Google Search Algorithm Update

Some are reporting signs of a new algorithm update:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-rolling-28403.html

Have you noticed any changes in your site traffic or ranking?

 

Yes, it's affected my website position and traffic but not more than 30 percent ..

 

Positively or negatively?

 

It's dropped!

 

Those things tend to recover over time. Hope yours will too.

 

Yes, and it will be recovered soon after the rollout ..

 

my sites are still working fine, no significant changes in traffic volume

 

one of my sites has had a drop of around 50% over the last few days.

 

I hope this update works better than previous one they did in June. Results sucked soon after that June update.
No significant changes so far with my websites since 21 Oct.

 

I have seen no changes, but then I was bitch-slapped by Chrome a year ago and am still recovering from that, so even if I saw changes I could not attribute it to this.

 

@mmerlinn
what do you mean by slapped by chrome? Can chrome hurt rankings somehow?

 

Not directly. But when your site is blocked by Chrome (60% of the browser market) eventually it will affect ranking.

 

Why is your site blocked by chrome? @mmerlinn

 

Starting with Chrome 68 in July 2018, Chrome started blocking and/or marking sites as insecure if they were HTTP sites. Starting in January 2020, ALL HTTP sites will be blocked by Chrome eventually killing all such sites for everyone except those with early browsers. Worst part of that is ALL of the accumulated knowledge that is not moved to HTTPS will be lost forever.

At that time my site was HTTP and according to Google Webmaster I HAD NO SECURITY ISSUES as my website is an INFORMATIONAL website ONLY.

So, starting in July 2018, I started noticing fewer and fewer inqueries from my website. In June 2018 inqueries were running about 10 per day, with a sale every 3rd inquery. One year later my inqueries were TWO per WEEK, often with NO sales for the week. No need to tell you how that affected my income.

It took me 10 and a half months to determine what the problem was (HTTP instead of HTTPS), then another 6 weeks to get it corrected. On Monday, 25 June 2018, my site was HTTPS and up and running. The previous week I had TWO inqueries for the week and no sales. ONE HOUR after getting HTTPS working, I had FIVE inqueries and TWO sales. Since then inqueries are gradually getting back to 'normal' which for me is 10 per day.

Basically what happened is that as browsers were updated to and past version 68, I kept getting fewer and fewer inqueries as fewer and fewer people were using Chrome browsers before version 68.

 

OMG, I did not knew this that chrome will block non-https websites. Thanks for this information @mmerlinn

What about those non-https links which people follow from other websites to my website? Will they automatically redirect to https version of the site, or will users get a insecure warning?

 

I don't know, but it looks like starting in 2 months Chrome will block all non-https links. Won't happen overnight and won't happen in older versions of Chrome. Most people have Chrome on automatic update, so the new versions will deploy fairly fast. With that elephant in the room, lots of people are going to be blind sided just like I was.

 

Thanks again for this info. Is there a generic .htaccess redirect code one can use to redirect non-http to https?

Currently I am using this code to redirect, but here I have to enter specific domain name.
Is it possible without having to type specific domain name?

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://munafasutra.com/$1 [R=301,L]

 

@JEET This:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Code (markup):

 

@qwikad.com
Perfect! Many thanks for this code!