October 2022 Google Search Observations

[Mentat]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5072624.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 4:47 pm on Oct 14, 2022 (utc +1)

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Another day, another downgrade.
When you enter the teeth of "the Google", you are crunched to nothing.
Another drop.
I can see the bottom now!

I have the impression that now the "Product review" category got much larger in a sense and this is causing problems.

To that end, Google adds:

If you see a change and wonder if it’s related to the core update or the product reviews update:

- If you produce product reviews, then it’s probably related to that.
- If not, then it might be related to the core update.


Earlier this month, Google revealed that the ranking signal introduced with the helpful content update will likely get stronger as other types of updates roll out.

That means this iteration of the product review update has the potential to cause a greater impact than previous versions.
It’s also possible that product review pages not affected by previous updates will feel the effects of this one.

So... what ranking signal? It cannot be something simple.
We are all too old for that.

[Martin Ice Web]

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System: The following 2 messages were spliced on to this thread from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5074432.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 4:50 pm on Oct 14, 2022 (utc +1)

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5072624.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 4:50 pm on Oct 14, 2022 (utc +1)

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big drop today, just rubbish traffic from google. even yahoo is better right now.

[RedBar]

Unusual visitor interaction today with either single page views or huge page views of 100+ per visitor!

I do get 100+ page view visitors but not usually several on the same day. They're all from different countries, IPs, devices etc, nothing unusual other than all of them on the same day ... Statistically this is inevitable at some point, today seems to be this day!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I can show you site after site that is 100% really helpful and formerly top ranking content that has been smashed to the tune of 50% traffic lost. These sites talk about products in the sense of how to fix or modify them but they do not promote them, review them or make a buying suggestion at all. Zero affiliate links and in many cases the products are long out of production.

None of that mattered so yeah, it suggests something else is going on. Perhaps the product review update is mislabeling non-review pages?

I have the impression that now the "Product review" category got much larger in a sense and this is causing problems.

Youtube videos flooded the results, bigger indeed.

Anyway, if you suspect either update for a large traffic loss, and it would be unlikely anything else is to blame given the timing, check your internal links.

- Make sure internal links are truly topical and helpful to have on the page doing the linking
- Do not keyword stuff. The link needs to make clear WHERE it is going and WHAT a visitor will find there. "Widget Grease" is bad anchor text, it doesn't tell you where you are going or what you will find. Does it go to a review page? To another site to buy some? "Visit our widget grease guide", or other verbiage/signal, is needed to tell visitors where they are going and what to expect if they click.
- Reverse the flow? You don't need to create a lot of internal links to prop up an already well ranked page on a new-ish informational site. Consider adding them where they make sense on pages Google already favors to make the value flow more deeply into the site.

Remember: Google doesn't even fully evaluate a page it feels isn't ready for prime time, you see this in Search Console when looking up user metrics and you find "not enough data" or adsense and find the same.

Helpful content includes internal links but the anchor text has to be informative too. Source: Removing a related content plugin that wasn't exactly helpful on many pages. A month later a lot of the content seems to be coming back to life and internal links were added manually to the top 4-5 pages only, according to G traffic/impressions.

Proping a good page up with lots of links from lesser pages is less effective than linking from a good page to pull up a lesser one, but it has to make sense.

*grasping at straws like everyone else* Tiring isn't it?

[RedBar]

It's Saturfay and I'm 13 hours into my Google day and already at 100% traffic for a Monday to Friday when a weekend is usually 60-75%. I am seeing more big page view visitors from my most popular countries and from the USA especially many Icloud Private Relay referrals.

Has G introduced something else seemingly small but has had a far bigger effect than it intended and has not realised, as yet?

[ChokenBako]

After a week full of declines my site startet to pick up again with 10-12% above last week traffic.
If this will continue for at least a week i will go break even with my traffic before the Google September Updates...

[ichthyous]

Last two days have seen very large drops of 15-33% in traffic from USA, UK, AU, CA. UAE traffic also dropped off a cliff. Most of the decline is "direct" traffic, search is only down about 5%. Anyone else seeing declines this weekend ?

[RedBar]

Saturday 122%, Sunday 49% and today so far coming up to 14 hours at 55%, for the month 89%.

It's certainly not stable for me but not as bad as it was.

Realworld business enquiries for inventory are picking-up with the recent big reduction in global seafreight rates.

[Nutterum]

I was cautious to post this at first as I thought its only me but I see competitors being hit as well. There was a MASSIVE deindexation of product pages across the board from Google. Talking retail clothing here. Even giants like zalando, aboutyou, etc. are suffering. Our site went from 4 million indexed pages down to 1.6 million. Just to let people know, I have 1.1 million products on the site I am doing work, all of them ready to go, and most of the other pages were category page pagination and such. Still those died, as well as almost 350k products over night.

The leading websites I cant speak of directly but I see that a simple index site search shows they dropped from a cliff as well.

Anyone see similar disruptions?

[BushyTop]

Looks like theres all sorts going on again.

[Martin Ice Web]

Gained a lot of #1 to #5 Planes Ober the last days . but traffic is at an all time low and 95% rubbish

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Sites hit hard Sept 13th seem to be coming back slowly starting Oct 13th. I see a lot of new youtube results have disapeared in my corner of the web(informational).

To be honest it felt like NON-product or review sites got treated as product/review sites.

Weird is that total visitors from search is up by a good amount but the number of impressions hasn't changed.

[EditorialGuy]

To be honest it felt like NON-product or review sites got treated as product/review sites.

It seems that way to me, too.

[RedBar]

All my sites have been html5 responsive for 8+ years minimum and for my global site its all-time average for mobile / tablets has been 41%, however this month so far it is averaging 44% with a noticeable increase in iPhone visitors by more than 10%.

