Got Hit By Google Core Update? Heres Likely What You Did Wrong and How To Fix It

I have a large sample of sites for different niches.
For a sample of sites: Links have anchors only for the phrases they find in the content. Links for phrases from content + url, quite a variety. I don't see any particular increases in such link profiles, no no change or decreases.
 
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SeoBacklinkGenie said:
Your chart shows average position dropped from 3-5 and you only have 125 articles. It's irrelevant unless you have more information not provided. People hit by core update lost hundreds of keywords completely in rankings. 50% traffic drop doesn't mean much by it self. If you have 2 impressions and it dropped to 1 that's %50 loss. It needs more context.
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125 top articles, that is cutting out the bottom parts of the site that barely affect traffic, which many also were lost before recovery.

Each number of those 125 represents hundreds of other keywords, as it is rare someone gets deranked for their Main Keyword and not others

A broad drop across all those articles that is big enough to move the average in a stable niche is something I think is worth noting, I've had these ranks for 2 years more or less and this isn't just
drop by age. No matter how tiny the traffic might be or the number of keywords, in lead gen niches you make a lot of money even off a single article getting down-ranked to page 2.

I was only posting to say I agreed with your assessment.......

I understand you think I can't tell when my own website is hit and don't intend to take my word for it.

But at this rate id need to send you whole excels of my website and the domain name to even convince you, and for what?

Do you need to see the hundreds of keywords ive lost traffic for to be convinced the 125 ranks ive held for years moving like that out of nowhere on the core update?
Or do you need to see the hundreds of keywords I now get 0 impressions from because my site has been completely blasted off the serp for specific pages during the time?


1680029982929.png


1680031048386.png
1680031138394.png

Or do you rather see the articles themselves

1680031434498.png

Is this enough information? Or do you need to see the hundreds of keywords being re ranked from the abyss this week?

1680031678825.png
1680031765236.png
Anything else?
Is this not good enough or do I need to hook you up to my search console or make you admin of the sites ive been running for years for you to just take my word?

Before anyone asks, no this is not seasonal like this to drop for 2 weeks randomly and lose hundreds of keywords you have maintained for years on constantly updating articles.
 
Why would I have anchor "is eucalyptus safe for cats" if I don't have information why is eucalyptus safe for cats????
 
Jaordas said:
125 top articles, that is cutting out the bottom parts of the site that barely affect traffic, which many also were lost before recovery.

Each number of those 125 represents hundreds of other keywords, as it is rare someone gets deranked for their Main Keyword and not others

A broad drop across all those articles that is big enough to move the average in a stable niche is something I think is worth noting, I've had these ranks for 2 years more or less and this isn't just
drop by age. No matter how tiny the traffic might be or the number of keywords, in lead gen niches you make a lot of money even off a single article getting down-ranked to page 2.

I was only posting to say I agreed with your assessment.......

I understand you think I can't tell when my own website is hit and don't intend to take my word for it.

But at this rate id need to send you whole excels of my website and the domain name to even convince you, and for what?

Do you need to see the hundreds of keywords ive lost traffic for to be convinced the 125 ranks ive held for years moving like that out of nowhere on the core update?
Or do you need to see the hundreds of keywords I now get 0 impressions from because my site has been completely blasted off the serp for specific pages during the time?


View attachment 248544


View attachment 248561
View attachment 248563

Or do you rather see the articles themselves

View attachment 248566

Is this enough information? Or do you need to see the hundreds of keywords being re ranked from the abyss this week?

View attachment 248576
View attachment 248577
Anything else?
Is this not good enough or do I need to hook you up to my search console or make you admin of the sites ive been running for years for you to just take my word?

Before anyone asks, no this is not seasonal like this to drop for 2 weeks randomly and lose hundreds of keywords you have maintained for years on constantly updating articles.
Click to expand...
Interesting to see this. Its hard for me to evaluate GSC data since i have been using Semrush to evaluate current websites and the effects vs core updates.

I am also not sure which numbers are what category on those pictures but I can assume some of what they are.

I reread your first post and yes makes sense major updates tend to lowers ranks for alot of people and rebound shortly after. My evaluation are for those who aren't recovering. I consider them two different cases. If you get lower ranks and bounce back I consider that "normal behavior" during a update. You probably bounced back because you said your not using many backlinks and I assume your not manipulating backlinks with dirty non relevant anchors. I don't think you were necessarily hit but were only effected by the heavy swings from the google update which is pretty common imo.

Here is an example of a ecom competitor of mine using my semrush keyword position tracker. They were ranked #1 for basically everything for 4 years straight. I can't imagine the keywords lost that im not even tracking. I don't think they are going to bounce back until next update. This site also used keyword stuffing in their anchors, combining 2-3 keywords per anchor mostly irrelevant anchors to pages. Much different scenario than yours.

competitor semrush.png
 
SeoBacklinkGenie said:
ecom competitor took an L
Click to expand...

