May 2023 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Here we go, will anything improve after a very poor April for many or will traffic continue to be hoovered-up by the G ad machine? No prizes for guessing correctly!

[Micha]

You shouldn't take Google so seriously. Sure, you can't get around the ecosystem, but it's been the case for years that Google likes to help itself to content, but website operators have less and less of it.

There are other ways to stay in the game, those who only rely on Google are doing something wrong in my eyes anyway.

[superclown2]

There are other ways to stay in the game

Care to expand on that? I'm sure there are many who would love to do so without Google.

[Micha]

I don't know what the best way is either, and we are a news site in Germany. That makes it easier for us than an online store.

For example, we started two podcasts that significantly increased our audience, then we entered into collaborations (with events, etc.) to be more present outside of the Internet, and we changed our whole look and communication. We are small, but this has given us much better opportunities to be closer to the reader. All of this has led to better reader engagement and us being found more and more without Google.

On the financial side, we kicked out Google advertising and started marketing our ad space ourselves, since then we've had stable revenue.

We are only a very small player and don't have the financial capabilities of the big players in our country (especially since I still maintain that Google gives preferential treatment to the so-called leading media). But we have accepted that. Therefore, we can completely ignore the fluctuations caused by Google, because the business is going anyway and we are still growing.

[yollo03]

Based on my findings and others have said it as well, a new AI was introduced or the previous AI was refined. I am actually seeing an improvement after all the hard work I put into the websites.

[ichthyous]

In the meanwhile; the business I'm getting from G has fallen to such a level that it's simply not worth building any more content. All my images are unique ones that I have created myself so I have been busy today blocking them from Google in robots.txt. I would be livid if I saw them rehashed by Bard and used on another site.

They have probably already been added to numerous datasets, Bard is not the only generative AI platform...you can check the largest dataset and request removal here: [haveibeentrained.com ].

Unfortunately, it's image by image, they don't have a system set up to upload multiple images for removal. I am paying attention to more activity that appears to be unidentified crawling on my site and banning the IP. I have seen that from Europe and Canada as well. so I expect that there will be a mad rush to build many AI platforms. There is a 'noai' tag that you can add to your meta tags for the page, but it's not clear if any AI bots are honoring it.

And ditto on the drop in business...it had already fallen drastically in 2022 and had a brief return in 2023, but now I fear that's it for Google. My only hope is that people get completely fed up and just move on, but my gut tells me that they won't...Google has built a sticky ecosystem and will retain a lot of people and convert them to using AI search instead of the old blue links.

[superclown2]

And ditto on the drop in business...it had already fallen drastically in 2022 and had a brief return in 2023, but now I fear that's it for Google. My only hope is that people get completely fed up and just move on, but my gut tells me that they won't...Google has built a sticky ecosystem and will retain a lot of people and convert them to using AI search instead of the old blue links.

It's hardly believable that a single company can dictate the fortunes of businesses all over the world. They keep their monopoly, as you so rightly say, because of their sticky ecosystem in which they are the default search engine on all the major browsers - which they pay for - and which many legislators consider to be illegal. This situation will not last for ever.

Frankly most people I've spoken to about Google don't even know that there are excellent alternatives! Google used to be far and away the best search engine but that was then and this is now. Perhaps the newspapers, which are likely to be badly affected by all this, can help to educate the public.

Let us not forget that AI is nowhere near perfect; it's shortcomings will be heavily publicised when the inevitable personal disasters are caused to users who believed what it told them. And no-one really knows whether or not the use of AI (which is incredibly expensive to run) will be all that popular anyway - I have certainly not known of any of my friends or colleagues shifting to Bing because of it. Plus: a lot of legislators are terrified of it.

Google is betting the company on this switch to AI. They have a system at the moment that makes the kind of profits that defy belief, and are they really going to abandon it to take a leap into the dark? Wow.

I think it's too early to predict the end of online publishing, and the free interchange of knowledge that the Internet once promised. We may just witness the end of a company that has done so much to destroy it already.

