November 2022 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Insofar as my global site is concerned my numbers are holding-up to average.

UK hotel site has seen a small decrease this week however realworld takings are ok, in fact better than anticipated.

[RedBar]

Bots, bots everywhere today for my global sites seemingly from the US however since all of the "tech info" is spoofed who really knows? All they seem to do is read my top navigation line with a different IP for each url and then go. Why?

[malkhaldi]

new update regarding to seroundtable November 11th - 12th
i cant understand what they are doing

[Broaster]

This is sad, so many of us rely on adsense or PPC and advertising and don't know to do anymore. They are fiddling with the algorithim like a rollercoaster, they tease a recover only for 3 days later for your traffic to be obliterated and no more.

Its been like this every since 2021. In 2020 after many years in limbo since those algorithims came out in 2012-2013 when all my traffic was wiped out including google news, I had a resurgence tht started late 2019 and continued on in 2020 I was getting picked up by google discover and getting lots of organic traffic

then in 2021 the summer my site was hit, it was around the time of the Core Web Vitals, ill see occassional spikes in traffic but its mostly from bing, but now Im barely getting 10 visits an hour if that.

My last great month was March I had 20k visitors in one day due to bing news article but then some spammers and scrapers stole my news and were posting my articles word for word and backlinking to my website via a bing news link. These scrapers the month or so were out ranking me in google search but not in bing

I notice yahoo and bing have better ability to tell spam from original, the only downside is NOBODY uses yahoo, I barely get traffic from there. This google algo team are just useless people who want to continue working there so they dont get laid off they create issues aka fiddling with algorithms so they seem busy so they can maintain a salary, if there is no issue they down size the department. This the only thing Im thinking because google search is messed up period. Try searching terms and you get irrelevant crap in search it doesnt help the person searching for important info when they just throw up a big name site that has some of the keywords but they have more name value and backlinks.

I miss the old google search where everyone had a fighting chance if they wrote good content or had the info you were searching for, I used to be able to finish my college reports easy with google search instead of going to the library Id type in some sentence and find an exact article that speaks on that sentence and topic, not anymore.

[RedBar]

Another day of average PVs at 50% to Uniques for my global site.

[ichthyous]

Participation in this forum seems to have declined considerably. Whatever Google did, my traffic became more consistent and started converting better after the major update in June...it's a bit like the old days now with much more consistent traffic patterns on an hourly and daily basis that follow the norms i have observed for years. I'm not seeing much if any of the insane traffic throttling from 2021 and early 2022 anymore. All that while I have lost a huge number of IBLs and my DA has taken a sharp drop...but many more new inquiries...go figure.

While this is a relief, my traffic was so badly affected for so long (18+ months) and my business was so hammered by the loss of quality traffic that I will never again believe that Google can be relied upon as a source of consistent traffic. The throttling and constant experimentation will be back soon enough i fear...this is only a temporary reprieve.

[RedBar]

Oh ... and there ya goes, the first 3 hours of today for me were ALL single page views and then, as if by magic, my multiple page viewers came back and have been there for the past 8+ hours with traffic already surpassing Monday's ... Not much manipulation there.

Participation in this forum seems to have declined considerably.

It's hardly surprising since no one can do anything because there is seemingly no rationale for what is happening. Long-established webmasters realise there is only one option, do not change anything and wait it out and test ideas with a totally separate and unconnected site

But there is another aspect and that is many site "updaters" these days, especially large corporates, are told what and how to do it by their book. They want cheap, updating monkeys who conform to their policies and are prepared to pay for ads, this is in their costings, ranking means very little or anything whatsoever to these bean counters, advertising spend and dominance is in their college learning and Google complies, even recommends, how to do it.

Of course local SEO can work extremely well and effectively but the days of "independent experts" are almost finished since the bean counters do not want anything outside of their control.

[JesterMagic]

@ichthyous Yeah these past few years have seen a drastic decline in users on this forum. I blame this in part of the rise of the major media websites taking over all the niches that use to be held by single owners. If the SERP position is not held by a major media website, then it is held by some low-quality spam website that uses more blackhat techniques. So basically, everyone missing most likely has gone out of business.

Google also has moved away from ranking user generated content on mid-size and small websites so forums and pages with comments, etc. do not rank the same anymore. This is in part due to social media, YouTube, Google Reviews, and Reddit.

[ichthyous]

I'm not sure if the number of users has declined or just the participation rate. Google changed so many things so drastically from 2019 to now that it seems futile to fight against the tide. This last two years in particular have shown us that even if you do rank, you won't get the traffic since Google has loaded the page with so many ads and widgets and pushed organic further and further down. Once the reward for ranking top ten was removed then the point of this forum and SEO in general becomes moot.