Blues are clicks, purples are impressions (meaning someone saw the site, bot or human, regardless of if a click occurred), 0 on purple basically means the site is not being seen at all, which either indicates you are ranked in the bottom 50 of the top 100 or not ranked at all, to the point even bots aren't giving you impressions when crawling serps. If a ton of your keywords become 0 click, 0 impressions you can basically read that as your site being heavily deranked off those queries, as if you had only moved down a few spots, even into the top 20 you would still get a few impressions, just no clicks.

Also, ouch to your competitor (although that may be good for you). I am not too familiar with semrush speed of position tracking so I'm not sure if the changes happening around the 22nd is just lag on sem rush part. Most of my websites with any sort of movement had it begin before the update was even over. For the most part my competitors are tracked on a weekly basis so I don't have their day for day data but just based on the weekly I can see in general what happened to them. (However, the biggest sites in the niche only gained rankings and traffic, multiple factors involved but you get the idea).

I have a particular competitor whos website fits many of the things you are talking about, they have not regained any major ranking as far as I've tracked them. Frankly, I saw the owner on Reddit and they admitted to some ... "odd" backlinking practices (they were looking for help as they didn't know how to recover the site).

Even then just looking at Ahrefs etc you can see the quality (or lack thereof) pointing to the homepage etc.
Which for the longest while you could usually get away with some of that, and endless website profile backlinks towards your homepage.

I guess people trying to control what shows up when their website name is googled by spamming profiles all over the web need to be a bit more careful now.

Your competitor took a massive hit, they don't even remain in the top 20 for almost any keywords tracked. I am skeptical about if they will rebound as this is one of the harder hits I've seen.

I assume you have a better idea about how legitimate of a site they are (business-wise) so you have a better idea about if they will just let the website sit or do actual work on it.

May I ask if the Ecom comp is in something ymyl? Probably not but sometimes I've seen medical device-selling websites hit this hard, but I've never seen an Ecom site get all its products practically wiped from the net in an update that didn't, particularly target products. This is not to say it can't happen but you learn new things every day.
 
Jaordas said:
Blues are clicks, purples are impressions (meaning someone saw the site, bot or human, regardless of if a click occurred), 0 on purple basically means the site is not being seen at all, which either indicates you are ranked in the bottom 50 of the top 100 or not ranked at all, to the point even bots aren't giving you impressions when crawling serps. If a ton of your keywords become 0 click, 0 impressions you can basically read that as your site being heavily deranked off those queries, as if you had only moved down a few spots, even into the top 20 you would still get a few impressions, just no clicks.

Also, ouch to your competitor (although that may be good for you). I am not too familiar with semrush speed of position tracking so I'm not sure if the changes happening around the 22nd is just lag on sem rush part. Most of my websites with any sort of movement had it begin before the update was even over. For the most part my competitors are tracked on a weekly basis so I don't have their day for day data but just based on the weekly I can see in general what happened to them. (However, the biggest sites in the niche only gained rankings and traffic, multiple factors involved but you get the idea).

I have a particular competitor whos website fits many of the things you are talking about, they have not regained any major ranking as far as I've tracked them. Frankly, I saw the owner on Reddit and they admitted to some ... "odd" backlinking practices (they were looking for help as they didn't know how to recover the site).

Even then just looking at Ahrefs etc you can see the quality (or lack thereof) pointing to the homepage etc.
Which for the longest while you could usually get away with some of that, and endless website profile backlinks towards your homepage.

I guess people trying to control what shows up when their website name is googled by spamming profiles all over the web need to be a bit more careful now.

Your competitor took a massive hit, they don't even remain in the top 20 for almost any keywords tracked. I am skeptical about if they will rebound as this is one of the harder hits I've seen.

I assume you have a better idea about how legitimate of a site they are (business-wise) so you have a better idea about if they will just let the website sit or do actual work on it.

May I ask if the Ecom comp is in something ymyl? Probably not but sometimes I've seen medical device-selling websites hit this hard, but I've never seen an Ecom site get all its products practically wiped from the net in an update that didn't, particularly target products. This is not to say it can't happen but you learn new things every day.
Click to expand...
Position tracking is usually pretty up to date every 24 hours. They did some shady stuff to try to avoid the core update which is why there is a delay in tracking. They have been around for 8+ years and essentially created this niche and has strong authority. Its not YMYL, its a small niche overall for ecom, but they were racking in around 20k visitors a month prior to update, now they are sub 10k losing around 800 traffic per day via semrush (which is delayed).

I would actually prefer them to be still ranking #1 actually since they provide good education awareness around the niche. Basically this core update replaced them with Amazon which does not belong anywhere near top 10 in this niche at all. Amazon was ranking 3-5 in most of my keywords prior to update, now they are ranked #1 for almost everything.
 
I would love your hypothesis to be true but I just don't see it.

