January 2023 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Happy New Year

What will G brings us, stability or even more mayhem?

Here's one for you, this will be my 30th year of web development, seriously, in 1993 I launched two websites and they both still exist today although they do look a lot different :-)

[dolcevita]

superclown2

You may well be getting a lot of business from Google at the moment but but that could change in the blink of an eye. However they will not be there for ever and if it wasn't for the fact that they can afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on 'lobbying' in order to keep their monopoly position their end would come even quicker, because there are far better real search engines out there.

One is a wish, and the other is a harsh reality, which, as we already know, has not changed in the last 20 years, namely that Google is dominant, the number one search engine for 93% of Internet users, and that it seems that nothing will change in the near future, no matter how many of us want it.

[RedBar]

Including today, so far my global site is "as expected" at 55% however the hotel site is at 103%, the daytime trade there is holding-up well for now.

Personally I feel that my "western" business is going to decline drastically this next few years but, at the moment, African and Eurasian enquiries have been solid the last few months therefore I am seriously considering moving my base again.

[RubicCubed]

I would rather be in the top 15 on Google than number 1 on Bing

I wouldn't, but then again our site is monetized by selling products as opposed to informational pages with Adsense ads. Google's SERP layout vastly differs from info queries to that of commercial (buyer) queries. Our conversion rate from Bing's traffic has always been substantially higher than Google's, even before Google's recent harmful updates and layout changes. Do a search yourself for a buyer query on Google and see how hard it is to find the organic pages. This is what I see on desktop, and where the #15 ranked page appears, for one of our queries in Google:

Sponsored (text ad with four sub-links)
Sponsored (text ad)
#1 Organic (amazon)
People also ask box
#2-5 Organic (mostly big brands)
In store availability box
#6-8 Organic
Product ads (16 products spaced at four rows of four products)
#9 Organic
Product ads (8 products spaced at two rows of four products)
#10 Organic (Youtube page if one considers Google's self-promoting organic)
Product ads (8 products spaced at two rows of four products)
Sponsored (text ad)
Related searches box
Sponsored (text ad)
Sponsored (text ad)
Sponsored (text ad)
#11 Organic
Product ads (8 products spaced at two rows of four products)
#12-13 Organic
Product ads (8 products spaced at two rows of four products)
#14-16 Organic (includes one Youtube page)
Product ads (8 products spaced at two rows of four products)

The website appearing in the top text ad for this query, with four sub-links, also consumes 2 of the organic listings.

Being ranked #15 for this query will most certainly bring little to no traffic on Google because of all the ads/boxes. Being ranked #15 on Google has (3) info boxes, (6) text ads and 48 product ads (12 rows of four products) above it. I'd take being ranked #1 on Bing over being ranked #15 on Google every day of the week.

Even the #1 position on Google will bring little traffic because it is now hidden/squished between ads and a People also ask box. Over the years we have realized diminished value for being ranked #1 on Google. Google's new ad heavy layout essentially wiped out the value of organic listings almost entirely for us. We can see from our own data, how being ranked #1 now for buyer queries, is bringing in much less traffic (up to a 75% reduction) then before Google's layout change. At this point I feel investing time/effort/money into ranking #1 on Google for buyer keywords will cost more then it's worth, because even being ranked #1 in Google is now bringing in so little traffic for us.

[ichthyous]

Anyone else seeing a drop in USA traffic today? Every other country is zooming, but USA is down 25%+ at 4:30pm:

The United States
-26%
The United Kingdom
+139%
France
+130%
The United Arab Emirates
+156%
Canada
+28%
Germany
+54%
Australia
+15%
Indonesia
+361%
Switzerland
+361

Since the holidays ended it seems that USA traffic is sluggish and struggles to break even some days...

[D_Vaghela]

Hello to all experts, I want to know that my website keywords such as (WordPress Hosting, Windows VPS, and Dedicated Server) are going down continuously, so what's the reason could be behind it?

We have also had good quality backlinks count on the above keywords, also my pages are optimized for the above keywords, then why is google throwing my website keywords down?

