Google Core Update September 2022

[ne0h]

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System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5071217.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 10:24 am on Sep 13, 2022 (utc +1)

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Another sudden update started rolling out for September core update.

[developers.google.com...]

Seriously...one after another...

[RubicCubed]

buyers may not get to even highly ranked sites!

With each update it gets worse and worse. I think many shoppers hit their breaking point and just don't use Google anymore. This may explain your other comment where Google may soon match Facebook with 90% of the traffic being junk. We get many more sales from other search engines than Google.

[JesterMagic]

I find I am using Google less and less these days.

Google News is full of useless content.

Google Ads I never look at as they are usually useless. (and way to many)

Google widgets like people also ask contains generic info that is usually useless and makes you go around in circles in search

Google search for products and service returns spam articles or articles so full of advertising from major brands with mediocre content that it is not worth the time to find any hidden gems. Bing is no better. I usually end up just going to Amazon or the store directly I want and looking at the reviews or questions for research.

Google is still decent for searching how to do something (especially in coding). I use Youtube for searching How to videos

Now I understand I am a power user and not typical, but I see my kids bypassing Google completely as well.

Google is doing themselves no favors in the future and are only thinking of profits now.

[RedBar]

I need to repeat that September is not normally a busy month for my global site owing to big widget international fairs however this September I have seen my highest traffic levels since January to March and already ahead of Arpril and May when traffic began to diminish.

In my realworld business September has seen my highest level of business enquiries.

Where we go from here I have no clue, will my improvement continue or will it return to 2+ months ago? One thing is for certain, I have done absolutely nothing to my site to change its current favour in Google, unless you are absolutely sure that something(s) are not at their best for G, think very carefully before doing anything.

On another note for new sites I am still not seeing full indexing and rankings even after a couple of months, does G have a capacity issue, has it been unabke to incorpporate new sites whilst all its updates have been going on?

[christianz]

This is the worst Google update ever and I am leaning to think it has to do with their "intent matching" thing that they have been pushing.

I believe they have a large lists of "user intent" and "website purpose" categories. In order to match users with sites they need to assign category to your site. This is done with bunch of fuzzy AI networks that spit out scores from 0.0 to 1.0.

If your site is infotainment site that is centered around things that are products, Google classifier will come up with something like 0.4 review site, 0.2 forum site, 0.1 online store, 0.001 #*$! site etc, and will treat it as a review site.

It will than launch separate algos to score the "quality" of your alleged reviews, which will, of course, end up with very poor score, because they are not reviews. Then Google will just mass derank your subpages.

Net result is that only cookie-cutter sites that mach one of their categories can have any exposure in search.

In my niche I suspect Google doesn't have appropriate category not just for my site, but also for the user intent. As consequence, they are giving users generic review sites, cuting off my traffic and those few who still see my site, increasingly are looking for something else, as I have noticed that bounce rate is not dropping with the search traffic.

[Soulofmonk]

Nowadays days Reddit gives better search results than Google.

[RedBar]

Nowadays days Reddit gives better search results than Google.

Results for what?

[BigKat]

Nowadays days Reddit gives better search results than Google.

Port scans coming from Digital Ocean IP ranges produce about the same results as Google these days...

[aristotle]

and those few who still see my site, increasingly are looking for something else

This is called mis-matched traffic. People have complained about it for years. But only part of it is Google's fault because searchers themselves often use vague or misleading search terms.

[ViktorN]

Since June we are on a steep downtrend after being top 90k sites worldwide by Alexa.
But this update was the worst. Lost 50% of the traffic only in Sep. Can't understand what's going on.

