Google’s May 2022 broad core update rolled out on May 25, 2022 and the rollout completed on June 9, 2022 (taking about 15 days to fully roll out). It was a massive algorithm update with many sites seeing a ton of volatility early in the rollout. But that was just the beginning, as we saw several large tremors during the rollout (with some sites reversing course based on those adjustments). I’ll cover more about tremors later in this post.

Also, it really felt like there was something different with this update (based on analyzing sites getting rewarded, sites surging back from the dead, the tremors that rolled out, the intent shifts that occurred, etc.) It was one of the biggest updates I have seen in a long time.

The problem is that we’ll never know what Google changed. That’s the reality of where we are with broad core updates, and it’s extremely important to understand that. I’ll also cover more about this later in my post.

Broad Core Update Case Studies:
When covering broad core updates, I’ve found the most effective way to demonstrate what happened is to provide cases of sites I have worked on. That’s because I have in-depth knowledge of each site, their history, each niche overall, I know what was surfaced during the audits, the work that was completed, how long those changes have been in place, and more. So, I’m going to cover five micro-case studies that once again underscore the complexity of broad core updates. In addition, I’ll cover some other important changes that coincided with the May 2022 broad core update.

And I wanted to thank my clients for letting me cover these cases. I think the cases can help other site owners understand more about how broad core updates work, how sites can be impacted, and more.

Here is a quick table of contents in case you want to jump around:

• The May Update – Something seemed different.
• A reminder about machine learning and tremors.
• Interesting Finds goes missing.
• Case 1: Financial site surges (YMYL with UGC)
• Case 2: e-commerce site drops (but only fringe blog content)
• Case 3: Health and medical site surges (with heavy UGC)
• Case 4: Entertainment community site drops – games, and more.
• Case 5: Product reviews site heavily impacted by broad core update tremor.
• Notes about quality, site-level quality algorithms, and more.
• Key points for site owners.

The May 2022 Broad Core Update – Something seemed different, but we’ll never know what changed.
Again, something just felt different with this update. It was huge, with a ton of volatility, several powerful tremors that had sites reversing course, and the extreme swings in search visibility (especially across certain YMYL categories) had me believing that Google implemented something new (and big). I believe they did, but once again, we will never know for sure what was changed. Broad core updates are extremely complex and take many factors into account, and over a long period of time. I’ll cover more about this soon.

There were also many sites (especially in YMYL) surging back from previous core update drops when they did nothing (or little) overall to improve. Yes, you can always see that during broad core updates, but this update seemed to yield more of those reversals/recoveries than others… And the massive swings back make me think the change could be more on Google’s end than the actual sites doing anything.

Here are two examples of this happening:

That’s a good segue to a reminder about how machine learning might be used with broad core updates.

A reminder about machine learning systems and broad core updates… Potentially thousands of signals sent to a machine learning system.
I have covered this a number of times in my posts and presentations about broad core updates, and it’s extremely important to understand. Google is doing a ton of evaluation over a long period of time with broad core updates. And from a machine learning standpoint, Google could be sending many signals to the machine learning system, where the system determines weighting of those factors, and ultimately rankings.

Bing is much more transparent about its use of machine learning for its core ranking algorithm. Bing’s Fabrice Canel explained that not even search engineers could go in and determine how powerful certain factors were. He explained they send thousands of factors to the machine learning system, which determines weighting, and then rankings.

How much does a certain factor matter for SEO? Via Bing's @facan We simply don't know. Bing is heavily using machine learning. We don't set the weighting. It's about sending thousands of features to the ML system & the system figures it out: (at 35:02) https://t.co/EiTktEFqx7 pic.twitter.com/HTzu9wkA5m

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 9, 2020

The reason I bring this up (again) is because you will not be able to break down all of the factors being evaluated by Google with broad core updates, the weighting of those factors, etc. And over time, Google could always be sending more signals to the machine learning system (making the system even more sophisticated as it needs to determine weighting of those new signals, which again, can impact rankings). Any change there could cause sites to surge when they shouldn’t, come back from the dead when they did nothing, or cause sites to drop that were once doing well.

The tremors we saw with the May 2022 broad core update signal to me (pun intended) that the initial rollout was not as successful as Google wanted. Several tremors were needed in order to get the results where Google wanted them.

Regarding tremors, John Mueller once explained that Google can always implement tweaks and adjustments after a major update rolls out. Well, we saw some sites completely tank ten days into the rollout and then surge back after the rollout was complete. I’ll cover more about that later, but that does give us a partial view into how Google needed to implement some big tweaks to get things in order. So, to reiterate what I include in every presentation about broad core updates, “Welcome To Google Land”.  

An “Interesting” Removal: Google’s “Interesting Finds” Mobile SERP Feature Goes Missing, Right Around The May Core Update
This is important to understand since it could also impact traffic for many sites across the web (and heavily for some sites). As I was analyzing client sites after the May broad core update rolled out, I noticed that Google’s Interesting Finds SERP feature went missing. That’s a big deal, since it was a large mobile SERP feature providing three articles by default in the module, that linked to a full listing of 20+ articles. Also, Interesting Finds enabled sites to double dip in the search results (the same article could rank in the module and in the 10 blue links all within page one of the search results). I covered the removal in a post on Search Engine Roundtable once I realized it happened.

Here is what Interesting Finds looked like in the mobile SERPs:

It looks like the feature was removed right as the May broad core update rolled out, which is interesting timing (pun intended). So, if you saw a drop in traffic with the update, definitely check out the SERPs for the queries where your site dropped. If you were ranking in Interesting Finds, that could be another factor contributing to the drop. Here is tracking via Advanced Web Ranking for “Interesting Finds”. Hat tip to Brodie Clark for pinging me about the trending chart from AWR.

