March 2023 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Are we having another shake-up or have ads taken-over the SERPs almost completely?

It is a Wednesday, I have some sites flatlining and some 50% down today, how bad are your sites?

[RareBit]

I am actually seeing some stability and have held 2nd place all day for 1 of my high volume keywords.

[superclown2]

My search results now, thanks to the Google monopoly, are the worst I have known for 20 years. Luckily I made hay whilst the sun shone so I'm not over-bothered, but I feel for those who are trying to make a living whilst watching their earnings vanish.

I predicted a while ago that Google would go for broke, squeezing the maximum they could out of search before the axe falls. This move to 'ads, ads and more ads' will put off not only searchers but advertisers to, who will watch their ROI falling. Sadly I expect more of this from them, not less, in the future.

As a searcher, I abandoned Google months ago. Authority is everything, expertise and specialisation is beyond their algo's understanding. Long tail searches, at least in my sector, are still a waste of time since they just turn up the same list of high spenders on Google ads, and don't get me started on the ad-filled YouTube epidemic.

[RedBar]

India is usually my second most popular visitor country however the last few days have seen traffic from there halving, very strange behaviour. The good news today is the last 3-4 hours has seen my USA traffic jump dramatically!

[Mestrick]

Google serp shaking badly websites moving up and down every 15 mins I search for my main volume keyword

[Aduc321]

In Germany I run some sites with product comparisons, the rankings are rather stable (so far), we have rather the problem that the big news sites take away our places, whether it is because of the authority? No idea... It becomes more and more difficult

[Micha]

Everything as usual, the ranking fluctuates a bit, but is stable for the most part. However, I also observe (also in Germany) that large news sites, mainly those of the public broadcasters, basically dominate, regardless of the topics. As a small niche site, you can't keep up.

[BlackParade]

As for me, some of online shopping page took the rank for the out of topic related keywords. Well maybe google see them as "product review" things... Not sure yet about it, Some longtail keywords still stay, but the main keywords took a big drop from 16 to 73 lols.....

[ErrlyBird]

SEMrush is showing some recovery to keywords and visibility while GSC is not. Multiple days of declining daily traffic. Hoping that things turn around over the weekend. On the plus side, conversion rate is higher, but I imagine people are spending their tax returns.

[RedBar]

Oh dear oh dear, I've just been doing my metrics and things are just becoming pointless insofar as search engine traffic is concerned.

February 2023 v 2022 : 78.1%
Feb 18-28 v Feb 1-17 2023 : 66.4%
Feb 18-28 2023 v All Feb 2022 : 59.8%

[mhansen]

Whatever is fluctuating at the moment, it seems to be helping me from the Feb 4th dips I saw - though I have been around long enough to know better than to the trust the stability of these changes for several days, until whatever is fluctuating, has completed.

That said, a number 1 or 2 position in organic results is worth almost nothing anymore due to the influence of ads and widgets. With just about any commercial query, a number 1 result position is still nearly off the screen on both G and Bing. The first ad is loaded with sitelinks, the second and 3rd ads seem to have a higher amount of padding depending on display size and finally, the PAA or other widgets take up the remaining onscreen real estate.

"Above the fold" used to mean what you see on the screen without scrolling. Now, for search engines, it merely means the entire viewable screen, regardless of screen size. Everything has been stretched, sitelinked, padded and widgetized to consume the full screen space on anything other than non-commercial queries.

[BigKat]

a number 1 or 2 position in organic results is worth almost nothing anymore due to the influence of ads and widgets.

This is our experience as well, with #1 positions in Google producing very little traffic anymore. Our results on Bing are better than Google, but still heavily depressed because of all the ads.

I question where Google goes from here. How will Google achieve profit targets if the search results are already mostly ads? Will we see even more ads/larger ads for buyer queries and/or will Google have another round of mass layoffs? Will we see Google's ad targeting loosened to then takeover informational queries, as they have with buyer queries, and dry up that organic traffic too? And will users tolerate this?

It looks like Google has hit a plateau, and the same could be said for Bing as well. This plateau has also impacted SEO due to the severely diminished value of being ranked even #1. I don't see AI impacting this much either because existing search engines will be unwilling to trade off a better user experience (less ads) for reduced profits. I believe it will take a new entrant into the search market, who is not so profit hungry, to compel existing search engines to compete by providing a better user experience.

[RedBar]

Google's ad targeting loosened to then takeover informational queries, as they have with buyer queries,

My widget sector has been like this for years, it's simply the quantity of ads that have increased massively to the point that organics can hardly be seen.

