December 2022 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Traditionally December is a good month for some and the lowest of the year for others.

[beaverman]

@MayankParmar have you been hit in Google Spam in October or later? Anything at all during HCU?

We haven't seen any recovery as well.

[RedBar]

Sunday as expected at 59% and so far today looking normal.

I deciided to have a look at the USA G SERPs yesterday and once again there are many localised very thin results that have appeared fron nowhere and usually 5-10 years old. I have mentioned this before yet no one commented about it.

These days I seem to be getting localised US results rather than national US results, do generic US results not exist any more? Sure the top 3-4 results are the big US importers / wholesalers but after those I see poor / thin local results and as for non-US businesses for popular products I have to go 20+.

Did I miss something?

[christianz]

This sucks. Still waiting for a core update for any improvements. No luck with HCU.

I wouldn't say that. Statistically you have more of a chance to get penalized during any given update than get boosted. The share of internet traffic redirected from Google to organic websites is always shrinking and trending to zero.

I don't know, maybe HCU improved Google SERPs overall, but just from my narrow niche perspective, it looks like it's doing the exact opposite of what the name suggests.

But it's hard to pinpoint these effects to one specific update or "ranking system". There are so many bad ones. It could just be the effect of EAT boosting, link de-emphasizing or any of their other bad ideas.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing the continued loss of top3 and top10 terms. Just as it marched higher for weeks in June out of the blue, now I'm bleeding terms daily and heading right back down. I ascribe this to the loss of ~850 backlinks from a DA88 site that I used to work with. It has taken months for the link count to be reflected in GSC but now they are almost all gone and that is being reflected in my ranking. The only thing that has saved me is getting a wide swath of new links from other sites over the last year, but not nearly the number lost.

[MayankParmar]

@beaverman I was hit by August HCU / September Core or Product Reviews. Not really sure which one.

[EditorialGuy]

We've been edging upward (year over year) every day since November 28, but the Helpful Content Update has given us an added boost. In the last few days, daily Google traffic has been up anywhere from about 9 percent to 27 percent YOY. Week-over-week traffic has also been up on some days, which goes against the normal seasonal trendline. Average rankings in Google Search Console have also improved.

Most of our top 100 pages are the same ones as usual. They're just producing more traffic than they were.

The site is an editorial (a.k.a. informational) destination travel-planning site that has been at its current domain for 21 years.

Note: We lost a fair amount of Google traffic in late September (coinciding with the Product Reviews Update), so what I'm seeing now could best be described as a moderate recovery.

[Atomic]

Note: We lost a fair amount of Google traffic in late September (coinciding with the Product Reviews Update), so what I'm seeing now could best be described as a moderate recovery.

Not bad. But a ways to go to get back to March 2020 levels.

[EditorialGuy]

Not bad. But a ways to go to get back to March 2020 levels.

The pandemic was already decimating our niche by March, 2020. (The free fall began in February of that year, and Google rankings were mostly beside the point at a time of international travel restrictions.)

[Martin Ice Web]

Today seems like they pushed out a new round. So far -30% and 80% zombies

And from user sight it seems that with every update it is harder to find realy good websites. Soon the first #10 will be all amazon affiliate sites.
google = money over quality

[RedBar]

Monday's traffic was at its expected level of 102.7% with today looking similar. USA traffic this month is definitely down 25% whereas all Eurasia is up with several excellent projecr enquiries, big western projects are being delayed / postponed / cancelled on a regular basis these days.

[ichthyous]

Yes I think something is up...traffic is unusually high this morning, including all the landing pages which had dropped 15-30% in traffic. My home page traffic has been mysteriously low for a week, but this morning it's up 90%.

Also the spam is through the roof...calls, emails, bots on my site trying to submit forms. I added managed challenges to all China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria traffic through cloud flare last month and that has helped the form spam originating from Bangladesh and Pakistan a lot. Chinese traffic seems to be hitting my images directly and is more than 100X the number of challenges of the next country. Meanwhile I get almost no traffic from China on my site. I have no business with these countries so see no need to allow them to access my images or anything else anymore.

[jxlarrea]

The early December HCU destroyed almost 50% of my US traffic. Today, traffic is almost back to pre HCU levels. Hope this sticks.

[BigKat]

Our traffic is down 32.70% despite our ranks not changing with the helpful content update. The traffic loss is a direct result of all the ads Google added to the SERPS which has pushed organic well beneath the now ever-scrolling fold. The number of ads Google is displaying easily doubled for product searches.

