Latest Google update Maverick is horrible

Webmaster Discussion
#1

I basically stopped trying to keep track of various Google updates, because they keep rolling them out extremely often, and for most of them nobody knows what the intended purpose was anyway. So there’s really no point in obsessing about them.

However, this latest update, which was codenamed “Maverick” (not by Google but by some SEO expert), has been amazingly devastating to my sales, and to a lesser extent for my traffic as well. It seems that it was rolled out on July 19th (although some sources mention July 16th). If you look at my Google organic traffic, there’s a slight dip on that date, but it looks unremarkable in the overall picture (The changes in the real time traffic stats are much more obvious than when you look at a broader date range.)

However, since July 19th my sales have been decimated. Prior to July 19th I used to get at least a few sales every day, after that update I am lucky if I get a couple sales in an entire week.

Google organic

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Direct traffic

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Sometime from October-November 2018 I seem to have recovered from the http to https switch (which went very slowly, and it was not a full recovery). And especially since the beginning of this year things started to look more optimistic, both for sales and with a slow increase in traffic. But this latest Maverick update has done away with all of those improvements. And what’s more, the traffic seems to keep “bleeding” every week even more, as if they keep decreasing it over time ever so slowly.

By the way, if you take a look at my direct traffic, it’s insanely erratic, and there are huge peaks and dips almost every day. These changes in direct traffic don’t correspond with improved or decreased sales at all, however. Some say that direct traffic is also google traffic, which they are unable to track for some reason. I don’t know for sure.

Has anyone else been similarly affected by this latest google update? Does anyone know what was the purpose of the update - to penalize what? Thin content, bad user experience, lack of backlinks or something else? I really have no idea what to improve on my blogs anymore. Trying to please Google increasingly looks like Mission Impossible.

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#2

I am still struggling with the March/April update. I lost 80% of my google traffic. I was hoping the next update may have rectified things.

#3

Sorry to hear that. I know how it feels.

#4

Yes, I noticed that update. I think sales been poor anyway because its summer, July and Aug always been bad in the past.

However I noticed some keywords I monitor now have all kinds of non-adult results, even Amazon showing up on a few. So there seems to have been some major change in whats shown. Impact on traffic hasn’t been to bad but it definitely as you mentioned it did something.

I actually saw the update start around the 14-15th July I think and when I compare the last 30 days this year with last year there is about 10% loss of traffic which all happened after this date. So yes, there has been a slow loss of traffic since that Google update.

There may have been another update in the last week, a slight correction perhaps of previous update but there is nothing official about it and I can’t see any improvement except some keyword positions change slightly in results.

I did look at stats comparing with last year, I’m actually pushing more traffic to sponsors however ratios and earnings are down. So it seems less is selling and possibly earn less for each sale (maybe too many sites have trials and special discounts).

Its very frustrating with Google, it does seem they keep sending less traffic and year after year decimate what they “share” out to sites.

I dont think direct traffic is form Google though, I always thought it was either type in or traffic from other sites. But not sure.

#5

Each subsequent update is increasingly restrictive and troublesome. Google just isn’t a good source of traffic any more. Regarding sales, this is a change in the way of consumption. Amateur fan sites virtually executed almost all popular sites. And to be honest, 1 amateur produces dozens of videos a week, is there a studio that can do that?!

#6

Perhaps, I think there sales are still there on normal sites too just that conversion are down a bit. The big unknown are those amateur / model sites and how they affect other sites, that’s very difficult to know as we don’t really have any data on sales on those.

#7

our google traffic took a huge drop in march and a massive drop in june. we’re down to less than 1/10 of what our traffic has been for quite a while. we were having family issues at the time, and i’m just getting caught up. i was definitely not ready to see our traffic drop… holy cow - no wonder our sales dropped!

#8

As I recall, the June update was made to correct the mistakes of this one, which was realized in March. Of course, in our niche the adjustments are only in the downward direction.

I agree with you. However, Twitter is about to ban porn, so this model will disappear very quickly. Unfortunately, I see a general change in consumer behavior – they buy less, and those of them who do it, prefer 6 months or 1 year membership to save money. Generally amateur sites did their job-now the user believes that everything over 10 bucks is too expensive.

#9

Sorry to buck the trend, but personally I’m happy… Traffic from Google is up on the site I care about the most…

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#10

Where are you getting those reports? Are those from the old dashboard? God I wish I could go back there. I hate the new dashboard. A lot less informative.

I don’t even know how to get the same graphs/information in my new dashboard that Ben supplied. I was going to look at mine to see if I see anything but I can’t duplicate what he’s provided as examples. UGH

#11

It’s not complicated at all. Just go (on the left hand side) to “Acquisition” and click the little arrow to expand that menu. Then select “All Traffic” to expand that submenu. Then select “Source/Medium”.

Select the date range in the upper right corner, and then select what you want to display below the graph (google organic, direct traffic, bing etc.) Or you can select that from the drop-down menu above the graph.

By the way, Bjorn, you are correct about direct traffic being from people directly entering URLs and also if some site has a link of your site with http and you switched to https (no tracking allowed in that case so the referrer info gets lost). However, in some cases google traffic is also disguised as direct traffic. Take a look at this article:

https://www.megalytic.com/blog/understanding-direct-traffic-in-google-analytics

In some situations, accessing a site from organic search may end up being reported as Direct due to browser issues. An experiment conducted by Groupon showed as much as 60% of direct traffic may be from organic search.

Since the maverick update I am seeing more direct traffic than google organic, and it looks totally unproductive for sales. Even the google organic that I’m still getting looks like some totally different type of visitors when compared to pre-maverick visitors. These just don’t buy anything… The latest ccbill sale I had happened on July 27th.

Maybe it’s all due to summer slowdown, I don’t know. It would be nice if that alone could explain the lack of sales… but the whole thing started happening around July 14-19th so that google update is still highly suspicious.

#12

My bad… I was looking in Google Search Console and not Google Analytics… No wonder I couldn’t see what you were seeing. .UGH

With that said I see the same dip on the 19th but it was only for that one day and I haven’t noticed any difference as far as sales meaning sales have been steady. Overall traffic is down a bit since the beginning of the year but I mark that up to summer…

#13

Well done, something you are doing must be working. What do you think the reason is you have had good results? Is it a specific site, like user generated content or something else?

I looked closer at my stats the other day and noticed its actually only really one section that’s lost traffic, the galleries I have which is probably the section with the most thin content as it’s videos and photos that many other sites have and small amount of unique content. Blogs seems to have suffered as well which maybe has to do with that as well? Then again the blog section on GayDemon seems to be fairly steady in traffic.

#14

IMHO the best data on Google traffic comes from Google Search Console – it shows keyword data… The URL will look something like this – https://search.google.com/search-console/performance/search-analytics though you need a bunch of get arguments at the end for your particular site.

Google Analytics I barely trust anymore. It’s overrun with bots. I layer in reCAPTCHA v3 data so I can segment out bots from humans, but how reCAPTCHA classifies visitors changes from day to day, so even that isn’t foolproof.

#15

Honestly, I have no clue why Google suddenly likes my site. That’s just one site. It’s the site I care about the most, but it’s been doing poorly with Google, but it has a lot of potential. I’ve just been waiting for Google to see the potential. Wouldn’t surprise me if it all goes away.