In the March 2019 core update to search, which happened about a week before the end of the code yellow, was expected to be “one of the largest updates to search in a very long time. Yet when it launched, many found that the update mostly rolled back changes, and traffic was increasing to sites that had previously been suppressed by Google Search’s “Penguin” update from 2012 that specifically targeted spammy search results, as well as those hit by an update from an August 1, 2018, a few months after Gomes became Head of Search.
Search engagement is declining, so the obvious fix is to make the search result worse which means people have to search more to find what they need. Engagement metrics went through the roof! Crisis averted!
Thanks to this fuck up, competition is a thing again in search engine space. Other search engines are getting better and start to capture the fleeing users.