I have theories about why Interesting Finds was removed, and it could be related to the new visual SERP features that have hit the scene recently. For example, larger visuals, more video, the new grid layout, short videos, etc. You can check my post that covers a number of new features being tested or that have rolled out recently. That’s based on my presentation at the Google SEO Meetup in NYC in June.

Now let’s move to the cases!

5 Micro-cases: Surges and Drops from the May 2022 Broad Core Update
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll provide five micro-cases below that underscore the complexity of broad core updates. Each is unique and I’ll cover both drops and surges. Let’s jump in.

Case 1: YMYL Site surges (financial) – Recovery during a smaller core update and more with the May 2022 broad core update.
This is a large and complex site in the financial vertical. It’s an international site that contains a good amount of user-generated content (UGC). The site had seen its fair share of drops and surges during previous broad core updates and had dropped pretty heavily during the June 2021 broad core update. That’s after major volatility during previous core updates. The site owner was tired of the uncertainty and wanted to tackle the situation full-blast.

Here is the drop from the June 2021 core update:

During the crawl analysis and audit, I surfaced many problems across the site from “quality indexing” problems to thin content to lower-quality UGC to technical problems causing quality problems. In addition, E-A-T is super important based on the vertical and there were gaps from an authority standpoint. Remember, E-A-T is heavily influenced by links and mentions from authoritative sites (off-site factors versus on-site). But it’s also important to reinforce your expertise by taking care of on-site factors (which they also needed to address).

The site owner worked hard to rectify as many of the issues as they could, which took a good amount of time (based on the sheer amount of issues plus a smaller development and content team to tackle the problems). And again, it’s a large-scale site with many moving parts, so any change could impact tens of thousands of pages (or more).

The November broad core update rolled out and the site was steady (but it was still down). The good news is that it didn’t drop more, but it needed more time in my opinion. That’s because all of the changes weren’t implemented yet and we know that Google needs to evaluate those changes over the long-term.

And then February 2022 arrived with a bang.

What looked like a smaller core update rolled out in early February 2022, and the site surged like mad. It’s a good reminder that Google pushes smaller core updates all of the time, and some can have a profound effect on visibility for certain sites. They aren’t broad updates that impact many sites across the web… but they can have a big impact for specific sites (if those smaller changes impact those sites…) The site surged by 39% that day and remained up from that time on.

And regarding smaller core updates, Google explained this right in their post about broad core updates. But I think many look past that point since they are focused just on broad core updates.

But the increase wasn’t done yet. When the May 2022 broad core update rolled out, they increased even more. So between the February 2022 smaller core update and the May 2022 broad core update, the site is in much better shape now visibility-wise and traffic-wise. And, they have fixed a number of issues across the site that will hopefully limit volatility during future broad core updates.

Here are several examples of urls surging with the May update. Notice one is during the 6/5 tremor (which I’ll cover later in this post).

Case 2: e-commerce site drops, but only blog content “out of their lane”
This e-commerce site produces a lot of informational content and has over a long period of time. And some of that content isn’t ultra-focused on the core competency of the company. There is a core e-commerce part of the site and then a lot of article content that some would be considered “fringe” in my opinion. It’s not core to the site, but is tangentially related to what the site sells. It’s definitely high-quality content, but topically it’s sort of “out of their lane”.

That content has historically ranked well (even winning a number of featured snippets over time), but I always brought up the possibility of that content dropping (just because other, more authoritative sites for those topics could potentially outrank this e-commerce site). In other words, there could be a relevancy adjustment that adjusts rankings for that content, or Google could decide that another type of site should rank for those queries (intent shift).

Well, the May 2022 broad core update rolled out, and boom, that content took a hit. When analyzing that informational content versus the core e-commerce site content, the data revealed the e-commerce portion didn’t drop at all. So, Google’s algorithms adjusted rankings for the blog content while the core e-commerce part was fine visibility-wise. In addition, the site owner explained that year over year, the e-commerce portion of the site is up traffic-wise (and conversions are steady).

Here is the fringe blog content that dropped wit the May update:

And here is the core, e-commerce part of the site (stable):

In my opinion, the change does make sense. It’s also why I’m a big fan of making sure your content generation plan heavily targets your core users. I have always recommended “staying in your lane” from a content standpoint. This case is a good example why.

Case 3: Health and Medical Site Surges – With Heavy UGC
This is a large-scale site focused on health and medical with a lot of user-generated content (UGC). It has also surged and dropped over time during broad core updates, and dropped during two subsequent broad core updates recently (June 2021 and November 2021).

I just started helping the site in May 2022 so I was not involved in the changes that were implemented prior to then (but after reviewing the changes that were completed over the past several years, I would agree on several of those bigger changes). There are definitely some I wouldn’t agree with, but there were several significant changes that I think could have made a big difference quality-wise.

For example, they heavily worked on improving “quality indexing”, making sure low-quality or thin content wasn’t indexed, while ensuring their highest quality content is indexed. They nuked thousands of urls over the past year or two and focused on making sure the pages that were indexed provided high quality and relevant information to users. They also improved on-site E-A-T by making sure experts wrote and/or reviewed content on the site, highlighting those experts, providing references and citations, and also using structured data to reinforce the health and medical content. Structured data is not a ranking factor, but it can give Google more context related to the content. That’s not all they did (there is a huge document with all the changes), but those are some of the core changes.

Well, the site surged during the May 2022 broad core update. The site is up 29% since the update rolled out and has held steady (even through the tremors that followed the initial update).

After reviewing the surge, the content that increased rankings-wise, and the changes that were implemented, I believe the surge is probably based on a combination of things. For example, the surge could be due to the work that has been completed to improve the site, maybe Google pushing UGC more for the queries versus informational sites (intent shifts), and possibly Google just turning the dials from a machine learning system standpoint.