[RedBar]

This last two years in particular have shown us that even if you do rank, you won't get the traffic

However it's not just the past two years, the really first big change for many was the image theft of 2010 followed by many iterations whereby ads became much more prominent and organic ranking much more difficult, in fact I feel that 2022 will be shown to be the year of new sites, unless they are extremely unique in all respects, will have found ranking an almost impossibility, furthermore for non-USA business sites to rank in the G US SERPs for keyword phrases almost pointless.

Ok, I am viewing this from a specific viewpoint but along with millions of other non-US business site owners, we have to consider the US as a closed marketplace for our products unless we open branches there. Is that what our potential clients really want, their suppliers opening up in competition to them?

OTOH being realistic that after 29 years of the www and the last 20 years of GloboCorps creating and establishing their new sourcing structures, maybe G US users simply have zero interest what happens in the rest of the business world ?

[RedBar]

Here we go again, for the last 4 hours nothing but single page views.

[anubitez]

I am holding steady since gains I mentioned earlier, I am just re-doing old content this week and fixing anything up and improving it, but when I refresh and re-post most seem to rank well against the best of my competitors, sometimes top 1 to 3, worse case 5 to 6. Best part, the content thieves auto and manual loosing ranks, I do ping google manually now whenever I update and especially post new content using the Google Search Console to ensure they visit it before someone else and try and claim it first.

Overall, no where near before the October 19th, still around 65 to 75% on average to before this date, but at least its not 10% on average to what it was before like what occurred on the 19th, but I thought I would update, my niche is tech information, howtos etc. Stick in there guys if your a legit website, keep pushing, I am and its getting back, so I can do it you can, unless your site is really screwed up or you doing alot of blackhat stuff.

[ichthyous]

I spoke too soon...this morning USA traffic was down 38%. That's the first suspicious drop in traffic in a while...only usa traffic affected

[sk7411]

I spoke too soon...this morning USA traffic was down 38%. That's the first suspicious drop in traffic in a while...only usa traffic affected

May be the events like Artemis I moon mission is affecting it ? I don't know for sure but i am seeing the same trend.

[RedBar]

A reasonably consistent / normal day for me. As of this moment on 16th Nov so far this month I am at 99.2% of average however I do expect that to reduce with Thanksgiving next week IF traffic is similar to previous US holidays.

[Markedd]

I have mentioned that all websites in one of the niches that I observe got hit by the Google Spam update and I this is what I noticed so far.
None of the websites have yet to make a full recovery, there are up days and down days, the latter being more frequent.
Semrush shows that the keyword bleeding continues but it has slowed down over the last two weeks.
A single website was hit the least and has lost maybe about 10-15 percent of keywords and this is a large website, almost identical in size with my own. The difference is that they have been building links the last couple of months.
So here is my conclusion at the moment. The so-called spam update is nothing more than push the websites with a good backlink profile at the top which mostly includes the mega-domains. The same type of update as the previous ones. Another interesting aspect was that there were winners in this niche, since not all can be losers. The winners were Amazon, YouTube, Walmart and so on.

[Nutterum]

Not sure what the hell happened but Google decided to boost the corpo website I am engaged with. Literally double the conversions with 15% increased traffic and from 6 to 18 page depth. It's like Google said - here let us throw you our paying customers . Now give us all your Adwords money. Let's see how long this lasts.

[engine]

As some of you know i like to test theories with practical examples.
I'm creating more and more specific content based upon user needs, which can sometimes be seasonal, and other times market driven.

What experiments are you doing to test the theories?

[RedBar]

My global site has had an extraordinary 24 hours commencing UK time 12 noon Thursday until 12 noon today, Friday.

This was akin to traffic in January to March 2021, consistent multiple global page views amounting to 232.7%

Any bets for how long this will last?

[RedBar]

And there ya goes, 3 hours of low volume single page views, nothing new there eh?

[ichthyous]

A huge drop in direct traffic starting yesterday at 10am sharp and lasting the entire rest of the day. This morning my search traffic is down 62% and direct is down 43%. USA, UK, CA, AU, DE and AE traffic all affected heavily. Anyone else seeing a big drop starting yesterday?

[ichthyous]

Anyone ?

[Atomic]

The World Cup?

[ichthyous]

It lasted ~24 hours and then around 11am yesterday traffic suddenly reverted back to a more normal pattern...

[RedBar]

Anyone ?

