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]

[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.

[ErrlyBird]

One of my competitors, actually, one of the only competitors that is gaining traffic right now, is using PAA FAQ on their site to a large degree. There is no category description, just PAA FAQ at the bottom of their category pages. They have gained tremendously since the March update. I need approval but I will hopefully be testing this on our site and seeing what comes of it. It is very time consuming, not as badly with AI, but still worth trying. I will not be removing the cat description, but adding in the FAQ to the bottom like they do. Just another feeble attempt to scrape up any traffic we have been losing, which has been a lot.

And again, ads are not included in our niche, so something else is going on other than just that. I know ads are horrible right now, and for people in niches that allow it, I can see decimating traffic even more. But even in our industry the shifts are insane. All competitors minus maybe 3 that I have looked at are going downhill and fast. And out of those 3 only one is making any real gains, the other 2 are flatlined, which good for them I guess, ours is a slippery slope down.

[christianz]

PAA FAQ

If you do it just keep in mind that what you are doing is super spammy. It's exactly the same as keyword stuffing. Just more up to date version of it.

[Rlilly]

"PAA FAQ"

Surely if you create your own PAA with unique content, not AI created or copied. It should be beneficial..

[headspace]

I think we will see a major change in how G operates after the July deadline expires for GA4. I have resisted updating to GA4 because I believe GA4 is designed to give G as much information as possible about how sites are doing in terms of online sales/revenue. Once GA4 becomes compulsory after July, I believe the algorithms will be able to more precisely target websites which they believe have some scope for culling and pushing in the direction of adwords. I am hoping that the upside to this is that it might provide some relief for smaller sites once the algorithms can determine whether you're making any money online or not, versus the value you provide to online searchers.

[mosxu]

@headspace

G has access to your bank account! Banks send the information to G, they do no need G4 but if your bank account is empty there will be no converting traffic!

[christianz]

Surely if you create your own PAA with unique content, not AI created or copied. It should be beneficial..

There are cases where PAA type content and PAA schema is legitimate and helpful. But mostly it is abused. PAA questions are added in small print somewhere below main content, only to comply with PAA schema requirements and they are only there for Googlebot, not humans.

[headspace]

@mosxu

i don't think G has access to my bank account, although they will certanly know that one exists. :-)
What I was alluding to is the fact that with the the old analytics G used to rely on users setting up converision tracking pixels and the like in order to produce conversion reports which you could use to see how well you were doing financially online. After decades of data from this landscape, they now know what shopping carts, payment pages, paypal buttons and other online payment elements are set up on millions of websites. Call it conspiracy, but I believe with GA4 installed they can now read your conversions without you having to take any explicit action to set them up at all. I suspect this will begin to inform the algorithms more precisely after the July deadline when all websites need to be using GA4. I hope as a consequence this may provide some relief for smaller websites.

[RubicCubed]

I am hoping that the upside to this is that it might provide some relief for smaller sites once the algorithms can determine whether you're making any money online or not, versus the value you provide to online searchers.

I can't see relief for smaller sites and expect it to get worse with many smaller sites collapsing. All the ads pushing organic results very far under the fold tells me Google is concerned about how much money they are making and nothing else - not what we are earning and not in displaying results to satisfy their users.

If we had nothing but ads above the fold it would violate Google's guidelines, but to spam their own users with ads Google finds acceptable. IMO, we should not hold our breath that a highly hypocritical Google will do anything to benefit anyone other than themselves.

[ichthyous]

I am hoping that the upside to this is that it might provide some relief for smaller sites once the algorithms can determine whether you're making any money online or not, versus the value you provide to online searchers.

Wishful thinking seems to abound here. First of all, get rid of GA from your site completely. Don't give Google any access at all, it is using that info against you. I removed GA two years ago and my ranking is higher. I'm not saying there is a correlation but it certainly hasn't hurt.

Thinking that Google will somehow take pity on small businesses once it analyzes the data and realizes that the site can't pay for ads is pure delusion, sorry. Google is out to maximize profit, period. That means getting rid of any pesky organic traffic that might lower the chance of a user clicking on ads. Organic is now a hindrance to Google...there will be no mercy shown to anyone that is already crystal clear.

[mosxu]

Yes, it was in the news banks report companies account balance to G!

G has chrome no need for any analytics on your website!

The information gathering is not their struggle, the way they are personalising traffic is what we don’t understand nor relevant authorities want to understand!

[Martin Ice Web]

last weekend was worse but this weekend was even worse. All time low. And we started today with 30% of normal traffic.
Sales from google traffic is complete cut off. ( Amazon doing very, very well ).
Meanwhile our nich is dominated by shops with very, very little content. Not more thant 1 or 2 sentences. No deep background. No helpfull content. 1 picture. No technical details.