From an intent shift standpoint, Google’s algorithms might now believe users want to hear from real people (mixed with expert responses) over article-based content. That’s at least for now… Intent shifts can be tricky and can turn on a dime. It’s impossible to say for sure, but UGC definitely jumped up in their market.

On that note, this is an international site and I’m not seeing the same type of content rank for English queries here in the US. When Google pushes UGC, that’s more of an intent shift. The site did complete a lot of work to improve, which is outstanding, but it’s hard to say how much of the surge is due to that. So, time will tell if the surge remains. For example, if Google pushes another intent shift, the site could drop (since it heavily contains UGC). They continue to work on improving the site, so we are all hopeful those changes can limit volatility over the long-term.

Case 4: Entertainment community site – games and more.
The site is a large-scale and complex one (with a long history). It has seen its fair share of ups and downs with broad core updates over time. During the crawl analysis and audit, I uncovered many issues that could be impacting quality overall for the site.

For example, there were many technical problems that could be impacting quality, there was a large thin content issue across the site (just based on the sheer amount of content on the site), the overall design and UX needed to be updated (it was looking older and dated), there was a ton of duplication based on the nature of the site, and more.

The site owner worked very quickly to implement changes and they completed a lot of work to improve the site. But, there is still more to tackle in my opinion on several levels. The site owner knows this and continues to work on improving the site overall.

After some work was implemented that impacted many pages across the site, rankings did jump for some important head terms in fall of 2021 (like the most important term based on what the site focuses on). That was super-interesting to see and it was outside of a broad core update. The site overall didn’t surge then, but certain important terms did spike in rankings. So again, that could be have been based on a smaller core update, which again, Google releases all the time.

Here is the most important head term spiking in rankings outside of a broad core update, as traffic follows:

And here is a combination (via regex) of three important head terms that surged at that time:

The site was stable through the November 2021 core update, which was a win based on dropping with the June 2021 update and bigger changes not being in place for a very long time yet. But then the May update rolled out and it wasn’t great for the site traffic-wise. It dropped by 18%. But as I’ve always said, it’s important to run a delta report to understand what dropped, and why.

Running a delta report based on the May core update drop revealed a number of relevancy adjustments. When objectively reviewing those drops, they did make sense. For example, the site was ranking for entity names when the site just had games related to those entities (and those rankings dropped with the update). When you add qualifiers to the query that related to what the site offers content-wise, the site still ranks very well.

For example, here are two core query categories remaining stable throughout the update:

Now the tough news. When the site did drop for important queries, it was often outranked by major publishers that aren’t directly focused on entertainment, games, etc. This irks the site owner to no end (and I totally understand that). This is something I have heard from many site owners over the years. Large powerful publishers creeping into their niche with a new section of content (or subdomain). Clearly that’s a tough situation if you’re competing with major publishers with tens of millions of links, extremely strong E-A-T, etc. But, this site focuses entirely on the niche and has for many years.

Here is a good example where larger publishers started outranking the site on page one. This site still ranks around the middle of page one, but you can clearly see the drop with the May broad core update.

So for this site, it’s a mix of relevancy adjustments and then larger, more authoritative sites outranking them for certain queries (even when those publishers don’t really focus on the niche). The site still ranks very well for many queries (and a number of important ones related to the content), but the update was not good for them overall. We’ll see if this gets adjusted over time as Google’s algorithms learn if users are happy with the results, which type of sites and content help them the most, etc.

Case 5: Broad core update tremor that destroyed, and then revived, a product reviews site.
At the Google Webmaster Conference in 2019, Google’s Paul Haahr (a lead ranking engineer) explained that Google can always decouple algorithms from broad core updates and run them separately. That was fascinating to hear, and I’m confident we have seen that happen a number of times since then. It’s super important for site owners to understand this and I wanted to provide an example of this in action below (at least I believe it’s what happened AFTER the May 2022 broad core update officially rolled out).

One of my clients started seeing a nice increase during the May 2022 broad core update. It’s a product reviews site that has surged and dropped with several Product Reviews updates. So it was good to see movement in the right direction… But then the 6/5 tremor rolled out. And that tremor was big for a number of sites that were impacted by the May core update. For this client (and for other sites), they dropped heavily on 6/5. And when I say heavily, I mean HEAVILY. As my client explained, they didn’t just drop from page one to page two. It was hard to find the site ranking at all for those queries (even in the top 100).

After this happened, I truly believed Google would correct that mistake before the update fully rolled out. But that wasn’t the case… Google announced the update had completed on June 9th . That was scary as heck for my client… Would they really remain down that much? In my opinion, they absolutely shouldn’t have dropped like that.

The May 2022 core update rollout is now complete.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) June 9, 2022

Well, another unconfirmed update rolled out on 6/12 (just three days later) and a number of those sites that dropped during the 6/5 tremor roared back. It was crazy to see… So, did the broad core update really complete before then? Or was this the decoupling of an algorithm (or several) from broad core updates and Google running them separately? Hard to say, but it’s important to understand this can happen with major updates… Check out the trending below.

Final Notes: Google is trying to surface the highest quality and most relevant sites and content with broad core updates, “quality” is more than just text on the page, and don’t ignore the importance of Google’s site-level quality algorithms:
As you can see from just the five cases above, it’s extremely hard to understand exactly why some sites surge and others drop. Broad core updates are complex and can yield relevancy adjustments, intent shifts, or drops based on overall quality issues.

Again, nobody is going to reverse engineer broad core algorithm updates. Google’s Danny Sullivan recently explained at the Google Meetup in NYC that Google is truly attempting to reward great content (and great sites) with broad core updates.

