June 2023 Google Search Observations

[Broaster]

I decided not to post any articles on my niche blog for a few days and on my stat counter I get 3 to 5 visits an hour on average. its hopeless.

[edited by: not2easy at 3:52 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2023]
[edit reason] _{New month, new thread} [/edit]

[RubicCubed]

every update you have ichthyous mirrors my own exactly.

I feel Google tries to rotate some buyer traffic to keep us interested. The problem is for those small niches there is little buyer traffic, and with all the ads few or no sales from Google has become the norm whether we are in the rotation or not. If being in the rotation for one day on and two weeks off is enough to pay the bills is the concern for some of us with typical overhead (warehouses, utilities, employees and the like). I'm grateful our sales are doing ok and coming from other places besides Google.

[mosxu]

Today only bots

[renatovieira]

Huge drop today... :/

[RedBar]

@Dooku

Those email addresses are MUCH more valuable than google search!

Absolutely, I started collecting bona fide trade email addresses in 1995 and have done so to this day abiding by all best practice rules. I usually only email about once a month with an unsubscribe rate lower than dying email addresses!

One word of advice about eshots, do not send massive image files without the subscribers approval. This year I have seen an explosion of 20-50MB image attachments with no unsuscribe link which has annoyed me to the extent that I have had to complain loudly when they send 2-3 week.

[ichthyous]

If being in the rotation for one day on and two weeks off is enough to pay the bills is the concern for some of us with typical overhead (warehouses, utilities, employees and the like). I'm grateful our sales are doing ok and coming from other places besides Google.

It's not, for any of us I think. This last burst on Sunday and Monday just reinforces how many people are actually looking for my products but can't find them for weeks at a stretch...even when I am ranking at the top, which I am. I should be making sales left, right and center, but weeks of silence at a time. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find alternatives that work as well as Google, and I have been trying a lot of alternatives since 2018.

[yollo03]

I believe the past upgrade that cause a drop in traffic for some members here (including myself) was reversed (which explains the recent traffic surge including myself) and now 'an improved' version of the update that was reversed is being rolled out.

The algorithms decide who will earn and who will not.

[anubitez]

Does anyone notice these threads now require you to sign in ;) well for the one's with Google Search Observations in the name.

guess Webmastersworld does not want to upset John M with the fact nearly all webmasters have given up and getting ripped while Google continues to rip our content ;)

unless i am mistaken.

[RubicCubed]

It's not, for any of us I think. This last burst on Sunday and Monday just reinforces how many people are actually looking for my products but can't find them for weeks at a stretch...even when I am ranking at the top, which I am.

Unfortunately it also reinforces just how tight of a grip Google has over shoppers looking for what you sell. It also highlights how Google's excessive ads make organic results near worthless, which is what the traffic data (lack of Google traffic) tells me too. I'm thinking the burst of traffic some may see occurs when Google removes these excessive ads briefly to push some change in layout or ranks. Because it has been this way for us for so many months, I don't see Google removing the excessive ads. If anything, Google is likely to push their money harvesting ad layouts globally once there is no additional revenue left to extract from the USA.

[ErrlyBird]

I'm in a niche where ads are not a thing. I'm still seeing the same as all of you. It's not just ads preventing traffic, although I am sure it plays a huge role, my niche is just as stirred up and no ads clouding the pool.

[mosxu]

Personalisation is the issue not even ads are displayed based on the bid, quality score and so on!

Regardless how high the bid ads do no show to searchers ready to use the credit card by clicking 3-4 ads!

It is like a penalty to our advertising account!

[ichthyous]

I'm in a niche where ads are not a thing. I'm still seeing the same as all of you. It's not just ads preventing traffic, although I am sure it plays a huge role, my niche is just as stirred up and no ads clouding the pool.

I agree and have also stated this here before...it's not only the number of ads on the page causing this. There are plenty of times I have searched using different IP/locations and the ranking was the same and there were a "normal" number of ads or none at all, yet the traffic had disappeared entirely for all the semantically related terms.

You can see when this rolled out around Easter that all of the terms dropped through the floor and stayed down for a month in April. There was an 80-90% drop in some cases. That has recovered, but what I am seeing for the last month of May is that traffic is vanishing on a daily basis for a rotating set of terms, i.e.

