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]

ibb.co Screen-Shot-2023-05-22-at-9-45-56-AM hosted at ImgBB Image Screen-Shot-2023-05-22-at-9-45-56-AM hosted in ImgBB

[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.