It also wouldn't make any sense from googles perspective to suddenly start prioritising backlink anchor text over all sorts of other stuff when they've been clearly moving away from this for the last 5 or so years. Backlink anchor text is by far the most manipulated part of their algorithm and they know this. Prioritising it makes no sense.

We've reviewed plenty of decent sized players in our field and it's just too random to really pinpoint what exactly the issue is. Some have terrible anchoring and rank very well, others have great anchoring and rank poorly.
 
jacksi said:
I would love your hypothesis to be true but I just don't see it.

It also wouldn't make any sense from googles perspective to suddenly start prioritising backlink anchor text over all sorts of other stuff when they've been clearly moving away from this for the last 5 or so years. Backlink anchor text is by far the most manipulated part of their algorithm and they know this. Prioritising it makes no sense.

We've reviewed plenty of decent sized players in our field and it's just too random to really pinpoint what exactly the issue is. Some have terrible anchoring and rank very well, others have great anchoring and rank poorly.
Click to expand...
That's right. Google gives us a sense of fear by panalty us at random. And competition for Google ads intensifies.
 
Disagree. I had no links, was ranking on the basis of onpage.

Still will check for anchors some comps made for me for - seo
 
OP - but by this theory what kind of anchors we should build?
domain.com = google will rank for domain.com;
generic = google will rank for generic;
exact = spam.
?
 
Turbo B. said:
OP - but by this theory what kind of anchors we should build?
domain.com = google will rank for domain.com;
generic = google will rank for generic;
exact = spam.
?
Click to expand...
Exact match is not spammy unless its excessive. Exact and partial are the most informative anchors for google crawlers.

Generic is mostly useless unless you can get it to relate well to the page. Branded and naked urls are good alternatives.

There is nothing wrong with exact match as long as your not over doing it.

Always blend a variety of your anchors.

There is no direct answer for what % blend of anchor types is best, you'll have to play with it to see what works for you.

Also keep in mind that there's a big difference between having 100 links with the same exact match anchor text compared to 100 links with all different exact match anchors texts.
 
SeoBacklinkGenie said:
Exact match is not spammy unless its excessive. Exact and partial are the most informative anchors for google crawlers.

Generic is mostly useless unless you can get it to relate well to the page. Branded and naked urls are good alternatives.

There is nothing wrong with exact match as long as your not over doing it.

Always blend a variety of your anchors.

There is no direct answer for what % blend of anchor types is best, you'll have to play with it to see what works for you.

Also keep in mind that there's a big difference between having 100 links with the same exact match anchor text compared to 100 links with all different exact match anchors texts.
Click to expand...
I see max 1% of exact anchors in my niche on top ranking sites.
Max % is domain.com
Next - brand, page title, naked domain variations, exact + some word, random.
Exact - up to 1%.

I am talking about root domains.
 
Turbo B. said:
I see max 1% of exact anchors in my niche on top ranking sites.
Max % is domain.com
Next - brand, page title, naked domain variations, exact + some word, random.
Exact - up to 1%.

I am talking about root domains.
Click to expand...
Yes a root domain should be little to no exact match anchors imo. It should be heavily naked and branded. Exact match anchors belong on subpages.
 
SeoBacklinkGenie said:
Yes a root domain should be little to no exact match anchors imo. It should be heavily naked and branded. Exact match anchors belong on subpages.
Click to expand...
I agree with this. However, would you say that having a large portion (perhaps 30-40%) of subpage anchors using brand anchors is natural?

The reason I ask is that we are always taught to keep branded and naked anchors as the higher percentages in our anchor profile, even for subpages. For subpages, it has never really made sense to me.

Using exact match anchors is almost considered a sin these days, but based on your experience, is it safe to use them more than the "recommended" 1 to 5%?
 
Turbo B. said:
I see max 1% of exact anchors in my niche on top ranking sites.
Max % is domain.com
Next - brand, page title, naked domain variations, exact + some word, random.
Exact - up to 1%.

I am talking about root domains.
Click to expand...
sounds about right for a root domain, assuming the root page has, by design not been optimise to rank for anything specific, but rather act as the hib page to all the money pages.

id be interested to know what those % are typically for your competitors sub pages.
 
myk33 said:
sounds about right for a root domain, assuming the root page has, by design not been optimise to rank for anything specific, but rather act as the hib page to all the money pages.

id be interested to know what those % are typically for your competitors sub pages.
Click to expand...
The root domains are optimized for keywords at most cases.
Inner pages has up to 70% exact match anchors.
But it also ranks fine with 1-5% exact match.
 
Turbo B. said:
The root domains are optimized for keywords at most cases.
Inner pages has up to 70% exact match anchors.
But it also ranks fine with 1-5% exact match.
Click to expand...
yea, to be fair, either way i think this shows that it much harder than we expect to get hit with anchor overoptimization. Especially for inner pages.

With that said, i myself still take a very conservative approach and save keyword anchors for good backlink opportunities.
 
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