But, it’s clearly way more complicated than just writing great content, although I get what he’s trying to say. And add that John Mueller has explained that “quality” is more than just the content on the page. That’s why it’s important to take other factors into account like the layout, ads on the page, the user experience overall, and more. That’s also why I’ve explained many times to focus on improving your site overall versus cherry picking changes. And like John explained, don’t just focus on the text on the page… it’s more than that.

We also know that Google’s site-level quality algorithms can have a big impact on websites during broad core updates, and that has little to do with what’s going on at the query level. So don’t miss the forest for the trees by just checking specific queries for a site that surge or drop. It could be a much bigger problem overall quality-wise. Work on improving your site overall from content to UX to the advertising situation to technical SEO causing quality problems and more. That’s what I call the “kitchen sink” approach to remediation.

Here is just one of my tweets (of many) about this with a link to a video from Google’s John Mueller discussing the topic. Do not overlook this point. It’s super-important.

Google on the importance of overall site quality -> Via @johnmu: For some things, we look at site quality *overall*. So, if you have significant portions that are low quality, then that can drag down your original, higher quality content too: https://t.co/MHrZN1P56Q pic.twitter.com/BrkGTMdCIX

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 2, 2022

The May 2022 Broad Core Update: Key points for site owners:

• The update just felt different, but we’ll never know what specifically changed. There was more volatility and bigger swings for some reason during the May update. There were also several powerful tremors during the rollout.
• Machine learning could make it nearly impossible to reverse engineer what Google is doing. Google could be sending thousands of factors to the machine learning system, which determines weighting, and then rankings. Bing has explained that search engineers can’t even go in and determine the weighting of various factors.  
• Google can roll out smaller core updates that can have a big impact on your site’s visibility. Those updates might not have a big impact on the web overall, but they can sure move the needle for specific sites (if those smaller core updates impact the site).
• Intent shifts can cause sites to surge or drop heavily (and site owners have no control over that). That’s when Google ranks a different type of site for the query.
• Relevancy adjustments can also have a big impact, but they might be correct. Objectively review your drops after running a delta report. Make sure your content is the most relevant for the query at hand.
• Overall site quality can also impact sites during broad core updates. If that’s the case, then working to significantly improve your site over time is the best path forward in my opinion. As Google’s John Mueller has explained, “Quality” is more than just the textual content on the page. So work on improving the user experience, ad situation, layout, and more (beyond just improving content quality).
• And finally, Google could always decouple algorithms from broad core updates and run them separately (and you can end up surging back when that happens). And that wouldn’t be during a broad core update. Again, Welcome to Google Land.

Summary: The May 2022 Broad Core Update Was Huge…
I hope the case studies I covered helped you understand more about broad core updates and how complex they can be. Google is evaluating many factors over a long period of time with broad core updates, and sites can see massive volatility in search visibility when the updates roll out. If you were impacted by the May 2022 broad core update, I highly recommend running a delta report and identifying the top queries and landing pages that dropped. Then determine if it was a relevancy adjustment, intent shift, or it’s overall site quality problems that’s dragging the site down. Then form a plan of attack based on those findings.

And definitely make sure to review the SERPs to understand various features and treatments that could be impacting visibility and click-through rate. For example, Google’s Interesting Finds mobile SERP feature was removed right when the May broad core update rolled out. All of this can contribute to traffic volatility.

Until the next broad core update, good luck.

GG

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In 2016 I wrote a post covering how long it takes before urls lose signals after not properly redirecting those urls during a migration. For example, a site had urls ranking in web search, changed urls but forgot redirects, and the old urls were 404ing. In that case, how long would the site owner have to add the necessary redirects or revert the migration before the urls lost signals and would have to start over rankings-wise?

Google’s Gary Illyes said at the time that you typically have a few weeks before most signals are lost. If too much time elapsed, then the urls would have to build up rankings again like they were new urls (if you added the urls back to the site, or if you finally added redirects). So, reverting a migration after letting a few weeks pass by probably wouldn’t yield a return to rankings like you had before. This was for web search and not image search. More on that soon.

In addition, I covered the importance of redirecting images during a migration in a previous post, which you should definitely read if you are approaching a migration. Images should be 301 redirected just like webpages. URLs are URLs… Unfortunately, many forget this step during site migrations.

URL migrations (for images) and the impact on Image Search:
What Gary explained makes complete sense, and I’ve seen situations like that before (unfortunately). But again, that’s web search and I never heard Gary explain much about image search with regard to url migrations and lost signals. We know that image search tends to lag behind web search with regard to updating based on what Google has explained over the years (and what you can see when images change on a site). Google’s John Mueller has explained this several times over the years.

And we also know that Google needs an image and landing page combination for image search. That’s an important point to understand, since some believe that if the image remains on the site (even if it’s removed from a page), that the image can retain its rankings. That’s not true. Google needs both the landing page and the image for image search.

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining this (at 14:41 in the video):

Also, at the Google webmaster conference in Mountain View in November of 2019, Francois Spies, product manager for Google Images, explained that Google wants to highlight more of the great content behind an image. So, it’s definitely not just about the image itself. It’s about the webpage content and the image.

Here is a video of Francois explaining the backend change focused on surfacing the great content behind an image. “It’s not about the pixels, but about the page behind that.” (at 1:23 in the video):

Dropped Into A Case Study
OK, so what if you change image urls, forget to redirect the old images to the new ones, and see a drop in image search rankings? If you decide to add the necessary redirects down the line, or revert the migration, how long do you have before those image and landing page combinations lose signals? Is it days, weeks like web search, or even longer?

Well, I just saw this situation unfold recently with a company that decided to move their images to a CDN, but forgot to add 301 redirects from the old urls to the new ones. So, the images were completely new to Google.

