe me... Those who think they know it all are just link sellers (they have to, to get more business, or being in denial so they can continue fooling clients to sell their 'linkbuilding services'), or just "gurus wannabe" who know nuts and probably got their knowledge by stealing from others and acting as if they know it all (these are the types who only make $1 per day, or are making bank because they copy their competitors' strategy [or being shared here] and act as if it is their own strategy).

Many of those who are ACTUALLY in the SEO (maintaining their own sites and clients) will know how WTF the past 2 years have been since the COVID updates, and especially after this core update. The ultimate case is those who just 'got lucky' but luck won't last long... When they lose out, they be the one crying and going around asking what happened without a single idea about the basics of SEO, or what the past algorithm updates were about.

SEO is not dead, but Google is obviously trying negatively affect organic search results. Just look at how they've tweaked the entire search engine results... Just look at the search results layout now - 4 paid ads, shopping ads panel, videos panel, people also ask panel, and so many other panels. And how they keep releasing 'unconfirmed updates' and shuffling results every week is a sign they are trying to push small businessowners or affiliates to go for paid ads with them. SEO, in the future, will just apply to big authority sites or webmasters with a huge budget. Many have agreed the recent core update is a middle finger to all whitehat webmasters. Now we're seeing websites with aI content ranking, or ranking via blackhat backlinks. Just look at your GSC now and look at your "performance" tab - notice how wide the impression and clicks are now due to the layout change.

Yet, these 'gurus' will still go around defending that SEO is alive, and mock those who said SEO is hard. That's the biggest joke.

It has come to the point I don't even bother answering or entertaining these 'gurus'. This is the reason why I don't bother replying to any of them, and now you know why (not directed at anyone here as of this post).

edit: Not being negative or pessimistic, but these are facts. Those who are reading this and have been years in the SEO business.. you need to ask yourself - have your traffic and revenue been the same as compared to before? And do you think link sellers would be truthful about the future of SEO when it is deteriorating over time? That's like a general telling his troops not to give up and there' hope, when they are ultimately losing the battle with factors against them.

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I think it is really time to get a real competitor for Google. Ahrefs will have no impact. An investment of 50 Million is nothing. Not even for a start. Compare it to yahoo, duckduckgo, ecosia, bing or whatever. They have no chance to cach up like the ones i named before.

I really hope that Apple will invest some billions. They have theoretically the money to stomp Google into the ground. But this will not happen since Google has Android and every device runs with google but they have at least a chance to make it close to google with iOS.

And this is what we need. A competitor that tells Google that they have to change.

I'm one of these peoole who hates Apple and would not buy any of their products, but if they deliver what we want I would change my mindset within seconds.

Kirito Kun said:

I really hope that Apple will invest some billions. They have theoretically the money to stomp Google into the ground. But this will not happen since Google has Android and every device runs with google but they have at least a chance to make it close to google with iOS.

I'm one of these peoole who hates Apple and would not buy any of their products, but if they deliver what we want I would change my mindset within seconds.

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hahahahaha
Same here... I think I had iphone4 and never ever again.
But like you... I hope, Apple will become a decent competitor to google.

And if Apple is worse of Google?

Cutoff said:

And if Apple is worse of Google?

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Impossible in the beginning. But let's say they would get a huge market share which is comparable to google, than things could/will change because they are profit oriented.


For the start they can not fuck up because they would lose to many customers and ruin their Brand as the search engine surely will be implemented on all devices.

Cutoff said:

And if Apple is worse of Google?

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It doesn't matter if it's better or worse.
The idea is to have some competition for google.

I will tell you something that I saw in one of my sites, before I had traffic for a keyword that was related to the main one of the article but I did not name it in the entire text. It gave me a lot of traffic and now with the UPDATE SEMRUSH it tells me that I lost it and it may be.... then maybe my sites had many keywords similar to those of my articles and they gave me traffic but now I lost all that portion.
Perhaps google with this update adjusted more to the real keywords of my articles. It will be a matter of adding it and testing if it improves traffic over time.

With what free tool can I review all the keywords I lost? Semrush free shows me a handful.

good day! How is Your GSC today? Greetings from Italy

Alf85 said:

I will tell you something that I saw in one of my sites, before I had traffic for a keyword that was related to the main one of the article but I did not name it in the entire text. It gave me a lot of traffic and now with the UPDATE SEMRUSH it tells me that I lost it and it may be.... then maybe my sites had many keywords similar to those of my articles and they gave me traffic but now I lost all that portion.
Perhaps google with this update adjusted more to the real keywords of my articles. It will be a matter of adding it and testing if it improves traffic over time.

