It's been nearly one and half a month, and traffic remains down (-60%). They've completely ignored Discover issues despite so many issues.

Same boat as you MP. Absolutely Discover has been obliterated for us (yet Google happily takes content en masse with large paragraphs for their featured snippets because of the 'user experience').

Who has non responsive website now?
Everyone has responsive website.

Maybe in your sector everyone has responsive sites now however in my huge global sector many do not, many have not updated their sites in 10 years since they mostly have all realised that Google is not the determining factor for their business success.

Google is an advertising platform solely for their benefit deriving advertising Dollars for must-have widgets, current social media, popular information such as travel, music, films, most of its income is driven by Joe Public driving his / her perceived demands.

If this is the G world you live in, my sympathies, it is not going to get any better for you, why would G drive traffic to your site for you to make money when it "could" keep it to itself given the opportunity?

This is a BS business model for the vast majority.

Barry mentioned it on his website [seroundtable.com...]

I assume it will be slow because of the chaos they created in December, this part is my assumption.

Ok, so this is a completely different thing and has nothing to do with broad core updates. I assume the confusion comes from the fact it's called core web vitals.

I've seen people a couple of times making an equivalency between this and the regular core updates.

I mean, one can still think that this is / will be a core update given Google's track record of giving accurate statements, but I'm fairly certain they did say the CWV update is not a core update and has nothing to do with core updates in the slightest.

As for regular core updates, I don't think Google believes the December one was "messy" at all. The last update did exactly the same what the one before that did, in fact I'd say it even amplified it. And there's no sign of the next one, meaning they are satisfied with the results. There will probably be another regular core update within the next 3-4 months or so.

PS: I believe SEOs and webmasters are blowing the CWV update completely out of proportions. Google several times stated that the effect of this update will be very small. And it kind of makes sense. They made this change public to determine webmasters to improve their sites from a technical standpoint. Now they probably saw that many websites still don't pass the CWV test so they delayed it to give people more time. There won't be any chaos at all once this is launched. The effects of this update will probably be so small we likely won't even be able to measure it.

I hope what you say will be true but what I am thinking is that web pages what will have bad core results will be excluded from google search...

Do you really think Google will destroy the entire programmatic online advertising industry just for some site speed feature that someone at search team invented?

AdSense would be destroyed instantly, because all sites that have even one AdSense ad unit are failing the core web vitals test. Most ad platfroms fail core web vitals and there is nothing webmaster can do.

Do you really think Google will destroy the entire programmatic online advertising industry just for some site speed feature that someone at search team invented?

AdSense would be destroyed instantly, because all sites that have even one AdSense ad unit are failing the core web vitals test. Most ad platfroms fail core web vitals and there is nothing webmaster can do.

People are freaking out about absolutely nothing.

Google multiple times said this update will have a minimal impact.

Also unless your site is truly atrocious Im not sure why anyone is concerned. Talking about mega layout shifts and loading times like 4-10+ seconds etc. But if that's how your site performs now then pretty much all your visitors will bounce anyway, the update should be the last if your concerns.

>>>Who has a non-responsive website now?<<<<

If I could post links I could show two examples of sites ranking 1st for pretty much everything and they have no mobile-friendly version at all, not even a .m version. They are ranking so high because they were around years before smartphones were invented and acquired powerful backlinks at this time when they were worth linking to, they simply wouldn't have acquired these links nowadays because the UX is so bad, but because backlinks override all of googles other ranking factors combined + 10 they are placed first for everything no matter what UX update is thrown at them.

Personally, I think Google need to consider downgrading backlinks from high DA sites that are 20 years old, just because they were relevant as the best site 20 years ago doesn't mean they will be as relevant and the best site 20 years later, especially if they cant even be bothered to sort out a mobile version after all these years.......

Good call, it can't be that hard to create an eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon or Facebook, especially in 2021. Our problems are solved, you're just not trying hard enough guys, while many of you are happy to pay your mortgage and put food on the table for your children its just not good enough, you need to push for ALL the money, not some, all THE MONEY! :)

We all know of small brands that are very well known in their niche while being unknown to those outside it. I go to many for info that are publishers and purchase from others that sell products on the regular. I am sure that many of you all do as well.

