"Google May 2020 Core Update" affecting your xF Forum?

I read the explanation of this update that Google provided and the impression I got was that it is measuring sites based on trust and authority more, and it also doesn't trust user-generated content as much as it used to. I mean, look how they added the rel="ugc" specification to specifically look at UGC. This means things like forums and wikis and similar web 2.0 style platforms where users get to post stuff on your site have lost some ranking because in Google's eyes, they're a type of "content farm."
 
No not a "content farm" per se, but a lot of reposted material from elsewhere and unchecked claims stated as facts. Just like here. :)
 
djbaxter said:
AdSense didn't shave it. The loss of traffic did.
Click to expand...
n4TzkbX.png

This occurred ever since the beginning of the year, losing around 40% until I shifted to a different network, giving adsense crumbs. Even then, they are taking away around 20% still. So no, it's not from the loss of traffic.
 
djbaxter said:
No not a "content farm" per se, but a lot of reposted material from elsewhere and unchecked claims stated as facts. Just like here. :)
Click to expand...
When it's a tutorial that was posted on my site first (I've had every single one of my tutorials reposted elsewhere), stolen and posted on other sites, and then those sites start getting the traffic instead of me, I kindly beg to differ.
 
this smells of some newbie in google trying to make a name for himself and he has dramatically stuffed up!
 
Our forum, with 20+ years of content, 17M+ posts, strictly moderated, loved by so many users, lost about 45% of traffic overnight after the May 4th update. Google already punished forums in rankings before this update, so this was on top of an already unfavorable situation.

Decades of dedication, so much work with so little compensation (is it even possible to maintain server costs for a forum these days?) and all of a sudden it seems like there's no hope anymore. No matter how much great content you have, forums are doomed. I'm shocked and sad now. It's not like we lost 5 or 10% and need to work extra hard to regain that -- we lost almost half of our traffic all of a sudden, in a moment of huge economic recession, the worst we've experienced in our country (Brazil).

And to think Google's motto was once "Don't be Evil"...
 
AzzidReign said:
n4TzkbX.png

This occurred ever since the beginning of the year, losing around 40% until I shifted to a different network, giving adsense crumbs. Even then, they are taking away around 20% still. So no, it's not from the loss of traffic.
Click to expand...
check your stats by country. We had around 40% too for 6+months with thousands of obviously fake clicks from Saudi-Arabia. Blocking the whole country via IP-lists was the only way to get this nonsense stopped (still some get through). It's not just a cosmetical issue imho as they bleed out campaigns (so others can't click as daily $ limits are reached).
 
you won't get these IPs from Google. Check for unplausible click/view ratios from small countries and if there is something obvious you need to decide if you can live with these fake clicks or if you can accept to ban the whole country. In theory you can check your serverlogs for these IPs and narrow it down but...this won't be fun.
Google does not care btw, we reported these clicks for months.
 
Nothing abnormal for me. We use cf and challenge about 30 countries, have blocked numerous ASNs that we've found to be bot networks, and we ban IPs with irregular behavior. Doubt that that is the reason for Googles removal. And why start in jan when nothing else changes for us.... Talk to anyone and they will say the same... It all started this year.
 
Anatoliy said:
I wonder how many dead links are among those posts.
That's funny that people take for granted that G drives free traffic their way and then call G evil for it doesn't show 20 years old news any more.
Click to expand...
That's not our case. We have over 4,000 new posts and dozens of new topics every day. Content is always up to date. It's a very active and loved forum, so if Google would actually return result based on relevance, our forum would be dominating the rankings in too many topics.

Of course we have a huge amount of inactive topics and the mods discourage bringing back dead topics. But I'm not sure if this actually matters to Google. Does anyone delete old content because of Google?

Traffic from Google is mostly for new content (like "PS5"), but content that doesn't fall into "news" will also appear, and that's just like Wikipedia or Quora I guess. A lot of this old, timeless content is much richer in forums than in a blog.

The biggest impact of this update, for us, seems to be on number of impressions and not position and I'm still trying to understand why. Would like to hear possible explanations for what is causing this.
 
brunoa said:
That's not our case. We have over 4,000 new posts and dozens of new topics every day. Content is always up to date. It's a very active and loved forum, so if Google would actually return result based on relevance, our forum would be dominating the rankings in too many topics.

Of course we have a huge amount of inactive topics and the mods discourage bringing back dead topics. But I'm not sure if this actually matters to Google. Does anyone delete old content because of Google?

Traffic from Google is mostly for new content (like "PS5"), but content that doesn't fall into "news" will also appear, and that's just like Wikipedia or Quora I guess. A lot of this old, timeless content is much richer in forums than in a blog.

The biggest impact of this update, for us, seems to be on number of impressions and not position and I'm still trying to understand why. Would like to hear possible explanations for what is causing this.
Click to expand...
So you are in the gaming niche as well? I've talked to a few others and it appears we've all been hit pretty hard in the gaming niche. What I've noticed for us, it's being pushed to reddit and fb groups...how those are good content to push traffic towards that are looking for good information is beyond me. It's a meme hell hole.
 
AzzidReign said:
So you are in the gaming niche as well? I've talked to a few others and it appears we've all been hit pretty hard in the gaming niche. What I've noticed for us, it's being pushed to reddit and fb groups...how those are good content to push traffic towards that are looking for good information is beyond me. It's a meme hell hole.
Click to expand...
Yes, it's mainly a gaming forum but, as many others, the "offtopic" sections are also popular (politics, movies, etc) and used to attract traffic from Google. The quality of discussions and the user base is miles ahead of FB, Reddit and other forums and I'm proud of that. Problem is Google won't see that and will consider forum content junk, it seems.
 
Mine is mostly a poltical blog, and its not ranking at all now, even though I know its the biggest poltical forum in NZ.
They even rank a major blog on page 1 if you search for forums
Looks like I'll have to do some work on my forum and attached website to try to get on their rankings.
But it is very frustrating
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
2024 Election Year and Google Shenanigans
Replies
5
Views
385
Mendalla
Mendalla
S
Add-on Which event manger/calendar for my needs?
Replies
16
Views
1K
FTL
FTL
benFF
vB 3.8 > xF 2.2 migration : 8 months later
2
Replies
28
Views
3K
benFF
benFF
eva2000
HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report Google Datastudio Dashboard
Replies
1
Views
780
eva2000
eva2000
Jgirl004
Ballpark budget for creating a small forum from scratch?
Replies
10
Views
1K
FTL
FTL
Top Bottom