[eccenihil]

My gripe... my site is over 10 years old and has never been hit like this before, down 30% or so, at a time of a low in CPMs due to recession fears. The information on the site has helped thousands of school kids worldwide for years. The other users of the site like the free stuff it provides and have been coming back daily for years, but now I'm not sure they can be subsidised via search and the advertising revenue it was bringing. Google, a monopoly over infrastructure, want to continue to faff around like they're still carrying out experiments en masse that affect many viable businesses. Don't trust you can build a business on shifting ground.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

- Wikipedia is moving towards "sound" - [soundlogo.wikimedia.org...]
- Shopping portals are investing in virtual reality shopping experiences
- Content creators are encouraged to embrace video
- Google's M.U.M. doesn't care what language it's all in

Soon the hardest type of content to do well in search with is going to be a vanilla text-based content website.

[RedBar]

Global site very quiet today, local UK sites looking steady. Attempting to predict real trade would be crazy however as a manufacturing business we are certainly reviewing all major capital expenditues.

[sk7411]

C'mon google we are bored .. It's a new month and we need a new update announced. :|

[RedBar]

Not a good start to the week with overall traffic last week back to pre-update level and similar this morning. How much of this is affected by my widget trade's 2nd largest fair culminating yesterday I may be able to judge later in the week. October into early November is usually a good period since it's the last chance for Xmas shipments to be despatched from many exporting countries.

Of course this means for companies that actually have orders!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Patience young pageweavers. If you lost traffic after a core update don't dread the next one, you need it!

"You can regain some traffic after a core update but a site will not fully recover until the next core update, at the earliest"

"Losing traffic after a core update does not automaticaly mean your site is doing something wrong"

So remember, don't just look for data on pages that lost traffic, look for it on pages that didn't. What did they do differently? Make more like those! Keep rocking the user experience charts and you'll do just fine in the long run.

[RedBar]

Blimey, just where are some referrals coming from, who is selling well out-of-date "data"?

Today I have had 4 visitors with "no referrals" from 4 different countries to a couple of pages not only removed in 2009, the entire site was at the same time!

[Martin Ice Web]

Finally google pushed me where i never wanted to go to. Normaly I do not buy at amazon and try to help smaller shops. But with current serps i went right away to amazon as i didnīt want to waste my time with all searchs leading to big useless resellers or fake test pages. And i will certainly not click on any ads.

[christianz]

C'mon google we are bored .. It's a new month and we need a new update announced. :|

I am not bored. As far as I can tell the September 20 update is still rolling out at full speed. The slopes that were established at that date remain unchanged, also the traffic trends.

Technically, it could be that they determined the end state of the rankings and now it's just changes playing out over delayed curves that Google adds to confuse SEO manipulators. But in either case - carnage continues at full intensity.

[BigKat]

Normaly I do not buy at amazon and try to help smaller shops.

Amazon gets enough of help from taxpayers in the USA. Looks like $4.8 billion in local tax subsidies, which does not include the loopholes they enjoy in big business friendly tax code or the utility discounts they get. I wonder how well us smaller shops would do if we just had a piece of the massive subsidies Amazon is getting?

Amazon Subsidy Data Source: [goodjobsfirst.org...]

Buyer queries continue to be overtaken by Youtube videos - leading shoppers to avoid Google. We are seeing a good increase in sales from Bing and DDG. For whatever reason Yahoo is relatively flat while Google's traffic performs the worst of all our search traffic, which has worsened since the product review updates and recent core update. What we produce and sell is unique - shoppers can't buy our products on Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. When I do a buyer intent search in Google, and blow past the Youtube spam at the top of the page, I'm flooded with our Chinese competitors' products. What the Chinese are selling are white label products being the same products simply sold under different brands/part numbers. So much for diversity, and it continues to worsen.

[RedBar]

'Tis a new mess day!

All my new realworld traffic seems to have disappeared and been replaced by 99% single page views and / or bots. Three days so far of pre-update traffic levels for me and I guess this will make the fourth meaning -33% v September ... Noooo, there's absolutely no manipulation going on is there?

[EditorialGuy]

No big changes here since the end of September's updates. We've been up a little (week over week) in the past few days, which is a modest positive sign at a time of year when our editorial travel site's traffic (including Google traffic) is usually on a downhill slope until Christmas.

