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Google Search Algorithm Update May 1st With Rumbles All Week Prior

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2 years ago

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For the past week, I have been seeing a different pattern with a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. The forums and SEO discussion around a possible Google update was brewing a good part of last week but the automated tracking tools, most of them, didn’t really pick up signs of a Google update.

So I watched and watched, and waited for the signals I track to align and they really didn’t seem to align. The chatter within the SEO community about a possible Google update started around Tuesday of last week, they were sporadic but SEOs were talking about ranking changes but the tools like I said, really did not show huge volatility.

Then Sunday, May 1st came and the tools and the chatter seemed to significantly increase. Honestly, it is weird to see a lead up like this to an update. I know Google tends to roll out confirmed (and likely unconfirmed) updates over several days to weeks, but this just felt weird.

SEO Chatter

Let me start by sharing some of the comments in terms of chatter from both here and WebmasterWorld starting a week ago through today:

Extremely low number across all sites for me today almost as though my analytical program is broken / not working …

Global site with 6 consecutive days averaging 126.3%, lowest day 110%.

Saturdays and Sundays I usually expect about 66% of my weekday average, yesterday I was 38%, the last date I had a similar number was 25th December 2021 at 37%. Yes, my quietest day of the year.

So far today, after 10.5 hrs, I’m at 28.3% … Something’s happened / changed / been “manipulated”, again.

RedBar indeed lower numbers today. This is an inverse from my typical Sunday. Existing user interaction has increased though. New users are far fewer than it should be.

Non commerce research site had a rank increase. 3x impression rate with added traffic. Increase of keyword base. Near 200 keyword sets at position 10 and above now.

Other sites are the same.

Today we see a new dropt of -50% so far the biggest drop since panda algo launched years ago.
It is creasy because we do have a lot of #1-#3 spots but it seems to mean nothing.
We see our descriptions coming up in a lot of featured snippets ( so it should be a trusted source).
What we are missing is business traffic. So before this quality update we had a lot of business traffic. It seems that all traffic from those source are completely directed to google ads.

I see absolutely stellar gains – search traffic is up 49%(450,000 visitors) over last month on an old site but it’s the newer content doing the heavy lifting. This site has remained unaffected by updates since 2009 so site age alone is not likely a problem.

Initially Monday was not looking good for me yet finished at 103.3%, Tuesday started in a similar vein but ended with 113.7%, today seems to have started well and nearly at 50% already … fingers crossed.

Traffic sources have been normal with the USA down a couple of points.

What I have seen is a bizarre 4 paid for clicks, 2 x USA, 1 x Belgium, 1 x UK.

wow… huge drop today… all right, let’s go again 😐

pretty big this time, yes. One of the biggest drops we have ever seen so far.

Can confirm a big drop this end (entertainment news niche). Lots of spam in the results which always gives me hope that it reverses.

Yesterday the drop was big. Today I can already see that it will be even bigger. Something big coming? 😐

Yesterday somewhat of a drop, today a massive drop in traffic looks like. But my ranking is higher today. Perhaps this is new for some of you, but I’ve been seeing these days where traffic drops off a cliff on a regular basis now. IF this is a way of rotating traffic so that more sites get seen instead of always the same sites on top I could accept that, but I doubt Google is being that generous. It’s more about the experiments with page layout and loading the pages with other Google widgets.

It’s a bug got to be, there is no way that these SPAM and new sites large publisher websites should be outranking everyone. I wish they will fix it.

Volatility is very high for May 1. Massive jump from yesterday. This not being a gradual increase from tweaking different levers means they decided to roll out something bigger.

Today could be a rough ride that continues for a few days. Much slower start to the morning for me but its early and no way to tell how things will shape up.

I also see a big jump today, after a big drop yesterday. These swings are not unusual these days, I am seeing days with very large drops in traffic on a regular basis.

ok so last 2 days it’s fail, organic dropped from 3,6K to 3,2k, it’s like a filter or something on it, ridiculous .. also direct/refferal traffic lower

Yes!!! As I posted yesterday, I’m experiencing very, very weird traffic anomaly.

And the past 24 hours the same thing – very very low traffic and conversions are terrible. One of my website even had 0 traffic for 2-3 hours, despite rankings are the same.

This is getting ridiculous.

Anyone experiencing weird traffic throttling since yesterday?

All across my websites I’m experiencing very, very low traffic. Keyword ranking are all the same, which made me even more confused.

