Google Algorithm Updates - 2022 Ongoing Discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
Theory Time!

Google has a new modus operandi going. What are we on... the 5th Product Reviews Update (PRU) in about a year or whatever?

It never made sense for Google to work tirelessly and quietly on some small test index in the lab, creating some monster of an update. It never made sense to drop that update on the live US index or even global index, and then have to do a bunch of course-correction. Never made a lick of sense.

What does make sense? Creating milestones and smaller feedback loops that you give you actionable data in shorter amounts of time.

And that's what we're seeing with the 5 PRU's so far. They dropped the first iteration, then tweaked for the next small goal, and released that, so on and so forth. And they're not done.

This makes sense. It causes less disruption for everyone, creates less time for SEO's to "figure it out" because of more constant, albeit smaller changes, and it doesn't freaking destroy businesses and lives with mistakes. It gradually destroys them! I'm kidding but really, a gradual destruction gives us time to pivot rather than end up on the streets eating the leather off of our shoes.

I think that's why the Helpful Content Update (HCU) has been so quiet. I bet by this time next year, we're talking about the 3rd, 4th, or 5th HCU. Matter of fact, quote me on it. This is the new paradigm. The incremental update. Chapters in a book, rather than slamming the entire heavy hardback novel on the table and sending chess pieces flying everywhere.
 
Ryuzaki said:
This is the new paradigm. The incremental update. Chapters in a book, rather than slamming the entire heavy hardback novel on the table and sending chess pieces flying everywhere.
Click to expand...
Probably right, but they literally invited SEOs like Glenn Gabe and others to "review" and learn about the update ahead of time. Man they hyped up its immediate effectiveness. There's nothing to learn at this stage since it hasn't done anything.
 
@Ryuzaki You mean it has already been rolled out? Or that this update is more like the finishing touch and then they call it?

I think it could be true, but we'll see. I've noticed some pretty major changes over the last month and two, mostly positive and I'm seeing more search results align with "real tests" when it comes to products.
 
So far if this is update or just such a time because there are holidays in USA and people don't search as much. My traffic is down for around 35%.

What is interesting Positions are almost same. CTR is same. But impressions are down like 50% or even more.

Random number: Let's say from 80.000 impresion we are at 35.000 impresions.
 
My traffic is down about 15% WoW.
But that diff goes away entirely if I filter off Seychelles/Czechia traffic.
On top of HCU and the US holiday weekend, it seems like Google is taking this time to fix that bot/bug/spoof traffic in UA.
 
Traffic down 75% for a big, brand white hat site. I've NEVER seen this before... Feeling completely crushed. No black hat, link-building, etc. All human content, no AI. Some articles up to 12,000 words, most ~400 words. Such BS that in order to answer a question, which could be answered in 50 words, you need 1500 words of filler. All of these sites online are straight up garbage and still ranking just fine.

Seeing a LOT of garbage sites jumping up in ranks for no apparent reason.
 
contract said:
Traffic down 75% for a big, brand white hat site. I've NEVER seen this before... Feeling completely crushed. No black hat, link-building, etc. All human content, no AI. Some articles up to 12,000 words, most ~400 words. Such BS that in order to answer a question, which could be answered in 50 words, you need 1500 words of filler. All of these sites online are straight up garbage and still ranking just fine.

Seeing a LOT of garbage sites jumping up in ranks for no apparent reason.
Click to expand...
That sucks. I believe it was the John guy from Google that tweeted a link if you think the changes from this update are off.m where you can give feedback.
 
contract said:
Traffic down 75% for a big, brand white hat site. I've NEVER seen this before... Feeling completely crushed. No black hat, link-building, etc. All human content, no AI. Some articles up to 12,000 words, most ~400 words. Such BS that in order to answer a question, which could be answered in 50 words, you need 1500 words of filler. All of these sites online are straight up garbage and still ranking just fine.

Seeing a LOT of garbage sites jumping up in ranks for no apparent reason.
Click to expand...
Define big brand site to give this some useful context.
 
MrMedia said:
Define big brand site to give this some useful context.
Click to expand...
Trademark, brand.com domain, not a keywordsite.com domain, custom theme, custom logo, about us pages, contact, TOS, etc. Legit brand. Non-spam based content, made in the USA. It's fairly obvious these days over spam built sites vs handmade sites.
 
Darth said:
I'm seeing some movement now. Some evergreen SERPs that haven't changed in a year, I moved up.

@contract here's the form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiHK67MSjwH8U_dt-DFiMaT-Gp4IGxUmgzBGQcbgR-PQBpEA/viewform
Click to expand...