Semantically related term set #1 - 3-5 days on / 2-4 days off
Semantically related term set #2 - 3-5 days on / 2-4 days off
Semantically related term set #3 - 3-5 days on / 2-4 days off

In this manner, your site is always going to have a traffic loss now, but not always for the same terms on the same day. I can only surmise that Google is sharing the traffic round-robin across all the sites that rank similarly. Is Google doing this out for altruistic reasons, or to help each site get at least some traffic? I doubt it highly...

[Martin Ice Web]

@ErrlyBird,

that proofs google ambitions to make money out of every single query. Poeple wsearching in our niche will see probably "realted" items or ads but nothing they searched for.

And with the best will in the world, i canīt see any positiv movements from HCU from march. The remaining websites/stores together have less HC then one of the stores that have been vanished.

[superclown2]

guess Webmastersworld does not want to upset John M with the fact nearly all webmasters have given up and getting ripped while Google continues to rip our content ;)

I suspect that some of our comments, although accurate and fair, can be considered by some to be controversial.

Often the truth hurts.

[BigKat]

I'm in a niche where ads are not a thing.

If Google doesn't make money from those search results then why would they spend money to improve them? It's also possible Google plans to insert ads into those search results, even if they aren't quite relevant. Based on what I see in our small industry, Google's only concern is making money from ads.

[ichthyous]

Just as suspected...two days of strong traffic and inquiries and now dropping like a stone. Actually I had three days of good traffic, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday...but Tuesday was already trending downward after noon and not one inquiry the whole day. Now...10 to 14 days of oblivion again.

[Micha]

Here too, everything as always. Three good days and now really bad. Xovi shows me happily jumping the keyword ranking ... It is a pity that Google's ranking chaos will sooner or later lead to many small website owners giving up. This means that a lot of good and informative content will disappear from the web.

[yollo03]

An update is being rolled out. Every time an update is rolled out there are fluctuations. Once it's done, then things become clearer. I was literally hammered from whatever they decided to drop on us. I do believe it will stabalize in a few days.

[ichthyous]

An update is being rolled out. Every time an update is rolled out there are fluctuations. Once it's done, then things become clearer. I was literally hammered from whatever they decided to drop on us. I do believe it will stabalize in a few days.

No I don't think so, this is following a clear pattern which is being seen by many on here...2 days of strong traffic and conversions followed by 10-14 days of death. This is the 3rd to 4th time so not just a random update.

[yollo03]

I didnt say it was a random update. Those that are being hit like myself, do you update your website on a daily basis?

[Micha]

In our case, new content appears daily, but I don't believe in updates. In my field, it seems clear that large websites are massively preferred. This is normal, but I have not observed such a scale before.

[yollo03]

Thanks. So I think backlinks were given more weight and I will explain. One of my competitors is fairly new and ranking quite well. The referring domains is quite low with low DA.

I think because it has less 'spammy' backlinks it is ranking well. Can anyone relate to this theory?

[superclown2]

One of my competitors is fairly new and ranking quite well. The referring domains is quite low with low DA.

Google frequently ranks new sites or pages highly to see how they perform. They then usually fall. Alternatively they could be high in the SERPs because they are optimised for unique or rare key phrases.

Then again they may have lots of links you can't see because they are blocked from the link reporting tools.

[ichthyous]

So I think backlinks were given more weight and I will explain. One of my competitors is fairly new and ranking quite well. The referring domains is quite low with low DA. I think because it has less 'spammy' backlinks it is ranking well. Can anyone relate to this theory?

Backlinks definitely still help with ranking. Having said that, it doesn't really matter because, with the new Google paradigm, even those ranking #1, #2, #3 will not receive the traffic they used to receive, or will only receive it very sporadically.

As I have reported here, and many others...we are getting 'normal' traffic a few days each 10-14 day cycle. My rank isn't changing during that time, it shifts a bit but not enough to cause the 50%+ drop in USA traffic that I am seeing again this morning.

Since Easter this is the new paradigm...ranking will only get you a minimal amount of good traffic now, so SEO is effectively dead. That means a lot of SEO expert livelihoods will go down the drain when everyone finally wakes up to the fact that their advice is useless now.

[BigKat]

SEO is effectively dead

^ This....