Based on the situation, and what unfolded, the site owners were nice enough to let me write up this case study documenting what happened. It doesn’t answer all of our questions about images losing signals, but does provide a good example of how moving quickly to fix the situation can help.

Image URL Migrations – Moving images to a CDN
In order to help with site performance, the company decided to move their images to a CDN. This is a common tactic across many different sites, and Google has explained it’s totally fine to use a CDN for assets like images and video. Again, it’s about the image and landing page combination for image search, and not just where the image is hosted. Here is a tweet from Google’s John Mueller about this:

But unfortunately, the site moved all of the images for a certain page type and did not 301 redirect the old images to the new ones. The images weren’t nuked from their old location, but each page simply referenced the new image location on the CDN.

Even though Google has explained that image search can lag with picking up changes to images, the url changes were picked up almost immediately in this case. Image search rankings began to plummet very quickly (like the very next day). Now, this is a relatively powerful site and crawling and indexing can greatly vary across different sites. But it’s worth noting that the changes were picked up fast.

Here is the drop in GSC for the urls ranking in image search (for the page type where image urls changed):  

A Double Whammy: Image Packs In Web Search
It’s also worth noting that many of the images that were migrated to the CDN ranked well in web search as well (via image packs). For example, the block of images that can rank in the core web results. Here is an example of what I’m referring to:

So, as image search rankings drop, image pack rankings dropped as well (which makes complete sense). Here is the drop in web search for those urls containing the images that were migrated:

The biggest takeaway here is that image search can update quickly when changing urls and you can see the impact quickly in the SERPs (both via image search and web search).

REVERT! … but will rankings return?
During a call about a project I’m working on for the company, they mentioned what happened with the image migration. Unfortunately, I wasn’t involved with the image migration and didn’t even know it was going on. And I wish I was involved… I’ve worked on a lot of migrations and even wrote a post specifically about image redirects during migrations!

In addition, I shot a mythbusting video with Martin Splitt that’s coming out soon and the entire session is focused on migrations (where we even speak about images!)

Anyway, as the site owners were explaining the image migration situation, I was literally firing up GSC on the call and isolating the page type in the reporting. Again, the drops were clear and significant.

During the call, I explained more about how image search worked and how redirects were necessary during url migrations. And my recommendation was to either implement the redirects quickly (since we were only a few days into the migration) or roll back the migration completely.

Reverting a migration is a big decision and it’s not often I would tell a site owner to do that. But, the drop was big and the move to the CDN wasn’t mission critical, so reverting was a good idea in my opinion (at least until a stronger plan was put in place for the migration to the CDN).

Luckily, based on the severe drop they were seeing, the site owners had already made the decision to revert the migration. The site was updated and the pages were already referencing the old urls sitting on the core domain. Now we just had to wait to see how Google would respond.

Image Rankings Surge Back, Including Image Pack Rankings In Web Search
The day after our conference call yielded good news. I had started monitoring the page type to see how Google would react to reverting the image migration. Well, it responded well. The changes were picked up quickly again, and rankings began returning for many of the images and landing page combinations. It was great to see.

In addition, the images were back ranking within image packs in the core web search results. Here is what that looked like:

So for this site, quickly reverting the migration (only a few days in) yielded excellent results. Rankings jumped back across both image search and web search. There’s no way to say that will be the case for every site, but the changes were picked up very quickly for this one. Disaster averted.

Image migration tips:
To end this post, I’ll include some final tips if you are planning on migrating image urls (whether you are moving to a CDN or just changing urls for your images).

• Just like with web pages, make sure you map out a strong 301 redirection plan for all images that will be migrated. Don’t botch the redirection plan. You will pay dearly.
• Understand that images alone are not sufficient to rank in image search. Google needs an image and landing page combination. So, leaving images up without the landing page is not a viable plan for retaining image search rankings. On that note, it’s important to understand that Google’s broad core updates can impact Image Search as well.
• If you forget redirects, and you fix the problem quickly, you might be able to see a full recovery. This case demonstrates that, although every site is different. Google’s Gary Illyes said you have a few weeks at most with urls in web search, so there’s a possibility that’s similar for image search (for the image urls). This site reverted the migration within a few days and rankings surged back.
• Once a migration goes live, definitely use a crawling tool to make sure all of the redirects are working properly. In my post about redirecting images, I explain more about that. Don’t assume everything is fine. Test the redirects to make sure.
• You can monitor image search rankings via GSC by using the Performance reporting and changing the Search Type to “Image”. Also, you can filter your reporting by page type if you are targeting a specific directory or url structure. Monitor changes and move fast to fix problems.
• You can also monitor image pack urls in the core web search results by filtering by the page type of url structure. It’s not perfect, but can help you identify volatility for urls that are ranking in image packs. You would need to use the “Web” search type, and not “Image”, since the urls are ranking in web search and not image search.

Summary – Image migrations are still migrations. Redirects are necessary.
Based on this case study, you can see that reverting an image url migration enabled a site to recover lost rankings across both image search and web search. We don’t know exactly how long you have until most signals are lost, but it could be in line with web search results (which is a few weeks based on what Google’s Gary Illyes has explained).

So, if you are going to migrate image urls, then make sure you nail the redirection plan. If not, rankings in image search could drop, along with image pack rankings in the web search results. And then you’ll have to move fast to rectify the situation by either adding those redirects quickly or reverting the migration. And that’s never a fun place to be.

And if you are planning a migration, then make sure to check out my mythbusting episode with Google’s Martin Splitt (coming soon). We cover a number of important topics!

GG

In the movie Flatliners, a group of medical students experiment with dying for a short period of time to see what’s beyond, only to be revived quickly after. I couldn’t help but think of this movie while recently helping a company that was in a dire situation. The following case study represents the SEO version of Flatliners… and I’ll take you through the details in this post.

