Google Algorithm Updates - 2023 Ongoing Discussion

[illmasterj]

Seeing something in the last 48 hours for an affiliate/display ad site. No decent data at this point but my spidey senses are tingling.

Organic traffic is down (not much, approx 12%) but rankings aren't indicating more SERP features or ads. Anyone seeing similar?

 

[Prentzz]

Seeing something in the last 48 hours for an affiliate/display ad site. No decent data at this point but my spidey senses are tingling.

Organic traffic is down (not much, approx 12%) but rankings aren't indicating more SERP features or ads. Anyone seeing similar?

Nope. I'm tracking quite a large number of sites that are doing big numbers in ads / affiliate, and which I use as a gauge for when updates are happening. Nothing obvious on any of the 20 I just checked. Could be something very small / only starting to roll out. Will check the remaining few hundred if I see more.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Seeing something in the last 48 hours for an affiliate/display ad site. No decent data at this point but my spidey senses are tingling.

Organic traffic is down (not much, approx 12%) but rankings aren't indicating more SERP features or ads. Anyone seeing similar?

Semrush and Cognitive SEO are showing movement, but way many more trackers aren't:

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I suspect something is going on in the "product" side of things, whether that be reviews or product listings. @jstover77 is seeing that as well:

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.

Part of my anecdotal evidence is the wide-swinging, chaotic nature of my number of clicks going through to Amazon while simultaneously seeing a small but non-negligible rise in overall traffic. I have not dug into any data to bother to pick this apart. Que sera sera, for now.

Besides this and even including it, things do seem suspiciously quiet. For the first time in a long time, my "this week compared to last week" graphs have less than a 2% variance on them. I'm guessing we're in for a core update eventually, possibly soon.

 

[ianovici]

Seeing something in the last 48 hours for an affiliate/display ad site. No decent data at this point but my spidey senses are tingling.

Organic traffic is down (not much, approx 12%) but rankings aren't indicating more SERP features or ads. Anyone seeing similar?

I also experienced drops on almost all my sites.

Noticed some stuff:
1. The extreme volatility of the second page. I have some medium to hard keywords "best x" that I recently added(1 month ago). My position changes between 8 to 13. When my site is in the top 10, the second page is almost the same as prior to adding the page. When my page is on the second page, the results change completely with the exception of one high authority site. When I noticed that, I started to track aggressively the results. And this started on 15th January. Noticed this for another site with another keyword.
2. Lots of local sites ranking for general keywords. The content is "poor". Short in length, with poor formatting and no kind of optimization.
3. Old content on my sites ranks for 1-2 days and drops for a few days. Starts again and so on...

 

[Ryuzaki]

2. Lots of local sites ranking for general keywords. The content is "poor". Short in length, with poor formatting and no kind of optimization.

This is what I'm seeing too. I've talked about punching up our EEAT in my case study thread and some other thread and added some stuff to the Kitchen Sink thread for this reason. The content is not good or better than what it's outranking, so the question is what are these sites doing differently that's being so strongly over-weighed at the moment? EEAT signals.

 

[ianovici]

This is what I'm seeing too. I've talked about punching up our EEAT in my case study thread and some other thread and added some stuff to the Kitchen Sink thread for this reason. The content is not good or better than what it's outranking, so the question is what are these sites doing differently that's being so strongly over-weighed at the moment? EEAT signals.

For me, the more I look, the more it seems more of an overall topic. The general content of the site helps it rank for keywords it would not otherwise.

What I'm observing is that either the site is strictly on a topic or has enough juice to rank. I have some products that are closely related to plumbing and the guides that I added are outranked by local plumbing sites or by plumbing blogs. The plumbing blogs(AdSense sites) are strictly on plumbing with no EEAT.

I think I'm gonna wait before changing something. My guess is that some kind of fix will be released soon and don't want to end up in another situation.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

I've lost all featured snippets a few days ago. Again. Last time in December they came back after some days. Hopefully, this time also. Quite disapointing seeing -33%, while the search results actually got worse / less relevant due to my 'snippet ban'. By the way, also the FAQ rich results are removed for my website.

I'm just wondering why I would lose the rich results. Maybe EEAT. At the moment I do not have an author box (working on it) and just recently added social profiles to footer / schema. I'll keep improving this and hopefully it will bounce back.

 

[Barry]

Like others have reported, there's something going on. I'm seeing a lot of movement across my main sites - one of which is experiencing massive losses. These position losses are much like the first rollout of the product reviews update, where pages would become not findable for their keywords. These are not "drops", these pages do not rank anywhere for their target keywords after this update.

This is the same behaviour from previous "product review" updates - position #1 to no longer visible for the keyword, anywhere. On this site, these losses are across both review and information posts.

A lot of my pages are looking like this, from #1 to non-existent. This page surged to #1 at the start of the "helpful content update" on the 5th December, then when the update ended on the 12th of January, the page disappeared, then surged back, now gone again - no rhyme or reason. Site is clean, all hand-written quality content, and no link building.

I used to get really bothered by this madness - not now, it's just part of the game.

