December 2022 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

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

[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?

[RedBar]

Wednesday's traffic was steady for me at 65.3% however I've already had a siginificant bona fide widget trade Canadian spike this morning but, hey ho, this happens. Previous years would suggect that from tonight my traffic "ought to" decline rapidly until Monday / Tuesday ... I cannot see any reason why this year would be any different.

[malkhaldi]

semrush High range

5.7

[engine]

I suspect volatility is subsiding a little, and i'd like to think that the Helpful Content Update has filtered through and the indexes will start to show the results.

[ichthyous]

I'm seeing massive drops which are worse than anything I've ever seen in 20 years, by far. Zero visits from USA from midnight to 6am. My home page has vanished apparently...not one hit. A 35% decline in search, and the declines are deepening every day for 6 days now. I've had zero new inquiries or conversions since this all started. It feels like a massive penalty of some sort.

[RedBar]

Looking at my US SERPs with the long-scrolling feature, the results for popular and standard widgets are pretty clean and viewble however for the big money keyword terms the organics can hardly be seen on desktop. On mobile my organics are much easier to discern between all the ads and promo images etc.

At the moment I cannot see any SERPs changes.

[seomotionz]

I'm seeing massive drops which are worse than anything I've ever seen in 20 years, by far. Zero visits from USA from midnight to 6am. My home page has vanished apparently...not one hit. A 35% decline in search, and the declines are deepening every day for 6 days now. I've had zero new inquiries or conversions since this all started. It feels like a massive penalty of some sort.

Same here in India. Today almost 30% traffic gone.

Traffic is bad since the EAT update started. But today it hit a new low. Many evergreen keywords ranking well are just gone. Blown to nothing.

[RedBar]

Same here in India. Today almost 30% traffic gone.

Which sector are you in? I'm in specialised construction products with four factories in the south and my most stable search market is India. I rarely see any kind of fluctuation other than occasional big download spikes from trade customers.

[anubitez]

Thinking about India, doesn't this country have the trial of Google suggesting content to write?

It sort of makes you laugh at the idea Google wants to give you ideas to write about, yet is out saying do not write content to rank in search. Well, you are, on one hand, telling us what to do, then punishing us when we do it with so-called "helpful content update".

[seomotionz]

@RedBar Mainly tech.

@anubitez Don't you know ?! Bunch of hypocrites they are.

[robzilla]

It sort of makes you laugh at the idea Google wants to give you ideas to write about, yet is out saying do not write content to rank in search.

No, you're rewriting or misunderstanding what they've said. All they're saying is write for people first.

If it makes you laugh and seems strange, contradictory or hypocritical, first consider whether you have all the facts right :-)

[RedBar]

My traffic is off the cliff edge today, after almost 14 hours I'm on 13% of average as expected ... Happy Xmas

[ichthyous]

Yes that's what many of us have seen for 7-10 days now. The traffic has been extremely low and very odd patterns. English language traffic has just vvanished, but continental Europe is flat or in some cases much higher.

My stats for the last 7 days:
Search traffic: -30%
Direct Traffic: -37%
USA: -38%
UK: -45%
CA: -52%
AU: -33%
-----
DE: +14%
NE: +25%
SP: +20%
EI: +30%

I have seen drastic drops in traffic to my home page and most of my major landing pages, but traffic to lowest level interior pages is much higher in some cases. I am seeing the return of informational pages taking over all top ten spots again for some searches...a repeat of 2021? And totally unnatural traffic patterns that drop to the floor suddenly and stay down all day, or huge zigzag swings for half a day.

[ichthyous]

Just for a visual clarification of my previous numbers. Graphs of USA and UK traffic for last 28 days. Both started to drop like a stone ~ Dec 11-13:

[ibb.co ]
[ibb.co ]

So I imagine this is the second linkspam update talking?

[ViktorN]

major decline over the past 24 hours. 40-50% of the daily average.
I want to say its Xmas, but this is very weird. Legit finance sit (original content only). Very disgusting if things stay like this.

[Atomic]

And the day after John Mueller announced there would be no core update the rest of the year. Did he say this because he knew something big was coming that might be mistaken for a core update? Or could John not be aware of everything happening? Or was it just a big youknowwhat you to the SEO community? In a world rife with coincidences, this doesn't seem like one.

[christianz]

major decline over the past 24 hours. 40-50% of the daily average.
I want to say its Xmas, but this is very weird

It's not Christmas. It looks like effects of the HCU they are franticly re-doing. It still doesn't work and it will never work. Completely laughable and absurd idea.

[ichthyous]

Not Christmas and not HCU...it's the linkspam update. HCU had zero effect on my site...in fact, traffic was doing well until they announced the 2nd update.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

*snip your traffic*

We're just surfacing the best content, improve your stuff

*snip your traffic some more*

This update was helpful

*snip your traffic some more*

Doesn't matter if you don't own the sites linking to you, they did, bend over again...

*snip your traffic some more*

Throw me a bone?

*ok, temporary reprieve, here's some traffic back, but it's gone again next month hehe*

*snip you traffic some more 2 weeks later*

See a pattern here?

[ichthyous]

The massive declines started for me on the 14th, and since then UK traffic is -40% for the last two weeks with no sign of improvement. USA and CA traffic are both -26% over the last two weeks. The linkspam update was announced on the 14th, so there you go.

It appears that Google has zapped entire categories of links...unable to target anything more precisely, they just unleashed pandemonium without any regard to how it may affect people's lives. I certainly haven't bought links from any type of network ever, so why should half my traffic be sacrificed because Google is too inept to target link spam more precisely? We are just the guinea pigs in their realtime algo lab.

[beaverman]

@ichthyous how old is your website? Is it an info site specialised in some niche or smth else?