[tangor]

At what point does milking the cow cause discomfort to the cow?

At the rate ad inclusions are going we might find out pretty quick!

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic is up but conversions have been completly wiped out

[RedBar]

12 hours into my Google Friday and so far every visitor except one has been a single page viewer!

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar,

i can confirm that. Traffic is totally mismatched.
And when bild.de is in serps for search term : widget test
then you know that google reached trust, credible and information bottom.
There are so many domains in serps where i keep away just by looking at the domainname.

[insideout]

The conversion rate has dropped to zero ! Traffic, keeps fluctuating !

[ErrlyBird]

Traffic is up but conversions have been completly wiped out

It's the opposite for me. Traffic is down but conversions are up! 5 days in a row now the traffic has slowly dwindled. It's giving me anxiety.

[BigKat]

it's simply the quantity of ads that have increased massively to the point that organics can hardly be seen.

Which is the problem - recent updates have left so little real estate for organic results that users are presented with mostly ads. Results are based on who has the biggest wallet and feeds Google the most, not what is most relevant to users which has created a very poor user experience. Further adding to distrust among advertisers and website owners is how Google tried to mask these UI changes by pushing out relentless updates that still continue. Ask yourself: Why would Google place so much effort on pushing out these relentless updates to organic results if organic results are rarely seen by users? More smoke and mirrors to distract us if you ask me..

[mhansen]

12 hours into my Google Friday and so far every visitor except one has been a single page viewer!

Have you checked the referring country? When I saw this last time, the users came from Google, had 1 pageview that lasted less than 1 second, and they were all from Seychilles. A quick country block in Cloudflare fixed the issue. These 1-page hit and run visits are hell to user engagement metrics, which I have a feeling is a bot attack from a competitor to drown the engagement metric.

[mhansen]

Had a page drop a few positions according to SEMR so I checked the SERP. There is a definite influx of local results pushing higher in search results. Again, they are not local to ME, just local in nature to generic queries. For Ex: Assuming I wanted to know how to prune an elm tree (I don't), instead of a national, popular arborist site with content focused on elm tree trimming methods, it is showing local tree service companies (across the USA) - that may or may not have a page about elm trees.

[RedBar]

Have you checked the referring country?

Yep, completely normal global spread. I am used to having lots of single page views since they are invariably visitors who want more in-depth information and images for a widget they have already decided to buy from their supplier.

Interestingly the hotel site was having a similar day and then at 14.00 UK time both sites lit up with multiple page viewers and visiting at a "normal" hourly rate. We'll see how long this lasts.

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been quite a bit higher for the last few days, but only one sale. I also noticed that what they are buying is my older, cheaper and more obscure inventory items. That's because there are so many ads for most searches now that they are not finding my most in-demand items. They are just finding the more specific and esoteric items that there isn't much competition for.

I have also noticed the same pattern every day...a big upward swing in the early morning and then a huge drop in visitors that lasts an hour or two. Then a big spike, another big drop....this is new.

[BigKat]

They are just finding the more specific and esoteric items that there isn't much competition for.

China, and their top distributor in the USA (Amazon), have to be making bank. At least in my industry they are killing it...

Have a good weekend everyone!

[Treud]

I had same results for last updates, big traffic Increase then conversion down. Since last “update” lost around 25% traffic but converted more and having more leads for sales.
I prefer this :)

[Dalnoon]

Seems like I've recovered from the 24th Feb drop. I lost 30% of traffic on the Google update day and then it slowly came back, and today I'm 100% back to where I was before.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Seeing the same as Dalnoon - I am recovering. It's hard to say some exact numbers, but something is happening just right now.

[RedBar]

I've just been going through some more metrics and a couple of notable points:

1. Dec/Jan/Feb page views were within 0.44% of each other, yep, zero point four four percent, never have I seen such close numbers.

2. My February 2023 Page Views were 42.7% of February 2021, that's down 57.3%.

This is for my global very specialised widget site that, realistically, has one semi-competitor, an excellent Chinese widget trade site, however it does not have as much in-depth info as mine. Nearly all other sites, especially in the US, are thin retail widget sites.

It is very, very evident within my industry that, especially in The West, business trade has reduced massively plus many importers and exporting producers are closing weekly.

[christianz]

Rankings and traffic (especially rankings) continue to go down every day for all of my sites, none of which have anything to do with reviews. The review update thing didn't make much change to this trajectory, maybe accelerated it a bit.

I guess my content is not generic and fake enough to please the Google AI.