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!

[BigKat]

I hadn't had a new inquiry in a week, but within 24 hours on Monday I had four good-quality inquiries

Very similar story for us with three orders from Google late Wednesday afternoon. My guess is Google disabled ads for a very brief period and by brief I mean < one hour. Google organic blocking with ads is currently in place and sending mostly bot/fake traffic.

[Treud]

Seems traffic is now stable at -20%. But like I said before even the traffic double the last few months the overall conversion remains lower than before.
Traffic tanked in France (and Europe) where the AI Bard widget is not rollout. So it’s not only a layout issue.

[emperor2]

Traffic from US and UK has reduced. Taiwan, Pakistan, and the Philippines show an increase.
Adsense's worse performance in 8-10 months.

[renatovieira]

@emperor2 - Here too. AdSense has been going downhill since april 1st and it doesn't stop. Earnings drop -150% since then.

[ichthyous]

The huge drops in USA traffic are back in full force...the exact same landing pages that dropped like a stone from Easter through last Mondy are almost back to their lows after only a few decent days. My USA and Canada traffic is -33% at noon.

I am also seeing that informational sites are rocketing to the top of every search...it's 2021 all over again! How many tacky how-to articles and top-ten lists do people need to see in the first ten results?

[mosxu]

I am guessing that for e-commerce all results are displayed based on how many ads the personalised buyer clicks before using the credit card!

And 80% of us have no chance to be seen ads or organic!

[RubicCubed]

I am guessing that for e-commerce all results are displayed based on how many ads the personalised buyer clicks before using the credit card!

Google is making users click as many ads as they can. This has killed ROI leading to massive losses for advertising. I don't know who can afford this except for the big marketplaces who offload costs onto sellers and that taxpayers are subsidizing.

[mosxu]

@rubiccubed

“Most Searchers” will click 3-4 ads/organic before using their credit card,

This is what most of webmasters don’t understand we all believe that we are viewed!

Nope! 80-90% of us never get a viewable impression but still get clicks that we usually call zombies!

[RubicCubed]

80-90% of us never get a viewable impression but still get clicks that we usually call zombies!

I think these zombies are released by Google to make it look like Google is sending us a lot of traffic when in truth they're not. I look at the raw access logs, and I can see these visitors from Google are from servers. I think Google filters off all the real people to direct to Amazon and in turn Amazon spends many millions if not billions with Google. This is how they keep the money flow between them as much as possible.

[mosxu]

@rubiccubed

We do not have access to their data centres so they think you will not be able to prove anything!

But machines are so obvious

[haramamba]

We do not have access to their data centres so they think you will not be able to prove anything!

Started from the beginning of 2021, I saw an enormous amount of iphone visitors (mainly from HK ISPs) that do nothing.
The typical request sequence is:
GET /
GET /captcha
POST /captcha
GET /en/
I cannot tell is this a human or some ai solving captchas, I tried different home-grown simple methods – visitors typically solve them in 8-10 seconds.
Tried to block the iphone traffic (the website is focused on desktop users). After 5 days all pages that appear in competitive searches dropped from the first to 5th page in serps.
After unblocking, the pages restored their positions in 5-7 days.
Have done the experiment 5 times and now I’m 99% sure the traffic is affiliated with G.
The traffic disappeared 2 weeks ago.

[Mentat]

When in doubt, follow the money.

There is a simpler explanation for this lack of traffic/non converting traffic.

See the latest financial info on Google.
Is not great, is not bad, but as a Publisher I can tell you is a disaster, so that means Google is making much more money from Google SERP ads.

As a webmaster, you are conditioned to ignore the ad links, but the ads now are almost like the usual links and there are a lot of ads.
It's almost impossible not to click on an ad link! On the first page there are now 50%+ Sponsored Links.
Using the mobile (phone) version, is even worse!

So the visitors are clicking on Links ads from SERP => it will not arrive to your sites or will not converts, as their intention is not commercial.

Also, something happened with the intent.
I wanted to find about some "pool accessories", but all the results were Online stores or junk results, affiliated sites with "Top 10 best pool accesories".

The blogs or forums are wiped-out; I wanted real people input!
Web 2.0 was killed by his maker.
Web 3.0 is all commercial.

[superclown2]

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!

Looking at my stats this morning it confirms (at least to me) what I've suspected all along. Google's share of the clicks on my sites actually increased over the last month.

In other words, having AI assisted search results doesn't seem to have helped Bing one jot. What this incredibly expensive technology has done to their income from ads I can only speculate but I doubt if it has done any good.

