Google Algorithm Updates - 2021 Ongoing Discussion

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Confirmed Update: July 1st, 2021
July 2021 Core Update

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Part two of the June update, which has been fairly interesting in combination with the Product Reviews Update, has started rolling out today. Let's see what they have in store for us.
 
Have not been fairing well recently, both clean and tainted properties, hoping this new back-to-back scheme is just taking the veil off the pre-existing public update rollout and then *non-public rollback cycles that often occur, and are known to SEOs but historically have not been well communicated by G at large.
 
As long as I don't see -10 red arrows everywhere, then I am chilling out with all google updates. Win some, lose some.

I am more annoyed about finally having to redo some of my sites for pagespeed.
 
bernard said:
As long as I don't see -10 red arrows everywhere, then I am chilling out with all google updates. Win some, lose some.

I am more annoyed about finally having to redo some of my sites for pagespeed.
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Isn't it a positive thing is page speed becomes an important ranking factor?! It's much easier to enhance page speed on a small site compared to large site like Forbes, CNET etc. I would be glad to enhance my page speed if in return larger publishers ranking for affiliate terms might lose rankings.
 
Lowrider said:
Isn't it a positive thing is page speed becomes an important ranking factor?! It's much easier to enhance page speed on a small site compared to large site like Forbes, CNET etc. I would be glad to enhance my page speed if in return larger publishers ranking for affiliate terms might lose rankings.
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I don't know, I find it difficult to hit the speed goals, because I like to create larger, more design heavy pages.

The thing is, I know my pages work, because they have a very high visitor value, but Google determines them to be too slow out of some baseline for mobile data, which is decisively too slow for my country.
 
bernard said:
I don't know, I find it difficult to hit the speed goals, because I like to create larger, more design heavy pages.

The thing is, I know my pages work, because they have a very high visitor value, but Google determines them to be too slow out of some baseline for mobile data, which is decisively too slow for my country.
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I know what you mean. I'm also struggling with my CWV score ;-) I'm just curious to know how Google will handle all the ads heavy sites of large publisher that are not CWV compliant.

I watched the following YouTube clip for page speed, which is quite helpful.
 
Seeing some positive movement for this update, no idea what it's tackling but the semrush sensor is at a high of 9.4 gonna go on vacation for a week to stop checking rankings hehe
 
tyealia said:
Seeing some positive movement for this update, no idea what it's tackling but the semrush sensor is at a high of 9.4 gonna go on vacation for a week to stop checking rankings hehe
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The most annoying is how every Google update bounces around, up, then down, down then up. And if you went up last, probably go down this time and reverse.

I try to focus on year to year increases or decreases in Google Analytics pr. page.
 
I dont believe in most of it.

Everyone, including Google has talked for years about page speed. But yet I took a new site with a very slow page speed to the top of the serps on a competitive B2B term in less than 6 months. It had a lot of other issues too besides speed, such as no links and little content compared to my competitors.

I did a whole series on it, month by month at serpwoo.com

They are just trying to distract and throw the next shiny thing at you, so you keep busy and get your eyes off the prize.
 
@eliquid I hope so, but anecdotally I've seen a lot of simple posts ranking really well.

I'm sure @CCarter would inject to say something about long seo content, but yeah, I don't know. I think Google actually values brevity/page speed.

The problem is that imo it doesn't seem like the content analysis is always good enough, so you only get to do that by having a massive backlink advantage.

Actually, my experience is that you can still get away with a lot, as long as you have a lot more backlinks.
 
Did anyone else have sites jump off penalty night of july 1st or morning of july 2nd?
 
Ryuzaki said:
Confirmed Update: July 1st, 2021
July 2021 Core Update

dIYqafi.png

Part two of the June update, which has been fairly interesting in combination with the Product Reviews Update, has started rolling out today. Let's see what they have in store for us.
Click to expand...
Ahh fuck. They got me with this one.

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-200,000 clicks over the 2 weeks compared to previous 2 weeks. -3 million impressions over the 2 weeks compared to previous 2 weeks. CTR went down by .4% which is insignificant. Average position stayed the same.

Looks like the July 2021 Core Update just removed my listing from many keywords. The keywords that were unaffected had no change in rankings.

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The effect was a 12% drop in organic traffic but a 1.25% drop in earnings!

SWEET!

The update removed my site from keywords that weren't converting. Those users weren't interested in coming to my site and Google removed my site from those listings. Good for me, good for Google, and good for those searchers!

I'm actually happy with this update and drop in SE traffic!
 
Could just be seasonal as well. July is the big vacation month in a lot of places.
 
Seeing some pretty big movements on my keywords in the last 24-48 hours. Anyone seeing something similar?
 
Yes, could seem like an update, but a minor one.

I only saw major changes on some 6 months old sites, so I guess this is a data refresh of some sort, that's why these newer sites got a boost.
 
CaptainHustle said:
Seeing some pretty big movements on my keywords in the last 24-48 hours. Anyone seeing something similar?
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The April 8th product review update made it so that an affiliate site pretty much couldn't rank for a non-review term (e.g. it could rank for 'best drum set' but not 'drum set'). I'm seeing some of my sites pop back up for non-review e-commerce terms (e.g. now ranking for both 'best drum set' and 'drum set').
 
Confirmed Update: 7/26/21
Link Spam Update

Don't let this image fool you:

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Three's been a ton of little micro-updates in the past couple of weeks, but today, on the 26th, even though the image doesn't show it yet, Google is releasing a Link Spam Update to target unnatural links.

It's meant to nullify spam links even better, and should take 2 weeks to roll out.

Google says: “In our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update… Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.”​
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Search Engine Journal says: "Information strewn throughout Google’s announcement suggests a particular emphasis on targeting links from sponsored, guest, and affiliate content."

Sounds to me like they might have learned something from getting people to crowd source their work for them using the rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc" markup.
 
This one sounds scary if you've ever touched any sort of link buying service, interested to see what happens.
 
britt said:
has anyone been affected by this yet?
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The updates usually take some time (about 2 weeks) for their impact to be fully felt.
Interestingly, since the updates started in May, my site has been seeing a spike in traffic (3X) the usual during the 2-week rollout period. The traffic then levels to the normal numbers after the rollout is complete, usually with some negligible or no gains or losses at all.

I must be doing something lackluster if these updates are not affecting my site negatively or positively.
 
bernard said:
I think what I felt was cannabis intoxication, sorry.
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There's been an on-going update for about 5 days now for sure. I've seen some wild swings in traffic, affiliate clicks, etc. I haven't had time to analyze it but it's definitely there. There's been talk about it here and there on the forums and blogs, too. It's been mild but lasting longer than usual for small updates.

Here's the Algoroo (first one that came to mind) that I checked:

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Definitely more volatility than normal as of late. Here's the Semrush Sensor for good measure:

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