It's been that quiet here recently I thought I was talking to myself!

I am still seeing massive disparities in PVs to Uniques, I was expecting things to be a little quieter this weekend however at the moment it's looking fairly normal.

The World Cup?

I have never seen so many disinterested about the World Cup footbal fans as there have been this year. There have been many different comments especially about the location but the most often is it being in the middle of a traditional football season.

Interestingly no one has asked at our hotel whether we are playing matches etc!

[ichthyous]

Very odd traffic today...USA traffic is down a whopping -45% at 3pm and still declining, while pretty much every other place is strongly up:
United Kingdom +88%
Germany +197%
France +256%
United Arab Emirates +78%
India +78%
Italy +167%

[wego]

Interestingly my global site's first weekday of November average was completely normal, my weekends are usually 50-75% but this weekend it was 76.3% and 81.7%. My most popular widget pages are still the same with only minor movements +/-1 positions.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:12 am (utc) on Nov 21, 2022]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[christianz]

Traffic is pretty awful across all my sites. Not sure if it's due to more "smart" AI features in the ranking or the annual black friday/Christmas traffic grab.

[anubitez]

My comeback is stagnant now, the October 19th/20th, I was reduced by 90% overall traffic, and now it is 25 to 35% down from what it is normally, which is much better but not great. My new posts rank well or do not rank at all, and the manual copycats with the slowest, ad-filled websites that do everything google tells you not to do will rank with it, highlighting it all and right-clicking copy. Some even use my images by cropping the watermark out. The automatic scrapers I am happy to report are gone that copy my new posts... But the manual boys are giving me grief. I do not understand. Articles are unique; 50% rank within an hour, and most times, even in hard competition areas top 3 even rank 1, others are not even in the top 100, yet those boys steal my stuff and rank it like three to five days later in the top 5 spots even 1 sometimes. I assume google is broken as **** still, so I am not expecting a full 100% return until this silliness ends if it ever does.

Maybe I should try some blackhat website-making if these idiots can do this over the years... I feel like doing it sometimes, seeing this. Also some header bidding companies are supporting them, check the ads.txt; you will be surprised ;) i should make a name and shame thread on reddit adops.

[Markedd]

@anubitez Dude, I have an entire niche where I am the only person that creates original posts and then there are about 10 manual 'content re-writers' followed by automatic scrappers. Not an ounce of originality in the entire damn niche except for my own articles. If I stop posting, that niche is gone. It's kind of funny actually, but also sad.

[RedBar]

So far my traffic levels are still holding-up which is a pleasant surprise however it is very, very noticeable the extra volume of bona fide trade supplers contacting me for bulk suppies of their widgets.

[anubitez]

I saw a post on blackhatworld where reddit since October 19th spam update keywords and everything increased i think 50 to 100x fold, explains why i had to stop using reddit to alert my community that used it since it was wrecking my own posts.

i tried to re-find the thread, the person had posted some interesting tracking screenshots, makes no sense but. If you have a new website, I would be ever so careful using social media especially Reddit, you will find it will be in the serps instead of your own URL. Domains that are at least 5+ years old seem to not have a issue, anything under especially under 1 then you will from what I can see.

[RedBar]

As expected my global traffic has been pretty normal this morning however, also as expected, as the day has progressed to the USA not working / holidaying / whatever, traffic has slowed to the extent that India, Russia and Poland are heading my locations. We'll see what the next few days bring very soon.

[ichthyous]

Huge drops in traffic yesterday and today...yesterday the entire morning was flat, then it recovered somewhat. Today UK is down 40% and USA down 26%. It's thanksgiving here so I can understand the drop in USA, but not UK traffic...

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - Here too. Very huge drop since yesterday. Definitely today the worst day for my main website.

[EditorialGuy]

Our overall traffic and Google traffic have climbed modestly in the last few days after weeks of slow but steady decline. Of greater interest is the fact that the biggest increases seem to be for our most popular bread-and-butter topics and pages. Some of those "Old Faithful" pages have been way, way up in the last few days compared to the same days of the previous week.

It's almost as if Google had dialed down "topic authority" and has now reversed that action.

Note: This is the time of year when I'd expect to see modest week-over-week declines. (We usually reach our nadir in early December and see a rebound after Christmas or after New Year's Day. This has been the pattern for 20+ years.) So any week-over-week gain in late November or early December, no matter how slight, is a pleasant surprise.

[RedBar]

It's 20.00+ hrs UK and my traffic died to a crawl 3+ hours ago ... Nothing we can do about it.

[RedBar]

An 18 hours dead zone for my global site with modest traffic returning at 06.00 UK time but for how long?

