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 :-)

[Jez123]

My site has been climbing rankings all week and yet today the traffic has been dismal (UK). Do I smell an update?

My ranks as I said have been getting better after being in decline steadily since this time last year. I haven't done anything to improve. Could this mean that google are indeed looking at different ranking signals, not just links? I could have gained a link or two that has turned it around I suppose but no evidence so far.

[nickZ]

Well only 3 places in a SERP see a little more traffic. Being on SERP 2 is next to 0

My ranks as I said have been getting better after being in decline steadily since this time last year.

[BigKat]

Being on SERP 2 is next to 0

For us, being number 1 brings about 12% of the traffic as it did a few months ago. It's pitiful...

What gives with Google's Gbot crawl spam? I just checked a couple of our products, and Google crawled one six times today and another seven. Is Google trying to replace some of the traffic these pages lost, because of the ads in Google's SERPS, with crawling? It makes no sense to me why Google would crawl these product pages so often when they are buried under ads in the SERPS.

[nickZ]

if a popular search term many competitors have also worked hard, Users go used to longer keyphrases if you will.
Nowadays the know to search better, instead of searching for a cellphone, the look for cheapest cellphne in i.e. new hamshere.

For us, being number 1 brings about 12% of the traffic as it did a few months ago. It's pitiful..

[ViktorN]

after great improvement over the month of January, got a big bang down since January 24 onwards. Changes again?

[insideout]

Definitely, something is wrong with Google. My traffic is going down without any reason. Are there any delays with Analytics ?

[mhansen]

I just spotted a new feature in Google SERP (New for me, in my corner of the serps, anyhow). A simple 4 word, commercial intent query with roughly 5,500 monthly demand, per SEMRush. The usual ads were there, as well as the featured snippet and plenty of PAA boxes stuffing the results page to push the organics below the fold of a 1440 tall monitor.

What was new, is that on the right-hand side of the desktop screen, there was a "Things to Know" panel with 5 alternative ways of asking the same question, with very thorough, exact answers, with an arrow to expand the answer.

Each "Thing to Know" was roughly 800 pixels tall, with images, tables, etc, showing a full-section of the website with that specific answer, along with a link to a website at the bottom.
Edited to add: Some of the answers showed 2 website thumbnails inside, to different websites who also covered that question/answer.

There was a "See More" button on the very bottom of the full panel, which loaded 4 more alternate questions with complete answers.

Ex query: "What do widgets cost?"

Ex: "Things to Know"

- Calculate the cost of a widget today.

[800 pixel tall answer with images, tables, etc, explaining how to calculate the cost]

- What is the current price of widgets in [my city] >
- How much do widgets cost near you >
- Where can you buy widgets in [my city] >
- How to estimate your widget cost >

< View More Answers >

[ViktorN]

I think everyone left G for ChatGPT

[BigKat]

I think everyone left G

The shoppers have and judging by the lack of sales from Google, I bet many businesses will jump ship too. Here we are at the end of another work week, and Google's relevance is next to nothing....

Have a good weekend everyone!

[Micha]

I don't know what's going on, but my website has been in free fall for a week now. And it's the usual picture again, old news articles or meaningless keyword spam ranks in my area on the top places. It's really no fun anymore ....

[christianz]

I don't know what's going on, but my website has been in free fall for a week now. And it's the usual picture again, old news articles or meaningless keyword spam ranks in my area on the top places.

It's what happens when they let AI do the ranking. Imagine how much worse it will get with the influx of AI generated content.

[Micha]

I think we all know that this is going to be bad.

[nickZ]

I don't know what's going on, but my website has been in free fall for a week now. And it's the usual picture again, old news articles or meaningless keyword spam ranks in my area on the top places. It's really no fun anymore

Internet is getiing bigger and bigger every day, and the search engines have to react, which is slow when your system is big, it becomes slower when its huge. There have been quite a lot of updates. Only way to see if Google's querry is going down is over trends.google.com (for better results use your country extension) or well if you sitting at a desk a little higher at Google.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:44 pm (utc) on Jan 29, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [/edit]

[RedBar]

My global site is seeing Haimalayan-type peaks and troughs, again western counties are noticeabe by their enquiry absence whereas many other regions are looking "normal".

What on earth is occurring on our UK-focussed hotal site I have no idea. Yesterday, Saturday 28th Jan, saw it's highest day since 28th Sept 2021, yes 2021. The place was busy all day serving hundreds of fresh meals, the bars were busy from 10.00 till 24.00 and with a good mix of people and generations.

Some local shops are doing well, some are dying, most local factories etc are reporting good trade meanwhile I know of several local, mostly small family businesses that are intending closure because they can no longer compete and their "children" have zero interest principally because it involves "work"! Nothing new there.

Interesting times.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is all over the place these days. For the last 5 days or so it has been lower than the previous weeks and there were very few new inquiries or sales. Today both direct and search traffic shot up again and so did ranking / visibility.

I haven't made much of an effort to track it, but it seems that the only thing that could cause this very targeted type of traffic manipulation is the number of ads and widgets in the search layout.

Unlike some of you, I am finding bring in the #1 spot to result in quite a bit more traffic. Once you slip down to 2-3 it pretty much vanishes unless you have a large prominent image block under your result.

[EditorialGuy]

Our 20+-year-old information site has been doing pretty well lately, both in terms of Google rankings and user demand.We seem to be doing best with subtopics where we have a lot of content, history, and expertise. Most of our bread-and-butter pages on those popular subtopics are up noticeably (in some cases, sharply).

[christianz]

For my 17 year old information site its exactly the opposite. Since mid January it's gradual decline with constant "A/B testing type" ups and downs.

Interestingly, yesterday, my traffic shot up exactly for 24 hours (midnight to midnight) and now its back to garbage again. But it seems like some kind of scheduled test or pre-update reset.

It seems that content quality doesn't matter, site age doesn't matter, links don't matter and nothing matters IF your site content doesn't "tickle" the AI in right way. My site happens to NOT be article-based and AI simply doesn't understand it.

[muniz900]

Hi, nothing is moving in the Google serp yet, the September core update is long gone, they should do an update soon, I thought they would do it in January but February has also arrived, does anyone know anything about it?

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld muniz900

does anyone know anything about it?

Would it make any difference if someone did? The SERPs for popular keywords is so full of ads now that trying to find "real" results is an almost impossibility plus your acceptable real results would most likely not be the same as my preferred result.

Localised and regional businesses can still do ok however national and international is altogether a different ball game and can cost a fortune with zero ROI.

[ichthyous]

Huge jumps in traffic for two days with many new inquiries...then today, whammo! USA traffic down 30% compared to yesterday. Canada is down 70%. Clearly Google is loading up the ads in North America today

[RedBar]

Clearly Google is loading up the ads in North America today

End of the month budget blow-outs? I have no idea !

[RedBar]

Metrics for my global site show:
January v December Page Views the same!
2023 January v 2022 January Page Views -20.1%
Daily average expectation -26.3%

The good news hotel
January v December Page Views +10.6%
2023 January v 2022 January Page Views +8.5%
Daily average expectation +21.7%

[Atomic]

Time for some February search observations?

[not2easy]

The discussion continues for February 2023: [webmasterworld.com...]