Yet another unconfirmed Google algorithm update hit this morning.
Stats in Semrush are around a 6.0 this time around, indicating some flux and changes in overall rankings and traffic for many websites.
The following industry chatter is also at a higher level than usual.
Here is the chatter going on on WebmasterWorld.com:
Hello guys,
Although I have been following up the forum for a long long time without posting, now I needed to write my first post and ask something…
Google announced early in June that the June update has two parts and the second part would be in July. The first part had already been done recently. Now the question is, do you know whether this page experience update is the second part of the June update or separate one which is independent from the second part of the June update?
It is a separate one and does not have anything to do with the core update.
The second part of the core update is expected to be released sometime in July.
Well, a local friends site I do (a painter and decorator) has just been taken over by another local decorator who doesn’t have SSL, doesn’t have a Mobile friendly (or any mobile site) and CWV scores in the gutter for the first time in a LOOONG time, so they must have pushed something else out (backlink related) else this site would have gone down further not higher IMO (and its not because I’m biased, they have no SSL, no mobile friendly site and CWV scores in the gutter, sincerely)
The last two days have been a train wreck for traffic. Today a 50%+ drop in UK and Australia traffic, and traffic to my home page is down 49%…some landing pages down 60%. Meanwhile I gained five top three terms today and impressions are trending higher (still much lower than before the drop on June 1st).
I think that this has nothing to do with CWV as I have zero red pages for mobile. There have been a handful of days with decent traffic in the last five weeks. The reality is, all these changes are designed to kill off our organic traffic for good.
My CWV scores keep changing in webmaster tools, even though I havent made any changes, very odd
I wrote about this before and yes, it’s all down to authority. Low authority sites plummeted down the search, stripped off high-volume keywords. There is nothing you can do aside working on your authority, which will take time even if you decide to buy links. You will have to create an exceptionally high quality articles to have a minor chance in earning a good position. High authority sites dont need it, a 500 piece is enough.
I think the core web vitals will mainly affect websites with a specific authority score range, the top sites won’t be affected.
How is it odd? Field data changes all the time, just look at your Site Speed report in Analytics.
It will affect all sites, but page experience being only one of hundreds of ranking factors, of course it’s going to affect some sites (or queries, rather) more than others. Top sites tend to rank well based on other factors, and CWV is not likely to bring them down, because like HTTPS it has a fairly low weight.
@yollo It has always been the case that high authority sites outranked low DA sites. I would agree that sites that are larger in scale are benefiting greatly, but I have also seen sites with lower DA than mine shoot up. I have lost half my top ranking terms, and almost all of the high volume ones since March. I have watched a site with a DA only one point above mine rocket to the top to pass all of the huge sites with higher DA, so this is NOT only about DA. I have watched a couple of others with a lower DA also rise relentlessly for months.
What they do seem to have in common is a lot of articles that they generate on every topic which use the keywords in the url. They add a new page for every single topic, repeated over and over. Whereas my home page used to rank on these searches but now lost half its traffic on a daily basis because the traffic is shifting to pages which are “exact match” for the search. If you don’t have the exact match you lose the traffic completely. Quality is not necessarily the issue either, because these articles aren’t all that great or in depth…just use the right keywords, or sometimes just landing pages with links and a few images and no real article.
I would posit that links are being demoted heavily in this core update. Google is wiping out the value of links for some sites and not others. It may be that if you have multiple inbound links from the same domain the value of the multiple links is greatly reduced…so that a mass of single links each from a different domain are helping sites to rank better.
[edited by: ichthyous at 4:00 pm (utc) on Jun 18, 2021]
I noticed it as well. Some of my competitors do just that. I think I will take a step back from monitoring rankings and keywords. I will come up with a different approach over the weekend, perhaps it is time to rejuvenate the website. I do it every year in November – December, perhaps it is time to do it again.
I will restructure the pages on the website and add new ones. I am taking a break for a week from following everything but the the website.
What’s Up With This Google Algorithm Update?
Based on the discussion above, it looks like links were demoted heavily during the past core update.
It could be that multiple inbound links from the same domain will have much more of a reduced value.
It still remains to be seen definitively, but this at least points us in some sort of direction. As per usual, Google has yet to confirm this particular algorithm update.
But we will continue to keep you updated as the story develops!
