Google Algorithm Updates - 2023 Ongoing Discussion

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The December Helpful Content Update and December Link Spam Update are now both done rolling out.
 
Semrush smells something huge cooking. I checked a ton of these and nobody is quite picking it up other than SERPWoo:

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For SERPWoo below, it's the 2nd to last bar, since it's already ticked over to the 15th (it's a bit past midnight) in my time zone:

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Let's see what the word is by Monday. Perhaps they had a core update lined up and were waiting to get the HCU and LSU out of the way.
 
My first site is hitting all time highs.
  • I stopped all content and links to it since late september.
  • Did add one static page earlier this month though.
I've actually been waiting to see when traffic would start dropping since I'm no longer working on it...

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I peeked at my ahrefs page by page for 2.5+ hours tonight (i lost 35% since the link spam update.

i observed this closely because i truly haven’t bought any links - however i do build them and none of the sites I built them from were hit - in fact… their traffic went up, but the posts they linked to down (some were exact match anchors)

i did notice something very interesting… with in each page on ahrefs I noticed the only keywords that actually dropped noticeably on a specific page were the exact same text associated with the anchors of the links. But, other similar leywords for that page of mine didnt budge, at all.

Note: Both links were naturally earned links due to a statistic piece i wrote.

My hypothesis: This brings me to a theory… perhaps google could be destroying links that provide exact match anchors in hopes to observe the reaction from the mass in some way? And that this isn’t a permanent reaction and an adjustment is near? Just a theory… i got destroyed and certainly got my links naturally in this case - it just happened they were exact matches by coincidence
 
AhFreshMeat said:
My hypothesis: This brings me to a theory… perhaps google could be destroying links that provide exact match anchors in hopes to observe the reaction from the mass in some way? And that this isn’t a permanent reaction and an adjustment is near? Just a theory… i got destroyed and certainly got my links naturally in this case - it just happened they were exact matches by coincidence
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So this thread was posted by Grindstone in 2019 on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1087836159969914880

That thread addresses Exact Match Anchors:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1087922442188869633

He also quote tweeted that thread in 2022:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1538203531345244160

The above is something I started telling Clients to do in 2018 when I adjusted my order documentation. Personally, I'm after sustained growth and typically Brand/generic/related-type anchors achieve that for me.

(I've extrapolated this into my internal linking practices too - because who knows what the future holds and the above future-proofs things for Me.)

You can agree/disagree with Grindstone but it's not a stretch of the imagination that what you're observing is what he outlined.

Also how long ago did you receive those specific links? Are they aged? When did they index?

I only say that because there are direct patents on Spam Manipulation that are "time based." This is an article from 2012 that goes over a singular patent: https://www.seobythesea.com/2012/08/google-rank-modifying-spammers-patent/

"The rank transition function provides confusing indications of the impact on rank in response to rank-modifying spamming activities. The systems and methods may also observe spammers’ reactions to rank changes caused by the rank transition function to identify documents that are actively being manipulated. This assists in the identification of rank-modifying spammers."

This is kind of the big reason people tell you not to "over-react" when you see down-trends after receiving a link, ie. not removing them.
 
thisishatred said:
This is kind of the big reason people tell you not to "over-react" when you see down-trends after receiving a link, ie. not removing them.
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Haven't been following specifically what is being discussed, but anecdotally, I went viral last year and picked up a TON of ultra HQ links that I would have never usually got. However, once the initial rush was over, traffic actually went down for a period. Now it is back up and higher than ever before.
 
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A bunch of my websites I haven't built links to in months mostly saw gains (some saw nothing at all). Websites I've been working on recently saw the biggest negative drop in rankings. Weirdly, their traffic hasn't suffered all that much. The anchor text theory would definitely make sense, as I build about 20% of my links with exact and partial anchors.

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OK, now a couple of the websites I've been working on recently shot way back up. Went from mostly negative rank movement to almost all positive movement. Some kind of rollback going on. The shit is all over the place.

I'm going to give it a few days and let the dust settle. This isn't the first time I've seen a mess like this with Google.
 
Anything new?
I just recovered 100% from the last 2 updated but lost 50% traffic today :surprised:
 
I got hit hard in October's update but have just noticed an uptick in traffic from around the end of the first week in January. I think i've increased traffic around 10-15% but across some very random keywords. So, something has definitely been cooking in the serps.

