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Has anyone seen differences in traffic or have you changed your habits when using Google. The local search is cool, but is it causing a *new* effect where people just "check it out" but don't take it seriously much like how items on a website marked with a *new* flag are treated.
I am also remembering back in the day when (as a joe surfer type) I got fed up with search engines and decided to start following links instead. Probably due to a major update that caused bogus results for a few days. I hope this isn't something that has affected Google... too bad they don't have a "16 million searches served today" type counter on their site. (That's probably a back-end feature)
I know that some of this is due to shifting alliances among the search engines, but if the trend I'm seeing is typical, Google has reason to be concerned.
They've been the best for the last couple of years and I've not had reason to use anyone else until the last two months. If my experience is the norm, then others have noticed the problems with Google searches as well and may be gone for good. G appears to have recovered and is now providing quality results again, but it may be too late. It looks like they've been concentrating their efforts on new services and forgetting who brought them to the dance.
Even actual referrals (numerically as opposed to percentage) on the same search in the same position doesn't mean much unless you are #1. If you are on topic and #3 with bad results at #1 & #2, then you will get more traffic than if you are at #3 when Google has replaced #1 and #2 with better results.
And if Google starts serving up really bad SERPs in your area, a fair number of searchers might go to another engine to search. That doesn't necessarily represent a trend of searchers across the web.
I think people are leaving Google due to the mess caused by the last algo change.
Whatever our personal agenda may be one thing is sure (in my area at least) the G search results are worse than they were for the consumer.
Regards
Rod
MSN seems to have the majority of its traffic towards hotmail.msn.com (74%), whereas yahoo has the majority of its traffic towards mail.yahoo.com (39%).
My thoughts are that alexa is fairly accurate with respects towards yahoo/msn/google, at least in the category of savvy net users (ie, people who would download the alexa toolbar).
And, truthfully, Google has always been a destination for Savvy users. Whether they can convincingly break into the naive user market remains to be seem.
Conclusion: Google is running strong.
I know that anecdotal evidence is just that, but friends and family have ask on many occasions lately what has happened to Google. They know they are having more trouble finding what they want, but don't know why. If folks are having to visit more sites to find information, that would increase referrals through Google, but not for the right reason. I saw an article that referrals by Google have hit record highs. Is this a factor?
I don't have the answers, just asking questions and trying to figure out where to concentrate my SEO efforts for the best returns.
Just looked at yesterdays stats and it was the first day ever that Yahoo brought more traffic to my site than Google. Also one of the top 3 days in sales revenue. Monday was #1 in number of orders. I think I'll take a look at the Yahoo forum.
I'm left wondering if G traffic is not much more than curious newbies and webmasters checking out their opposition.
Hopefully the income trend will continue :)
One more observation. I don't remember the exact date, but on the Sunday of the Brandy udate, Yahoo was still serving Google results, but on Monday evening they switched to their own. Those two days when I was ranking high in Yahoo were my highest traffic days and revenue was 250% of normal.
The rest of the week was below normal. I recognized what had happened, but all I could do was wait for Slurp. It's taken until now for Slurp to index enough pages to rank high enough in Yahoo to show results. Are these just coincidences? I don't think so, but does it really indicate a change in the Google surfer or is there something else to explain it and has anyone else had something similar occur?
The term I target is so specific that if someone is looking for it on one search engine, they will not leave the internet to they have got it, and so I'm guessing they put more effort in and go to different search engines. I'm sure this might also apply to previous posts in this thread. If someone is searching for a tape or CD etc on the internet which they think they can get cheap there but fails to find it, I'm sure they'll just leave it and go into their local shop on the high street and buy it, but in contrast, if they're searching for something like lets say a very specific Perl script etc., its unlikely they'll stop searching until they've found it. If one search engine does not provide good results, they'll go to another. I might add that G is not providing relevant results related to my site at all at the moment...
OK, I don't trust my stats to be accurate, and of course there are other factors, but the trend is clear.
Is there a US regional variation in the number of people switching to other SEs? Do a higher proportion of Californians use Yahoo! rather than Google? This would explain the drop as I now get little traffic from MSN or Yahoo.
I guess it is true that Yahooers are buyers and Googlers are researchers.
That is probably because you are one of the few people left in Google. Many of the rest of us have been nuked by Google filter. You now have our traffic, plus yours. Enjoy it while you can. ;-)
Oh...and my Yahoo traffic is way up. I used to get squat from Yahoo. Now I get squat from Google. Who would have ever thunk!?!
I am not so sure there isn't some element of truth there. I still use G for looking up technical info etc. mostly myself and I think from past traffic patterns I would have to build a cube to get serious about it, but a shot from the hip is that yes especially the msn traffic and then the yahoo traffic did convert more across the board than the traffic from G did. I had always heard the heavy adwords guys say that people use the left side of the serps to research and the right side to buy. I wonder if the user base of the engines could be different in that the G users are more internet savvy and the msn and Y users more impulsive buyers? At any rate with the shift toward purely informational sites in the G serps now that rift however significant now will only widen.
Though I'm ranking well for keywords with Google, searchers aren't coming from there to the extent that they do from Yahoo and even MSN. I'm not sure why. If you just look at the logs and keywords, Yahoo and MSN seem to be sending more relevant visitors for the type of sites involved. And it's not because we aren't ranking well in Google, because we are. I don't have a theory on it.