Some are fortunate for Google to give them a high day (real converting traffic) every week or two, but not us. It's all constant bot/cloud/fake traffic from Google even ranking number one. The ad spam is just too heavy and made organic entirely worthless.

[ErrlyBird]

Getting decimated more and more every day. Sad times....

[mosxu]

We stopped doing SEO because the machine was dumping all our efforts!

Now the problem is the machine dumps our ads too which is illegal!

Elon Musk asked for both Google and Facebook to open source their algorithms!

According to Musk there is real time suppression without advertisers even noticing!

80% of our ads or organic have no chance to be seen but we are all fools thinking we get views!

[Atomic]

Musk is a tool.

[ichthyous]

Today USA, AU, CA and EU traffic is very low...I am seeing the same pattern reasserting itself, namely that traffic for the same set of semantically similar terms dropped hugely today.

Some are fortunate for Google to give them a high day (real converting traffic) every week or two, but not us.

I have noticed that the inquiries I receive during the "off" or "low" 10-14 day period are garbage. Usually not very serious inquiries and low budgets too. Then suddenly for about 36 hours high-quality lead after high-quality lead....then go sleep in your hammock for the next two weeks. I call it "Google Gaslighting"

[ichthyous]

Musk is a tool

Yes, but an undeniably rich tool. He has run Twitter into the ground and it appears that Meta is now planning a Twitter clone app to kill it off. While I personally can't stand Instagram and FB either, I will love to watch Musk's pair get squeezed...

[mosxu]

What is the business model for Chat GPT? It costs almost a million to run per month but no ads?

[phranque]

they make up for it with volume.

[chuviie]

Analytics real time works as usual but hourly charts are 3x lower just right now. Is anyone see the same?

[Martin Ice Web]

I have noticed that the inquiries I receive during the "off" or "low" 10-14 day period are garbage. Usually not very serious inquiries and low budgets too. Then suddenly for about 36 hours high-quality lead after high-quality lead....then go sleep in your hammock for the next two weeks. I call it "Google Gaslighting"

that what we are seeing too.
And besides this our non attended shop with lots of errors, missing pictures, low quality, NO HC, is doing better than our main shop.

Yesterday was a day off in 3/4 germany. But traffic yesterday and today is hitting a new bottom low.
And as i stated before, google vanished ALL our main traffic (money) sites and there are only items with very low public interest that we get traffic to.

[superclown2]

What is the business model for Chat GPT? It costs almost a million to run per month but no ads?

Usual big company tactics. Give it away free at first to reel in the users. Then when they are well hooked start charging. It's been this way for a couple of decades.

[ichthyous]

Ah yes, back to the fun old days with my USA traffic hugely suppressed and starting the day at -65%. I guess I will sit and do some embroidery, or maybe carve a small animal out of soap until Google decides to give me my 18 hours in the sun again sometime around June 18th-19th.

[Rlilly]

Nothing new to add here again. One listing number 9 in organics SERPS (should be on first page) had a staggering 78 other listings above it.

You might as well ad Block Google Bots on your site, wont harm you business. They already killed it.

[Martin Ice Web]

worst day for us today since panda started years ago.

[RedBar]

@MIW
Incredibly low global traffic for me today, has there been a major outage somewhere?

[Dalnoon]

My traffic also keeps dropping, the same pattern as some others mentioned here. 2 weeks of straight drops accompanied by a couple of days of bounce, followed by an even harder drop. Been like this for a couple of months now.

I've tried updating content daily, improving internal backlinks, and adding other pages around the same topic. Nothing seems to help. My best guess is, it has something to do with the spam/HC updates - I've also noticed that for a couple of queries, I'm being marked as filtered in Google and have to click on "Show all omitted results" to appear again. Tough times.

[BigKat]

For product type searches in the USA I'm seeing product ad blocks with up to 40 products in a single block. It takes a lot of scrolling to get beyond these on a desktop. Good luck getting any traffic with this layout. If searchers do get beyond the ad spam, organic results are now including more images. The problem is very few shoppers will get beyond the wall of ads to see even one organic result.

[ichthyous]

Incredibly low global traffic for me today, has there been a major outage somewhere?

My best guess is, it has something to do with the spam/HC updates

There is no outage, and it has nothing to do with spam updates. This is now an established, regular pattern. Google will not send you, me, or anyone else the traffic anymore even if you rank #1.