[RedBar]

As if we have not had enough of scraping sites and their members posting our images and information, I have just seen a TikTok post ranking #6 for one of my specialised widgets with the usual moronic "designer" questions ... FFS Google, you are now the purveyor of the lowest common denominator "information" products on the planet.

Is it not time to examine your own E-A-T ?

Why are you giving me an answer to a question I did not ask?

Oh yeah, I forgot, you know what I want, don't you?

[superclown2]

Why are you giving me an answer to a question I did not ask?

Possibly because they sacked so many staff then switched most of the rest to their kamikaze project. Quality was never great, too much bias towards authority at the expense of relevance as we all know, but it seems to have gone completely out of the window since the Great AI Panic.

[Dooku]

but it seems to have gone completely out of the window since the Great AI Panic.

Which is good :-) Because everyone and their mom are now on ChatGPT doing everything from writing a thesis to creating video scenario's to site content.....etc...etc...
Google has missed the boat, those people will never return to google as they are now familiar with ChatGPT and have set up their workflow around it. And those users are also finding new ways EVERY HOUR to make money using ChatGPT for which they will not be needing google anymore soon. Second half of this year is going to get very interesting.

[Treud]

There is indeed a huge shift in the search behaviour and Google is finding a way to retain them on their services.

Yesterday was playing a game with a friend and during a record/stream we had an issue with a setup. Instead of « Googling it » my friend said « Let me ask ChatGPT »

He didn’t found the answer right away but his experience was the answers were far better that what he could find on a search engine and he ended by a « soon all search engine will be dead »

This AI is for me as big as the invention of the internet. I wouldn’t’ imagine a few years ago that’s something would come from nowhere and change the searching behaviour so quickly.

[superclown2]

This AI is for me as big as the invention of the internet. I wouldn’t’ imagine a few years ago that’s something would come from nowhere and change the searching behaviour so quickly.

Yes Google will undoubtedly lose a lot of business to chatbots but for a lot of commercial queries they will be unsuitable. Would they for instance be able (legally or ethically) to tell which company provided the cheapest green widgets, or the best insurance for your pet unicorn?

Another question I am asking myself is: if Bard is going to be so good, why should visitors to Google click on ads?

Just what advantage putting a chatbot on a search results page would give Google is a mystery to me, whilst the potential pitfalls are many and deep. I foresee more layoffs there soon.

As for the current search results: I am seeing a flood of 'authority' sites bubbling to the top of countless search results with content that is clearly AI generated, and which is completely divorced from the expertise of these sites. This is a result of many years of Google preferring 'authority' (ie high spending on ads) over specialisation which from their point of view is logical; the actual creator of the product or service pays the authority site a commission, the authority site pays Google for the clicks, the customer who buys the product or service pays for everything. There is a Google tax on practically everything bought on the Internet.

If AI can destroy this system, which is so harmful to the public as well as businesses, then roll on.

[li7chang]

My traffic has been declining since April 28th, I don't know why

[Cyril TechWebsites]

The first part of “The Grand Robbery update” continues rolling out. They are destroying my niche as a whole. Here are the screenshots of the best websites with “how-to” tutorials and guides for sysadmins. This so-called “helpful” update marks your website as “bad” and nothing will help you: your authority, your backlinks, or the quality of the content.

That’s how the traffic for my best competitors is looking in the last year:
[imgur.com...]

My theory is that Google is preparing the room for its AI Generative update (the second part of “The Grand Robbery update”). It will finalize the destruction of all the websites using which the Bard can make a “mistake” and leave only “good” (from Google’s point of view) websites in the SERPs. I believe G needs this to keep users within Google’s system and won’t leave it to other websites. They will be just showing our content rephrased by Bard to their users and making money on ads. They are trying to own the content all over the Internet with AI. That’s what it looks like for me.