So last friday must have been an update or maybe HCU ( what a laugh) was tightend.

[headspace]

@rubiccubed, @ichthyous

You both have a point. But I look at it this way. The ultimate aim of G is to increase its ad revenue from online search. I can't see a better way of doing that other than determining via GA4 which sites are making money online and muscling in on them to take a cut by choking off traffic and pushing them towards adwords.
Why I believe smaller sites with valuable content may benefit from this more precise GA4 targeting, is the very same reasons you have both highlighted. Search is currently degraded with all of these ads above the fold, but the ads are only there because of falling ad revenue. If that can be eased by utlising GA4 then we may see a return to a semblance of normality by letting those organisations who can ideally afford to pay for traffic do so since these are the organisations which have the resources to game the system.

[ichthyous]

Traffic this weekend was actually stable and above average. Today has also started strong but appears to be dropping a bit. Now ask me about the conversions. Not one since the last burst of activity one week ago.

[superclown2]

Organic is now a hindrance to Google...there will be no mercy shown to anyone that is already crystal clear.

Google began all this ages ago by employing human reviewers to track down affiliate sites; which of course took money from the web which Google thought was rightfully theirs. These sites were labelled as spam (even though some of them were superb, packed with lelpful content, even if they were competing with mine!) and given +25 or +50 penalties.

I had a site given a penalty, which was lifted provided that I removed all affiliate links and didn't put them back. So obviously it was a site that they considered valuable; but only as long as it didn't earn money! To me at least the message was crystal clear.

They then favoured high spending advertising sites in the SERPs, even when these sites were in effect affiliates themselves and they contained, in most cases, boilerplate content. The result? Original producers of products and services had to pay these high spenders for the enquiries that should have been theirs by rights, whilst the 'authority' sites paid Google for the clicks. A nice business model! Shame the public are the ones ultimately paying for all this.

The last major update wiped out just about all the remaining affiliate sites I used to watch; the only ones that survived were those that hid their affiliate links by various devious (to Google, at least) means. More of their competitors for the little bit of money still available from organic search removed.

I have predicted for some time now that, seeing the writing on the wall regarding their present search dominance, Google would go all out to make as money as they can, before the axes inevitably fall, even at the risk of destroying the publishers that made them in the first place. The term 'Google Ethics' is an oxymoron (strange that so many ethics staff resigned or were sacked isn't it?).

[ErrlyBird]

Surely if you create your own PAA with unique content, not AI created or copied. It should be beneficial..

I did use AI and rewrote in my own words. Its literally just a test to see how well it performs. Our only gaining traffic competitor does this and working well for them.

There are cases where PAA type content and PAA schema is legitimate and helpful. But mostly it is abused. PAA questions are added in small print somewhere below main content, only to comply with PAA schema requirements and they are only there for Googlebot, not humans.

I agree. I am doing this to try and gain traffic and not necessarily to help humans. But at the same time, the information is pretty useful especially for first time buyers. So in a way, it is user friendly.

If you do it just keep in mind that what you are doing is super spammy. It's exactly the same as keyword stuffing. Just more up to date version of it.

This is my biggest fear and why I am running it as a test on one category vs going all in on it right away.

I have gotten the green light and have implemented it this morning. Now to keep track of my keywords and see what happens.

[Treud]

My Impression is on the rise since months. Not crazy increase but it’s steady. But the CTR is really going down and still after the early May huge drop.
Conversion not at the previous level though.

[superclown2]

If you do it just keep in mind that what you are doing is super spammy. It's exactly the same as keyword stuffing. Just more up to date version of it.

Perhaps I've misunderstood how this is being implemented, but isn't it just similar to having an FAQ on the page? I'd have thought that was useful for visitors.

[ichthyous]

My Impression is on the rise since months. Not crazy increase but it’s steady. But the CTR is really going down and still after the early May huge drop.
Conversion not at the previous level though.

My impressions and CTR also started to diverge around April 2nd and have not stopped since...clicks keep heading lower while impressions are relatively stable. Conversions are nil, except for the odd 18-24 hour period every two weeks. The inquiries I do get outside of this time are usually quite low quality and for older lower-priced items that I haven't sold in years and which I practically have hidden on my site. I assume that's because they are finding these items through image search with very specific search terms.

[RedBar]

What switch was flicked on Monday? I had a completely old-school traffic day with 200% of my recent average, today, Tuesday, it's returned to its former level ... utter madness.

[Rlilly]

I would not be shocked to see one day in the future, BUY buttons right there in the SERPS and eventually you will never have to leave Google to buy online...