My rankings are not changing...traffic for my top three ranking terms can drop up to 60% on any given day with no change in rank whatsoever...back in April it was -90% in some cases and that lasted the entire month. This is how Google operates now, they are killing off organic reach almost entirely.

Denial is the first stage of grief...

[BigKat]

There is no outage, and it has nothing to do with spam updates. This is now an established, regular pattern.

The pattern you describe can be directly tied to layout changes which Google is apparently changing on the fly. As I posted earlier, a single product ad block of 40 products consumes a lot of real estate. If I scroll further, this ad block of 40 products is is topped by another product ad block of 64 products at (4) products for (16) rows. Where Google positions these ad blocks, along with standard or expanded text ads, is what is sapping shopper related traffic. We get no reprieve from these ad spam laden layouts for not even one hour in a week. If you see a regular pattern where Google gives you at least something every now and then in the USA market, consider yourself lucky.

[ichthyous]

The pattern you describe can be directly tied to layout changes which Google is apparently changing on the fly. As I posted earlier, a single product ad block of 40 products consumes a lot of real estate. If I scroll further, this ad block of 40 products is is topped by another product ad block of 64 products at (4) products for (16) rows.

@BigKat As I, and a few others on here, have posted recently...the presence of ad-stuffing and widgets on the page only partly explains this phenomenon. There have been many times when I have had a "normal" amount of ads or no ads at all when I checked. I checked in other countries as well by switching my IP, not just the USA results. Others here have done the same and also found that many times the page was not stuffed with text
ads, product ads or widgets. Something else other than the ad stuffing issue is at play with these drastic drops. Please try this yourself by checking various locations and let us know.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Another big drop for my niche today (not only my website). I believe in the next year or two the majority of the websites within my niche will be destroyed entirely and will stop producing content (I see the rocket drop pattern on many websites in my niche since May 2022 update and September 2022). No possible fixes, they are just finishing us all, erasing entirely from the Internet.

[edited by: Cyril_TechWebsites at 3:06 pm (utc) on Jun 9, 2023]

[jellyfish]

Today I'm experiencing what I would definitely call traffic throttling. For minutes and even hours today, little to no traffic followed by bursts of strong traffic. Not surprisingly with this happening traffic is 60% down today currently.

[BigKat]

the presence of ad-stuffing and widgets on the page only partly explains this phenomenon.

@ichthyous

I can't speak to you or other's analysis, as it doesn't necessarily apply to what I'm seeing, but I believe the large number of ads makes it clear Google's intent is to fully/completely monetize as much of their traffic/every click as they can. To what detail Google can analyze a users intent, is subject to speculation. It's quite possible that Google identifies the intent of us to check our positions in the SERPS and dishes out a clean layout to keep us guessing. Everyone besides us and our friends/family/associates checking the SERPS on our behalf, may get different variants of Google's ad spam layouts.

[RedBar]

Why don't we all simply accept that Google is now 100% a classified ads website incorporating for free a few randomly selected semi subject-associated links?

The original and real Google is never going to return therefore until such time Joe User migrates elsewhere, unless one decides to "pay to play" in its world, admit that G has won this battle and move on.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar Yes, the good old days are over and we have all seen this coming for years. I have been trying frantically to steer the ship away from Google since 2018. Unfortunately my foray into bricks and mortar was ended by the pandemic, paying for ads is a total waste, social media is now an equally rigged game which is 100% pay to play too. The small fish are pretty much locked out online and IRL. More power to those of you who have Amazon as an option...I do not unfortunately.

[christianz]

I think Googlebot is soon going to face huge increase in rejection/rate limiting, and will be treated as any other scraper bot.

[BigKat]

unless one decides to "pay to play" in its world, admit that G has won this battle and move on.

No more Google Ads for us - Google takes to much meat off the bone for it to be profitable anymore. I'm not sure if we should look at the current state of Google, and all the ads, as a battle win for Google. To me it seems more like a last ditch effort by Google to prop up their profits at a cost of stabbing us and even their own users in the back. I feel Google's earnings from search will likely plateau in the near future, or at the very least show a major decline in growth. Any growth in Google's search earnings will soon need to be driven by expanding the USA ad spam layouts to other countries, loading up info searches with ads and/or major cuts to their workforce which AI may help with.