Phantom 5 0 8211 The New Google Update Strikes
Management Summary
What is a Phantom Update?
What’s particularly special about the Phantom update is the fact that Google neither officially announces nor comments on it. Google is causing a lot of fuss, mystery and confusion among SEOs.So far there have been 5 major Phantom updates and a few small ones. However, all of them are about the quality of the content in relation to the users. Google Phantom is supposed to ensure that users feel comfortable on the website and can find their way around.
Who is affected by this Google update?
What is striking is that both the winners and the losers come from the same industries. Possibly an indication that not only certain topics or areas are negatively affected by Phantom 5.0.Dictionary sites, travel portals, recipe websites and health portals in particular have felt the impact of the new Google update, both positively and negatively.
A Comparison of Online Dictionary Sites:
Here you can see, for example, onmeda.de (blue) vs. netdoktor.de (green):
What is striking is that the dictionaries mainly contain pornographic terms on the first pages. While sites with actual pornographic content have disappeared.Google has made the index a lot more youth-friendly.Dictionaries, Wikipedia and lifestyle magazines have particularly benefited from this, as these sites use pornographic terms but do not show any explicit content.
But even websites that had not previously been affected by a phantom update fell victim to it in February. One of the winners here is, for example, ebay-kleinanzeigen.de. In comparison, reddit.com suffered a heavy loss.
ebay-kleinanzeigen.de, for example, was able to make significant gains with brand terms such as “thermomix”, “autoscout”, “iphone 6” or “ikea”.
In a direct comparison you can see that reddit.com has lost a lot of rankings due to the new Google update for brands such as “facebook.com”, “PS4” “4chan”, “Steam” “minecraft” etc.
Another noticeable thing is that theSites that were obviously spam have finally been punished.We actually expected this effect with Penguin 4.0 in October 2016, but it turned out to be a bitter disappointment.
These sites are classic lead generation sites that use pop-ups, questionable sales videos and other dubious tricks to get the user to enter their email address. Some of the backlinks on these pages are obviously spam. Until February, these sites had stable rankings for strong terms, despite Penguin 4.0. The crash could be explained by an update by the Penguin algorithm or by the obvious factors on the site itself.
Chef vs. Eatsmarter
A direct comparison of chefkoch.de and eatsmarter.de is also interesting. As you can see, chefkoch.de has gained enormous visibility, while eatsmarter.de has lost a lot.
chefkoch.de:
eatsmarter.de:
However, even after directly comparing the winning and losing keywords, there are no clear insights for us. Because chefkoch.de gained rankings for completely different keywords than eatsmarter.de lost.
This case is particularly exciting because these two sides are very similar. We can only think of one argument that could possibly be true: chefkoch.de has more “authority” than eatsmarter.de. As is well known, chefkoch.de is the original, the top dog, so to speak, which Google seems to be more fond of.This could be the artificial intelligence of the Google algorithm, which assigns more “authority” to websites whose content has been online for a long time.
Conclusion on the Google Update Phantom 5.0
In summary, it can be said that not only one factor was taken into account in Phantom 5.0.It can be seen that the Google update mainly targets dubious, dubious and explicitly pornographic content. Anyone affected by the update should pay attention to the honesty of the content on their site – not that it is ultimately only aimed at lead generation and the content is secondary.
Another factor is the backlinks: anyone who has previously placed their links in the “gray area” should make sure that they have a clean slate in the future!
It should also be mentioned that Google rolled out an update against pop-ups on mobile devices in January. Officially, this only affects the mobile index. However, pop-ups have long been considered a negative factor in Google.
Ultimately, one can only advise those affected:to take a close look at the update and possible effects – whether positive or negative.Which pages, directories and keywords exactly are affected by Phantom 5.0? Are there annoying advertisements on your website? And what about usability anyway?
