Google Algorithm Updates - 2020 Ongoing Discussion

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I think it was a bug where some kind of link filter was removed.

In my case sites with strong backlinks (which some are from domains which probably have their outgoing links ignored by Google) and above average DR had gains.

Would love to know a technique to figure out if outgoing links from a domain get ignored by Google.
 
Maybe nofollow went from little hint to BIG hint and regular followed links went from BIG hint to little? A flattening of link weight across the board? I just feel like G has been on this "linkless index" crusade for a long time, one in which I personally think they are a loooong way off from achieving given how shitty they seem to be at distinguishing "quality" content.

Big links aka "big brands" have been their cornerstone, trusty Inception-like tops to remind them where corporate "center" should be. But a lot of high authority sites also have shit technical and shit content, so if they fuck with link weight then their pre-existing big publisher/corporate cornerstone becomes corrupted and they are unable to find true center/truth.

As for someone whose never really had much of a link budget though, I'm down to party!
 
All of this "no link" talk is wishful thinking, as wishful as returning back to a time when nearly all they cared about was backlinks. Page Rank is the core of Google's algorithm. Why would they not use a metric that's available to them, one that represents votes for quality, especially when they can now ignore low quality spam and root out high quality spam? And they don't rely on a third party API like social shares.

To drop links or at least reduce their power to negligible amounts would mean they need to understand "content quality," which is completely subjective. Sure, they can look at intent, sentiment, and on-page signals, but none of that tells you anything about "quality". And everyone's idea of quality is different, and while lots of people use Analytics, there's no way they can tap into the entire clickstream.

Not to mention that on-page is as exploitable as backlinks are up to a point, a point where everyone has optimized to the maximum amount, and now you have an even playing field again and they have to lean on other metrics (like link votes).

How will they know what to rank for time-sensitive searches without measuring virality through links? What would be the tie breaker between two exactly similar pages in terms of content, on-page, and technical SEO? How will they know if a page ranking in position 9 is better than a page ranking in position 1 if what they go off is CTR in the SERPs and on-site metrics as provided by Analytics? Of course these are simplified questions not meant to actually be answered, only to illustrate the point. There's a weakness and the solution is measuring the flow of page rank through links and partially understanding relevance through anchor text usage.

The idea that they did a one-day test is goofy, too. You think they don't test these changes before they roll them out? It's not all guess work. I'm sure they have representative, offline indices they run these tests on. When they roll them out to the main index, sure they have to adjust things as the changes cascade out across trillions of pages, but the tweaks are never that drastic, because they understand what they're changing because they've already tested it.
 
Ryuzaki said:
How will they know what to rank for time-sensitive searches without measuring virality through links?
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Parsing mentions and using them to create entity ids after validation.
Validated oracle cohort groups to speed up the process.

Validated oracles are extra juicy cuz they have the side effect of letting them push their spergy agendas with out as much itemized moderation.
 
I'm more likely leaning towards increasing incompetence in Google, as it has become a (politicized) behemoth.

You could also not rule out that this was an unforeseen consequence of Google's political meddling on ordinary search results. The Authority Hacker guys talked about this as well, with "fringe rating" now in Google, supposedly.
 
@secretagentdad, Parsing mentions requires parsing and cataloguing backlinks as well as branded mentions and references. It's already being done, and to do it correctly requires having backlinks in the mix. They wouldn't drop out 90% of the equation and expect to get a better result.

@bernard, I agree. It was a legitimate bug some dummy they hired that filled some kind of gender, racial, or sexual orientation quota (which is illegal, which Yale is finding out now) likely caused the bug. Google has been having an accelerated and more consequential amount of bugs lately across all of their products. We know why, because qualifications have become less important and the distractions of the internal culture are increasing.
 
Ryuzaki said:
@secretagentdad, Parsing mentions requires parsing and cataloguing backlinks as well as branded mentions and references. It's already being done, and to do it correctly requires having backlinks in the mix. They wouldn't drop out 90% of the equation and expect to get a better result.
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Whats your point.
Links are just the easiest type of mentions not the only ones or even the most valuable ones.
Also, don't forget they can check against what gets put into their form and what gets clicked in autocomplete.
They're a platform with more traffic flow data than anyone else and they don't have a shortage of computing power.
 
secretagentdad said:
Whats your point.
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My point is exactly what we've been talking about. That they won't be dropping links and page rank as a part of the algorithm, and that it's the core part of the algorithm and what makes Google Google and not one of the other search engines with crappier results.

I also stated that there's no point in trying to answer my simplified questions because they only stood to illustrate the point, not to actually be answered, since all answers will be inadequate without including backlink data.
 
They're being displaced by other factors. I was saying the amount of leaning on links they do was going down and they were starting to very substantially weigh other types of mentions that historically have not been very relevant due to better new validation mechanisms. Not some absolutest nonsense about dropping links wholesale.
 