[Alex_1729]

My sites are dropping as well. I'd prefer not to draw any conclusions, but it seems like Google is doing what Google does best: increasing organic traffic to the worst pages I have, with lowest ad revenue, and no transaction value. At the same time, they seem to be reducing organic visits to the pages of higher ad revenue, and transaction opportunities. Are they slowly draining us until there's nothing left? Is that why they introduce everything so slowly, since slow death won't cause any fuss? Once again, I don't have a lot of data to support this or draw any definitive conclusions, so time will tell.

[superclown2]

Are they slowly draining us until there's nothing left? Is that why they introduce everything so slowly, since slow death won't cause any fuss?

I think you're absolutely right. Eric Schmidt stated years ago that Google would keep 'pushing the envelope' a little at a time until they were stopped. If they had introduced all their googlespam at once it would have caused uproar.

This is another reason why I'm wondering about why they are proposing switching to an AI system after so many years of refining the current one. OK ChatGPT has taken business from them but I don't see people flocking to Bing; so why introduce Bard, which could be just another (second runner) competitor to their 'search' (read: 'advertising') business? I may be naive but to me it doesn't make sense.

[Alex_1729]

why introduce Bard

Drive up stock price? Increase value of the company? Get more users?
[i.imgur.com...]
Could it be as simple as it seems? Google is the main company on the net, they need to be where things are hot. And right now, gpt is hot.

[Treud]

My traffic is declining, but the quality I receive is better. (Inquiry and orders), so I’ll take that :D

[JesterMagic]

A real game changer is when ChatGPT gets real time access to the internet. This will allow users to perform more traditional searches. This is when Googles business will be truly threatened.

I rather pay a subscription per month to get results than trust a company that is based solely on Ad revenue.

We also need at least 3 big players in the search/ai space to ensure proper competition so companies are more about retaining their customers.

[samwest]

Sorry, but at this point I could not have more disgust with gorg. I started a new site, and after nearly a year, they started indexing pages...about 8k pages in the sitemap, all with decent rank math scores. They were steadily adding pages to the index, then stopped cold at 900 and have begun reversing all indexing and heading back to zero. The way they use AI is ridiculous and always punitive. I've dumped their search and now use ChatGPT exclusively. You can find exactly what you want without having to trudge through a mountain of ad filled "partner" pages.

[RedBar]

After several days of extremely low traffic levels at 07.00 UK time this morning my global site suddenly had a few more page loads and then from 08.00 until 13.00 completely normal page views making it already +122% v my new average ... No doubt that's just killed it!

[superclown2]

Could it be as simple as it seems? Google is the main company on the net, they need to be where things are hot. And right now, gpt is hot.

Absolutely! AI has an amazing future that we haven't even scratched the surface of yet.

They could host it on bard.com perhaps, if they can persuade the Spanish registrant to sell. But on their search page? Replacing a time tested and mega profitable system? Competing with their ads?

a very 'brave' decision on their part.

[BigKat]

Are they slowly draining us until there's nothing left?

Google had previously drained us (ecommerce USA) months ago. To maintain growth, I don't see how Google can avoid rolling out more ads to other countries and info searches, which we're already seeing here in the USA. Combine a mass expansion of ads with large scale layoffs inside Google, from AI taking over Googler's job duties, the near term is going to be quite painful for many.

I was reading a story where they said 60% of shoppers in the USA start their search on Amazon. How disappointed these shoppers must be, or shall I say disillusioned, to see a full page of ads on Google for the same products they already saw on Amazon. In its current state, Google is generating really disappointing results if one wants to even define them as results anymore. All the time, money and effort Google spent on creating algos and machine learning to present the best results to users has been kicked to the curb and replaced by ads of the highest bidders. Putting users last is going to harm Google in the long run and create a void in the search market any new entrant (hopefully Apple) can capitalize on.

[EditorialGuy]

My traffic is declining, but the quality I receive is better. (Inquiry and orders), so I’ll take that :D

Interesting observation. Most of our information site's revenue comes from ads, and we've been seeing an improvement in ad earnings despite traffic that has been so-so (not great, not awful, just less than I'd expect at this time of year). Mind you, I'd just as soon have a lot more traffic than not!