The case had me wondering if there is some type of algorithmic timeout that can occur without a message showing up in Google Search Console (GSC) in either the manual actions viewer or security issues report. In other words, can a site “spook” Google somehow and receive a timeout?

Or maybe there was an algorithm that updates monthly, and this site triggered some type of demotion for some reason, only to be cleared when the algorithm updated the following month? I’ll explain more about my thoughts soon.

It was a scary situation for the company, and I believe more site owners and SEOs need to know about it. It underscores the fact that you’re not in control – Google is. And if something goes wrong, and your rankings drop for some unknown reason, site owners can feel absolutely hopeless while their sites hemorrhage money.

The site owner I helped was nice enough to let me write up this blinded case study. His company experienced a crazy one-month drop back in late February. Let’s jump in.

I created a quick table of contents in case you are interested in jumping to a specific section. That said, I do recommend reading the entire post from start to finish (to get the full picture):

• The Drop – Sunday, Bloody Sunday
• The Discovery Phase.
• Sharing SSL Certificates and IPs.
• Quality Indexation.
• It’s ALIVE!
• What caused this? Security timeout, an algorithm updated monthly?
• Key learnings and 7 important questions for site owners.

Sunday, Bloody SEO Sunday
Wednesday, February 20^th started out normally for me. I was cranking out work early in my office, then hit Twitter and my feeds to check the latest technology news, and then settled back into client work at 9AM.

Then at 9:20, I received an email from the CEO of company I’ve known since 2014 when medieval Panda roamed the web. The subject line read, “Google Drop”.

He asked if there was a recent algorithm update, since his site just saw a drop a few days prior. And it wasn’t a small drop… so he was extremely concerned that another major update could have rolled out.

The site’s Google organic traffic dropped 94% starting exactly at 6PM on Sunday evening (2/17). By the way, keep 6PM in mind… we’ll be coming back to that time soon.

Here is what the drop looked like. First, this is the daily trending:

And here is the drop at 6PM when checking hourly:

And here is the massive drop in average position:

It was also interesting to see crawling drop off a cliff once the rankings drop happened. It’s almost like something internally at Google demoted the site and then even slowed crawling of the site. Here are crawl stats from GSC:

And here is a screenshot based on analyzing the site’s log files in Screaming Frog Log Analyzer. Notice the big drop in Googlebot (verified) crawling the site:

In addition, the site’s xml sitemap wasn’t being crawled frequently anymore (much less than it previously was). So, with whatever happened, it seemed that Google had flagged the site, demoted the site, and wasn’t applying many resources to the site from a crawling perspective.

Needless to say, the CEO was freaking out a bit since a majority of the site’s traffic (and revenue) come from Google.

What happened? The Discovery Phase
I’ve seen a lot of big drops over the years, but this one just seemed strange… First, 94% is a massive decrease… one of the worst I have ever seen. Second, there wasn’t a major algorithm update that Sunday, which ruled out a broad core ranking update. Note, you can still experience a drop for a number of reasons beyond broad core updates, but massive algorithmic drops like this are often associated with core ranking updates.

Next, I quickly checked for manual actions and there were no manual actions showing in Google Search Console. There also weren’t security issues showing up in GSC, like malware, hacked urls, etc. So, the two major culprits beyond an algorithmic hit could also be ruled out. Or could they? More about that soon.

My next move was to ask about recent site changes. Actually, the CEO beat me to the punch via email and explained an interesting recent change. He explained that they were toying with the idea of reincluding a forum they used to have on the site. They activated the forum subdomain the Friday before the Sunday drop and reinstalled the forum software.

There was no content on the forum subdomain yet… just the fresh install of the software. They were simply configuring the forum when the drop occurred on Sunday, 2/17. Google did end up crawling and indexing a few pages from the forum setup, but again, there wasn’t any real content in the forum during that time.

But, Google clearly knew about the forum (since it was starting to be crawled and a few pages were indexed). Also, by the time the CEO reached out to me on Wednesday, they had already turned the forum subdomain off. Regardless, I already started thinking about the forum’s history…

Beyond the forum change, there were no major changes implemented on the site recently. Therefore, we had what seemed to be an interesting cause and effect relationship. Again, there was a Friday forum reinstall and then a Sunday drop. History-wise, the forum used to be on that forum subdomain (forum.domain.com) and then was moved to a subdirectory on the www subdomain during medieval Panda days. The forum was shut down due to inactivity and some lower-quality content years ago.

Sharing SSL Certificates and IPs – Cloudflare Anomalies
Disclaimer: There are many, many sites using Cloudflare that haven’t been negatively impacted by sharing SSL certificates or IPs, but I had to bring this up based on what we found. I’m not saying this was the case, but it sure looked fishy.

The site uses Cloudflare and was sharing an IP and SSL certificate with about 15 other sites. The subdomain had to be configured on Cloudflare when it was set up that Friday, 2/17. When checking some of those other sites that were sharing an IP and SSL certificate, you could see some risky/shady things going on. There are other case studies that brought up the potential negative impact of sharing IPs via Cloudflare, so this was an interesting find.

Note, Google has always said that sharing IPs is fine and should not cause any crazy impact on a site (even when asked about Cloudflare directly). But, there are cases of sites dropping that were sharing IPs when risky/dangerous sites were part of the mix.

Of course, the drop absolutely could have been the forum situation alone, or a combination of the forum situation and sharing IPs with shady/risky sites, or even something else. It’s impossible to know, but I wanted to bring this up since the CEO spent a lot of time digging into the Cloudflare situation.

After identifying some of the other sites that were sharing the same IP, the company set up a private SSL certificate and was able to get a different IP after the drop. Again, we don’t know if the Cloudflare situation was the issue, but after checking the risky sites sharing the same IP, I think it was a good idea to implement those changes. The changes were completed on February 24.

