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 :-)

[swright]

Someone mentioned that G ramped up local importance in results - I'm seeing the same thing. A site I'm tracking fell in the US after the HCU, and the fall was due to some of its top pages being overtaken by pages from local businesses. I get that for some queries local is important (auto insurance, tax services, etc.), but this is for informational, non-location-specific queries. The same site has retained its top positions in other English speaking countries like Australia, UK, Canada, perhaps because there are less local businesses that have put up pages on these topics due to the smaller size of these countries. Some of these local results that were pushed up are pretty mediocre, worse than the pages that were demoted. I'm sorry, but the fact that I'm in the US doesn't mean that I'd rather read a crap article on some general topic just because the site has a US address over a much better article from a site in the UK or Australia or wherever.

If you read Google's advice on what to do about your site if you were hit by the HCU, it's about figuring out which pages fell and how they may be unhelpful to the user. This would be pretty misleading in this case if your site fell just because it wasn't deemed local enough, not because there is something wrong with its content. Not to mention Google overlapping its updates to make it harder to figure out which one you were hit by. They have published advice on what these updates are about, ostensibly to help you make your content better, but they are actually doing everything they can to prevent you from figuring out why your site was demoted. Was it the HCU or the spam update that was launched a bit later but ran in parallel? Is there something wrong with your content or is it just the spam links that every site has? "Just keep creating great content!" That's what my top competitors have been doing for years, and almost all of them are now bleeding traffic after the last few updates.

[RubicCubed]

if you were hit by the HCU, it's about figuring out which pages fell and how they may be unhelpful to the user.

What if your pages didn't fall but were instead pushed down by all the new ads Google introduced into the serps? Are ads even content, subject to ones knowledge and expertise (EEAT comes to mind)? I personally don't consider ads content but instead a monetization technique that supplements content.

I'm not reading much into what Google says because it doesn't apply to my situation. Google's excessive over-monetization of the serps have left some search results producing just one organic result that is surrounded by ads. It's so bad that scrolling is needed to see the second result, and in some cases a lot of scrolling is needed. The amount of traffic Google is siphoning off into ads is exceptionally high making efforts to rank high for some searches a complete waste of time.

[ichthyous]

After what seemed to be a sharp drop on Friday eve and Saturday, traffic returned stronger on Sunday. Search is up 92% so far today compared to yesterday at this hour, and direct is up 76%. This coincides with a sudden return of top 3 / 10 ranking terms on mobile and desktop over the last two days. I had been losing top ranking terms steadily since last June.

Someone mentioned that G ramped up local importance in results - I'm seeing the same thing.

I am not seeing that...my strongest traffic these days is outside of my local market. USA traffic is up compared to the holidays, but stable and not unusually high. UK traffic is very high, and W. Europe is also quite a bit higher. It seems to me that the December updates probably wiped out a lot of traffic while analysis of "useful content" and link quality was being performed across the internet. It seemed to take almost three weeks...since that coincided with a normal decline in traffic it's hard to know exactly how much was new post-pandemic norms for traffic and how much was Google. I am beginning to see that lots of demand was "pulled forward" during the pandemic and people just were not spending in 2022. That has spilled over into the auto market now, homes and Bloomberg reported this morning that even rents in the US are set to head down. Strange times we are living in.

I should say...I am seeing a lot more inquiries from new customers. However most of that is international, so it's a hard sell. Most people in these countries have no clue what my high price-point items cost, so there is no hope of converting them to an actual sale. More is not always better.

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed my global traffic seems to be back to just above average. Last week saw above average business enquiries including some from the West for a change especially from popular tourist destinations.

[malkhaldi]

another spike today semrush 5.4
my main keywords not stable up/down

[RubicCubed]

another spike today semrush 5.4

Our ranks are stable but Google is using the almost all ad serp layout that has stopped traffic dead in its tracks. Even top ranked keywords get little to no traffic because all of the ads. Does Semrush go haywire when these layouts change?

[mhansen]

Google is using the almost all ad serp layout that has stopped traffic dead in its tracks.

For the last 2-3 months, I worked on improving a 15yo site that had lost relevance for specific queries over the last year or two. It used to be in the top FS answer as well as 1-3 for several high volume commercial queries, that returned great leads for us. The site work was mostly as an experiment to see what worked and what didn't in bringing the site back to relevance from 15-20 position where it gradually fell to.

The site came back strong with this latest set of updates that began in December and continued into this past week. While it did not retake the FS spot from a world leading financial magazine website that rhymes with "orbs", it's back in top 1-3 positions for the exact same queries as before. It may as well not even be there... there is little to no traffic or leads coming in from it. The SERPs are nothing but ads everywhere. Local ads, product ads, PAA, youtube video's, etc.