[ichthyous]

Yesterday everything snapped right back into the old traffic pattern and all of the sections of my site which were down 40%-80% since Easter were back to their old levels. It seems to be holding thing morning, but USA and CA traffic has not fully recovered. Traffic from Europe, UK, and AU is roaring. This does coincide with higher ranking, but not a big move upward and certainly not enough to have caused this much higher traffic level.


With the reversion back to 'normal' traffic I have had my first new customer inquiry since May 5th! One cannot make a business on Google destroying your traffic for half the month. Let's see how long this holds before going right back to the lower levels...

[RedBar]

For my global site Monday had a pre-April 2023 average day which made a gratifying change. Our UK hotel venue site was 100% average which for a Monday was good.

As a global business several years ago I combined all my country and region-specific sites under one umbrella site however, because of changing business conditions, my current thinking is to return them to how they were.

Has anyone else done this kind of reversal?

[Martin Ice Web]

Something must have happend over the weekend. Starting on friday with worst day saturday and going on till today we see a significant drop in traffic. User engangment is nearly zero. Complete mismatch.
Our niche is now amazon + 1 price compare site + 1 million ads + rubbish sites that have nothing to do with our niche

I guess google puts 1 price compare site into serps to avoid regulation complains from EU commision.

Every time you think google couldn´t show worse serps they proof you false.

[RedBar]

@MIW

Something must have happend over the weekend.

I concur, something hit me too however yesterday post 08.00 my traffic returned to a more usual level. So far today is not as busy but I do have traffic.

Every time you think google couldn´t show worse serps they proof you false.

Absolutely and then what will it do for its information ? Ohhh, I forgot, it doesn't deliver information any longer, it's simply an ad-serving site !

[ichthyous]

OpenAI CEO wows lawmakers at closed dinner: ‘Fantastic…forthcoming’
[cnbc.com ]

OpenAI is already out there trying to win over our members of Congress to avoid any kind of real regulation. Google will make a similar push I'm sure. Nobody mentioned the massive copyright infringement issues, except for one member of Congress who mentioned that Copyright will need to be extended to cover works partially created with AI. Apparently works created solely by AI cannot be copyrighted as there is no actual person creating the work...a smart move by the copyright office. Extending copyright protection to machine created work would flood the copyright system and very quickly overwhelm the courts with claims of infringement for works that were created with stolen intellectual property to begin with.

[ErrlyBird]

I am also seeing things starting to come back. Visibility and traffic are returning to normal levels after a very slow past couple of weeks.

[samwest]

Yesterday everything snapped right back into the old traffic pattern

I often wonder if these drops are network related.

[horizon.netscout.com...]

[thousandeyes.com...]

[cybermap.kaspersky.com...]

[mosxu]

AI, Bard means less buyers searching and it means self destruction!

And for me more zombies!

[Treud]

On my side, nothing coming back to last few weeks levels. Plus normally I have a sort of pic on week-end, and low tide on Thursday, Since a week, I have a flat line. Seems Google is telling me « You will have this amount of traffic, no more, no less ».

[ichthyous]

I often wonder if these drops are network related.

For three weeks running? There was a very precise pattern to the drop. It affected USA and Canada traffic mostly, and it affected specific sets of semantically similar terms. A network outage would not last so long and would be spread out across all parts of each site. Instead it was exactly the same pattern every day from around Easter to now

[seomotionz]

Interesting observation. Most of our information site's revenue comes from ads, and we've been seeing an improvement in ad earnings despite traffic that has been so-so (not great, not awful, just less than I'd expect at this time of year). Mind you, I'd just as soon have a lot more traffic than not!

In our case since last week. Traffic is good and increasing. But the ad revenue is down. Only two days we have got the usual otherwise they are significantly less.

