Google Algorithm Updates - 2020 Ongoing Discussion

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CCarter said:
This massive update looks more like a Google HTML update since the volatility is way too high. This is Google changing the html and throwing rank trackers off.

Similar to how a wordpress blog can update to a different theme with different css and html code underneath yet the content stays the same, that is what we are seeing. The organic position results aren’t moving it’s the rank trackers that use certain css names and classes to identify the positions that are screwing up cause of the new “HTML theme”. This thing happens about 2-3 times a year.

Most rank trackers can hide this by the fact they don’t display ALL the results. For example Ahrefs will update your ranking position once a week, if an error like this occurs they can hide it for 1-2 weeks without anyone knowing. Full SERP daily tracking can’t, so it seems more sensitive since we measure volatility. It’s going to be a rough week, but things will “magically” return to normal once the rank trackers have the new html code mapped.
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I'm sure as shit glad you cleared that up. AHRefs is showing all KWs dropping out of search right now.
 
Seeing a lot of changes in the last couple of days. From what I can see, the latest updates seem to favour older sites.

I see newer sites getting kicked down a few spots in a bunch of different niches. Two of my sites that are old, but got hit by "medic update", are not on the first page.
 
Darth said:
^^^ Could be an EMD?
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I took a goosy gander. He said it's akin to WeightLossBoss.com. Google could be re-weighting EMD and partial matches and this is just a giant bounce in the mean time. It's happened before.
 
Conversions have been absolutely awful this past week in most of my niches. Thankfully I have 4 years of historical Amazon Affiliate data to see this is always the case for mid-February (September is also ass for any new person reading).

So if anyone is panicking about lower conversions on Amazon because of the last update, the update probably isn't the reason for lower conversions.

It's so weird how that works. Traffic is exactly the same as last week. Rankings have remained constant. All affiliate links for top 25 traffic'd pages are working. Yet conversions drop by 50%~ (10% to 5%). Every single year!

Thankfully people are going to be getting their tax returns soon!
 
@JamaicanMoose Yes, I figure mid-February is always weak. People spent their money in January on sale and now a lot of people are also on winter holiday, at least here in Europe.
 
My traffic has been down since the start of the week, but my rank trackers are all reporting no changes, so I have been investigating what else might have been going on (I thought actual searches for my KWs may have decreased for whatever reason).

Anyway, just saw this post and wondered if anyone here as some insight?
 
Darth said:
My traffic has been down since the start of the week, but my rank trackers are all reporting no changes, so I have been investigating what else might have been going on (I thought actual searches for my KWs may have decreased for whatever reason).

Anyway, just saw this post and wondered if anyone here as some insight?
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Like 25% of the posts on that website are fear mongering. Unless Google announces on their Twitter that there was a major update, it's not worth worrying about. Even when Google announces it, it's not worth worrying about if you've been doing things correctly.

Anecdotally, my sites have seen an increase in traffic/revenue this week and been straight cash money.
 
JamaicanMoose said:
Like 25% of the posts on that website are fear mongering. Unless Google announces on their Twitter that there was a major update, it's not worth worrying about. Even when Google announces it, it's not worth worrying about if you've been doing things correctly.
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I would have ignored it too had I not seen my own stats decrease 25%
 
Update: Leap Day, 2020

I've been too busy with a new web design project to watch closely myself, but I did notice that yesterday I sold a metric buttload of stuff on Amazon. Traffic was at normal levels though. Could be seeing some intent-reshuffling with money posts ranking better. Could be the normal fluctuations we see with updates. Here's what some of the monitors have shown:

SERPWoo:
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Accuranker:
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MozCast:
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SEMRush:
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SERPMetrics:
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I've got no other details or insights. Anyone noticed anything in particular?
 
Ryuzaki said:
Update: Leap Day, 2020
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Traffic has remained the same / slightly increased. Conversions are slightly lower this week, especially on big ticket items (note to newer Amazon Associates people: you'll have random weeks in February/March/April where conversions are ass. Don't panic, it happens every year). I've also noticed Amazon has been slower to update their 'today' ordered items reporting.
 
Possible Update: March 10th, 2020

Possible small update yesterday. I noticed my traffic was down slightly, chalked it up to a high traffic post possibly shifting around. But the forum-o-sphere is talking and the blog-o-sphere is reporting that talk. SERoundTable (where I always steal these images) shows about 5 of these:

Cognitive SEO:
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RankRanger:
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Moz:
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It should also be noted that SERPWoo, Accuranker, and SEMRush do NOT report any significant fluctuation at all.

I don't have time to do any digging into this one, so I don't have much to offer beyond "I noticed my traffic for yesterday was down a bit" when I checked my phone this morning.
 
There is a major update:

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HOWEVER it's not an organic position moving update, it's Google changing the HTML code and CSS classes of their results. Basically it's like someone switching out the theme on a wordpress site for another theme. The content is the same.
 
Yes, I noticed Ranktracker malfunctioning yesterday.
 
I took a big hit from this last update. Traffic dropped 27%. Has me running back to the Crash Course to tighten up my research and technicals. Maybe I will start doing sex toy reviews on Youtube instead of trying to rank sites lol
 
I saw an increase in traffic this past week. Saw a shift in some posts I created for backlinks. Dramatic increases.

Anyone else seen this?
 
EyesExist said:
Anyone else seen this?
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Yeah, I went down 20% due to the virus concerns and then got that 20% back and seemingly another 20% up, starting around Thursday of last week maybe. I haven't had time to dig and see if it's one post ranking better or across the whole site or what, but it is organic traffic related.
 
Possible Update: March 30th - 31st, 2020

I don't have time to steal images of SERP trackers from other sources at the moment but here's SEMRush's meter:

InvpI6q.png

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I know @bernard was saying elsewhere that one of his sites has 5x'd in profit or traffic. Maybe he can say a little something.

I do have a post that ended up locking into place at #1 and doing the full featured snippet takeover on every related long-tail, and it seems to have taken even more terms down since the 30th.
 
Yeah sure, my fitness equipment site really surged today in the rankings. When it had increased earnings, it was from the corona lockdown effect I think, but now the rankings made some signficant jumps up anyway. This was a site, I was about to give up on, but last month it has been making well above 1.5K, which is about 5x what it had so far.

The site only has 35 referring domains and jumped ahead of sites with a lot more. I do have good user metrics and I hit intent well. This specific site also has real hands on reviews.

My main site is less obvious. Some rankings are now fully back to where they were pre-November, where I lost 30% traffic. Others plummeting over the last few weeks, which I attribute mainly to intent changes for individual keywords.
 
Update: April 15th - 16th, 2020

I waited to say anything but an update started on the East Coast of the US around 10pm, if I recall. Nobody else has said anything yet but SEMRush picked it up. It's nothing major, I explain what I'm seeing below:

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I had a post start bringing in crazy traffic for terms it shouldn't have, and this update cleaned that up a bit. Seems to have been one of those updates that brings in offline data that had to be crunched first.

I like these little windows where you can improve by (made up numbers) 100 points and then be brought back down to 50 points of improvement. It's like the old days where you can make some extra cash before being brought back to reality, which is still better than you were doing. If you're constantly publishing and driving posts to the top, you can always be taking advantage of these windows of opportunity.
 
We picked it up at SERPWoo. We just no longer really blast it out to the public anymore

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They seem to be doing a bit of schema shuffling as well.
 
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