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December 2022 Google Search Observations

         

RedBar

11:09 am on Dec 2, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



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

RedBar

5:30 pm on Dec 26, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



As expected Xmas Day was very quiet at 23.6% and, to be honest, today's not looking much better plus I assume similar for the next 7 days.

What for my global site is very evident is that new pages are spidered within a week or so yet now take at least 2-3 months to rank anywhere and up to 5-6 months to get to the first page however new sites are struggling to get any traction whatsoever after several months even when they are unique pages with unique titles and exclusive images ... It's as though their database is full and cannot accept any more until something's dropped out / been removed ... Alternative search enines are showing those pages on their first page.

ichthyous

5:52 pm on Dec 26, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@beaverman My site is 20 years old, and it is related to the arts. The category is broad as it can include both commerce sites or info / edu related sites using many overlapping terms. Most of the competition is concentrated at the low end of the market, and that competition is exploding due to the number of Instagram / social accounts selling low priced offerings and now also advertising on Google.

I offer items at the higher price points and it is very much based on reputation and credibility of the name over the years. The economy has definitely put a damper on high end sales, but especially if nobody can find you! Thing is, a decline in links would cause a drop in ranking, and that doesn't appear to be the case so far. I have dropped for some terms, but not that many...I lose a few, then gain them back the next day. So why the 40% loss of search traffic some days?

anubitez

6:16 am on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

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I found new copycat sites. They are now making their own mobile apps to view their sites (technically my site, hah) on your mobile and monetize them through ezoic on the mobile app or the visiting website, etc. I suppose auto scrappers got to look even more genuine, but damn, it's working. I shrug these days. Even funnier, this dude made his public pbn based on my site and own mobile app, created content based on my content 99% via automatic scraping, and hot-linked images with the feature image are ai generated off-topic. I cannot believe the ezoic approved it, and google loves it and ranks it just again shrug. It has paid links, daily mail, a heap of 90+ links within three months, terrible page speed, and stolen content. The site is not structurally better than mine.

Right now, I am in google's sin bin, and three years ago, ezoic rejected me, the only monetization company ever to do this, granted it was my first week of starting to blog for the first time. Other Google partners pursued me, so I got no issue these days in this area, but just the irony of the situation makes me.............. I do not know the words.

O yeah, Ezoic approved his entire PBN network based on my site I forgot to add too, and google ranks them all equal and not duplicate, hah, like the official syndication partner of pbn network 1, reposting all my posts again and again with a different theme, o and those sites have apps built chrome web-store that works and are monetized...

Is anyone else seeing this sort of crazy setup? I hope it doesn't happen to anyone here; this is more than the average copycat scraping website setup, no wonder why I cannot get a break with this crap + the manual copycats and then the other crud going for my articles...

RedBar

1:57 pm on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Traffic remains very low, Monday at 33.3% with today so far even lower.

As is usual at this time of year it's giving me the opportunity to catch-up :-)

anubitez

2:40 pm on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

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@Redbar apparently from comments I read on seroundtable, something seems to be up again besides the usual from a few reg posters, could be related to that along with seasonal.

RedBar

3:28 pm on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@anubitez ... In my sector I'm not seeing anything noticeable other than an increase in ads for my popular widget keywords. Many of my global competitors basically gave up with the SERPs in about 2015-16, many national and local widget suppliers still advertise but are very focussed with their efforts.

These days international suppliers like myself are thin on the ground plus advertising is utterly pointless similarly to many other industries.

ichthyous

6:20 pm on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I think nothing has changed since around the 13th/14th. Search and direct traffic fell off a cliff. USA / UK / CA / AU traffic in particular are down 25%-45% every day. Today search is down 31% and direct is down 44% at 1pm. The holiday is always somewhat lower, but nothing like these drops.

I am wondering if Google has zapped links across the board to see how it affects a wide swath of sites, then slowly dials it back. God knows how long that might take. I am not seeing huge drops in ranking though, so where is all the traffic going?...ranking is up one day, down the next.