Traffic is good and targeted in the tech niche in our case. But it seems Google is hell bent on "I will not pay the Publisher" mode.

[RareBit]

Does anyone know why the FAQ snippets have been dropped? It's had a massive impact on 1 of our sites. I am wondering if it's all to do with the upcoming AI release?

[RubicCubed]

Does anyone know why the FAQ snippets have been dropped?

Possibly to make more room and reserve more real estate for ads? We've seen such features greatly reduced along with image and video blocks in serps removed. What replaced these features were ads making the whole screen just ads. It's a very difficult time these days for businesses.

[superclown2]

It's a very difficult time these days for businesses.

If it's any consolation, it's the same for searchers too.

[ErrlyBird]

Its odd though because I am seeing return in my Metrics on SEMrush but not seeing GSC improve at all. Numbers in Analytics are also low. Conversion rate hasn't been as bad as in the past but down about half a percent from the previous months. Taking slow period into consideration, we should still be seeing more than we are getting

[RareBit]

Isn't SEMrush just estimations based on KW volume ect? We are seeing similar but the assumption is either more people are away on holiday or the cost of living crisis in the UK is starting to bite..although the warmer temps must be reducing energy outgoings.

[anubitez]

i am seriously starting to believe there is some indian backhand crap going on... most of the search raters manually are from India? and all these indian news sites or copycat sites from India just never seem to get hit............... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

[BigKat]

it's the same for searchers too.

Agreed. After buying traffic from Google vanished months ago, we've seen an increase in sales coming from other search engine traffic and social (including Reddit). Referral conversions are also up for us from forums including private member-only forums. Searching Google for products we produce returns mainly ads of unsafe Chinese products sold on Amazon. It's terrible that Google would promote and profit from ads that promote unsafe products, but they're insulated from culpability so I'm sure the well being of their users doesn't matter much to them so long as they're clicking ads to feed the greed.

[Rlilly]

I hope Google Search kills itself.

Sorry i cannot add any valuable information here other than hire a Pro Photographer to take pictures of each product you sell because the results look like an image mall now. Good images might make a difference between someone clicking and not...

Make sure your Merchant listings and Product snippets in GSC are Valid....

But even then, if you not a brand or in a specialty Niche, your chances for success in google are severely diminished these days

[BigKat]

if you not a brand or in a specialty Niche, your chances for success in google are severely diminished these days

Unfortunately being in a specialty niche still isn't enough to be found in Google's organic results because of the ads filling the entire screen. The ads Google is serving are broad match while organic is subject to an algo that should return the most accurate set of results for even detailed searches. While Google's algo for organic results may produce good results, those results are still well below broad match ads. It's absolutely maddening Google would make users scroll past a full screen of broad match/irrelevant ads to hopefully find an accurate set of organic results for their search.

[Treud]

Still on the low slope. CTR is stable but the impressions tanked and lost big amount of KW where is was top 5 and now pushed to oblivion.

I think there is no point to correct stuff. Just do the thing and one day you’ll lose, the other you might win. Google is a casino, and the casino always win !

[superclown2]

It's terrible that Google would promote and profit from ads that promote unsafe products, but they're insulated from culpability so I'm sure the well being of their users doesn't matter much to them so long as they're clicking ads to feed the greed.

I'm not sure if that will continue. At present liability for damages may rest with owners of web sites but once Bard starts giving 'advice' it would (and probably will) be argued that Google is responsible.

We live in a compensation culture (here in Europe, at least) but no doubt Google have taken their potential liabilities into account. And no doubt they are aware that laws like the UK Unfair Contract Terms Act means that, yes, they can be sued even if they issue disclaimers.

They have thought about these things haven't they?

[anubitez]

@superclown2 I do see lawsuits in America happening over AI chat bots, mainly for search engines such as Bing and Google, good point about liability.

Going to another point in general to everyone else, honestly, I am at the point if Google releases this new search engine and really starts screwing things on another level which for me personally I do not care anymore as DuckDuckGo as of yesterday is my primary source of traffic, I may block Google, I am over their crap if I get nothing in return no point letting them pillage and use my content.