Honeypot, even with good intentions I don't trust G enough not to further target sites just for reaching out. I've been in IM for like 15 years now? I've seen too much happen that contradicts.

Speaking of, this is the first time in 15 years where I've seen one of my own big brands get hit majorly for doing nothing wrong. Came as a big surprise! No manual actions in console. Crazy thing is G was reporting typical # of search impressions during roll out, even when I saw traffic drop, but when I re-checked search console, impressions were plummeted. I couldn't figure out why analytics and ad network showed lower traffic #'s. Their data is very bizarre to be going back in time and changing.
 
contract said:
Trademark, brand.com domain, not a keywordsite.com domain, custom theme, custom logo, about us pages, contact, TOS, etc. Legit brand. Non-spam based content, made in the USA. It's fairly obvious these days over spam built sites vs handmade sites.
Click to expand...
None of that says it’s a big brand to me. These days that is bare minimum. Is a custom logo really the benchmark for a big brand?

Traffic? Referring domains? Age? Surely these metrics count more in regards to the status as a brand and in reference to algo updates.

useful to know if a genuine big brand got demolished in this update or, with the greatest respect, just another seo site got hit.
 
@contract, what’s the DR score of the site? I suspect part of what they determine helpful or a big brand is based on others votes (links).
 
My site that was hit in the last PRU seems like it's being seen through a new lens now, some bigger first page keywords returning to their pre-PRU positions (from lost) and a bunch of lower volume new keywords popping in positions #20-50. I haven't really touched anything since that late July PRU rollout so assuming this the HCU doing something here but not sure..
 
Ahrefs traffic seems to be unaffected but did experience a week of decline in analytics though.
voKJeaS.png


Also stopped building links for like the past 1.5 months... just picking up whatever HARO has and what comes naturally. DR did steadily decline from like 46 ~> 37 but then again, traffic steadily chugs upwards so who knows...
 
So I know this isn't exactly about rankings but its rather important.

Auto complete is now suggesting real multi step deviations and generic keywords under peoples brand names that don't even fully share terminology.

Holy Balls Talk about leaching brand equity.

Google is the ultimate network effect tax man.
 
Has anyone got an answer for the folks whose pages appear to be indexed in GSC, but when you search any related keywords on the page it doesn’t show up in tge SERP at all?
 
mcfarlanek said:
Has anyone got an answer for the folks whose pages appear to be indexed in GSC, but when you search any related keywords on the page it doesn’t show up in the SERP at all?
Click to expand...
Yes, we talk about this constantly as it's a newer kind of issue that seems to be the norm these days. In fact we talked about it yesterday here. To add to the discussion, I think it's as simple as "Google crawled and indexed the page but isn't ranking it yet." They used to do those things extremely fast and now they not only aren't doing it fast but are decoupling the two action. The higher your page rank score the less of a problem it seems to be.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Yes, we talk about this constantly as it's a newer kind of issue that seems to be the norm these days. In fact we talked about it yesterday here. To add to the discussion, I think it's as simple as "Google crawled and indexed the page but isn't ranking it yet." They used to do those things extremely fast and now they not only aren't doing it fast but are decoupling the two action. The higher your page rank score the less of a problem it seems to be.
Click to expand...
Hey thanks @Ryuzaki but I meant pages that have ranked for years then have disappeared from the serps?
 
Not sure if this is related but... in the past week or so I've had two articles rank FAST.

Article #1: Made it to rank #5 and was only published 2 days ago.
- KW difficulty was 18.
- Ranked for 2 kw out of the gate.

Article #2: Longtail but made it to rank #3 after 1 day.
- KW difficulty was 0.
- Ranked only for 1 kw out of the gate.

Usually I see the articles start ranking for a bunch of related KW before settling in after the 6-8 week mark. Some are even slower and take like 3-4 months for google to even figure it out...

My DR is still declining... down to 36 now ):
- At this point I think link building velocity is a part of the formula for DR.
 
The Helpful Content Update is officially complete and done rolling out, as of today, September the 9th, 2022.

Q8qT8sZ.png

​
Congrats to everyone who survived, even if you were hit to some degree. You just never know how these things will go. Yesterday got a lil rocky according to all the SERP weather trackers:

jqXstYG.png


OKCbmyl.png


LCsPKEt.png


Oc89MU3.png

​
Who knows if that was this update or another one they're already rolling out. It definitely seems like smaller and more frequent updates are the way things will be, and that doesn't even mention the daily or even more frequent tiny updates that happen.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back