RedBar

6:38 pm on Dec 27, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Just how often does G update its database and rankings these days? I was checking some of my pages today and one specific page that ranks #1 has not been updated by Google since 6th January 2022 !

I am becoming more of the opinion that G has run out of space for general / evergreen stuff and doesn't care any more simply inserting ads on the first couple of pages, job done.

anubitez

1:33 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

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A little background, I have been monitoring my top 500 keywords for the entire 2022 period for the past few weeks or a month since I lost everything in the October spam update. I had about 90% lost pretty much, and low traffic. Today, my own data collecting + semrush both spot on that about 70% of that 90% lost has returned, pretty much half of that top 3 and the rest top 10s and a few top 100. As I said, these were the top 500 keywords for the past 12 months they got me traffic and ranked exceptionally well. This made my day if it was going to stay.

The other issue is, this time of year, my niche is quiet, and hardly any traffic between Christmas and new year, so I cannot tell if this will lead to traffic returning properly, hah! I will know by the second week of January unless they all disappear again. Anyone else notices their keywords return?

RedBar

2:10 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



As in previous years traffic is slowly returning with it already at 33% today with its usual country spread, if it achieves 60% for Weds-Fri that would be normal for me.

Question ... Will we see increased ad expenditure in the New Year as many businesses struggle to survive?

christianz

3:43 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 5+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



When ad rates crash to lowest levels of all year (after Christmas, Q1 of next year), Google may return some of the traffic it has taken from you to enrich themselves in Q4. But this year - I don't know if we can even count on that.

Yes - traffic has livened up during past few days. But it could be temporary blip.

ichthyous

6:16 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I am seeing UK traffic back to average this morn. USA and CA is still abysmally low... down 54% and 76% at noon. Traffic to my home page has been getting lower and lower since the 13th, this morning -70%. Search is still -30% today, direct is -35%. We will see if this slowly recovers this week and 1st week of January...

mosxu

8:10 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

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Problem is the harassment algorithm never rests, it is targeting us for no reason for at least 10 years now

mosxu

8:13 pm on Dec 28, 2022 (gmt 0)

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P.S

In Sicily we would not experience anything like it

electro karbolinek

12:02 am on Dec 29, 2022 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



So i didn't have time to check my blog's stats for past ~2 weeks because of chrismas time, but now i'm really shocked. Gaming niche, eastern europe, depending on GA our traffic increased by more than a dozen percent viewers and our visibility in GSC just rocked up. We have many views of reviews and test taht were on ~30-40 position in google. Now they are top10. It's the first time from last 12 months when our visibility has increased. Not many backlinks, maybe some from wikipedia and not even a single paid. We're just creating quality content.

I know that those stats may decrease in next few weeks, but wow. No Discover, only organic.

malkhaldi

11:10 am on Dec 29, 2022 (gmt 0)

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semrush

High range
Position changes for numerous sites!
5.2/10

RedBar

2:27 pm on Dec 29, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Weds at 62.3% however so far today looking a bit slower. US traffic slightly lower, I assume the weather situation isn't helping a lot?

christianz

6:45 pm on Dec 29, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 5+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



semrush

High range
Position changes for numerous sites!
5.2/10


Those who reported positive changes, saw those before there was any spike in volatility sensor. So this new volatility rise will more likely make things worse.

ichthyous

10:14 pm on Dec 29, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I'm seeing odd traffic spikes yesterday and today...yesterday a big spike in UK traffic pushed it to +22% for the day...today UK is back down -30%. USA traffic has spiked twice today and is recovering slowly it seems...better than the last two weeks.

RedBar

5:00 pm on Dec 30, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Friday is running low for my global site which will mean I'll be tantalisingly short of my December 2021 metrics however the hotel / gig venue is way ahead of last December but what potential horrors await us from Sunday onwards is anyone's guess at the moment!

System

2:31 pm on Jan 3, 2023 (gmt 0)

redhat



The January thread is active here: [webmasterworld.com...]



[edited by: not2easy at 5:41 pm (utc) on Jan 3, 2023]
[edit reason] corrected link [/edit]

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