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

Published

2 years ago

May 2, 2022

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.
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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.
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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.

Advanced Web Rankings:

Cognitive SEO:

Accuranker:

SERPmetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPstat:

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:

Certainly appears something is afoot – see this query for a Hawaiian airport with a KP for a Spanish car rental company 🤷 pic.twitter.com/meQEANSDbt
— Peter Mindenhall (@PeterMindenhall) April 29, 2022
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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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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024

Published

23 hours ago

April 18, 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.

The Google March core update still is causing volatility and it is deepening. Google may make changes to the crawl stats report in Search Console. Google Search Console now shows unused ownership tokens. Google Maps will drop the review drafts. Google Add added generative AI for image generate for Demand Gen campaigns. Google Search is testing more sitelinks designs.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Deepening Google Core Ranking Volatility Hits Yesterday & Today

I know we just reported on more volatility this Monday, possibly related to the Google March 2024 core update, but we are seeing even more volatility over the past 24 hours related to this update. This volatility shows deepening movement for those who were hit, which is incredibly sad in many cases.

Google Search Console Adds Unused Ownership Tokens

Google Search Console has a new security feature under user and permission management to help you manage your unused ownership tokens. Basically, it helps you manage who has permissions to your Search Console profiles and who should not, maybe some legacy verifications.

Google: Should We Explain The Crawl Stats Report in Search Console

Martin Splitt from Google posted a one-line question asking, “Should we do something to explain the crawl stats report in GSC?” This was posted on Mastodon, which has a small audience, but the responses were pretty good.

New Google Ads AI Generated Image Tool For Demand Gen Campaigns

Google Ads announced that Demand Gen campaigns are getting generative AI tools to create image assets. This is rolling out to advertisers around the world in English with more languages to come later this year, Google said.

Google Tests Horizontal Lines For Sitelinks & People Also Ask

Google Search is testing horizontal lines under the sitelinks and the people also ask elements in the search results. This is a long horizontal line that goes across the while search result snippet.

Google Maps No Longer Will Support Draft Reviews

Google Maps will soon stop supporting drafting reviews for local business listings and Google Business Profiles. Google said that starting July 16, 2024, review drafts will no longer be supported.

Doogler In Google Play Area

Some of you love photos of dogs, so here is another one of a Doogler, a Google dog, in a play area, at the Google office. This was shared by the Life at Google Twitter account.

Other Great Search Threads:

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 16, 2024

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 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 will fight the site reputation abuse spam both algorithmically and with manual actions. Google is testing thumbs-up and down in product carousels. Google Ads similar product carousel is being tested. Google Search updated its image documentation. Google AdSense has a new ad format named ad intents.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms

Google’s new spam algorithm update also introduced new spam policies including the upcoming site reputation abuse policy that won’t go into effect until May 2024. Google has confirmed it will fight site reputation abuse spam using both manual actions (humans) and algorithms (machines).

Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results

Google launched the style recommendations with thumbs up and down buttons not long ago after testing it in January. Now Google is showing this thumbs up and down buttons in the product grid search results, so Google can see what you like or dislike and then show you more products that you do like.

Google Ads “Similar Product” Carousel

Google has a similar products section and carousel for Google Ads sponsored listings. We have seen similar products and similar shopping related results from the organic / free listings but now I am seeing examples of a search ad carousel for “similar products.”

Clarification: Google Search Supports Images Referenced From src Attribute

Google has clarified in its image search help documentation that images are only extracted from the src attribute of img tags in Google Search. This is not new, but Google decided to update its documentation based on some questions it received about the topic.

Google AdSense New Ad Intents Formats – Links & Anchors In Content

Google AdSense announced a new auto ads format named “Ad intents.” Ad intents places links and anchors showing organic search results with ads into existing text and pages on your site related to your content. Yea, it takes your content, and hyperlinks it to the Google search results.

3-Wheel Tricycle At Google

Google’s Ann Arbor office has this 3-wheel tricycle that some Googlers have used over the years to get around the office. This one looks like the hot pink Huffy brand. I spotted this recently on Instagram but the photo is from 2016.

Other Great Search Threads:

I don’t have an update to share at this time, but you should continue to use classic GMC for rules and supplemental feed support. Here’s how to switch back if needed, AdsLiaison on X

In this case, I’ve been introducing a new metric; “likelihood to get search traffic” to see what we should add to XML sitemaps. Some pages might do incredibly well on other metrics, but simply, Joost de Valk on X

It does have a title, and it loads a HTML page – so this seems normal. The JavaScript doesn’t seem to be loading well, so if you’re the site owner, I’d suggest reading ou, John Mueller on X

News! Google Ads removed in some accounts the possibility to hover over a daily budget to edit it. You need to hover now and then click on “Edit budget”. Why changing things to less user-friendly ones, Thomas Eccel on X

The time has come! Registration for the Zürich Product Experts Summit has now opened for eligible PEs in Europe. Virtual registration will follow in May. Check your inboxes and the KB for more details., Google’s Product Experts Program on X

When I want to add positive search terms as exact match, I first add them quickly as broad, then bulk switch them over to exact match. lately I’ve been getting this error and the only way I can switch the keywords is by using Ads Editor., Greg on X

Yeah, quantity says nothing about quality and even less about user value or business value. Sometimes the solution to a “crawl budget problem” is not to make the server faster & search engines, John Mueller on X

Which the best method to link to the alternative language of a website, WebmasterWorld

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 15, 2024

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 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.

There was more Google core update volatility over the weekend. Google defended its statements about forums ranking for almost everything. Google responded to The Verge’s printer article mocking its search results. Google AdSense publishers are seeing really big earnings drops. Google crawl budget is allocated on the hostname level. Google threatened California over its new proposed link tax bill with pulling investments and its news results from the state.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Weekend Google Core Ranking Volatility Taxing Site Owners

As I mentioned briefly in my Friday video recap, I was starting to see renewed chatter on Friday morning around more Google search ranking volatility. I spotted some renewed chatter that lead through Friday, into Saturday and today. So I figured I’d cover it and share some of what SEOs are saying over the weekend.

Google Responds To The Verge Mocking Its Search Rankings For Best Printer

Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge posted a new article with the intent to both rank for [best printer] in Google Search, as well as mock Google for how he can game Google’s search rankings using AI-generated content, while throwing in some affiliate links. Google’s John Mueller responded saying, “People seem to really enjoy it.”

Google Goes On Defensive On Its Search Quality & Forum Results Statements

Recently, we covered some of Google’s rationale for ranking forums like Reddit and Quora so well in the Discussion and Forums box for many queries. Just a few days ago, we covered how I was sad to see Google ranking some dangerous and potentially harmful forum threads for health-related queries.

Google Threatens California: Tests Removing Links To Publishers & Pauses Investments

On Friday, Google responded to a pending bill in the California state legislature, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), that would require Google to pay a link tax to publishers by testing removing links to California based publishers and pausing investments in news publishers within the state.

Google Crawl Budget Is Allocated By Hostname

Google gives every hostname its own allocated crawl budget. So that means each domain, subdomain, etc has its own unique crawl budget.

Google AdSense Publishers Reporting Huge RPM Earnings Drops

Many Google AdSense publishers have been reporting massive declines in their earnings and RPMs (page revenue per thousand impressions) since late February. This comes a couple of weeks after we reported the switch from CPC to CPM bidding in AdSense did not have a negative revenue result for publishers.

Google Android Figurine Display Case

At the Google Chicago office they have dozens of Android figurines on display in this glass display case. I guess they all have a name and are labeled with details. I found this image on Instagram.