Im still seeing shifts in search throughout the week. This already been wholly confirmed?

I notice that each week, things change around but it looks like user habit predicts it. The audience that comes in at a certan time to search, predict certain results. Old vs yougn, etc.
 
EyesExist said:
Im still seeing shifts in search throughout the week.
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Me too. Seems like some offline link calculations got rolled in. Got some nice boosts across all my projects.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Me too. Seems like some offline link calculations got rolled in. Got some nice boosts across all my projects.
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Same here.. Glad i never got caught into the 'cheat methods' of the web

the best advice ever, "keep your links natural"

I think a whole generation of sites are tanked and gone
 
Doing my rounds in Ahrefs this morning I feel like I'm seeing more "new" keywords popping up, many on projects that haven't been touched in months. Nice broad uplift in already ranking keywords as well.

Kind of feels like Google is "tilling" the SERPs to uncover keywords they missed in previous "passes". I've noticed this in the past, new ranking keywords coming in waves as opposed to a steady/gradual trickle...but usually correlating with noticeable updates.

Anyone seeing anything out of the usual or am I just having a lucky weekend?
 
harrytwatter said:
Doing my rounds in Ahrefs this morning I feel like I'm seeing more "new" keywords popping up, many on projects that haven't been touched in months. Nice broad uplift in already ranking keywords as well.

Kind of feels like Google is "tilling" the SERPs to uncover keywords they missed in previous "passes". I've noticed this in the past, new ranking keywords coming in waves as opposed to a steady/gradual trickle...but usually correlating with noticeable updates.

Anyone seeing anything out of the usual or am I just having a lucky weekend?
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Probably just ahrefs or it didnt really effect my sites yet.

You can check by going to search console, and counting longtails in the performance tab for the last day or 2 and comparing it to the same days from last week.
 
harrytwatter said:
Doing my rounds in Ahrefs this morning I feel like I'm seeing more "new" keywords popping up, many on projects that haven't been touched in months. Nice broad uplift in already ranking keywords as well.

Kind of feels like Google is "tilling" the SERPs to uncover keywords they missed in previous "passes". I've noticed this in the past, new ranking keywords coming in waves as opposed to a steady/gradual trickle...but usually correlating with noticeable updates.

Anyone seeing anything out of the usual or am I just having a lucky weekend?
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Saw a huge rise in traffic this weekend. I haven't dug too deep but I like how it is progressing.
 
RBT said:
Just wanted to follow up on this: https://www.buildersociety.com/thre...dates-2020-ongoing-discussion.4826/post-53571

What is happening is that google seems to temporarily drop 1-2 pages from the SERPs and then I have to resubmit that URL on Google Search Console and it comes back up to its old slot immediately.

Seems like a bug. Any one else seeing this?
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I was having this exact issue.

Had a page ranked solid in position #2, then it dropped out of the index for no apparent reason.

Submitted the page for indexing in search console and the page returned to #2. I've seen this issue intermittently throughout this year.
 
Update: September 15th, 2020

An update has been simmering over the past week, showing initial signs that the chefs were in the kitchen. Seems like we've all been served up another update today.

I'm not calling it official. I haven't seen the blogs and all that talking about it. But I see the data daily. It seems to be one that pulled some offline data into the online algorithm too. Sometimes you have rankings that never get to where they should be and do everything wrong and non-intuitive, and then an update hits and "pop" they all slam into place. That's offline data being brought online. One of my bro bro's finally saw a few posts move up from way down in the top 100. One popped up 94 places where it should have been for months!

[Edit: calling it official]
 
Ryuzaki said:
An update has been simmering over the past week, showing initial signs that the chefs were in the kitchen. Seems like we've all been served up another update today.

I'm not calling it official. I haven't seen the blogs and all that talking about it. But I see the data daily. It seems to be one that pulled some offline data into the online algorithm too. Sometimes you have rankings that never get to where they should be and do everything wrong and non-intuitive, and then an update hits and "pop" they all slam into place. That's offline data being brought online. One of my bro bro's finally saw a few posts move up from way down in the top 100. One popped up 94 places where it should have been for months!
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You talking about this?

iYAId8n.png
 
Seeing massive movements in traffic (like temporarily real time traffic will drop 50% and recover over several hours), but Accuranker and SEMrush ranks/vis is staying the same or better(!). Been trying to figure out what the heck has been going on. Started Monday.
 
Seeing a 10-20% increase on last week across a handful of sites, started late Monday/early Tuesday for me. Something's definitely changing!
 
Have seen a recovery back to "normal" levels in the last 6-12 hours on two of my sites that were severely down, and the site that inversely got a boost during that period is now down itself.
 
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