[ichthyous]

I am also seeing declines in traffic from English speaking countries starting on Sept 20-26th...USA is -8%, Canada is -34%, Australia -43%...the sole outlier is the UK, which is +7%. Rest of Europe and the world is mostly higher.

I believe that backlinks are no longer counted as strongly as they used to be. I closed a partnership account lost about 800 backlinks from a very high DA site (80+). So far the effect has been more muted than expected...perhaps because Google doesn't place a high value on a mass of links from the same domain. I would almost say that traffic improved at first once the links vanished...

[RedBar]

Today, Wednesday, I am still seeing lots of single page views, they're not to main navigation pages they are to specific widget pages which is normal for visitors seeking more detailed widget information. Multiple page views are not so frequent at the moment but realworld enquiries are still consistent. It is not very often I get several consecutive days of single page views.

[Jez123]

I am getting lots of foreign traffic. Far more than I am getting from the country I want. Just endless crap from google these days.

[StupidIntelligent]

Penn State University has bingo and casino pages ranking in top 3.

America has gone bonkers.

[RedBar]

Penn State University has bingo and casino pages ranking in top 3.

Ok, I'll bite with a "stupid" question, why not or what was the search term?

[robzilla]

Penn State University has bingo and casino pages ranking in top 3.

Probably not related to this core update, but clearly the collegian.psu.edu subdomain has a spam issue.

On second look, their journalism students consider it "sponsored content" [www-collegian-psu-edu.translate.goog]. LOL

Obviously you should not be seeing that in any search results.

(If you are, I hope you use the feedback link at the bottom of the SERPs, maybe even report it to PSU.)

[Martin Ice Web]

Last sunday we had a very big hit. It remains till today. About 45% of traffic got lost with this sunday update.
And it has targeted our pages where we are best in. Where we have lots of items with detailed description and pictures.
Remaining traffic is to pages with very low to thin content. But this is the item owed. There are items where you canīt write more than one sentence. Everything else would be spun text.
It seems that google thinks we are to good (having to deep information) for nomal users. Traffic times are now business times. Traffic falls sharply when business times (5p.m.) ends. So i guess for long time now that google not only tries to guess what we are searching but who you are and what skills you have.

[StupidIntelligent]

Danny Sullivan has clearly stated that Google has no problems national newspapers and now universities selling casino, CBD, underwear, fruit juicers, as long as they're using the "sponsored" tag.

Smart affiliate mangers should simply start contacting their local newspapers and colleges.

[RedBar]

I'm seeing surging variations. By that I mean I am seeing several hours of solely single page views and then for a few hours multiple page views then back to single page views for several hours, repeat etc. This is so much like a manilpulated flick switch it's crazy.

[Mentat]

All the previous updates were almost inexistent for us in the last 1.5 years.
On the 26 of September we even had a record traffic.
On the 27 of September our traffic halved and is goind down each day.
Our competitors does not seems to feel any love also.

Even my personal Youtube profile is broken, aso my interests in Goolg Home.
Is like a database reset & rewind.

To add to the problems, eCPM is record low and going down a few cents each day.

I got nothing.

[ichthyous]

In my experience traffic has been quite a bit stronger since the August update...I was abroad and didn't pay attention to traffic at all from early Sept. until about October 3rd. Traffic is a bit lower now, but I also closed a major 4 year long partnership and lost 800+ links from a DA 80+ site. I was expecting the effect to be much worse actually. Conversions since the August update have been far stronger...they were pretty much non-existent all year prior to that. It's as if more normal traffic patterns are prevailing again.

[KaseyM]

Traffic has been flat and predictable for about 4-5 months surviving all the core updates then suddenly earlier this week. Zap. 20-30% lower.

[herolegend]

Google makes it harder for us every time it updates

[shadowlight]

Google makes it harder for us every time it updates

Yep, that is their intention, they don't want to be sending anyone any traffic of value without obtaining as much money as possible in exchange for that traffic.

They used to be a search engine which was supplemented by ads, now they are becoming an advertising engine supplemented by search.

