With this monthly episode, we will discuss some of the important updates and changes for the WordPress community. Google SERP update and new core web vitals which will be important for online businesses in the coming time.

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Blogging Monthly. Last month has been very busy, not only because of Pandemic but also due to certain updates from Google.

Google has not only released a new SERP update but also updated Webmaster tools to include various new reports. They have also suggested using the new Core web vitals report to check the health of your sites as later this year they will start using those signs for SERP.

Google SERP Updates And Web Vitals

So let's start taking a deep dive into each of those topics. To start with let's discuss Google SERP update for May 2020.

Google May-2020 SERP Update

Google has released a major SERP update last month. The update started rolling out on 4th May and got completed around May 18th. This is one of the major core updates after what we have seen in last September.

This update has given a lot of fluctuations to the first page rankings. Even worst, many webmasters have reported that their first-page rankings were moved down to 9th or 10th pages.

Google's official response is similar to any other core update that the webmasters can't do much about it other than creating user-friendly content. Though the rating volatility impact across the industry is huge for this update. You can check the chart from SEMrush to see the SERP variations for last month.

Who Is Winning?

So who is winning and loosing in this SERP update?

Let's talk about my sites first. Last time when I talked about COVID-19 impact on Blogging in the last episode, I told that I am seeing an increase in the traffic on a few pages. Those pages are related to how you can work from home or things you need to set up a home office.

There was a surge of almost 100% increase in traffic on those pages but with this update, I have lost that surge. I checked and most of the traffic loss is due to the lost rankings. Some of my keywords where I was ranking in the top 3 have moved out of the first page.

On MetaBlogue, the impact is minimal and I have not lost much of the traffic with this update. Small ranking changes but some of the pages have also improved which has kept the overall traffic about the same.

So what's happening overall industry?

The update was not targeted to any specific geographic or niche, the impact is worldwide and across niches. The major gainers look like news articles that have started getting more prominent locations on the front page.

Along with news, another major change is for online forums. Many webmasters have reported that they are seeing the online forum pages gaining in the SERP. Articles are being replaced with more user-generated content on the 1st page of search results.

What happened with your sites? If you are seeing any impact please drop a note and let me know.

How to recover from it?

As per Google, there is not much a webmaster can do to recover its rankings. In my view,