UK sites have seen less traffic for several days yet realworld business is still holding-up for the moment.

[JesterMagic]

Yesterday was the worst day for me as well in the last 17 years. We have been hit hard and down 50% since last year though. We always see a decline before or on a holiday in the US (in this case Thanksgiving) and then a bump afterwards.

[renatovieira]

@JesterMagic - Same here. Yesterday I had numbers from the beginning of my main website that I started in 2013. It's unfortunate...

[christianz]

I am seeing tanking traffic too. Across all my sites.

Some of it probably is due to Google going into turbo greed mode for Black Friday/Christmas, but it's more than that - steady downward trend started after US midterm election.

Yesterday I had numbers from the beginning of my main website that I started in 2013

It is remarkable how little exposure legit sites get on Google these days. You have to be Internet ninja to go from Google search to a real site like ours. It's just a wall of junk (snippets, widgets, YouTubes, big tech platforms etc).

Adjusted by number of Internet users, the share of traffic directed to normal websites hits new record lows every year. While the share of ads, Googles own sites and priority platforms hits record high every year.

[Martin Ice Web]

Last three weeks we see some strange traffic patterns.
Traffic climbing over the week beginning with saturday and gets down sharply on thursday with even lower on friday.
Except sunday seems to be the worst day right now, with traffic lost to -75%.

Overall we see a light traffic gain. You immediatly see when google opens the gates. Real traffic is coming in, sales, inquiries....

We wonder that google change their mind in relation to sho searchpages from websites in search results.
Mostly big brands (or better to say big companies that put up a trading platform: like otto, kaufland a.s.o. ) are poaching in high tech verticals without any knowlage about what they are selling.

So much to about make a compelling website with deep information.

[RedBar]

Very low traffic levels until 06.00 UK time this morning, since then it's been looking much more like a Friday average for me.

[Neohippy]

About 10-20% below normal all day today (UK traffic)

[BigKat]

Our traffic is down about 12% and conversions (US Ecom) are down 50%+. In normal times we would see an increase in traffic and conversions with consumers who are in Black Friday spending mode. Inflation, recession, etc. all play a role in spending. However, our overall traffic drop is a combination of a substantial drop in buyer traffic to our product pages with a less substantial increase in traffic to our information pages. Taking a look at the SERPS it's evident big brands are being promoted more than ever with an increase in Amazon crowded SERPS for many buyer intent queries. This is more of the same we've seen from Google in prior years, though each year it gets worse.

I'd encourage other Ecom site owners to dig deeper in their data to see if Google has stripped them of buyer traffic and are attempting to offset it with an increase in info traffic.

[Tomwlsh]

My website is still down about 99% since the October spam update.

The funny thing is, over the last few weeks impressions continue to slowly drop but the number of clicks is remaining steady. The CTR for my top articles is through the roof, now approaching 20%, with some top pages as high as 40%.

I really have no idea what google is trying to do.

[Micha]

I'm starting to wonder what exactly Google is trying to do with this?
The spam update has cost my small news site a lot of traffic (40% on average), even though we publish self-researched articles every day. But, that's nothing new for us.

I can agree with the observation that traffic increases from Monday to Thursday and then drops off. Saturday is the worst day of the week.

But what generally amazes me is that Google's search results have become miserable. So much spam and links that have absolutely nothing to do with my search query, I find very strange. In particular, I'm surprised that for current topics in niche areas, big news sites often rank well, but with very old articles. It doesn't surprise me that many sites are losing traffic, but it does raise the question of where Google is actually going.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Observing search creates anxiety and depression. Writing articles about topics you enjoy is less stressful and more productive.

I recommend the later.

[christianz]

Observing search creates anxiety and depression. Writing articles about topics you enjoy is less stressful and more productive.

I recommend the later.

If only everyone was as lucky to be able to just do what they like, write articles about white they like, not worry about Google etc. Unfortunately many here are making a living from websites and it really does matter if Google decides to show irrelevant junk in the SERPs instead.

[RedBar]

Traffic to my global site is precisely where I expected it to be with USA -33% with PVs.

UK hotel site with 95.6% long-term UK traffic is seeing both traffic and realworld footfall and takings up considerably. So far the World Cup is beiing good to us and with some good live bands over the next few weeks plus lots of Xmas lunches etc we may end 2022 on a high note :-)))

[Atomic]

Unfortunately many here are making a living from websites and it really does matter if Google decides to show irrelevant junk in the SERPs instead.

It matters to everyone. But we can't do anything about that. But we can work on our websites.