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!

[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.