If you want to play obtuse please continue to do so. Keep doing the same things and blaming Google if you think that is the way to success. Whatever fits your narrative.

>>>We all know of small brands that are very well known in their niche while being unknown to those outside it. Repeat business is the business<<<

I'm sure we also all know of MANY examples where bigger, biggest brands top out over smaller brands as well, for example, Pinterest outranking smaller brands with a photo and line of text, e-bay and amazon having a product for sale while being out of stock topping smaller brands with more information and having the product in stock.....

Hey all, just wanted to say we've definitely benefited from your updates about this last big April update. After being way down in the rankings the last 11 days we saw a big recovery starting yesterday. Hoping it sticks now. The site had no product reviews whatsoever so it was confusing why it was affected.

Same here. After getting killed in February and March, and bleeding traffic week after week, two days ago marked a slight uptick that's carried over the past few days. I almost don't want to mention it for fear of jinxing it, but I am definitely seeing some positive movements.

Yea I hear ya. I hesitated to mention it too. We had a big drop in March too that only lasted 3 days and then recovered. So not sure why we're getting caught up in these updates because we weathered all previous updates with no issues.

This morning USA traffic is down 65%, while UK traffic is up 300%. I am in the USA but my UK traffic is twice my USA traffic. Traffic from most non-USA countries is strong, but USA is a train wreck. Is anyone else seeing only their USA traffic dropping today?

christianz

Do you really think Google will destroy the entire programmatic online advertising industry just for some site speed feature that someone at search team invented?

Google is not focused on publishers, just on advertisers,
Advertisers can do almost all what they want because they pay to google
For all other who do not pay to google are "google rules"...

Advettisers and Google has same goal, goal is that place where will placed there ads unit is the best for display
So google doing all for advertisers because they paying to google

Google is not focused on publishers, just on advertisers,

You seem to have forgotten about users. Advertisers don't product revenue without an audience.

You seem to have forgotten about users. Advertisers don't product revenue without an audience.

Yes, this is correct, audience is connected with advertisers by 2 miilion of publisher websites over adsense
2 million...
Google making rules for 2 million publishers

If we are real we can see that 0.2 seconds is like nothing, not important for normal people, not for normal users,
and for google is important/ why?

I started receiving old errors from 2018 again for mobile pages. Issues that no longer exist resurfaced, which means they tweaked something again. When you validate a fix it usually says started and then passed. What I am seeing now is a new message, 'Looking Good.' I would have been amused if all these updates weren't trashing my website.

Take a look at this twitter thread...actual users pointing out problems with Discover that we publishers are seeing from the other end. Google is ignoring user interests....completely.

[twitter.com...]

@topaz the official Google support forum has similar reports but google doesn't care

[support.google.com...]

Take a look at this twitter thread...actual users pointing out problems with Discover that we publishers are seeing from the other end.

Yes.

Also Reddit threads from now and then about discover, weird search results, Pinterest spam etc. I mean threads by regular people and not SEOs.

Also this got finally fixed: [seroundtable.com...]

Anyone else noticed Google is having more and more problems lately? Like the last one or two years or so.

There were never as many bugs as these last two years. And a lot of these very serious. Indexing issues persisting for months in 2020, discover being completely messed up, google news broken for more than a year now, planned updates delayed, messy and weird core updates, etc.

It's pure speculation from my part but seems like they tried to force AI and ML on everything and it turns out it's not really working out that well.

@universenet nah this is one of the bluff that you will have to call google on. There are way too many horrendous sites out there with piss poor core vital scores.

the cwv is going to be a benchmark for a little while like the amp debacle. chances are sites with awesome cwv will get a short term boost of about 3~6 months, then they revert everything back to the good old links / paid ads $ power in term to slaughter the pigs by december.

I agree, they did something that is not working and will not admit it. The fact I am getting fixed errors from 2018 show as new errors means something is completely off. The probably can't undo it so they try patching.

I got hit so many times, at the end of March I got punched again but regarding impressions I have almost recovered it from it, impressions are up +300% but this is nowhere close to the drop I got from December 2020, just a minor recovery. If however the impressions continue rising then I will recover in a week or a few days.

