SEARCHENGINES

Google Helpful Content Update’s Last Surge?

Published

7 months ago

September 27, 2023

Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen more chatter of ranking movement for those SEOs initially impacted by the September 2023 helpful content update. I wonder if this is the last push, the last surge, of this helpful content update before Google says this update is done rolling out.

This update seemed to wreak havoc on our industry, seeming to target SEO’ed sites a bit more than others. And Google says the update is doing what it needs to and will not be rolled back. Don’t forget, Google did originally warn us that this update would impact SEOs. I wrote it would be as big as Panda was for some SEOs and while it took three of these updates to sink it, it seems like it finally did.

As a reminder, this update started to roll out on September 14th, about 12 days ago, so it should be done within the next couple of days. But sometimes these updates can take longer to roll out than just two weeks, although the previous one took 38 days but the one before that was only 15 days.

In any event, we are seeing more chatter while the tools are still acting super calm.

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the new SEO chatter in the past couple of days from WebmasterWorld and the comments here – this is just a sampling of that chatter:

Big drop in USA, UK, and CA traffic today, -35%, -25%, -75% respectively at 2pm. Yesterday UK ended the day at -39% and AU was -50%, USA was flat, CA was up 120%. So big swings and this is while my number of top 5 ranking terms keeps climbing all summer and through September.

Saturday global site 61.5%. I get concerned when it’s sub 60% on weekends
Saturday hotel venue 198%
So far today global site 53.5%
So far today hotel 196%
The crazy inconsistency continues.

In Germany we have a very big problem with newspapers and large magazines that rent out their domains outside of their subject area or write articles for all sorts of things – without any real specialist knowledge. These are actually all areas (finance, energy, telecommunications, streaming, etc.)

Huge drop today… Here We Go Again 😀

Big drops today for USA (-26%), Canada (-61%), Australia (-67%) and Germany (-40%) at 2pm. Clearly the strong traffic pattern of early Sept. is over as all of the anglophone countries are perpetually lagging now. German traffic was unusually high earlier this month and is now reverting.

Crazy spikey day again after a 63.5% day Sunday, so far today 271.5%, these page view spreads are npt “normal” for me.

I also see traffic spikes, then cliffs. Today the SERP’s are crazy… AdSense on the floor, I smell G’s movements.

+34% increase in USA traffic.
-27% decrease in Canadian traffic
We are based in Canada and we’re seeing an increase in USA traffic and decrease in Canadian traffic.
We also just got #0 featured snippet for USA traffic as well…
I’m not mad at growing in the USA, it was one of our goals – but we are destabilizing in our own country.

30% drop.

We experienced a much harder fall then this just from all the ads Google put in the serps months ago. Combine this with the horrific HCU, and it’s a complete disaster in Google. The only thing saving us is the increased sales from other search engines

For my global site Monday ended with my second highest day of the year at 284.5% however traffic came to an abrupt halt at UK 20.00. After 11 hours today it’s at 30.5% with PVs to uniques reverting to almost 1:1, Monday was 1:6.1
Utter inconsistency seems to be G’s delivery at the moment.
Advertisement

100 users in 5 minutes, nice. going up I’m confirming. I don’t think I’m special so everyone will see the improvements in a next days (I expect it to get where it was before)

Anything new today? Is it still keeping/going up?

That is just some of the chatter in the past couple of days.

Google Tracking Tools

Like we said before, the Google tracking tools are unusually calm. This tells the same story as our earlier reports. Chatter within the SEO community is off the charts but the tools are super calm.

Semrush:

SERPmetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

What are you all seeing over the past couple of days? Do you think we are at the tail end of this update?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Related Topics:Content Google Helpful searchengine surge Updates

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Interested In Hreflang Alternatives

Published

9 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Gary Illyes from Google said he has heard from the SEO industry that hreflang can be “annoying” and complex and confusing. So he is open to ideas on how to replace it and make it work for both small and really large websites.

He wrote this on LinkedIn saying, “Things I’ve learned and heard in Sofia at the SERPConf event.” He said one of those is that “hreflang is annoying.”

Gary wrote, “I don’t disagree,” that I guess he understands why SEOs and creators find it annoying.

So he said that he open to new ideas. He wrote, “I’m still very open to coming up with something less annoying, but it needs to work for small sites and mammoths as well, while delivering at least the same amount of information.”

So if you have ideas, let Gary know, he wrote, “Ping if you have ideas.”

You can use hreflang to tell Google about the variations of your content. This helps Google understand the various pages and how they are localized variations of the same content. But the implementation can be confusing and detailed, why he said it can be annoying. Several years ago, John Mueller said hreflang can be the most complex aspect in SEO.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 1, 2024

Published

1 day ago

May 2, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Ads posted its first feature announcement in over two months, it is on PMax updates. Bing Webmaster Tools fixed a notification bug. Google SGE renamed its AI overviews to AI Answer. Most SEOs have not filled in the Google March 2024 core update feedback form. A Google search for flag GIFs can lead to Nazi flags.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Ads Posts First New Feature Announcement In Two Months – PMax Updates

Google Ads has posted its first new features announcement in its help section in over two months. This was to announce several Performance Max campaigns features, which we will get into below. But like I reported earlier, Google has not posted anything in this section for two months prior to posting this new announcement.