Edit to add: I just ran a search for a high value query. While we do not come in at position zero, we are the #1 result. The featured snippet is nothing but a reference to our content. "According to [ourwebsite].... then the rest of the featured snippet". Haha.

[BigKat]

back in top 1-3 positions for the exact same queries as before. It may as well not even be there... there is little to no traffic or leads coming in from it. The SERPs are nothing but ads everywhere.

Ditto. Our ranks are great but the ad saturation is just so huge we are getting very little traffic. I'm just glad we jumped out of G Ads before this mess hit. My hunch is only those who have special ad pricing with Google, or have a possible affiliate earnings arrangement with Google, will survive this bloodbath in ads. The lack of free traffic will also starve many businesses out of existence.

Our sales outside of Google are very strong, so I am thankful some are using other search engines for shopping related searches.

[RedBar]

Global traffic today was unusually high to one specific widget which is popular but not that popular! Checking my logs I found a common referrral from a specialist US designer magazine, unsoliceted links still work.

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been much weaker since Tuesday, and today is very low. Search is down 15% and direct down 32% at noon. USA is off 30%, Canada -70%, Australia has not had one visit yet today. Continential Europe also dropping like a stone. Only UK remains strong. Meanwhile, my ranking is stable and even slightly higher.

[mosxu]

Since this update they brought local high street stores up we are getting same traffic but is not the same in the way that it is full zombies!

Needless to say that the bill is the same,

[christianz]

Big drop on 19th.

Google seems to be getting increasingly confused since about the 14th. They started the year well but now are really struggling with basics again.

[Nutterum]

Big Gain since 11-th of Jan on certain Central European Markets. Greece, Hungary and Czech Republic got 60% YoY increase. Culprit - Google utterly destroyed the traffic of 6-7 competitors with their link quality update. They did appear..fishy on Ahrefs if I can at-a-glance see that, Google Algo definitely saw that.

Gambling space is always at the mercy of these algo updates, but boy the link-spamming affiliates got the hammer this time. Several top ranking affiliates in that space in Germany, Sweden, Hungary got destroyed.

[BigKat]

Looking back at this week...

Though Google smothered the SERPS with ads, making us extremely difficult to find, our weekly sales held up strong. We saw numerous sales coming from the lesser known search engines as well. It's good to see people looking elsewhere if they can't find what they want on Amazon or Google. Google may be misjudging their dominance as it pertains to searcher loyalty. From what our data is telling me, searcher flight from Google is happening rather quickly.

[superclown2]

From what our data is telling me, searcher flight from Google is happening rather quickly.

Expect more of the same as they go for broke.

India's supreme court ruled last week that they have to stop insisting on Android phones (97% of smartphones in India) being packed with their own apps, so other search engines will soon be on those phones - in one of Google's biggest markets - instead. Meanwhile Europe is figuring out a way to re-write the law they passed which tried to do the same thing, but which allowed a big loophole for G to exploit.

In the meanwhile here in the UK organic results are not so slowly disappearing from the first page. Firstly they went from ten to nine, then to five for certain key phrases, and a search on mobile this morning for a popular term revealed just three. Even these were sites that had ads as well. Desperation seems to be setting in, as they shed staff.

I remember other search engines trying to become ad-only 20 years ago; none of them exist now.

[mosxu]

Zombies replaced half of my traffic

[Martin Ice Web]

After getting hit by HCU und GSU i realized that it want get better in future. So a toke the decision to make some very big changes. I allways hesitated to do it because i knew first off it would cause a big drop.
Nevertheless i did it. Rankings were like i expected. The Site dropped for several Weeks and it was a pain.
After some weeks i noticed a Slow But steady uptick in traffic. Engagement seems to geht better, too.
Since about 2 weeks we are gaining traffic and we are now up to 144%. We are now at Levels from before may 2022 when Google decided to Push several harmfull updates. Sales picked up and we see steady traffic throughout the day. There are only one or two short times with traffic dents.

[ichthyous]

@MartinIceWeb What changes did you make?

I am seeing traffic steady most days, and then it will suddenly drop off a cliff for a full day and return back to where it was. Some big jumps up in visibility lately and a slow steady return of top 3-10 ranking terms after a solid six months of losing top ranking terms. It seems that the increase and decrease in top ten terms has a steady pattern of about six months. Interestingly, in that time period I have lost a considerable number of repetitive backlinks from several high domain authority sites in the last 6-7 months and it seems to have helped, not hurt me.

[anubitez]

Apparently, from the google search console, I got hundreds of ranks 1 to 3s on super popular keywords and checked data on SEO tools, including Google; they still generate lots of traffic and used to be my highest traffic points. But when I search 50 to 75% of the time I am not listed, sometimes I am for an hour. and it is like this in all different regions, sometimes it appears in this part of the world and the next, but Google's data insists I am always in these top spot for this keyword, it makes zero sense.