I asked Bard about some specific howtos I made, it's copied them command and word for word almost and no credit, yet I am blacklisted as a spammer.

O, and I think search engine land or some site posted where Google Bard has been training its source, one is a manual copycat to who I've sent over 500 DMCA requests now, which all succeeded as its 99% copied word for word and half the images are copied with my name on it and I found out the plagiarizer was in the list for Bard to train its data too, even funnier! like wtf?

So recap

October 2022 site went from 30 to 50k a day to 1k to 2k a day from Google on average
Copycats stealing my content manually and automatically still rank over mine, these sites steal others too, some have disappeared in the auto theft, but manual copycats going ok still where I am in the abyss.
Google now uses my content for its responses with no links or sources; so far, I can see the ones the manual boys have not stolen in my testing.
Google trains Bard on a website I DMCA constantly, and yet I am still ranked as the spammer, even after improving all the little things, and I am an authority in my niche with links from actual manufacturers, companies that I write howtos on, and recommendations...

John Muller, if you ever do read these forums, wtf come on, dude, so tweeting with your SEO family in a circle jerk and do your job... O wait, you work for an Indian now that cares about spamming serps with ads and promoting Indian copycat news and Bollywood sites that are experts not only on the Bollywood industry but medical, shopping trends, technical experts on how to build a nuclear fusion reactor from the fu****** ground up but have e-e-a-t good scores thanks to the search raters from India that are their pals giving em points lets be real here.

meh........ rant over for today.

tldr, forget about Google once you hit rock bottom and focus on other sources, I find I get much better engagement from social media, Bing, Brave Search, DDG etc.

[mosxu]

I think we all need to something abot zombies and bugus reports. This is ilegal practice.

As for AI is the end of search, bing for example is responding to queries on the right taking the ads space that is so distractive and interactive that the searcher will not even see the main ads!

And we all know something has to click on the ads to bring revenue! Maybe AI can click on ads too!

[RubicCubed]

AI is a tool that can help us find what we're looking for more efficiently, but it's still up to the search engines to strike a balance between providing relevant ads and maintaining a good user experience.

I look at the search results right now and see Google's intent to confuse searchers and make them click ads. I believe this is how AI will be integrated in with Google and used to drive revenue by creating an even more hostile environment of ads.

[Nutterum]

@Redbar :

My main work is on big e-commerce platforms or B2B websites. I did dabble for a bit in the dark world of big gambling affiliates too. One thing I can tell you is that segmenting one big domain in to several local domains say widges.com to widges.co.uk / de/ at /hu etc etc can be extremely powerful because of one simple reason - interlinking. The international "brand site" links to the local ones which interlink with each other. Just dot place the flag in the footer, Google hates that. Rather insert it somewhere in the main navigation menu. In addition you can take benefit from linkbuilding strategies, where you can link multiple local domains in one article without invoking over-optimization penalty from the bot. THere is a price though. Unless you have an unified analytics solution like Snowplow or Adobe Web Analytics or similar connector to your database, you will be in reporting hell figuring out the performance of each country. But if the site is big enough you can assign team members to specific markets , thus achieve better efficiency.

All in all, I believe that segmentation is better than one site with country silo folders as you scale many things on their own and benefit for x-times better (and often bigger) crawl budget.

[ichthyous]

After a month of extremely low traffic, Google seemed to have partially reverted on Monday, but that is fading somewhat. I hadn't had a new inquiry in a week, but within 24 hours on Monday I had four good-quality inquiries...so the business is still out there when Google isn't choking us all to death.

I am seeing the same very large ecomm sites zooming to the top spots in my niche, and it's the same ones over and over no matter which market you look in. A site that was at the top for every search last year, then in the doldrums for almost 9 months, and now shot back up to #1 for every single term. Some algo tweaks took place, perhaps ratcheting up the importance of link juice again.