I just searched for a very common but specific service. The first three places don't provide the 'specific'. The next four were price comparison sites, with none of the information I was looking for. The last three were Google books.

On to page two, and five of the results are from Italy (or at least they are .it domains). I'm in the UK with cookies deleted. None of these sites could be reached, one redirected me to a site blocked by Norton. Perhaps Norton blocked the others too.

On to page 3; eight of the results were .it domains. I didn't click on them.

On page 4; all .it domains. I gave up at this stage.

Wondered if I had a virus. I'm really experienced and I don't download anything but just in case I ran a scan on my computer; nothing found.

I tried my laptop; very similar results so no it's not a virus. I didn't click on any of them.

I checked the cached versions; they are just full of scraped mashups.

Either something is very wrong with Google this morning or someone is playing some very effective games to mess up the SERPs.

I might just as well stick a pin in a dictionary as use this advertising agency for searching. It seems to get worse by the day, as if that was even possible. This is definitely a new low though.

Take a look at this twitter thread.

At least G can be used without having to log-in.

Any site such as this (walled gradens?} will never get my patronage and I personally know of many others who feel the same way.

Fine, that's their business model preaching to the already converted, I don't need nor want it.

RPM is very low and will obviously not go up. Who is the same?

Now that we won't be getting page experience update until summer, they might do a core update next month

@Casanova Yup, AdSense is not looking good this week.

Ad rev might relate to the roll out of AdSense Management API Version 2.0 ... which... I suspect.... might actually be linked to the Disover issues too.

It's pure speculation from my part but seems like they tried to force AI and ML on everything and it turns out it's not really working out that well.

Google has no choice but to move away from the outmoded dependence on links to determine ranking and relevance. Link spam has been rampant since the beginning and the whole concept of outbound links is dead, nobody wants to do it. I have had several major news and arts publishers publish interviews with me where they didn't want to place an OBL to my own website, I have to fight for it each time and sometimes the answer is "our policy is not to include links to third party sites"

I believe that Google is dealing with the growing pains of perfecting AI now so they can free themselves from the old ranking algo entirely. The SERPS might be unstable or not very accurate for years while this process happens. Add on top of that the fact that Google has become much, much more aggressive about driving traffic, clicks, revenue into its own hands and away from ours since 2018.

Ultimately we have no leverage and it's their platform, their rules, their game entirely. Possibly governments can pressure Google if they band together...Google has started to pay some news sites. Without governments pushing hard Google will just take it all and return nothing.

As some have mentioned here, the best you can do is create a brand name that people search for. The majority of my searches are my brand name or a variation of it. It does piss me off though that competitors are trying to poach my traffic by running ads for my brand name which are coming up above my own home page now!

I dont have ads so I am unfamiliar as much as others with ads but cant you block them in ads.txt?

Google has no choice but to move away from the outmoded dependence on links to determine ranking and relevance. Link spam has been rampant since the beginning and the whole concept of outbound links is dead, nobody wants to do it.

Yes and no.

I have noticed that pure "old-school" link building where you go out and acquire links (even white hat) seems not to work - or work less. These all have a discernable pattern Google seems to have picked up on.

What does seem to work is link acquisition patterns that correlate with brands and real publishers.

I'm talking here about natural link growth that's spread out on new articles and news posts published on your site regularly coming from trusted and authoritative sites, often times repeatedly from those same sites. A process that's constantly ongoing in the case of most of your newly posted content.

Like, if you are a real publication, a normal and organic link pattern would be most of your new posts getting picked up, shared and acquiring links from other trusted sites on an on-going basis.

Compare this with "link building" - even white hat - where you create a resource and then contact other websites and ask for links to that page. All this has a footprint that can be detected.

So, what I'm trying to say is that perhaps Google is now better able to detect organic link growth vs. SEO link building (white hat / blackhat makes no difference), due to these having unique footprints and patterns. Google might just ignore most links/link building efforts if they believe they were inorganically acquired.

I rarely see sites with real organic link growth demoted during core updates. I see sites with SEO link building patterns (even pure white hat) hit by core updates all the time.