The Waiting Game and Digging In Further
At this point, traffic was still down about 94%. The site was flatlining… The only thing we could do was wait to see if the forum and Cloudflare changes acted like a defibrillator and could spark a heartbeat for the site.

Beyond those changes, I wanted to dig in further to see if there were other issues impacting the site. So I fired up DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog, and then dug into Google Search Console. Remember, the site was humming along for years doing well, so it would be very odd to simply drop 94% one day without a recent change. Again, there wasn’t a major core ranking update going on… so it would be odd to drop that much without a manual action or a known security issue. And Google Search Console was all clear from that standpoint.

Quality Indexation
When writing about major core updates, I’ve often mentioned “quality indexation”. Since Google has explained it takes every page into account when evaluating quality, it’s important to make sure only your best content is indexed (while handling any low-quality or thin content appropriately).

For example, you could boost low-quality content, nuke it via 404s or 410s, or noindex the content if it needs to remain on the site for some reason. I’ve covered this decision matrix many times in my posts about major algorithm updates.

When checking the pages that were indexed, over half of those pages were not submitted in xml sitemaps. That raised a red flag, so I dug in more and focused on those pages. I ended up finding thousands of urls that were lower-quality or thin that were currently indexed. So, we had a situation where approximately 40-45% of the pages indexed were problematic from a quality standpoint.

Now, this is typically something that would manifest itself during a major core update and not randomly on a Sunday night. :) Therefore, I recommended they address the situation, but I wasn’t sure if that would really be causing the issue. They moved quickly to nuke many of those lower-quality pages and most were removed in early March.

Beyond that, there were some issues I picked up here and there, but nothing that should have caused a 94% drop in traffic from Google.

It’s ALIVE! One Month Later… To The Minute
Time went on and nothing changed. Every few days the CEO would email me with an update that typically said, “No changes, still waiting”. The March 2019 core update rolled out on 3/12 and nothing changed with the site. It was still down 94%.

But then something amazing happened. Remember when I said to remember February 17 at 6PM? Well, literally one month later, to the minute, the site started surging. At 6PM on March 17, the site came back to life. It was fascinating to watch.

The CEO sent me an email showing the surge in real-time analytics and was hopeful the trend would continue. And continue it did… The site roared back to life and has been doing well ever since. Here is the trending so you can get a feel for how this played out.

Here is how the hourly trending looked. The site surged right at 6PM:

Here is trending from GSC (clicks and impressions):

Here is the surge in average position:

Again, this was not just a recovery. It was a recovery after exactly one month. And not just one month… it was one month to the minute.

An Algorithm Updated Monthly, A Security Timeout, or Something Else?
This could have been some type of security timeout, but after thinking about it more, it very well could be an algorithm that’s updated monthly (which could also be related to security). Something spooked Google, an algorithm flagged the site, and rankings dropped. Then maybe when the algorithm was updated a month later, the site came roaring back. I can’t say for sure if that’s what happened, but it makes the most sense to me.

Was Google spooked by the forum change? Was it the Cloudflare situation with risky/dangerous “neighbors”? Was it the high percentage of low-quality content that was indexed that finally tipped the scale? Was it a combination of these things?..

It’s hard to say, but I think something with the forum triggered some type of security issue. If that’s the case, it’s just strange that Google wouldn’t report that security issue in GSC… Instead, the site owner was left wondering if his business was burning down to the ground. That’s a good segue to key learnings from this case study.

Key Learnings: The Danger of putting all of your eggs in the Google basket
It’s easy to keep rolling along when things are going well and believe it will always continue. But the reality is that Google pushes changes all the time, some minor, and some major. There are thousands of algorithms at play that could go haywire, there are manual actions, security issues, and more.

Even after years of doing well, it only takes one minute for the train to go off the rails. And it did on February 17 at 6PM for this company. I’ve created a list of bullets that every site owner should go through based on this case study. I would start thinking about these things now, before something goes wrong. Over the years, I’ve spoken with many site owners that have gotten smoked by Google for one thing or another. And I believe all of them would tell you to start thinking about these things immediately.

7 Important Questions For Site Owners Based On This Case Study:

• How much of your traffic, and revenue, relies on Google?
• How can you diversify your traffic so there’s less risk if your rankings suddenly drop and Google traffic dries up?
• If revenue tanks for 30 days, 3 months, 6 months, or longer, how long can your company stay afloat? How can you mitigate that risk?
• Do you have people in place that can effectively handle a catastrophic SEO situation? Are they internal, external, and do you know they will help when the situation goes sideways? Form a plan today with a team that you trust.
• Do you have a system in place for testing and rolling out changes on your site? Will you be able to isolate changes to better understand the cause and effect relationship between those changes and a drop in rankings?
• Do you understand that Google is not perfect, and strange things can happen from a rankings standpoint? You are dealing with algorithms, and those algorithms are not perfect. Collateral damage could occur, and are you ready to deal with that?
• Do you understand that there’s no guarantee that any human Googler will help you if your site drops heavily? You might receive some feedback, or you might just hear crickets chirp. Google doesn’t have to respond to any business owner that’s dropped heavily due to an algorithm update, manual action, security issue, anomaly, etc.

Summary – Be Prepared For SEO Turbulence
Based on what happened in the case above, I do believe the drop was probably based on some type of security issue that spooked Google (when the forum was added back to the site). And that issue caused some algorithm to flag the site, which resulted in a one-month drop (to the minute). Luckily, the “timeout” expired, the algorithm was updated (probably monthly), and rankings and traffic roared back.

