Mobile traffic went down even though the website has great Core web vitals performances.. indexing new content is so delayed

I am experiencing the traditiional Xmas / New Year wind down but without the parties etc ... Many businesses in my global industry are closing this Friday until 4/5th January, I expect much lower traffic and enquiries.

YMWV!

A 76% drop in USA traffic this morning by 10am! That includes a 49% drop in visits to my home page and a 36% drop in searches overall. Every day a new rotation of which pages drop through the floor. Lately it's been my home page that has gotten hammered, while traffic to lower level pages seems to have improved. Anyone else seeing this?

1. Indexing for new content is very slow down.
2. Search results had some problem with show fresh content according to phrase or keyword.
3. The automation software for SEO show for our domain that we grow up but GSC show completely different results.
4. Even if you want to find some answers on some questions in Google it's very difficult to find the right website with the right answers.
5. Reduce bad performance by decrease some of the ad units run by Google Adsense.
6. More and more websites in the EU without new CMP get better positions in SERP.

If you want, you can add more observation of your website.

Console got updated with data for 14th.. but 15th data is still missing/delayed lol

I am experiencing the traditiional Xmas / New Year wind down but without the parties etc ...

This is the first time in 20+ years that I've seen a fairly steady rise in traffic during early December. Normally our travel-planning site's traffic bottoms out in the weeks before Christmas, but I think pent-up demand and optimism spawned by COVID-19 vaccines have a lot of people thinking about trips in 2021.

As for the core update, I think we benefited a bit (but just a bit).

EditorialGuy, wish you all the best in 2021, 2020 for the travel niche could have been very painful I would assume :(

“Validation temporarily disabled
If you see a "validation temporarily disabled" message in your report, this is because we're updating some of the criteria for some issues in this report. This change does not affect validation requests that are currently in process, but new validation requests can't be submitted until after we finish updating our issue criteria. Thank you for your patience.”

Now GSC is suspending Validation. First manual indexing feature is disabled and now validation is suspended. Want us to fix our sites but doesn't give us the tools to fix our sites.

Is anyone else still struggling with all google tools, GSC and GA have been intermittently down for weeks now. Google really is a mess atm. When I think back to a couple of years ago, the results, tools, and just general feeling around google was so much more positive. These past 2 years have really have made a mess of things.

Is anyone else still struggling with all google tools, GSC and GA have been intermittently down for weeks now. Google really is a mess atm. When I think back to a couple of years ago, the results, tools, and just general feeling around google was so much more positive. These past 2 years have really have made a mess of things.

Yeah.

In the last two years Google seems to have changed its communication strategy and relationship with webmasters.

Tools are bugging out more, features removed or "simplified".

And more importantly less communication. (no, ironic Tweets from JM, arrogant and smug ones from Garry and copy-paste of the core update blog post from Danny don't count as proper communication)

In the past at least there was some kind of communication about what updates did. Now all is said it's a "broad update that does things".

Relationship and communication between Google and webmasters has deteriorated significantly the last 2 years.

Seeing indexing issues again. Console says 'URL is on Google' but it's not.

I am also seeing issues with indexing.

Also, some Top Stories carousels and Google News queries are out of date by four days in the US Search. Outside of the US, the carousels and news results are minutes old with fresh content. So a problem with US results?

@topaz

I had the same four/five days old issue yesterday in the UK, India and Australia but it was fixed automatically after 17 minutes.

I also confirm the indexing issues in France, US and UK

@topaz

Did you recover from Google Discover's zero impression problem that you have faced in August? I just read your messages about it in another topic and wanted to ask that. Thanks for your response.

Nope, haven't recovered from that.

EditorialGuy, wish you all the best in 2021, 2020 for the travel niche could have been very painful I would assume :(

Yes, it's been awful. The good news is that we bottomed out last March and April, so now we aren't facing our usual December dip. :-)

I haven't recovered from the August bug/update as well.

I'm seeing the normal Xmas slow down with US G.com looking ok BUT G.UK a strange mess however both sets of SERPs have one thing in common.

A US site, good company not supplying UK, that is ranking very high with a 10+ year old page comprising of only one poor image and the three keyword phrase ... and that's it, nothing else.

Back to the future 2000 anyone?

E.A.T?

The SERPs here in the UK seem to have been over-simplified. To rank for, say, red widgets it only seems to be necessary to be highly relevant for widgets and for the page contents to mention red (or even have a backlink from a site that is about something red).

If this is artificial intelligence then it must have an IQ of about 20. The result is that specialist sites have been pushed right down which must be frustrating for searchers who are looking for real information. Will most people be satisfied with these results though? After all they will be presented with sites of well known companies that they are more likely to trust (even though their expertise in the searched for term is dubious) rather than specialists whom they have never heard of.

I'm interested to see that it only seems to effect good money terms in my vertical. I wonder if Google has a list of key phrases that it will only give to large companies regardless of relevance?

Perhaps this is the new normal. If so most of us are (pick your own word here).

Seems there's a lot more change today following this December core update.

Traffic is down and Semrush is reporting movements. Not good

the update is not completely rolled out as google stipulates .. Huge fluctuation started yesterday

@superclown2

For several months my UK widget SERPs have been, mediocre, my US, IN, loads of others, have been pretty much as expected with, I'd say, 80% good relevancy.

It's not as though G is pushing any specific company, other than the irrelevant US suppliers, the results have generaly tended to be extremely poor in comparison.

Not that DDG et al are any better for the big key phrases here, they are all very poor, MS supplied results have tanked big time to the extent I have stopped using them anywhere near as much.

i feel their attempt to be different has failed, anyone else?

Right!
Semrush Sensor shows crazy movements today for many EU countries, USA, Australia etc.
Definitely there is something going on.

@Redbar
Frankly I think Bing results are awful and their display is a mess. I've given up on DDG because most of the results I get are relevant only to the US and I'm in England. Google is still the best in town - usually.

However I checked a competitor's site with a page which beats mine on Google for a decent phrase - say very tall unicorns. Their site registers well for tall unicorns but the word 'very' doesn't appear on their page; no synonyms of it are on their page; it is not in any links to their site; none of the sites that link to them have it in their name or description; out of 260 pages of their site the word only appears 8 times.

Change the word 'very' in the search term for any synonyms of it and they disappear down to page three plus.

The logic of this completely escapes me. I can only conclude that either Google is deliberately making the results less relevant to encourage clicks on ads; they are trying to simplify the SERPs by ignoring certain words; or the 'update' is very much a work in progress.

In the meanwhile I am still seeing movement for good money phrases but none for the less important ones, which seem set in stone.

A complete train wreck today...searches down 31%, USA traffic down 38%, UK traffic down 29%. That's while I've gained back six top-three ranking spots. These days it's averaging more than half the days with traffic sharply down, and the other half mediocre.

@superclown2

As bad as many of these SERPs are I am still getting serious enquiries and orders however I do know, because these enquirers tell me, that they are having to delve deep into their SERPs to find their potential suppliers.

The lack of realworld trade fairs this year has "complicated" things plus the necessity to quarrantine in some countries has reduced my air miles greatly!

@ichthyous

Do you even have any organic traffic left? Based on your posts, it looks like your traffic should now be zero, or minus something. Apparently you never get increases?

@petterijokelainen The numbers I'm posting are compared to the 4 week average for that day...so for example at 7:30pm I'm -16% on USA traffic and -41% on UK traffic compared to the average Friday . Searches down 22% and overall traffic down 16% so far today. Those are big drops, even adjusting for the Christmas downturn.