[superclown2]

One is a wish, and the other is a harsh reality, which, as we already know, has not changed in the last 20 years, namely that Google is dominant, the number one search engine for 93% of Internet users, and that it seems that nothing will change in the near future, no matter how many of us want it.

You obviously wasn't around in the days when Altavista and Yahoo were the kings of search. <BWG>. They were thought to be invincible too. And they didn't have regulators all over the world trying to trim their sails.

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics".
I now have a couple of sites producing good business 100% from just Bing and DDG. Google doesn't even list them, despite the fact they carry unique content on unique subjects.

In the meanwhile a quick check of the UK SERPs this corning suggests that the current 'update' is hardening, with a lot of surprising sites now settling into top positions. A couple of my own sites are in the top 10 for certain queries but the pages that are listed are totally unsuitable for the search terms they rank high for. The titles that are displayed are, too. Each page has zero incoming links, internal links that describe them precisely and no copy that is really relevant to the search terms so I can't even pick any ranking clues about why they rank so highly for competitive terms. So, I suspect that this AI is still very much at primary school learning stage.

Perhaps those badly affected by this latest incarnation should sit tight. My experience suggests that the next update could well produce a different crop altogether.

[engine]

Google's SERPs last week were quite volatile, although a little better settled today. The news is that the two updates from December (Helpful Content Update [webmasterworld.com] and the Link Spam Update [webmasterworld.com]) that were supposed to take a couple of weeks, have continued.
Google says that it may take up to another couple of weeks, but that could mean it's completed as early as this week.

[superclown2]

One is a wish, and the other is a harsh reality, which, as we already know, has not changed in the last 20 years

That is a fact I am very grateful for. Over most of those 20 years Google was a serious search engine with a priority to produce the best possible results. Those of us creating good relevant websites could make a good living from them as well as providing content that was really useful to visitors. However that was then and this is now.

That wonderful search engine created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin has been taken over by bean counters with a priority of maximising profits. Every 'update' now, including this latest one, continues with this aim but it also decreases the value of their search results. This is an excellent time for a well funded rival, or one with a completely different approach, to step in. Both of these seem to be happening right now.

Today's SERPS results for a decent money spinning search term (the most popular one in my vertical);

1: a price comparison site
2: another price comparison site
3: another price comparison site
4: a relevant site that genuinely deserves to be there
5: a relevant site that genuinely deserves to be there
6: another price comparison site
7: another relevant site that genuinely deserves to be there
8: another price comparison site
9: another price comparison site
10: another price comparison site

So: if you want worthwhile in depth information about the subject only three out of the top ten are suitable. The other sites are all heavy spenders on advertising and most of them also appear, of course, in the ads on the page as well as the SERPs.

I have ignored, of course, the usual Googlespam which hides the organic results even more.

I don't think I need to comment further.

[BigKat]

I don't think I need to comment further.

Google's SERPS are the worst I've seen them in terms of relevancy and excessive ads. It's hard to dismiss what I'm seeing as anything other than a money grab by Google. Google organic may be dead for us and many other small businesses in ecommerce.

I'll sum our January so far with this: Google is supposed to be the #1 search engine yet in January is coming in dead last for sales.

[ichthyous]

That wonderful search engine created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin has been taken over by bean counters with a priority of maximising profits. Every 'update' now, including this latest one, continues with this aim but it also decreases the value of their search results. This is an excellent time for a well funded rival, or one with a completely different approach, to step in. Both of these seem to be happening right now.

The minute Google went public the push to maximize profit started...that was predictable. The reality is the Google business model is outdated and what we see now is the frantic attempt of a monopoly to wring every last cent out of search, even if it destroys the quality of search. Google is cannibalizing itself.

We all agree that the Google model is broken but I don't see that the average user does, or if they do they don't care much. It will be very hard to shove Google off the throne just with the promise of fewer ads or better technology. The truth is that most people don't care...Google serves their needs now and they don't need the best possible search or ad free search. Google was very smart to weave itself into the fabric of everyone's daily life, and that's what keeps people always using their products.

Don't forget that Google and Meta also have their own AI models and they can unleash them. I think that moment is coming sooner than we think. They won't sit back and watch OpenAi or other upstarts gain a foothold so easily.