Yesterday’s sales and conversions are its lowest point since this year.

the last 2 days, rankings high, but very low low traffic. Conversions have been non existent!!!

This week have been the worse on record

There does seem to me more of a spike in the SEO chatter later on in the week, even over the weekend but it is always hard to compare weekday levels to weekend levels of chatter.

Google Search Tracking Tools

The Google search tracking tools have been calm for most of the week but they seem to be showing changes towards the past day or so. Here are some screenshots from these tools, I do suspect some will update this morning and show bigger changes.

Semrush:

click for full size

Algoroo:

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RankRanger:

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Mozcast:

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Advanced Web Rankings:

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Cognitive SEO:

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Accuranker:

click for full size

SERPmetrics:

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Advanced Web Rankings:

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SERPstat:

click for full size

Knowledge Panel Shifts

With many of these Google updates, there are also folks who pick up on the knowledge panels and there changes. So that does coincide with these reports as well:

So as you can see, there is a lot of chatter within the SEO industry but the tools were quiet most of the week. However, something bigger caught the ‘eye’ of some of the tracking tools over the past day or so. So something does seem to be up…

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.



Source: www.seroundtable.com

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Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

Published

4 hours ago

on

December 2, 2023

By

Dog Astronut Google Logo

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show more recent content in the Discover feed. Well, that may have changed with the new Google follow feature.

Glenn Gabe, who is a very active Google Discover user, noticed that since the Follow feature rolled out, he has been seeing content that is weeks and months old way more often than before the follow feature rolled out. Glenn wrote on X that “this could also be playing a role. i.e. Google isn’t providing as much recent content, but instead, focusing on providing targeted content based on the topics you are following.”

It makes sense that if you follow a specific topic and if Google Discover only shows the most authoritative types of content, it might be hard for Google to find new content on that topic. So it does make sense that Google may show older content more often for that specific topic you follow.

Here are screenshots Glenn shared:

Google Discover Old Stories Follow

Google Discover Old Stories Follow2

Have you noticed this in your Discover feed?

Forum discussion at X.



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SEARCHENGINES

Google Core Update Done Followed By Intense Search Volatility, New Structured Data, Google Ads Head Steps Down & 20 Years Covering Search

Published

19 hours ago

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December 2, 2023

By

Google Core Update Done Followed By Intense Search Volatility, New Structured Data, Google Ads Head Steps Down & 20 Years Covering Search

Google’s November 2023 core update finally finished rolling out this week, and it was the longest core update rollout. Then, a day later, we saw more intense Google search ranking volatility and chatter. Google added new organization structured data and also added a new profile page and discussion forum structured data, both with Search Console and Rich Results test support. Google’s crawl rate setting is going away soon. Google Search Console went down a couple of times this week. Google spoke about the SEO value of bringing back 404 pages for links. Did you see the Google patent for what appears to be SGE? Microsoft is working to bring GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot and Bing Chat. Google Ads won’t allow personalized ads for consumer finance topics in February 2024. Google Local Service Ads has new impression metrics. Google Ads released its Ads API schedule for 2024. Google is testing Gray accepted labels in the search results. Google is testing line separators between sitelinks. Google is testing an interview label for news results. Google local photos is testing hearts and other emotion reactions. Google is testing removing the cache link from the search result listings. Google’s head of search ads, Jerry Dischler, is stepping down after 15 years. And I’ve been covering the search industry and search for 20 years now. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Sponsored by BruceClay, who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.

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Generative Summaries For Search Results

Published

2 days ago

on

December 1, 2023

By

Google Professor Robot

Google has a published patent named “Generative summaries for search results” which is believed to be the patent behind the Search Generative Experience launch we saw earlier this year. This patent was filed on March 20, 2023 and approved on September 26, 2023 under the patent ID US11769017B1.

Juan Gonzalez Villa posted a thread on X breaking it down, which I will embed below so you can read it.

The abstract reads:

At least selectively utilizing a large language model (LLM) in generating a natural language (NL) based summary to be rendered in response to a query. In some implementations, in generating the NL based summary additional content is processed using the LLM. The additional content is in addition to query content of the query itself and, in generating the NL based summary, can be processed using the LLM and along with the query content—or even independent of the query content. Processing the additional content can, for example, mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary including inaccuracies and/or can mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary being over-specified and/or under-specified.

Here are Juan’s posts:

Nice write up Juan!

Forum discussion at X.



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