Also, word of mouth works very fast these days in regards to the Internet. When one blocked/filtered webmaster gets POed he tells 20 people, they tell 20 more, and so on. Time will tell, but if my theory is correct Google is already feeling some crunch to their bottom line. They have to try wilder and crazier things to make the same amount of money. (adwords 90% of page next?) Loss of user trust and loyalty has a cascading effect.
If Google has an increase in searches but not clicks it is probably due to all the web developers trying tons of searches to figure out where their sites went IMO. That is not good for CTR either.
Because people like to use search engines to find mom-and-pop businesses.
The only people looking for mom-and-pop businesses are B2B salesmen.
People are searching to meet a need. If that need is met, they are happy. Sometimes part of that need is to have options in their results, sometimes they want a quick answer, and they want one site (any site) that can supply them with what they want.
There are a lot of people that don't want to deal with specific mega-sites, just like some people object to shopping at wallyworld, but I would guess that there are very few surfers that would specifically prefer that their SERPs are filled with obscure mom-and-pop sites, commercial or otherwise.
So my girl friend who barely knows what a computer is would be called a B2B salesman when she looks for a local insurance agent? lol Unfortunately I think the Google suits are just as out-of-touch as that statement is. But the great thing about the free market is that people who are out-of-touch will suffer the consequences for that behavior eventually.
It sounds like you already have.
To take the insurance example. My guess is that the typical UK user would be comparing products from major companies, not looking for a broker. Even on the high street most brokers are now branches of nation-wide companies.
nope it's a google cheerleaders meeting ...ah well ..sad :[
Google leads to sales have been virtually non existant over this past few weeks. I should add that the rankings for these sites are still fairly steady (first page) on Google.
""whoops ..looked in here ..thought it was a forum..y'know ...free exchange of ideas etc ......
nope it's a google cheerleaders meeting ...ah well ..sad :[ """
LOL, seems to be the norm.
IMHO: the new Google is simply about paid listings. All this relevant SEO talk is, well not relevant. Google is about making money LOTS of money. Simply buy or spam your way to the top.
In a state of the art computer room set up for use by young people and also available to moms and dads,30 NEW dells purr away 12 hours a day. I am able to walk around "MBWA" and observe the behavior of the users as they come in and sign on. Makes a great test bed.
Four months ago the under 21 crowd Google was a verb and almost always used first. Now its about 60/40.
The older crowd (Ha) moms and dads MSN 75% of the time.
nope it's a google cheerleaders meeting ...ah well ..sad :
Actually, I thought it was more of a Google-basher's meeting. That's the usual behavior pattern here. :-)
As for changes in referrals from Google (or MSN, or Yahoo), I don't think anyone can draw a valid conclusion from threads on this forum. Why? Because, by nature, support forums attract posts from users who are having problems--not from those who aren't.
Also, there's a tendency here to make global assumptions based on personal hardships or frustrations, as in "Google is trying to kill off mom-and-pop businesses," or "Google is intentionally corrupting its search results to sell more AdWords," or "People who search Google want shopping results, not information, so finding an MIT Widgets Institute article ranked ahead of my widgets e-commerce page is obviously proof that Google's search quality has deteriorated."
Side note: If it is true that shoppers are migrating from Google to Yahoo or MSN, why is that a bad thing for anyone but Google? Instead of complaining that Google is driving away shoppers, why not simply follow the shoppers (and the money) to Yahoo or MSN? Ultimately, the market will determine which search engines deliver the most users, referrals, and profits.
This is from my weblogs from a site that was top ranked on Google, then killed by Florida and Austin updates and is now top ranked on Yahoo and MSN. It shows that Google even on the really niche terms provides 25.7% of my traffic. In comparison Yahoo (ink) on major terms which get probably 1000 times more searches give just over 2 times as much traffic. So Google is still dominating but it is not helping those companies like mine which are possibly the most relevant and content rich.
On a side note I hear more and more often how bad Google results have become. However, I also hear that most people don't use the search engines enough to either notice a difference or realize the results are junk. I gave up on Google when I consistly couldn't find what I was looking for and switched to Yahoo.
The only way to determine whether you just have a problem with your site or whether Joe surfer might be changing his habits is to draw on the experiences of other webmasters as well as your own.
What I see is others confirming a possible shift in serious buyers away from Google to Yahoo and MSN. If you sell a product, this is good information. Maybe others already knew this, but I've done quite well over the past two years relying on Google for most of my traffic.
Has anyone been complaining?
It appears that the sensible posters on this thread are pondering the nature of google visitors, and whether they are worth spending time and effort on.
Its not a 'Yahoo is better than Google' thread, its, a discussion into the nature of the traffic that we are currently welcoming into our sites?
There are no obfuscations as far as i can see, no hidden meanings, just a simple "my sites income is growing in relative proportion to my visitors from google decreasing"
google still provides the bulk of traffic to around 20 of my sites, but the fact is that yahoo and msn between them are dealing me a better hand when it comes to income.
Nothing is going wrong, google is a fairly unstable search engine (in my field), and i've learned to live with it. This latest increase in other traffic brings money with it, i liken google to british package holidaymakers, cheap & cheerful. IMHO