[superclown2]

We all agree that the Google model is broken but I don't see that the average user does, or if they do they don't care much.

You are absolutely right. The vast majority either don't know about other options, or if they do they don't know how to change to them. They also don't realise that the billions that Google makes as the ultimate middleman come, albeit indirectly, out of their own pockets - the 'free' Google is a myth. However they use Google, not because they like it, but because it is the default on all major browsers, thanks to 'commissions' that G pays billions for. Many jurisdictions are recognising that this breaches their competition regulations and it will be interesting to see how G's final appeal to the Indian Supreme Court over the Android issue fares and, if it fails, how many other countries will follow suit.

America may still be in thrall to the mighty dollars spent on 'lobbying' but Ms Vestager in Europe still has them in her sights; the Digital Markets Act is going to get tighter during 2023, European websites still using Google spyware are getting prosecuted under the GDPR, and leaving AI and other search engines out of it there is talk of a number of major European telephone/internet companies banding together to sell ads themselves in direct competition to Google if they can get regulatory approval. (yes, European companies are expected to follow both the letter and the spirit of the law). A decision on that is expected next month.

I reckon that G is going all out right now to to extract the maximum they can out of the Internet before the storms break, and that is one major reason why the SERPs are in such a mess with increased ads and other googlespam.

Sure, Google won't just lie there and take it but regulation is coming whether they like it or not.

[dolcevita]

superclown2
I reckon that G is going all out right now to to extract the maximum they can out of the Internet before the storms break, and that is one major reason why the SERPs are in such a mess with increased ads and other googlespam.

Sure, Google won't just lie there and take it but regulation is coming whether they like it or not.

I can see the hatred and anger in your eyes when you talk about Google. Has Google done something terrible to you with your business or positions in the past?
I too would like Bing to strengthen and Google's dominance to decrease, but you seem vindictive.

[superclown2]

but you seem vindictive.

Vindictive? :-) I have much to thank Google for. I have made a lot of money from them, enough to last me the rest of my life.

All I am trying to do now is tell the truth as I see it, based on nearly 25 years of working online. Sometimes the truth can hurt some people and they won't believe my predictions but that's life. Cassandra had a similar problem a couple of millennia ago.

In the meanwhile I hope your business prospers.

[mhansen]

I'm in the USA, content driven, lead gen.

I'm seeing major position changes for high volume, commercial queries in G serps, including some VERY high authority websites in this space. We're generally side by side with these sites so it's significant to see them disappearing from serp's. Old positions were 1-3, new positions are 85-90 for the same queries. SEMR is showing a 15-25% drop in several of the sites within this niche and I think the only reason it's not higher, is that the queries are not updated in their database yet.

Alternatively, new websites to the niche, or just old websites who are now entering the same query space saw position changes from the 90's into the top 5. Another very significant jump.

[robzilla]

I reckon that G is going all out right now to to extract the maximum they can out of the Internet before the storms break, and that is one major reason why the SERPs are in such a mess with increased ads and other googlespam.

All I am trying to do now is tell the truth as I see it

There's no such thing as a "truth as [you] see it", you're just saying you think people should accept as the truth what is, in fact, merely your perspective. You're entitled to your perspective, of course, as much as I am to my perspective that ideas such as the one quoted above are the result of some intellectual vices, but maybe consider what the value of your gospel is in a search observations thread, before you spread it. It's just "noise" as described in the forum charter [webmasterworld.com], and "[t]he noise level that editorializing creates makes it difficult to filter through threads for information of real value."

[swright]

What I'm seeing in my vertical is all of my top competitors losing traffic for the past several months. They've all been hit by this latest helpful content/spam update (don't know which of the two because they are mixing them on purpose). All these websites that are losing traffic have high-quality content and are relatively high authority. What they are being replaced with are pages with mediocre content, poorly written (some of it seems written by AI), with errors, poorly designed and formatted, etc. So this update doesn't make sense to me. It's not only this one but the previous updates too. It's like they decided to surface worse content in the past several months. And with this update, the quality seems to be getting worse every week.