 

[tyealia]

Seeing this as well, a big hit once again to my EX main site that google seems to annihilate then revive every couple of months 50% drop vs 7 days ago.

 

[Prentzz]

This is what I'm seeing too. I've talked about punching up our EEAT in my case study thread and some other thread and added some stuff to the Kitchen Sink thread for this reason. The content is not good or better than what it's outranking, so the question is what are these sites doing differently that's being so strongly over-weighed at the moment? EEAT signals.

Can you share an example of this, even via DM, that's not going to out your site. I wanna see a few examples of this because I've not noticed it anymore than it's ever been.

 

[wikibum]

I am seeing a massive drop in one of my product review sites while another one go jacked up. The only difference between the two are the brand signals + traffic sources. One is getting more brand signals and traffic from other sources, while the other isn't as much (only because we were testing to see what works before implementing on the other site)

Other traffic sources + Brand signals are definitely helping to move the needle.

 

[smithy]

Semrush is showing huge movement today at 7.2.

Noticing a 15-20% increase in traffic today compared to this time last week.

https://www.semrush.com/sensor/

 

[Politico]

I noticed about a 25% drop in search traffic around Feb 9, not sure what accounts for it but it had basically recovered all the lost traffic from 2022's updates before dropping. I put a lot of kitchen sink style work in to do that, so kind of annoying. Have been seeing some wild kw ranking swings the last few days too.

 

[Zoro]

GSC updates is now over 24h for me, was 9 hours aprox a few days ago.

 

[ianovici]

Update seems massive. Affects all my sites. Have keywords that dropped from 1-3 to 100+.

 

[Biggy]

Semrush is showing huge movement today at 7.2.

Noticing a 15-20% increase in traffic today compared to this time last week.

https://www.semrush.com/sensor/

Can you write down what do you think why your site went up?

1) do you have author bio page at the end of site? Only on top site?
2) real author names with surename?
3) about us pages real?

Would love to know more what's the reason in your opinion. My site(s) all of them dropped like 50-70% and now i'm maybe 10% up, but too soon to tell.

 

[smithy]

Can you write down what do you think why your site went up?

1) do you have author bio page at the end of site? Only on top site?
2) real author names with surename?
3) about us pages real?

Would love to know more what's the reason in your opinion. My site(s) all of them dropped like 50-70% and now i'm maybe 10% up, but too soon to tell.

It was a false dawn.

Back to before now, unfortunately.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Update: February 21st, 2023
Product Reviews Update

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This is the 6th Product Reviews Update and is hitting old and new languages, including: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese.

It will take around 2 weeks to roll out.

 

[MrMedia]

Up another 10% - something is definitely going on

 

[Boy]

Someone @ me in 2 weeks when it's finished rolling out and I'll share how my auto-translated posts into those languages are doing.

 

[wikibum]

auto-translated posts

If you are auto translating the posts, there is a high probability that people reading them in their own language know that the content is crap and are not converting, so I am wondering how that part is working out for you.

I am saying this because I tried auto translating and then had a person native to that language read my article and they said they would leave my site and never ever come back because it was total trash :-(

 

[Boy]

there is a high probability that people reading them in their own language know that the content is crap

That's what a disclaimer is for.

so I am wondering how that part is working out for you.

Based on the aff programs that allow me to see the country of origin, it's working fantastic. What once was a sea of USA, UK, and Canada is now incorporating a ton of South America and Europe.

I am saying this because I tried auto translating and then had a person native to that language read my article and they said they would leave my site and never ever come back because it was total trash :-(

I have some guy in Poland that messages me every few days asking for a job.

 

[smithy]

Up another 10% - something is definitely going on

It seems like you're never hit by these updates.

In fact, with every update, you seem to get an increase in traffic, which is the opposite experience of many.

Do you have any advice or wisdom you mind sharing?

 

[MrMedia]

It seems like you're never hit by these updates.

In fact, with every update, you seem to get an increase in traffic, which is the opposite experience of many.

Do you have any advice or wisdom you mind sharing?

i hinted at it before. Spread the odds of getting destroyed by having a ton of quality content. Many of my keywords have also taken a beating but many have skyrocketed. The net effect is positive and has been since I ran this site in question through every update. Every update I see a good boost but this one is the best yet.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

In fact, with every update, you seem to get an increase in traffic, which is the opposite experience of many.

You have to remember that a lot of people who are succeeding don't like to post too much on the forum every update (or at all about their sites specifically) - they might not even really notice the update/think it's a big one so you always get a lot more noise from people who went down. Don't assume 'many' is anywhere near the majority. If you're getting hit every time by every update though you're definitely doing something wrong:

* does your content suck/are you taking too many shortcuts/relying too much on tools + crappy writers just to hit some score?
* do your links suck - are you just buying the same links everyone else is being dumped while some of your competitors are getting stuff you'll never get from those vendors?
* is your site slow/ugly/weird (I see more of these than I could count...) so your bounceback to search is too high/you're sending all kinds of negative signals to google...
...... you could go on forever but there must be something if you're noticing most updates.