[westcoast]

"They used to be a search engine which was supplemented by ads, now they are becoming an advertising engine supplemented by search."

Spot on.

Google had a great model in letting publishers earn something for their own content and splitting the proceeds. The old model was to leverage the community to do the work for them, but they weren't happy with sharing, so they've now taken the entire risk of both advertising AND content providing on themselves, leading to a situation where THEY now have to provide all the content in the search engine itself (by siphoning off more content from more people) to maintain revenue.

It is hard to see how destroying publishers from which you are siphoning content is a smart long term move.

People have used "evil" to describe Google, but I think it's simple, predictable, quarterly-number greed. They mortgaged their future and harmed publishers for a quick buck. It might not be too late for them to reverse course, but I think we are very, very near the tipping point where their "advertising engine"'s vampiric nature leads them into a downward spiral as a company.

[ChokenBako]

Since one week i am loosing traffic everyday. 3-4%
Anyone else?

[Mentat]

Same here and I have a deja-vu called PANDA

[RedBar]

Anyone else?

I'm fluctuatingt a bit and then rebound, for instance yesterday was slow'ish for a Sunday until 18.00 UK time then completely normal traffic re-appeared and has continued so until 13.00 today ... Will it get turned off again soon, absolutely no idea?

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar,

we, too, saw traffic picking up at 18 pm yesterday. But it was all one hit traffic. Thousands of one hits within 2 hours.
Complete usesless.

Same here and I have a deja-vu called PANDA

Yes, but with Panda you did know why u suffered. This time it seems like they roll the dice for every website. And this several times a day.

[christianz]

PANDA

11 years later and spam / low quality content is far greater problem than before Panda. Problem is that it's impossible to measure page quality by automated means. It would require human-like general artificial intelligence and expertise in every possible field. Such AI doesn't exist and doesn't look like is going to exist (unless you are Ray Kurzweil and think that "Singularity is Near" every year).

But Google still tries to determine "quality" and "EAT" this way, which is why AI generated nonsense ranks. It has just the right "quality" and "EAT" properties to satisfy the AI but no real quality or expertise to satisfy human searchers.

Sometimes the thinnest page with no author info is by far the highest quality result and exactly the kind of page human is looking for. There are large specialist sites made up almost exclusively of "thin content" which are obviously best fit for certain types of queries but Google demotes then because of their superficial "content quality" filters that look for bloated word counts, author profiles and other signals which are easily satisfied by auto generated spam.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing a big decline in English language traffic today...USA -53% and UK -36% this morning. It's a federal holiday here in USA so not sure if that is the reason why...

[RedBar]

But it was all one hit traffic. Thousands of one hits within 2 hours.

I "hate" this type of traffic, it seems to be nonsensical but just how does G manage to deliver this type of traffic? One-hit bots would seem to be useless, I don't carry any advertising therefore nothing to click, what's the point?

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar,

does your one hit traffic comes from multiple domains or more from 4 to 5 IP ranges. Something like 185.55.65.* ,

[ChokenBako]

Today again - 20% compared to last week. What the hell is going on...

[robzilla]

I "hate" this type of traffic, it seems to be nonsensical but just how does G manage to deliver this type of traffic? One-hit bots would seem to be useless, I don't carry any advertising therefore nothing to click, what's the point?

Have you done any analysis on this traffic? Is it bot traffic?

[Martin Ice Web]

@robzilla,

it is not bot traffic. It is more that many poeple hit just one, two or three differnet pages but no other pages. IP Range are telecom carriers.
If this happens i know that something is gonna happen with serps.

[morpheus83]

Direct traffic continues to dip, oddly enough, we are getting traffic for our old pages. Seems some parts of the Google Index are being rebuilt (Wishful thinking).

[Jori]

I'm rebuilding my website, updating anything I can. So, why an old page that I didn't touch at all since mathusalem is getting loads of love from google all of a sudden?

[renatovieira]

A very big huge drop today... F***