It's also interesting how Google thinned out the organic results and is hiding them between ads. The first organic result (Amazon), which is beneath four text ads and above a people also ask box. Then we have three organic results above a product shopping box of eight products. A similar layout continues after ever-scroll is invoked. Needless to say, the ads are siphoning off a good portion of the traffic.

[ichthyous]

Really weird traffic patterns these days...traffic skyrockets early part of the day, then just fades the rest of the day. My home page is -77% this morning, which has been the pattern since this latest update...but overall traffic is either everage or slightly up. Google has decided that my home page just shouldn't be shown anymore. Some other landing pages are down 30% some days and then back to normal the next. USA traffic is average or slightly down some days, while international traffic is sky high. My UK traffic is now 60% of my USA traffic many days now, despite being based in USA and usa having 5x the population. Are that many more ads being shown in USA serps?

[Atomic]

It's looking a bit like a link spam update.

[beaverman]

@Atomic why?

[Atomic]

Sorry about that. I should have been more specific. The Google algorithm update page has updated:

December 2022 link spam update releasing for Google Search
[developers.google.com ]

Christmas has come early. I've seen decent gains for 5 consecutive days.

[ichthyous]

My search traffic is up 31% so far today, it would be great to see that continue but the first day of these updates tends to be an anomaly. I'm not sure, but I don't think purchasing links from link farms, etc is a huge problem in my niche. I do suspect one major competitor site may be doing this. It will be interesting to see how they fare now....

[christianz]

Google should be adapting their spam link devaluation algo 24/7 anyway. Why are they announcing updates like this? Are they playing mind games with spammers? Are they trying to provoke reaction from spammers (mass removal of links) so that they can verify they are spammers?

Either way, just like everyone else with well aged sites, my link profile is 99% spam backlinks (numerically speaking). For the most part Google is good at ignoring them. But let's see.

[Martin Ice Web]

My search traffic is up 31% so far today,

and today we are -50% again. Not buying any links or exchanging any links.

All last updates have achieved the opposite of what they have been made for.

websites with high quality content in serps -> down
Spammers in serps -> up
serp quality to search term - > down

[beaverman]

@Martin, that's harsh. Hope it returns to normal.

I got so tired of all these updates overlapping, don't even want to check out the analytics or GSC for the time being. Another 2 weeks of waiting for another update to roll out.

[Martin Ice Web]

@beaverman,

yes we hope to. But if we see what is ranking than i doubt it will be better.

just google "Kaltgerätekabel 5m" -> website elternpass is ranking at 6
i have never seen a site with so much desinformation, spun text and so many amazon links like this one.
I don´t know why google is even crawling this website.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is all over the place...skyrocketing the first half of the day, then dropping off a cliff suddenly. My home page and major landing pages all taking major hits in traffic, -80% some days, then reverting back to normal, then dropping again...on and off for almost two weeks already. Yesterday UK traffic suddenly turned off entirely and was -45% by day's end...today USA traffic was down by 72% this morn. Meanwhile, visits to individual content pages are still fairly strong.

Visits to individual pages ("one hit wonders") are almost always lower quality searches and traffic...they rarely result in sales / conversions. Home page and landing page traffic result from more important high volume searches, and that is what is clearly being siphoned off with these latest moves by Google

[RedBar]

Wednesday's traffic was normal for me and I was expecting it to slowly reduce from today. Well, sort of yes it has, I was seeing lots of single page views until my mid-afternoon when I had several multi-page views from the Middle East of 100+ each time which pushed things along nicely. This kind of visit is usually followed a few days later with a large project enquiry.

Many companies in my widget trade will be closing Friday night until the first week of January, my metrics will go see-saw!

[mosxu]

For sites under quota the traffic is becoming obviously so unnatural inside a season even a 3 year would notice

[System]

New Google Quality Rater E-E-A-T Update thread at: google/5078008.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: not2easy at 12:54 pm (utc) on Dec 16, 2022]
[edit reason] split thread cleanup [/edit]

[RedBar]

As expected for me traffic is down today and looking like a weekend level.

Hotel / pub chocker block, it is mad Friday here, website dead :-)

[ichthyous]

Another big drop in search traffic today...down 18% at 5pm. Traffic basically stopped cold between 6am-10am. USA is down 25% and UK traffic down 34%. AU and CA also down. Google put the damper on all day long today.