With what free tool can I review all the keywords I lost? Semrush free shows me a handful.

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Add your site to Ahrefs, it will show you all your data if you verify that you own the site.

Kirito Kun said:

I know that this works but it is a bit risky imo. There is a possibility that yoast implements h2 tags for FAQ because users are asking for this option since 2 years.

If you have replaced the <strong> attribute by using HTML to change it to h2, than there is a high chance that all your Q&A will not convert back from HTML to blocks and you have to go through all your 500 articles and edit them manually.

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You are spot on here. It's terribly annoying to go through past articles to add links. My previous SEO lead chose this method, and now I have to keep it up. The results are great though. Still waiting for yoast to add the h2 option, but seems they aren't particularly interested.

leit said:

Add your site to Ahrefs, it will show you all your data if you verify that you own the site.

Click to expand...

I only have FREE version

It has come to the point I am doubting keyword rank checking services.

They are showing that some of the keywords I'm ranking for are on the first page, some even at the 1st spot. But I'm not getting sales, nor conversions, nor any stats backing that up.

Either the keyword rank checking services are giving me invalid or wrong data, or Google is really throttling traffic or their new search results layout have effectively destroyed organic traffic.

AliceInSEOLand said:

It has come to the point I am doubting keyword rank checking services.

They are showing that some of the keywords I'm ranking for are on the first page, some even at the 1st spot. But I'm not getting sales, nor conversions, nor any stats backing that up.

Either the keyword rank checking services are giving me invalid or wrong data, or Google is really throttling traffic or their new search results layout have effectively destroyed organic traffic.

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It's more likely that Google is throttling traffic, and also sending your zombie traffic. I've seen this reported elsewhere many times. It's also possible this new update introduced some new things that are even more controlling our traffic, where the organic element is almost gone and it's all down to opening a tap when Google algo feels like it.

AliceInSEOLand said:

It has come to the point I am doubting keyword rank checking services.

They are showing that some of the keywords I'm ranking for are on the first page, some even at the 1st spot. But I'm not getting sales, nor conversions, nor any stats backing that up.

Either the keyword rank checking services are giving me invalid or wrong data, or Google is really throttling traffic or their new search results layout have effectively destroyed organic traffic.

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This is exactly my situation.

It's so strange.

AliceInSEOLand said:

Google is really throttling traffic

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Google has denied this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do assign traffic tiers to websites.

I found this from a very old thread and it seems similar to my experience with Google even a decade later:

phpbuilt said:

I have my own theory of what Google is does. They say "this site, based on its age, backlink portfolio and other factors, deserves this volume of traffic" ...

Lets say you qualify for 400 unique visitors a day. It then goes through your site and allows you to rank for a combination of keywords which it believes will allow you to receive 400 unique visitors a day (giving preference of course to the best optimized or best backlinks).

The reason I think this is I can have a website which has around 400 visitors a day, and going up on a steady bar ... traffic seems to double every 4 months.

Now I can pick like 4 URLs which rank well and spam them ... then they start doing the Google dance. Those 4 URLs were the most traffic pages, then they skip to the teens or 20s ... yet somehow my website still gets the exact same amount of hits you would expect from Google (the 400 a day) and if those 4 urls consisted of 100 and drops down to 20 ... then my other pages pick up the slack and give me the additional 80.

Its just really weird how predictable traffic from Google is, and sometimes you get a bonus and the bonus ends up being on a new tier of flatline or slant ... its like Google said "ok you had 300 but now you're allowed 350" and all your keywords jumble around to make it so.

This also turns your over-optimized pages into "waiting on deck". Yeah -- you certainly qualify for a high position on that keyword, but if it were given to you then you'd break your throttled traffic model so for now, that page is going to be suppressed. But later on when you qualify for that extra 50 visitors a day, that page suddenly ranks like it should.

Just my observations anyways.

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AliceInSEOLand said:

It has come to the point I am doubting keyword rank checking services.

They are showing that some of the keywords I'm ranking for are on the first page, some even at the 1st spot. But I'm not getting sales, nor conversions, nor any stats backing that up.

Either the keyword rank checking services are giving me invalid or wrong data, or Google is really throttling traffic or their new search results layout have effectively destroyed organic traffic.

Click to expand...

What's your plan of action?

I've got a really bad feeling about this latest update.

I'm going to improve the UX of the website and try some alternative advertising methods.

I'm not sure if I should bother continue link building. Tough decisions ahead.