I confidently predict (and no doubt many will disagree) that after their initial panic, Google will continue, following a few tests, to show the same kind of results as ever, perhaps with even more ads (if that is possible); and that Bard will be quietly pushed to one side as far as search is concerned. How much money Google will make out of AI in the future is an interesting question, but It has amazing possibilities so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they gradually lost interest in search, in the face of massive litigation problems and consumer ad-blindness, to concentrate on their future product. I know that I would in their place.

[ah999]

My traffic keeps falling over the past 2 months. Never had traffic this low in all the years.

[RedBar]

Yo-yoing traffic for my global site varying from my old daily average to 1/3rd of it. A permanent and consistent reduction is one thing but huge fluctuations like this are annoying / frustrating when there can only be one culprit, a deliberate manipulation by The Gorg to scrape our sites to generate more iincome for itself.

Looking at the current so-called SERPs layout, will we see before the end of this year the completed roll-out of G's classified ads website? It's what, 80-90% complete now?

[Treud]

Wait from « premium » Google, they will put the organic results behind a paywall for those who want less ads !

[RubicCubed]

Looking at the current so-called SERPs layout, will we see before the end of this year the completed roll-out of G's classified ads website? It's what, 80-90% complete now?

RedBar, that's an excellent way (classified ads) to describe Google's SERPS. In my business field, Google looks like an aggregator of Amazon products. Google's users have no chance to see other products not sold on Amazon, so why should they bother with Google at all?

[ichthyous]

If you check GSC it really says it all...I compared the last two months to the previous period and there is a strong divergence between impressions and clicks. The CTR dropped 20%. I gained clicks for some terms, but that was far outweighed by the massive 30%-60% loss of clicks to my most important terms that brought in the most valuable and converting traffic. The divergence between clicks and impressions continues to widen since March 31st.

For the terms where I have dropped in clicks...I am seeing 4 ads at top. The top 4 organic spots are crowded out by the same huge sites over and over...they aren't all in the same field, some are ecommerce, some are sites to hire a professional, to book a tour, and stock photo sites...but it's the same set of sites for most results worldwide. I see that some of these sites are also paying for ads on the same page, so appearing twice. Is there a correlation between the companies paying for ads now also being pushed to the top of organic?

[Rlilly]

"I see that some of these sites are also paying for ads on the same page, so appearing twice. Is there a correlation between the companies paying for ads now also being pushed to the top of organic?"

I think: The only correlation is these companies appearing twice generally got deep pockets to advertise on top, so they generally bigger brand companies. Hence they have the scales of economy to be on top of the Organic listings also.

[superclown2]

I see that some of these sites are also paying for ads on the same page, so appearing twice. Is there a correlation between the companies paying for ads now also being pushed to the top of organic?

I remember Eric Schmidt saying years ago: "brands are not the problem, they are the answer".

Google trusts big brands so they give them top spots for just about everything. Relevance and expertise come way below trust in their opinion.

Is that the way to run a search engine that claims to offer the 'best' results? Well it's worked OK for Google's bottom line so far.

[RubicCubed]

I see that some of these sites are also paying for ads on the same page, so appearing twice. Is there a correlation between the companies paying for ads now also being pushed to the top of organic?

Possibly. Because there are now so many ads, their value and profitability are diluted as they are magnets for clicks and only one will get the sale. To help prop up a poor roi on ads, it's possible Google may also favor giving advertisers top organic spots. But the top organic spot has little value anymore because they are hidden underneath a full page of ads. A top organic spot maybe gets 5-10% of the traffic as it did a year ago, and over half of those crumbs are fake bots and server scrapers. It's really garbage traffic that doesn't convert at all.

[Atomic]

Is Google going to announce an update or what?

[Treud]

My impressions are pretty much the same since the update (and the last few months) but the CTR tanked a lot,
I must be buried somewhere widgets and everyone is scrolling over me…

[Dalnoon]

I lost 15% of my traffic over the past week - starting last Tuesday. Google didn't announce an update but it sure feels like one.

[engine]

There was certainly some significant movement in the last week, but no announcement from Google. I wonder if some of it is related to a reindexing of the helpful content update.

[Rlilly]

"Noticed that an NHS page that doesn't even mention one of our keywords 'mobility aids' is ranking in the top three,"

That is because that pages mentions other subjects related to Mobility Aids.. and more than likely other sites have linked to this page using "mobility aids". Hence Google is smarter than you think.

[Martin Ice Web]

Yes, huge impact on our niche - 30%

q

I wonder if some of it is related to a reindexing of the helpful content update.

HCU is nothing about helpfull content. I havce never seen serps beeing this bad after last HCU.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

HCU is nothing about helpful content.