[EditorialGuy]

Our Google traffic has gone up a bit in the last couple of days, which isn't normal for our travel site at this time of year. Usually we don't see an uptick until after Christmas.

Not a huge improvement, but every little bit counts.

[Micha]

Normally Fridays and Saturdays are the weakest days of the week, but since yesterday afternoon Google traffic is steadily increasing. According to Xovi, the ranking of my most important keywords, which have suffered since the spam update, is also recovering.

[anubitez]

I think people should expect an update per month besides all the hidden updates. I will not even be shocked if we see two major updates a month, given what they did in December. Maybe Jan or Feb they could release three major updates running for two weeks over each other? Good luck to all; it will be bumpy.

[beaverman]

@anubitez how has your G traffic been so far since the first December update started?

[edited by: beaverman at 12:15 pm (utc) on Dec 18, 2022]

[malkhaldi]

traffic not stable at all
i am waiting untill roll out finish

[ichthyous]

This weekend I am seeing a gain in top three ranking terms, which had been losing for two weeks on a slow drip. Google is ranking big ecomm sites like Etsy at the top now, in a reversal of pushing only info sites all year up to June or so. With the huge carousel of product listings at the top of the page and a big block of text ads below that, nobody sees your site even if you rank top three and have a big listing with lots of featured images. I think showing up in Google local is more and more important, as you jump to the top of the list.

Is anyone using the free Google product listings? Are they effective at all?

[RedBar]

My global traffic will most probably yo-yo until the beginning of Jan 2023 but yesterday was busy for a Sunday however after checking it out 50+% of traffic was from the Middle East with Saudi leading the way. Most PVs were to specific widget pages and when this happens to me it is usually followed a few days later with a request for the widget availability plus prices.

If I average 66% of traffic for the next 2 weeks I'll be pleased, less than 50% would be unusual.

[ichthyous]

My traffic has simply cratered since this weekend...on Sunday search ended -26%, direct traffic -32%. USA traffic was -20%, UK -60%!

Today, the same pattern...USA is -50%, UK -20% and AU and CA are both -75%! Traffic to my home page is -45%, some landing pages -80% today at noon.

These are not normal pre-Christmas numbers at all. For twenty years my normal drop right before Christmas was about 10%-15% max. I also noticed that much of the traffic this weekend hit one page and immediately left in under 10 seconds. These kinds of traffic declines are basically game over (again) after only four months of more normal traffic from Aug - Nov. The first half of the year was a total writeoff.

[edited by: ichthyous at 5:13 pm (utc) on Dec 19, 2022]

[RedBar]

The page is loaded with so many ads

Last night I was doing a bit of research for an electrical product, wow, wow, wow ... the carousel at the top of the results just went on and on and on ... Firstly they were all valid ads which is good news for the advertisers and consumer plus the majority of them had pretty good landing pages with other alternatives.

Secondly I scrolled down to the regular results, bear in mind I was doing this on a large screen, heavens know what it would have been like on a phone, interestingly several of the ads also had highly-ranked pages so I got a pretty good feel for the type of widget I intend to buy in the post-Xmas sales if there are any remaining.

So what do we have now for selling popular products? Google's long been the classifieds of advertising and in my example above pretty good at it. Has Google achieved convincing the vast majority of users that the displayed ads are better to click on since this is what many of the suppliers (advertisers) have available therefore don't bother going any further?

Mission accomplished for the moment?

[EditorialGuy]

Google's long been the classifieds of advertising and in my example above pretty good at it. Has Google achieved convincing the vast majority of users that the displayed ads are better to click on since this is what many of the suppliers (advertisers) have available therefore don't bother going any further?

Remember the printed Yellow Pages? Or COMPUTER SHOPPER? Or the free weekly shopper newspapers that used to be delivered on doorsteps or in the mail? They worked in the print era, so why shouldn't their modern counterpart (Google commercial SERPs) work on the Web?

(Side note: At a meeting in New York, I once heard the CEO of a trade- and special-interest magazine company say that his company's surveys had shown that many people read his firm's magazines "for the ads.")

One advantage Google and other search engines have over the old Yellow Pages and shopper publications is the fact that they can be two things at the same time: an ad-laden shopping resource with an emphasis on paid listings, and an ad-light or even ad-free informational resource ("10 blue links" plus answer boxes and the like) for non-commercial queries.

I'm just surprised that Google has never put display ads on its informational SERPs. If respected publications like THE NEW YORK TIMES can have get away with space-sucking billboards and netboards above the nameplate, surely Google could get away with a modest leaderboard.