My hope is that this case study sparks some questions for you internally at your company. You should think about a worst-case scenario now, before it happens. Have a plan in place for a catastrophic drop, because as this case demonstrated, it sure can happen. I recommend going through the bullets above with your team and forming a plan of attack. I hope you never have to use that plan, but if you do, you can be ready.

GG

Update: February 27, 2018
Until today, you could only see ad filtering in action using Chrome Canary (a version of Chrome that provides the newest features being tested). But I just spotted ads being filtered in the stable version of Chrome for desktop and mobile. Google has said that ad filtering will roll out gradually over time and this is the first time I saw the stable version of Chrome filtering ads. You can see examples below.

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On February 15, 2018, Chrome’s native ad filtering launched. Google annoucned the move last year and it definitely caught the attention of many site owners (especially the ones heavily running advertising). But let’s face it, the ad situation has gotten way out of control. I’ve written about aggressive, disruptive, and deceptive ads many times based on what I’ve seen while analyzing major Google algorithm updates. So any measure by Google is a move in the right direction (even if Chrome’s ad filtering only targets the most intrusive ad types across desktop and mobile).

Once D-Day arrived for sites employing intrusive ads on 2/15/18, many have wondered what ad filtering will look like in the wild. We’ve been given examples by Google, but nobody has seen this in action yet.

I have been collecting a list of sites that violate the Better Ads Standards based on the various types of intrusive ads that would cause a site to be in violation. And my list has grown exponentially over the past few months. Therefore, I’ve been testing those sites in Chrome as soon as dawn broke on 2/15. But as documented in a recent New York Times article, Google will be rolling out the ad filter gradually over time. And as of this morning, I didn’t see ads being filtered in the stable version of Chrome on sites that were in violation. That was until I received a little help from a Canary.

Chrome Canary – Ad Blocking Is Active
Many don’t know about Chrome Canary, but it’s a version of Chrome that provides the newest features being tested that aren’t in the stable release of Chrome. So you can see what’s coming by testing in Chrome Canary. There is a desktop and mobile version by the way.

In Chrome Canary, there is an option to turn on ad filtering in both the desktop and mobile versions of the browser. When activated, Chrome Canary will block ads on sites that have violated the Better Ads Standards (sites employing only the most intrusive ads types). Well, I tested some of the sites on my list this morning and could see ad blocking in action.

Below, I have provided two examples of this working on both desktop and mobile. It’s important to understand that desktop and mobile experiences are handled separately. So a site could be in violation on desktop, but not on mobile (or vice versa).

I plan to update this post over time with more examples of sites being impacted by Chrome’s ad filtering. And I will also provide more details as the stable version of Chrome starts filtering ads.

The First Examples Of Chrome Ad Filtering In Action:

1. A site in violation on desktop in the stable version of Chrome (without ad filtering in action):

Once the popup is closed, you can see all of the ads running:

1a. The site with ads being filtered on desktop in Chrome Canary (see the notification in the upper-right corner):

1b. The same page, but check the upper-left corner for ad filtering options:

Note, the site is not in violation on mobile, so there’s no ad filtering going on.

2a. Here is a site with ads being filtered on mobile. Desktop is not in violation. You can see the notification at the bottom of the page about ads being filtered.

2b. And when you click “Details”, you can learn more about why the ads are being blocked and you can choose to “always allow ads on the site”. I have no idea why anyone would turn that on.

3a. Here is a site with ads being filtered by Chrome on mobile. You can see a popup when visiting in the stable version of Chrome:

3b. When you visit in Canary, you will see a notification at the bottom of the page about ads being blocked:

3c. And when you click “Details”, you can view more information and allow ads to be displayed. Again, I doubt anyone would do that.

4a. Here is a site that’s in violation for desktop, but not mobile. When visiting the site, there are many ads, including popups.

4b. When checking Chrome Canary, you can see a notification that ads are being blocked and you can see all of the blank ad placeholders.

Update: Ad Filtering Arrives In The Stable Version Of Chrome: February 27, 2018
I just noticed the first examples of ads being filtered in the stable version of Chrome. Until now, you could only see ads being filtered using Chrome Canary. Google has explained that ad filtering will roll out gradually over time and I am finally seeing the stable version of Chrome filtering ads (both desktop and mobile). You can see examples below.

1. A site with ads being filtered on desktop. The site is not in violation on mobile so ads are not being filtered there. You can see the notification in the browser window and then a message about ads being filtered (with the option of allowing ads on the site):

1b. When you click to view site settings in the browser window, you can see that ads are being blocked due to intrusive ads:

2. Another site with ads being filtered on desktop. Notice the entire right sidebar empty (where ads would normally be displayed):

3. A site with ads being filtered on mobile. The site isn’t in violation on desktop, so ads aren’t being blocked there. You’ll see the notification at the bottom of the viewport about ads being blocked.

3a. When clicking the icon for site settings in Chrome for Android, you can see a message about ads being blocked due to intrusive ads.

Ad filtering in the stable version of Chrome is coming soon. Stay Tuned:
I wanted to quickly document a few examples of ad blocking in action so site owners could see how ad filtering works in the wild. I will post more examples soon, and then also provide examples when the stable release of Chrome begins filtering ads. Again, Google is supposed to be rolling this out over time.

As you can see, ad filtering is completely removing ads from each site. In addition, the notifications on both desktop and mobile could scare off even more users. So the sites are being hit on multiple levels. First, there’s no advertising running in Chrome (hurting those sites financially). Second, some users will be running for the hills when they see the ad blocking notifications in Chrome. And third, some users will lose trust in the sites being flagged (which can have secondary effects for the site at hand).

My recommendation to any site in violation is to fix those problems as quickly as possible and then request a review in Google Search Console (in the Ad Experience Report). Here is more information about the ad experience review process in Google’s support center.

Stay tuned. I’ll post more updates soon.

GG