I'm yet to see the complete return of all of my rankings.
 
aussiefly said:
I got hit hard in October's update but have just noticed an uptick in traffic from around the end of the first week in January. I think i've increased traffic around 10-15% but across some very random keywords. So, something has definitely been cooking in the serps.

I'm yet to see the complete return of all of my rankings.
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Same here. I got hit in September; lost clicks, impressions, and got pages de-indexed but this month everything started getting re-indexed and shooting back up so something is stirring for sure.
 
Still down MAJORLY.

Added 1,000,000 US, college educated, quality content. No change, kept dropping, and still am. Literally nothing happened.

Venturing on the dark side? Using AI content now and going to see what happens. Using it as a means to HELP the user and add beneficial content to each page. If G penalizes for that, then the who thing is broken and the future is going to be so stupid.
 
contract said:
Venturing on the dark side? Using AI content now and going to see what happens. Using it as a means to HELP the user and add beneficial content to each page. If G penalizes for that, then the who thing is broken and the future is going to be so stupid.
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Is this a move being made out of frustration and/or impatience? Is there any other option than utilizing AI content? We still don't know what Google's long-term plan will be in this area - I'd hate to see you take a website with high-quality content and potentially sabotage it based on a short-term decision driven by frustration.

I'm sure you've asked yourself this already, but I thought I'd chime in.
 
DanielS said:
Is this a move being made out of frustration and/or impatience? Is there any other option than utilizing AI content? We still don't know what Google's long-term plan will be in this area - I'd hate to see you take a website with high-quality content and potentially sabotage it based on a short-term decision driven by frustration.

I'm sure you've asked yourself this already, but I thought I'd chime in.
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Curiosity really. The algo update was a pushing point. I'm turning a HQ content site into a higher quality site so at the end of the day, so it's a risk I'm willing to take.

AI is a gateway to better content and page quality. Why would one be penalized from that? It can be abused, sure but so can link building efforts. At some point G is going to have to accept AI content. It doesn't make sense for them not to.
 
contract said:
Still down MAJORLY.

Added 1,000,000 US, college educated, quality content. No change, kept dropping, and still am. Literally nothing happened.

Venturing on the dark side? Using AI content now and going to see what happens. Using it as a means to HELP the user and add beneficial content to each page. If G penalizes for that, then the who thing is broken and the future is going to be so stupid.
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Were you hit in the October Spam (around the 19-21st in particular) update?

I'm tracking a lot of sites that got hit around these dates as that's when mine got hit, and there are no signs of recovery whatsoever for anyone who got hit around this time it seems.
 
contract said:
Still down MAJORLY.

Added 1,000,000 US, college educated, quality content. No change, kept dropping, and still am. Literally nothing happened.

Venturing on the dark side? Using AI content now and going to see what happens.
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If you couldn't recover with human written content what makes you think ai content will be any different? Not worth it IMO.

btw, i see many people stressing over getting negatively affected by last year's updates. I understand how it feels but i don't think you're doing a lot wrong. I've seen enough to think that 2022 updates was just googling running tests on the live algorithm.

By all means improve your sites but don't think you were hit because you're doing something wrong.
 
exarch said:
Were you hit in the October Spam (around the 19-21st in particular) update?

I'm tracking a lot of sites that got hit around these dates as that's when mine got hit, and there are no signs of recovery whatsoever for anyone who got hit around this time it seems.
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Yes, no linkbuilding efforts. 1-2K articles? All English writers, BB theme, etc.. It's going to take a long time for recovery for anyone hit. Nothing we do right now is going to change that.

Encrypted said:
If you couldn't recover with human written content what makes you think ai content will be any different? Not worth it IMO.

btw, i see many people stressing over getting negatively affected by last year's updates. I understand how it feels but i don't think you're doing a lot wrong. I've seen enough to think that 2022 updates was just googling running tests on the live algorithm.

By all means improve your sites but don't think you were hit because you're doing something wrong.
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I don't plan to recover with content.

These updates weren't content focused at all; though, they say they were.

Simply putting that content belief to rest here.
 
contract said:
Yes, no linkbuilding efforts. 1-2K articles? All English writers, BB theme, etc.. It's going to take a long time for recovery for anyone hit. Nothing we do right now is going to change that.
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I'm going to guess this is an MC4 type issue. You're likely being caught as over optimized for a set of factors while ignoring another, likely backlinks it seems.

What does your backlink profile look like? How much has it improved in the last 6 months and how much has your on-page improved in the period roughly speaking?
 
contract said:
I don't plan to recover with content.

These updates weren't content focused at all; though, they say they were.