I am affected by the October spam update, as some here know. Is this a result of Google testing my site or something if I did get pinged? Have I fixed it or something? I would have thought all my keywords and posts would be in a spot 50 to 100 by now, as it's January, and I got affected in October 2022. All the other competitor listings seem okay, so I believe it is not google reshuffling and just my site.

Has anyone seen this and can provide any info?

[Martin Ice Web]

ichthyous,

i realy had a wrong understanding of what quality realy means. I had, as many of us, some widgets with realy good description, pictures a.s.o. Objectively considered they were better than all pages on page #1. One site was buried on page 3. No matter what i did to the site, it didnīt move a step up or down. I examined the site on search page #1 on suddenly had the enlightenment. They all had some things that my pages misses. I added these things and made the other big changes. It has now moved up to #4 on page #1.
I donīt know if it sticks but i defently did something wrong in the past.And this is due to the way i gorwed up with the internet. But things have changed and also we have been on high quality content we dindīt trigger the right switch.
And it took a lot of time to see things moving. It toke about 3 month while constantly upgrading our site.

From google i wish that there was a version without amazon links or amazon affiliates. It is hard to find real information or tests regarding widgets. Accepted sources are not to find but fake testing sites with a lot of wubble text and a link to amazon. That doesnīt help.

[Jez123]

It's early days, but I have a nice uptick in traffic (but not many conversions, but iffy time of year and economy etc) [prnt.sc...] My traffic has been declining from last year coinciding with the end of lockdowns, which was to be expected.

I haven't changed anything. May be short loved and just google shuffling?

[anubitez]

holy cr**, that bing algo must be real my duckduckgo, yahoo and bing traffic has surged like crazy.

off-topic a little, but i would seriously suggest to people struggling with traffic to look at bing compliance.

[christianz]

Big drop at 10 PM GMT. But bounce rate jumped - suggesting more irrelevance and intent mismatch in the SERPs.

[christianz]

i realy had a wrong understanding of what quality realy means.

I think you have it backwards. Google has wrong understanding (no understanding) of what quality means.

There is no automated way of scoring webpage quality. It is too abstract, too nuanced. Short anonymous forum post can be more quality than lengthy manicured made-for-SEO article in a corporate site with US street address and author bio with PhD.

Links used to take care of this - humans backlinked to what was truly the quality content. But now that backlinking (and to large degree the whole Web) is dead (only spam and only paid backlinks), Google no longer knows what is quality and their search results are crap.

By the way - I am now getting on average 3 paid link exchange requests per day (not even counting those who land in my spam folder). That's what linking has become. Pure spam, pure manipulation and it works.

[RedBar]

For the last 5 days my global traffic has dropped dramatically and well behind Jan '22 at about 77.5% so far for the month.

[ichthyous]

I had a huge increase in traffic over the last two days...yesterday search was up 140% the first part of the day and direct was up around the same. Then at 1pm sharp traffic literally dropped off a cliff and declined every hour after that. Today my USA traffic is -62% and search is down 32% compared to yesterday at this hour. Notably...during this period of very high traffic on Sat, Sun and Monday I got no new inquiries. Not one. So not sure what that was all about, but the traffic was much higher globally, and it seemed real, not bots. My ranking is up considerably over the last few days as well...gaining back top ten ranking terms at a nice clip.

[ichthyous]

By the way - I am now getting on average 3 paid link exchange requests per day (not even counting those who land in my spam folder). That's what linking has become. Pure spam, pure manipulation and it works.

I think many would agree that a new model has been needed for a long time since linking is badly abused. But it seems that Google may be fundamentally adjusting HOW links are valued and what kinds. As I have mentioned here, I terminated two non-performing partnerships over the last six months. Those had about 1200 links from two very high DA sites pointing to my site. I expected a bloodbath losing that many links overnight. Instead I am ranking higher and better traffic than the first half of 2022 when the links were in place. Perhaps the volume of links from any one site is being discounted now...more important to get a single link from a very high DA site like an article from a magazine or newspaper etc. Those cannot he purchased or scammed for the most part. Links still do count, but are not quite as important as before and it has to be the right kind of link.

[nickZ]

for the 5 to 7 years Google has devaluated forum links, blog links and all other easy to do linking.

But it seems that Google may be fundamentally adjusting HOW links are valued and what kinds.

[christianz]

for the 5 to 7 years Google has devaluated forum links, blog links and all other easy to do linking.

Ironically, that's where there is least amount of paid links / spam links.

As far as easy / not easy - try to post irrelevant or obviously promotional links out of the blue in any decent forum. Your posts will be deleted and your accounts(s) banned.

[Martin Ice Web]

@christianz,

i didnīt say that google delivers quality sites. Maby i had better said i had that wrong understanding what google counts as quality.
By the way, we are playing a game on a big pitch and unfortunatelly we donīt make the rules.