I believe it's not about helpful content. I believe Google is optimizing its budgets. They already pruned 12,000 employees, they started sharing workplaces, and they even started deleting all Gmail accounts that are not active for 2 years. They are looking for ways to reduce their spending. I see this "helpful" update as an option for Google to reduce crawling, to save money. They don't want to crawl the website (for example, with 1200 URLs) to find only 50-100 good URLS, and then spend their crawling capacities for 1100 "unhelpful" URLs. I believe that's the reason for this. Instead of crawling, they will push out all websites from the SERPS that don't have a majority of "helpful" content.

[ichthyous]

Google trusts big brands so they give them top spots for just about everything. Relevance and expertise come way below trust in their opinion.

Not always true in my niche...none of these huge ecomm sites was dominating all the top spots in my niche from Sept. 2022 until May 2023. They were at the top in 2021. Google has now reverted back to showing informational sites at the top for most searches where the intent could be either commercial or informational. If they are ranking ecomm brands it's only the huge, powerful ecomm sites...so yes that is the case for now.

I lost 12 spots for a new term that I started dominating in around February. Last week just dropped from 3 to 15 while these same few sites take over 1-4 across every term. It's as if Google is determining what it thinks is the most relevant possible result and the rest gets no chance. I imagine that from Sept 2022 - April 2023 they were all saying the same about my site...it climbed steadily in that period and was unstoppable.

Google does rotate the favored intent and criteria that push sites to the top...but it seems to run in very long cycles...~ every 9 months since about 2020 is what I am seeing. Right now I believe it's links, links, links that count again. I am seeing one site that had dropped like a stone for 9 months zoom to #1 for every search...they are definitely buying a lot of links very quickly I think, there is no other explanation as each page is exactly the same with no unique or valuable informational content...it's just a directory of local service providers for every market.

My impressions are pretty much the same since the update (and the last few months) but the CTR tanked a lot,
I must be buried somewhere widgets and everyone is scrolling over me…

I just posted the same thing...Looking at GSC tells you everything. Impressions fairly stable but CTR has dropped a lot.

USA (and Canada) traffic continues to be abysmal...today starting -42% at 10am. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is fairly strong:
[ibb.co ]

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:24 pm (utc) on May 22, 2023]

[BigKat]

They already pruned 12,000 employees

True, but they are replacing some of them with low-paid foreign workers: [webmasterworld.com...]

In its present state, Google is only serving themselves. Users can't find what they are searching for because of all the ads and because of all the ads advertisers are having a difficult time maintaining a positive ROI. Google can only rely on abusing their dominance for so long until users and advertisers leave for good.

[Martin Ice Web]

@cyril,

sounds kind of conclusive. But in our niche there is not a single site with helpful content (except amazon)
Our niche is more like as less content and as less quality the site has, the better it ranks.
+ if a site is not connected to the niche the site has 100% the opportunity to rank.

[Rlilly]

I dont think its trust with Big Brands, they just have scales of economy so large, smaller sites cannot compete. From direct referrals in browsers, citations, in the news, links, blog posts, reviews, global presence. More bookmarking and on and on

[RedBar]

After a very low traffic weekend, at 05.00 UK time this morning traffic returned to normal levels and has remained there all day ... for the moment!

Our UK hotel venue site continues to do extremely well in all departments, especially food at the moment, hence, considering the state of the UK economy, it continues to surprise and please all involved in its success.

Obviously we're pleased with it although I can't help wondering whether the website has reached its maximum traffic potential. How would one estimate this considering it is not a large venue in a highly populated area? Anyone with any ideas?

[mosxu]

Most of sales/leads disappear after 3-4 searcher clicks! 80% of us are not seen in this 3-4 move but we still pay a lot and create the most useful content!

I have created a great product that no one else has and still not getting displayed!

This is hate!

[Dooku]

Google, which laid off some 12,000 employees earlier this year, filed applications for low-paid foreign workers to come to the United States

Wow....you don't need any enemies with companies like that in your country. But than again, lack of ANY real regulation is the reason companies like google can operate the way they do. We are only seeing the symptoms of their greed entitled by mentality of it's society.
Until the core cause of this not solved by legislation, like in Europe, nothing will change.
Maybe it's really a good idea as someone mentioned in this thread to just block google from crawling and indexing your website and abusing your work for their own gain.

Currently even an old style "Yahoo" index is even better than what google pushes in their serps

[Treud]

Went on YouTube to check some metrics of the videos I carelessly put online since years, and to put a new one with better tags and quality. And I see that my views are increasing since a few days. So probably more videos are pushed in the SERP making everything going low.