Simply putting that content belief to rest here.
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I wonder if thats because of google speed issues or element problems.

If you go to google search speed do you have slow speed? One of my sites droppped and I wonder if thats because of a bit slower load time on mobile. It will be fixed in like a month. Will let you know what will happen.
 
Encrypted said:
I've seen enough to think that 2022 updates was just googling running tests on the live algorithm.

By all means improve your sites but don't think you were hit because you're doing something wrong.
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This has been my sentiment all along. They slung out a LOT of stuff "all at once":
  • Product Reviews Update
  • Page Experience Update
  • Core Update
  • Product Reviews Update again
  • Helpful Content Update
  • Core Update
  • Product Reviews Update again
  • Spam Update
  • Helpful Content Update again
  • Link Spam Update
There's a lot of flailing and attempts at corrections going on. It's a big sign that they weren't sure how all of this would impact things that there were so many frequent similar updates one after another, and that they were all decoupled from one another, which isn't necessarily something that would have been done in the past. And to make matters worse, they all came in such a rapid succession that they have to be blurring the results for Google, in terms of understanding the changes as well as they might like.

I got tagged by the September 2022 Core Update. As everyone knows in these cases, all you can do is improve anything you can and wait. But as Google always says, "these are broad updates. It does not mean you did anything wrong." This is true, and who knows what weightings caused the shuffling of results, but we know that someone won where we lost, since it's a zero sum game.

Improvement is always a good thing to be doing. I was convinced my site was on point. Then after weeks of racking my brain, I came up with a solid 5 or 6 things I could do to improve.

All it really takes is to spend some time in the SERPs and see what's ranking. It's a drastically different playing field right now than it was 6 months ago. The most obvious thing to me is that Google can't tweak the knob towards link authority because AI spammers are buying aged domains. So they tweaked it towards EEAT, and so heavily in fact that all I see ranking these days is local business sites that aren't local to me. And what do local businesses have that everyone else doesn't in regards to EEAT? That's one way to think about and tackle these updates, specifically the recent core update.

contract said:
Yes, no linkbuilding efforts. 1-2K articles? All English writers, BB theme, etc.. It's going to take a long time for recovery for anyone hit.
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(Yes, I know the site, contract is a long-time friend). I think you were hit by the Helpful Content Update based on the exact timeline the tanking occurred. You can reference the list of updates here to see it line up perfectly. And it's not that your content is unhelpful, but if you think about what you were posting compared to how a robot would be forced to interpret it, it's not surprising that they'd not understand it. Adding the text content SHOULD help but I don't think you'll recover until they update the helpful content classifier again, and that's if you get the work done before hand.

The other problem with this string of updates is that once you got hit by any one of them, and it literally didn't matter which one, every next one that came out continued that negative trajectory. Which tells me that the labels and names they're giving these updates don't mean a single ounce of dookie. They're all related and are all being tweaked together each time. The names might be the "main" thing they're working on, but all of them are in play each time. And I think the only chance for the trajectory to change is for the next core update to will that into existence. I've not seen a single site where the trajectory changed in between core updates in the past couple years.
 
@Ryuzaki, Thanks for this. You are saying for EEAT. What would you do? Make about page with writeers and why our site is trustworthy?

Hard part is I don't have that big team. What If I put generated faces. Could be this bad?
 
Ryuzaki said:
The most obvious thing to me is that Google can't tweak the knob towards link authority because AI spammers are buying aged domains. So they tweaked it towards EEAT, and so heavily in fact that all I see ranking these days is local business sites that aren't local to me. And what do local businesses have that everyone else doesn't in regards to EEAT? That's one way to think about and tackle these updates, specifically the recent core update.
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What I'm seeing is a ton of parasite spam and huge generic sites. Feels like they turned up the site wide authority knob to 11 and turned down the url level links algorithm.

If you're seeing local sites like that, I have to imagine you're targeting informational local queries and getting weird business results instead of informational content answer pages?
 
Prentzz said:
If you're seeing local sites like that, I have to imagine you're targeting informational local queries and getting weird business results instead of informational content answer pages?
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I mean that on typical, non-local informational queries I’m seeing “local” (but not local to anyone in particular) business sites with blog sections ranking. So small brick and mortar businesses are having their info blog posts surfacing, as opposed to their location or product pages.
 
A couple of my Ecom websites got hammered at the /product level. Top-level keywords saw huge increases, which make up for the traffic loss. Traffic is stable and sales are normal.

Make it make sense.
 
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