Impacts of the Coronavirus on Google, SEO and digital budgets

In the span of a month or so, Google has completely transformed its results pages for this and for many other associated terms: from the SEO point of view, it was like a huge update that hit the activity in large areas, as we are going to see.

Those who were in the lead with light news suddenly saw themselves thrown out of the SERP, losing positions and traffic: its content has not stopped being a “quality content”, but it has grown out of focus compared to the topic really searched for in that moment by people.

Moreover, the search volumes of the term Corona (and all others related to it) have completely changed and skyrocketed: who is making visits now, quite for sure, has now reached a level of traffic for which he previously needed months or even years! This is why it is always important not to neglect content updates, keeping an eye on what is happening in real life, as well.

Days ago, Gianluca Fiorelli too analyzed the “Covid-19 case” referring to Google with a detailed article on his blog, showing how the virus is having a similar or even stronger impact on SERPs than a broad core update, with the big difference that we cannot try to face this situation with “better contents“.

The reason, says the SEO, is that “people stop looking for the topics, products and services that you offer or, even if they would actually like to purchase your services, they can’t because they can’t get out of their Red Zone”.

The presented case study concerns the organic traffic of healthy websites and the segment of the travel sites, which together with other types of websites (such as local businesses and some niches of eCommerce B2B and B2C) was among the most affected by the virus.

The article shows the results of a travel site specialized on travels to Sardinia, which in less than a month (since February 20th, the day of the announcement of the first coronavirus infection in Italy) to date has undergone a vertical collapse for all the main queries. An inevitable situation, comments the expert, “considering the amount of panic and hysteria in all Western countries”, so much so that now “toilet paper is more sought after than diamonds”.

The expression “query deserves Freshness” it is increasingly visible not only in search trends, but also in Google’s features and among the answers selected by the search engine. For instance, analyzing on Google Trends in the United Kingdom the interests related to Florence as a touristic destination is displayed as breakout response “coronavirus florence italy”, as well as searching on Google UK “Travel to Italy” there is only one organic search result that does not concern Italy and the coronavirus, and also the “People also ask” and “related searches” boxes have many answers on “if it is safe to travel to Italy now”.

Fiorelli tries to analyze the economical impact of this “rather dramatic” situation, especially for travel and tourism companies in Italy: the problem does not concern so much the refunds for cancellations (we are in low season anyway) as much as the absence of future reservations, given the fact that Easter season is basically lost and summer is approaching.

Many of the less solid online travel companies will be strongly affected by this situation and, considering that 5.5 percent of Italian GDP is represented by tourism and related industries (and jobs), the entire national economy will also suffer.

Fiorelli is aware that SEO alone, of course, “can’t save a website from a situation of almost zero revenues caused by an uncontrollable external reason like the Covid-19″, but can stand as a hope in the long term because it is easy to imagine that “when the coronavirus crisis will end (because it will end), people will probably want to travel even more, especially after being forced not to leave their cities for a long time”.

The advice is therefore to work for that day, improve the overall quality of the website and already try starting from now to improve its organic visibility: if this will not bring more traffic and more revenue in the present day, it may mean immediate visibility afterwards, especially when the freshness impact of travel queries will go back to normal.

The last survey on the impact of coronavirus on the digital field comes from Search Engine Land, which analyzes in particular the scenario of online advertising investments, reporting (unavoidable) collapses and problems: even giants like Google and Facebook will suffer a decline in advertising revenue in travel and other sectors most affected by the global efforts to slow down the spread of coronavirus, while marketers and media buyers need to reassess short-term advertising strategies.

According to some analysts, due to the coronavirus epidemic at the end of the quarter Google will experience a 15 percent annual drop in revenue related to travel ads and in the second quarter a 20 percent decrease. Similarly, there are signs of declines in travel expenses, retail, packaged goods and entertainment, which together account for 30 to 45 percent of Facebook’s total revenue.

The first answer to this situation has been the cut of the investments in advertising, mainly for companies active in the industry of hospitality and events, but more generally the problem also regards the supply chain for the eCommerce and all other fields.

The most widespread feeling in the digital field is therefore an overall “edginess“, a state of anxiety and concern: exactly the same feeling that we are all experiencing in everyday life struggling with the coronavirus.