On May 1st, Semrush’s overall sensor tool that tracks ranking and traffic flux was measured as very high (around an 8.1 on the scale).
In addition, there have been major discussions on the forums, with everything from people receiving traffic to people not receiving as much traffic.
We kept watching the forums as well as other potential signals. The problem is that there is some confusion as to what’s happening in this regard, because the tools do not align with the forums on these types of discussions.
May 1st arrived and then we saw a real impact in terms of a possible update in Semrush’s tracking tool:
Chatter was on the rise, and appeared to get significantly higher. It has been strange to even see something like this in the week prior to an update.
However, something like this is very different in that most major algorithm updates and core updates have been confirmed by Google when they feel the need to confirm as such.
Most major core updates have typically always been confirmed by Google. And we have no reason to suspect that they won’t be confirmed again.
Indeed, the forum discussions are quite strange as well.
SEO Forum Discussions Surrounding the May 1st Google Algorithm Update
Since January, due to Google updates and almost 40% traffic loss – I have reduced my writing time on my site and focused on writing traditional books, the main reason is my rankings are being overtaken by spammers or poorly written articles by news/magazine outlets who employ foreign writers for SEO purposes.
In time, if this carries on, the writers and high-quality independent websites will be pushed out of the marketplace – and only spam or news/magazine sites left.
I have just been looking at a few sites that are now doing REALLY well and the new Google AI loves them. They all seem to have the following:
1. Created in last 18 months
2. WordPress/ simple design
3. Author profile
4. Long – AI generated text fails to write in first person, or any long words, complex metaphors etc
5. SPAM SPAM and thousands of pages created in short space of time
6. AMAZING core vitals that I cannot even beat as my users love my images too much
One in particular, since January 2022 this site (I have found) has managed to post 62,000 articles. Surely, Google should know that this must be automated no human (even with large team) can create that many articles. And, guess what! 1 million to 500k people a month already in just 3 months. All this while I – a published author for Penguin is no-where. I can just manage 1-10 articles a day on my 15 year old website.
Come-on Google sort it out, it’s not hard…
1. Give credit to old established websites
2. Realize that slowly updating/uploading articles means humans are writing them
3. If a site used to get 1 million + users before AI search – it deserves to be seen as people loved these sites
4. News or magazine websites are not the holy grail many of the articles that are non-news related are badly written.
5. In December 2019 (I keep a diary) Google search was awesome since then it has just been a downhill spiral of spam.
6. Any sites adding 1000s pages every month needs to be flagged as spam.
Bing, Yahoo, and others still function to the degree they do with smaller market share. I know SEO is SEO but each will have a slight variation in what they are looking for.
I really do not think things will get better, but rather worse. Why? Pay attention to what has taken place since 2020. We are literally in the middle of an information revolution. Controlling information is where its at from elections to medical advice, masks or vaccines, you name it. No opinion can be allowed that is not an official narrative.
Do we really think they will stop there? While the rest of the world sleeps or watches Netflix the SEO community can see how things are shaping up. This is why Elon Musk buying Twitter is so radical and necessary. Power only wants more power and to break the real monopoly controlling us will require more than chanting in the streets.
It’s been a completely normal and average weekend for me however today, after 12 hours, my traffic is at 14-15% across global and UK sites … Anyone else?
A quick review of my SERPs look normal.
You seem to be convinced that CWW are very influential on ranking. I don’t think they are very influential. The problem with our human made, human written, but not corporate owned and not blue checkmark / priority publisher sites is that Google think fake AI generated websites are real websites and our real websites have to compete with them, because they are assigned somewhat similar EAT (no EAT basically).
Add to that “toploading” of the priority stuff and toploading of googlespam (widgets, youtube), you find yourself getting less traffic for your 15 year old site where you invested your whole life into, than some vertical TickTocky viral lol video that took 2 minutes to create and provided exactly zero value to anyone, save for some entertainment (if you’re 12 and not very bright).
CWW is the least of our problems.
@Jori the nseo matter can definitely be real. It does not have to be a corporate big boy picking on us either. Part of the whole “Google will ignore xyz links, oh and you dont have to use disavow any longer” was supposed to take care of that.
Still the truth of that impact can be hard to know. I treat different sites in different ways. Oddly enough the one I do literally no linking with and ignore the backlink profile is doing best. It also has a very large amount of written content… still.
November = -47.4104%
December = +58.8018%
January = -37.3626%
February = +36.3958%
March = -36.6048%
April = -29.0398
Organic:
November = -22.2222%
December = -33.5404%
January = +6.70194%
February = -1.89036%
March = -25.3763%
April = -6.54206%
FWIW my realworld business enquiries, and many of my global competitors, are experiencing extremely low levels of traffic and interest.
* If I move, I’m dead *
That because even “good” actions can lead you to hell nowadays. Nonsense, indeed.
Yes. Im beginning to feel like its not worth it anymore. I have a really good authoritative site that has performed well over the years, until the last few years when Google have been hell bent on decreasing organic visits (that make any kind of money) and increasing their own revenue with what seems like constant updates, then having to deal with the impact of covid, lots of ups and downs over the past few years. Was steady(ish) over the last few months and was finally beginning to stress less, however something definitely happened beginning of Apr that has just resulted in poor non converting traffic….again!
No doubt whatever changes they made will be good for Google’s revenue stream.
Nothing seems to get traction.
While impression rates are on par with previous weeks it appears that the serps are trying to rank these new keyword sets. It is almost as if they flipped a switch and reset something. Maybe its like shuffling a deck of cards before a new deal if I had to try and describe what Im seeing.
Traffic is slightly down but not horrible since Monday and has been gaining back to normal through today. It really does make you wonder what they are up to at Google. Why keep screwing with things on nearly a weekly basis?
What’s Going on With the May 1st Algorithm Update?
We don’t know. And it remains to be seen.
However, we will continue to watch and report on any additional developments as they take place.