[ichthyous]

Here we go again...USA traffic is starting the morning at -74%. Search is -30%, direct -34%, home page -53%. Traffic in general is just at a new lower level from any place that counts. Meanwhile, plenty of traffic from Botswana!

[mosxu]

It is so bad,

To still try to make the money from the 80% who do not even get views ?

Reality check coming

[Treud]

US traffic is dead today. Like almost nothing… Pretty much same as you @ichthyous They must prepare something big again.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Drop continuing, nothing helps. Just can't do anything like watching they are destroying all I was doing for more than 10 years. Insanity.

[RedBar]

My global site is back to its new daily average, i.e. -33% which is -26% v May 2022 and -33.3% v May 2021 ... Obviously this is only going one way therefore I am seriously considering that from 1st June I shall be removing 90% of all my exclusive information and images from public viewing.

G, go scrape someone else's site for poor images plus mal / dis-information.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is shifting in all kinds of ways:

1) Top performing categories vanished for weeks, now returned to the top
2) traffic to home page is -30 to -50% again
3) All kinds of obscure categories on my site are getting much more attention, and it seems to rotate on an almost daily basis. One day one category gets flooded with traffic then drops right back down...next day a different one.
4) Search is down -17% over the last month, -7% over last two weeks...so improving
5) Direct was flat for the last month, but -30% for last two weeks...so strongly declining Google Image traffic
6) USA, Canada, UK traffic are -20%, -32%, -8% over the last 30 days.
7) Europe was higher, now almost all western euro countries are dropping fast
8) Only higher traffic is India (+60%), China (+78%), UAE (+35%), Australia (+60%), New Zealand (+80%) and Russia (+18%)
9) traffic from schools and non-converting sources is much higher. I couldn't possibly have more traffic from 'Janet University Network' in the UK...it's every day all day now.
10) Commercial inquiries are almost null again...the inquiries that are coming are low budget types

[Mestrick]

@ichthyous I am in UAE, I can't see higher traffic. from where you got this report. 4 ads above organic and then ikea on top then our website, how we can get higher traffic.

[Martin Ice Web]

it is getting worse every day. google is targeting our best sites down to zero. What left is traffic to shelf warmer items.
Clearly google is on the way to kill all organic traffic to items that are included in their shopping ad system.

On the other side, sales on amazon are amazing high and rising every day.

[Rlilly]

I consider my self one of the pioneers in SEO, launching a site selling office labels in 1996, ended up with over 100 million free visitors from Google. Even got sued by a major international Brand company in EU because our listings came up first for their brand name - using fair legal comparisons.

Its been 27 years and for the first time, I am lost and going to give up SEO. There really is no organic anymore, its all getting lost in the SERPS surrounded by a lot of shopping ads and image haze. And the power to drive business is diminishing faster than ever.

[ichthyous]

@Mestrick UAE is -70% this morning, so perhaps it's hitting me now. USA is -62%, and search is down 40%.

@Rlilly I've been at it since 2004, and I have come to the same conclusion. There is just nothing to stop Google from killing organic outright and no complaints from the consumer, who really doesn't see the difference or doesn't care. With these kinds of numbers I basically am left with bots and students...once again I am going a full week without a single new customer inquiry.

[yollo03]

I believe it is as a result of the recent update. I am hit as well apparently, no idea where the traffic is routed to now.

[superclown2]

There really is no organic anymore, its all getting lost in the SERPS surrounded by a lot of shopping ads and image haze.

I wonder if a lot of it is the result of 'authority' sites discovering that they can put up an unlimited number of pages for every subject under the sun using ChatGPT .For many years now Google has preferred 'authority' over speciality or expertise.

You can be the greatest expert in the world on your chosen subject but you'll be beaten by the big ad spenders all the way.

[Rlilly]

"unlimited number of pages for every subject under the sun using ChatGPT "

I think that will be a mistake for websites using AI developed content going forward because Google will be smart enough to distinguish between Human written content and AI content. And penalize AI content as duplication.

[mhansen]

For many years now Google has preferred 'authority' over specialty or expertise.

I'm definitely seeing the opposite effect of this right now in the niche I cater to, looking through SEMR data. Some very well connected, authoritative, publicly traded sites that are uber-high authority for 20+ years, are now seeing their own organic traffic decimated over the last 6-9 months. One competitor that saw +8M visits a few months ago is now down to -500k. Another, who saw +2M visits 6 months ago, down to -100k. Very big well known brands with TV ads, sports sponsorships, etc.

Coincidentally, this is in line with Google adding it's own ad related services to local PPC markets, and many local sites now rank well for the terms these national sites used to consume.