[superclown2]

After weeks of turbulence the SERPs in my vertical seem to be settling. These are my observations about just that vertical, viewed from London, so your conclusions may be different, but here goes:

1)Trust seems to be the most important factor now. Perhaps more than it should be. It could be argued that sites that spend a fortune on advertising are more trustworthy because Google will have established that they are genuine businesses and not fly-by-nighters; others may claim that they have bought the right to be so high in the organic results. Who knows. However I think it was Eric Schmidt who said "brands are not the problem, but the solution" and that viewpoint seems to be a paramount one.

2) The useful quality update looks successful. There are sites I have admired for years for their well-written, in depth content but they have failed to achieve high positions. They are now much higher up but still trumped by the mega sites which have far less useful content.

3) The attempt to eliminate paid links looks far less successful. A couple of sites with hundreds of injected links into Wordpress sites dropped out of sight a couple of years ago but they have bubbled back up near the top again. I would have thought that links like these are fairly easy to spot algorithmically but it seems not. In any case the deleted domains lists are full of sites that were previously used for paid links so this is obviously a war that has been going on for a long time.

4) I am not seeing a lot of AI generated content in the upper levels of the SERPs. If I can spot it just by looking at it I'm sure the mass of technical talent at Google can do it. I have seen a bit in the lower levels and the first clue is the AI generated images, which are easy to spot. Anyone using these might just as well put a "created by AI" label in the <head> section.

I too would like Bing to strengthen

I would appreciate Bing more if they clearly labelled their ads. I would need a magnifying glass to see their tiny labels, plus the layout of the SERPS looks like a disorganised mess. I would have thought that MS's designers could do better. After all, Google's dominance came initially because they presented clear, easily read search results of high quality. However I am wondering off topic ......

[RedBar]

If previous years are anything to go by then my traffic should start to return to my global site from today onwards, Monday it was at 71%.

Really surprising is the UK hotel site at 108.7% for its first 9 days with dining especially holding-up well.

[JesterMagic]

>> I would appreciate Bing more if they clearly labelled their ads.
Agree. When I look at Bings search result page I see lots of similar issues as with Google search result pages (though at least with Google you can tell better what is an ad).

Google's Monopoly in search (and having new devices default to using Google Search) needs to be broken. We need competition in the space so users have more options and search engines actually try to return better results for the user and not just for their own pocket book.

Unfortunately I don't think Bing is the answer to competition in the search space as they seem to just copy Google.

[Atomic]

Last night I received a notification about ranking change for a query and went to investigate. I found a SERP that was completely different than the day before. All of the scrapers and AI garbage and low quality sites were gone and replaced by the sort of sites you would expect to show up on page one. The sites that actually produce and sell a widget rather than the sites that write 2,000 word articles about the widget.

Autocomplete is also different, suggesting words that I would not have expected. Related queries suggest just as they always did with helpful suggestions. Also, to be fair, there are a few results mixed in that are from solid industry sites related to the query, but not in the right way. Perhaps a similar widget but definitely not the correct page to surface for this particular query. But these sort of results appear on page 3 and further down.

I haven't seen a result this good in years for this vertical. Content marketers still ranked but none showed up until page 2 and they were only the highest quality that have been around for 20+ years that have become household names. These sites owned 8/10 spots on page one the day before.

I expected these results to be gone by morning. Only one SERP looks like this for one specific query. Similar queries, maybe a plural, maybe one word less look exactly like they've looked for years. But this one query stands out. Never seen anything quite like it. If more queries start looking like this one, it's bad news for content marketers.

[edited by: Atomic at 3:32 pm (utc) on Jan 10, 2023]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

The further drastic drop in traffic, "IT how-to" niche. Neither updating, nor new content helps, it's just destroying my 10 year old website. After a year-by-year growth, suddenly Google identified my website as a bad one, and started killing it, and nothing helps. I don't know for what reason should we produce new content these days...

Here is how it looks like:
[imgur.com...]

Like in one moment my website became low-quality. How can this happen in real life? Not within Google Algo?

[RedBar]

Like in one moment my website became low-quality.

Furthermore does G even know it has done this to you since, for the vast majority of us, there is nowhere to query and complain?