I seem to remember reading that the recent "updates" had a more mobile focus, am I correct?

[Nutterum]

@RedBar - Yes. They are definitely cranked up the mobile side of search in the last 6-8 months. Across several properties I monitor I can easily see a bump in mobile traffic , from average of 61% to 65% and since October some sites hit the 70% mark. All sites are either e-commerce platforms with big international traffic or smaller product websites. The data is statistically significant as I am talking more than 200k+ monthly organic across multiple sites. Location is EU btw.

[EditorialGuy]

They are definitely cranked up the mobile side of search in the last 6-8 months. Across several properties I monitor I can easily see a bump in mobile traffic , from average of 61% to 65% and since October some sites hit the 70% mark.

Is Google "cranking up the mobile side of search," or are users cranking up their mobile usage? I'm inclined to suspect the latter. (Side note: I was a latecomer to smartphones, but even I have cranked up my mobile usage quite a bit. Mind you, I draw the line at TikTok!)

[RedBar]

or are users cranking up their mobile usage?

Our local hotel / functions site has been steady at 70% mobile for at least 3-4 years, on my global site it's the recent big increase in iPhone usage that's surprised me. I'm going to have an in-depth to see if there has been some extraordinary usage by anyone.

[tangor]

Consumer usage has changed, the device used has changed. We all will see change.

[Martin Ice Web]

Yesterday we reached 90% of traffic compared to the traffic before the quality updates started. Today it started with a big hit (-75%). And it feels like panda ( overall site penalty ).

[christianz]

It seems like they have given up on ranking websites completely. They give everyone sitewide penalties and only leave .gov .org, wikipedia, youtube, amazon/ebay and some other big tech content farms.

Google results have never been this irrelevant. Plus they have flooded the layouts with googlespam widgets. You are lucky to see 2 organics above fold on mobile. For some queries you essentially get redirected to YouTube app - a lightweight web version. Entire above fold section is just YouTube videos. That's zero choice - you go to Google to "search the web" and end up locked entirely in Google (YouTube).

[Martin Ice Web]

and now a got a recent message from google that i could push my christmas shopping with some extra juice by buying google ads.

Yes google, but i will push my chistmas shopping at the place where the buyers are and that is amazon not google.

[Shepherd]

some extra juice by buying google ads

We got caught up in last month's "update" and saw a 50% decline in organic traffic from google. As soon as we noticed we slashed our ad spend to $0. I would love to think that there is some backchannel discussion going on at google: "we lost $10k/day ad spend from this account, what's going on?" but sadly I know they never even noticed.

[RedBar]

I posted this yesterday:

I'm going to have an in-depth to see if there has been some extraordinary usage by anyone.

My two biggest country visitors are the USA and India and I can see that the big increase in use by iPhone users have been by these two countries, none have tried to hide their recent regular visits.

India is a massive industry supplier and obviously the USA is a massive industry purchaser.

Apart from being a global supplier my site is a global reference for many specifiers. I have never bothered creating an app for this site, would it make sense for a trade user to download the entire site onto their phone / tablet / wherever for immediate reference when needed?

I assume so however I use very few apps and tend to keep my phones extremely clean, would / could this make sense? It's not something I've ever really considered.

Do comprehensive apps actually reduce website traffic levels?

[Nutterum]

@RedBar - I have seen what you describe (people downloading the the main information pages) on the two investment websites I monitor. I even got a massive hatemail when we changed the layout of the thirst to aligned with the core web vitals push from Google. The company for the second website stopped development of their app (as it is something else you mentioned) simply because it only soaked up dev money (esp iphone version) to keep up and running. They got some flank from their hardcore users but very soon after these same users bookmarked the pricetable pages and life went on as usual.

I checked the iphone spike you mentioned. I saw an 11% increased across 10-ish properties, so you are on to something there, I think! Whether its adoption of google search through Siri or something else I am not sure, but it is visible. Looked at data from 01 Sept till 15 Oct.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Just take a look at how they are destroying my website entirely. Since the first Product Review update my website started tanking - nothing helps (nor updating, nor new posts). And the most important thing - I have a non-review website (it had around 0,3% of reviews before, I deleted most of them months ago, found a few backlinks to Amazon last time when checking, and deleted them too, but no effect). I have a how-to website related to IT and computers.

Here is a screenshot:
[imgur.com...]

[tangor]

how-to website related to IT and computers

A few years back g, in particular, started deprecating most tech sites that were not AUTHORITY or BRAND. A lot of sites disappeared after that.

[SteveWrz]

All 3 of my sites have been hit again. Down 8%, 18%, and 22% compared to last week. This is already after being hit hard with the previous product review update. I don't even do any reviews. I had just started to see some growth again too. I've never once engaged in any practices Google calls spam. I really don't understand.

[RedBar]

So far in October my global site is running at 95.8%, realistically it has been three low Sundays that has stopped the 100%.

The UK-focussed hotel functions site (95.4% long-term UK traffic) is at 128.7%. This is completely new territory for us, historical website data and real world business takings show slowdowns every October and November, this October we have already surpassed our forecasts and Xmas bookings are far higher than expected at this time.

Very unusual times.

[christianz]

A few years back g, in particular, started deprecating most tech sites that were not AUTHORITY or BRAND

They need to put this into their guidelines, that, in order to appear in Google search results, you have to have a company of certain turnover, number of employees, certain ad spend etc. Otherwise they make it seem like it's all about making great content.

[luckyfellow]

"A few years back g, in particular, started deprecating most tech sites that were not AUTHORITY or BRAND" where did you hear this? I see many new tech websites ranking