Googling “Flag GIF” Leads To Nazi Flags In Google Search

If you search for [flag GIF] on Google, click on the “waiving” refinement, you are taken to images of Nazi flags. I waited a full week to report on this, a full week from when Google acknowledged the issue and it is still an issue.

Bing Webmaster Tools Notifications & Insights Bug Fixed

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft confirmed Microsoft has fixed a bug with Bing Webmaster Tools showing inaccurate and/or irrelevant notifications in the notifications and insights section. Fabrice wrote, “Happy to report that the fix has been implemented and the issue should now be resolved for your site and all sites once data is refreshed.”

Google SGE AI Overviews Has A New Title – AI Answer

Google is now labeling or using the title of its SGE, Search Generative Experience, “AI Answer.” This replaces the title “AI Overviews” and “Al overviews are experimental.” This change happened on Monday, I believe.

Most SEOs Did Not Send Feedback To Google On The March 2024 Core Update

Google opened up its feedback form after it announced the Google March 2024 core update was completed and it seems most SEOs did not send Google feedback. Why? Maybe because many don’t believe Google will use that feedback to help them? Maybe because SEOs don’t want to share specifics with Google?

Sundar Pichai 20 Year Google Anniversary

Google’s CEO, Sunday Pichai, on April 26, 2024, posted on Instagram that he is celebrating him 20 year anniversary of working at Google. He started on April 26, 2004 and is now running the place.

Other Great Search Threads:

ave you seen this before…. Seems like looker studio google has got lot of spam links injected …i just encountered this while checking something… its tons of content… made a search with site: hea, Raman on X

Gartner: “By 2026, Google will lose 1/4 of queries to AI” Datos: “Really? Let’s investigate that claim with data from millions of real Internet users.” https://t.co/5QErT9g9IF Embarrassing that th, Rand Fishkin on X

The favicon guidelines are at https://t.co/9z0HOt9H5f – not all sites have unique favicons, so I wouldn’t immediately call that spammy. For images in general, a legal path may be open via the DMCA process., John Mueller on X

Well, moved to Munich, Germany., John Mueller on X

The more server logs and crawl patterns I see, the more I’m sure the world needs more SEOs. Of the good kind. You see, part of good tech SEO is fixing spiders traps, optimizing crawling, speeding up sites. 1/6, Joost de Valk on X

This Google Ads thing is becoming really expensive. Fee increase from 2% to 2.5% for Italy. Fee increase from 2% to 3% for Spain. Fee increase from 5% to 7% for Turkey., Thomas Eccel on X

We’re committed to ongoing and planned enhancements and listening to great ideas as yours to help us maximizing our crawl efficiency and minimize crawls. There’s no AI or PhD that can outperform the IndexNow signal when it is properly configured. We f, Fabrice Canel on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 30, 2024

Published

3 days ago

May 1, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Microsoft Advertising has officially added Copilot to help advertisers using AI. Tuta complained to regulators over its ranking drop with the Google core update. We saw the same person rank in Google Search with multiple entities. Google renames product sites to product websites. Google Search App has a neat screenshot feature. I am offline today, all these stories were pre-written and scheduled, including this newsletter.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Copilot Now In Microsoft Advertising Platform

Microsoft announced the general availability of Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform. This means you can now use Copilot (Microsoft’s AI) natural language conversational chat, asset recommendations, and image asset creation in the Microsoft Advertising platform.

The Same Person With Multiple Entities In Google Search

Last week, Shameem Adhikarath shared an example of an individual that shows up twice as two different entities in Google Search. It is like maybe Google was fed two distinct entities for the same person and now Google is showing both of them, with the same name and same query.

Tuta Complains To EU Regulators Over Google March 2024 Core Update Ranking Drop

Tuta Mail, a popular encrypted email service, complained to European Union tech regulators that Google dropped its rankings for all sorts of keyword phrases with the Google March 2024 core update. Tuta is upset they no longer rank for [encrypted email] after this update.

Google Search App “Send A Link To This Page” When You Take A Screenshot

One of my pet peeves is when people send me screenshots of pages they want me to read and do not include the URL to that page. Well, the Google Search app is trying to solve that issue by telling the person who took a screenshot to “Send a link to this page” by clicking a big blue “Share” button.

Google Renames Product Sites To Product Websites

Google has renamed the Product Sites search filter to Product Websites. These only really show up in the European regions and starting last week, Google renamed “Sites” to “Websites.”

Slimmer Google Dog Tag

We have seen numerous dog tags for Dooglers, Google dogs, before. But this one looks slimmer than the old dog tags. I found this new photo of a Doogler and you can see the small Google collar tag.

Programming Note: Offline For Last Days Of Passover

This is a programming note that I will be completely offline for the last days of the Passover holiday. The last days of Passover are on Monday and Tuesday, April 29th and 30th. Any stories published here will be scheduled and written beforehand and not posted live.