[robzilla]

I'm just surprised that Google has never put display ads on its informational SERPs. If respected publications like THE NEW YORK TIMES can have get away with space-sucking billboards and netboards above the nameplate, surely Google could get away with a modest leaderboard.

Display ads can't compete with contextual text links, and would distract too much from the search results. They tested banners on branded searches once but it was not a success. Caught a bit of flack for that because Marissa Meyer once said "There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or Web search results pages. [...] Ever." These weren't really the same sort of banner ads though.

From In the Plex (Steven Levy):

At the time [early 2000s] the dominant forms of advertising on the web were intrusive, annoying, and sometimes insulting. The most common was the banner ad, a distracting color rectangle that would often flash like a burlesque marquee. Other ads hijacked your screen. Google wanted none of that. Brin and Page understood that because of the very nature of search—people are looking for things—Google could provide advertisers a terrific environment. The information in ads could even be as valuable to users as the results Google provided from search queries, they believed. [...] Google ads would not offend eyeballs or sensibilities. They would be small blocks of text targeted to actual searches. The right keyword would trigger an appropriate ad.

Of course they did eventually get into the business of selling those same banner ads (including ones that certainly do "offend eyeballs and sensibilities"), but I don't think we'll ever see them in the context of the SERPs. Text links are much more flexible and not as likely to offend those eyeballs and sensibilities, and there's less of a direct association with text links that most people understand to be part of the Web rather than Google vs. a banner ad on Google's own pages.

As you say, they just have that advantage. They don't need banner ads. NYT probably does, they can't get away with mixing content and ads in the same format; ads need to stand out.

[RedBar]

so why shouldn't their modern counterpart (Google commercial SERPs) work on the Web?

Errr, have I criticised its business model here? I think if you read my post again you will see G was very successful at delivering completely good results. I have posted many-a-time at how good G is at providing its version of classified ads and with my postings about this they are intended to point out the reality of its SERPs, that's all.

[MayankParmar]

Indexing issues lol

[RedBar]

Yesterday was as expected at 60% and today looking very similar, the interesting thing is how much more consistent the traffic levels were with no huge peaks and troughs and still are, plus my country visitor levels have been at their average volumes.

So, lower traffic levels, far fewer bots, steady and consistent traffic all day ... Hmmm.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing my 4th day of abysmally low traffic. USA/UK/CA/AU all down -42 to -52%. Every morning at 8am sharp the traffic drops to almost zero and stays very low for the rest of the day. Can't only be pre-Christmas, since the rest of (non-English speaking) Europe is normal or up today. Search is -28% and direct traffic is -51% at 2pm. Is anyone else seeing such a huge drop since ~ last Friday?

[christianz]

Definitely seeing some serious turbulence in my traffic/rankings. Semrush sensor seems to agree.

[mosxu]

@elonmusk

Losing a poll to be CEO of own company is the funniest thing ever but a blue budge will not put off a zombie from voting!

My phone can still vote while I am “sleeping” with your blue badge or not!

[ichthyous]

@christianz That's the thing...I'm not seeing turbulence in my rankings so much. Actually last few days I have recovered some lost top 10 ranking terms. But the traffic has dropped like I have never seen before. Search traffic is -36% today and direct is -50%.

[RedBar]

Tuesday was ok at 74% and again no spikes plus the usual wide spread of countries furthermore a huge reduction in email spam.

UK hotel site traffic is down 10% as expected but the tills at the moment are ringing nicely. Hopefully all the promotional work done since September will pay dividends however what on earth is going to happen come January is giving us some sore heads!

Just checked hotel site 132% v 2021.

[malkhaldi]

December 2022 Google Helpful Content Update Taking Longer, Said Google
[seroundtable.com...]

[ichthyous]

That post from SEO Roundtable is based on anecdotal quotes from WebmasterWorld! Many of them are quotes from my own posts here. The links to Twitter posts showing massive drops in visibility after the link spam update are very informative though. I think Google is zapping links left right and center and that's why the big drops.

Today my UK, AU and Euro traffic seems to have reverted back to normal for 1st half of day....USA still down 50%.

Google needs to get these updates over with and never launch them again right before Christmas as it has killed 10 days of prime holidays sales. Oh wait, maybe that was the intent?

[Atomic]

Something's happening in Google search tonight. Impressions are going crazy. It feels like a Core update, but that couldn't possibly happen, right?