Several years ago I had a site at #1 for several years. It was a widget I first created in about 1980, it was, and still is, one of the top selling widgets in my trade world. The site was all about this widget, information, facts and hundreds of images. Imagine my surprise one day when I saw I had been relegated to #2 by a USA importer with just a few words and images.

Within a few months my totally exclusive images started appearing on all kinds of widget sites and I lost 66% of my traffic. I closed the site completely 3 years ago even though I am still the widget industry #1 for this product, now the product information is listed on my general global site.

This is precisely where G gets some stuff incredibly wrong yet it has nowhere available to question why this has happened.

This occurrence actually had a dramatic effect on my global industry when many companies saw precisely what had happened. 90+% of them stopped their website developments etc since they rapidly realised that if the originator of the widget with a deicated site could not rank #1 for its own widget, then what chance would they have?

That was 2016, they now mostly have a single page splash site.

[ichthyous]

Just wondering if any of you have ever deleted your FB (Meta) business pages and the effect that it had on your Google ranking? I have a FB business page since 2010 that sits inert and I would like to zap it, but I am worried that the loss of the "social signal", link back to my site, address, etc will end up working against me with Google. Does anyone have any experience with deleting their social profiles?

[RedBar]

Does anyone have any experience with deleting their social profiles?

Yep, a couple of years ago I deleted all social media links across all my and customer sites with seemingly zero effect. My media sites were FB, Houzz, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, all other sites were solely FB and Twitter.

They were all ok until about 2016, what happened in 2016, that's the second time today I've mentioned that?

[ichthyous]

@redbar Did your clients permit you to delete all their profiles like that? Typically the business handles social or pays a social media marketing co to do it. I am only considering it because the reach of the FB posts is horrible and I don't need a zombie FB profile out there. Worried about the effect of losing such a long standing page might be...

[RedBar]

Did your clients permit you to delete all their profiles like that?

Good question and I had to think about that for about a couple of seconds to re-fresh how and why we did it and, quite simply, it was during the scamdemic lockdowns.

During those lockdowns not one of the "local" businesses had hardly any traffic from those sites which started to make me think that these were simply job justification / creatiion schemes and were these links needed rather than a new business promotion plan.

Insofar as my global site was concerned I had a major dummy out with all social networks since not only were they not driving me any worthwhile traffic I was effectively promoting them ... for free ... I was no longer their business data provider.

I do not know of anyone in my widget business who uses a media marketing company and I deal with several in the USD 1+bn turnover level, they all still do it in-house since, quite simply, they learned it from the very start and they've learned what it is that people ask and want to know.

I seem to remember a G video a "year or two" back when John M said it didn't have any ranking effect ... Perhaps someone can confirm this?

[mosxu]

Problem is the traffic is so badly manipulated if you start well with a keyword check the history how conversions do not occur anymore! The algo learns the value of the keyword and starts spreading it but the consumer lost out here because is not the best website showing!

[RedBar]

@mosxu - I agree therefore just how are they manipulating their results?

Simplistically, and I see no reason why not, is the algo skewed to the extent that no matter the search term for a specific widget, the algo automatically assumes it is a retail purchase enquiry above all other possible searches?

Is this why we see so many similar sites on the first page all stating Widget A for USD 000.00?

It is quite remarkable at times how just by adding another word or even a couple of letters what the SERPs displays. Do we assume that price comparison sites often get preference since it makes G's job so much easier? I also guess that with most of them carrying G ads helps too?

I've thought along these lines for many years otherwise why do so many high quality widget pages fail to be not only at the top of the SERPs but quite often fail to be on the first 2-3 pages?

[RubicCubed]

The algo learns the value of the keyword and starts spreading it but the consumer lost out here because is not the best website showing!

Yesterday we had a brief period of visibility in Google's SERPS between 9:30AM - 12:30PM which allowed a rush of orders from Google to come in. After that, we were nowhere to be found. To your point, I checked the path to sale on orders after 12:30PM and many came from different search engines after first hitting our site from Google between the hours of visibility. Even though Google wants to bury us, it's good to know people who have seen what we sell are willing to expend the effort to go to a different search engine to find us again so they can return and make their purchase.

[malkhaldi]

again
semrush
High range
6.0/10