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]

[BigKat]

I'm starting to believe the throttling theory is in fact true.

Throttling is likely the consequence of Google rotating layouts. For example, I see Google has removed the right sidebar of product ads for a USA product related search on my desktop. This would normally result in a very small amount of organic traffic that has slipped through the rest of the ads above it but alas, Google has added a left "filter by" sidebar for users to filter by seller, price, brand, etc. As one would expect, smaller ecommerce sites get no visibility here either with marketplaces dominating the seller field, price filters going to marketplaces who are known to dump offshore goods at low costs and the brands field going to big brands everyone knows. If there's a way Google can slice the throat of a small business, they will find a way and are doing it with this new layout. In an hour, there may be a different layout displayed and another an hour after that, etc.

[Soulofmonk]

I am noticing two snippets more frequently in SERPS for most queries.
[ibb.co...]

[Micha]

I'm starting to believe the throttling theory is in fact true. My hourly traffic has been stuck on a number for days now, even during peak hours. I used to see a lot more up and downs.

I have also been observing this for weeks. In addition, the keywords are jumping. I monitor some with Xovi and every hour the ranking is completely different, usually even with 10 places difference.


p.s. RedBar thanks for the explanation with the quotes

[mhansen]

Give advantage to top tier sites like Forbes

Forbes decided to open a new section/ on their website that is displacing the entire industry who specialize in it. Literally, they went from no pages of content, 0 visitors / 0 KW's in this market in August 2022, to more than 2,500 pages of content, 5M estimated visitors and nearly 200,000 #1 positions out of 1.6m kw's in roughly 8 months (They displaced everyone 2-3 months ago). EAT is broken when specialists who are professionals in there market are displaced by a national business and finance leader, simply due to entering the market.

I am noticing two snippets more frequently in SERPS for most queries.

I have seen the same, but with 3 floating horizontally across the top.

[superclown2]

EAT is broken when specialists who are professionals in there market are displaced by a national business and finance leader, simply due to entering the market.

You are absolutely right but this is nothing new. Many years ago Eric Schmidt stated that 'Brands are the solution, not the problem' which had some merit at the time because the Web back then was a jungle with many dangerous beasties lurking in it. The problem now is that the concept that 'Might is Right' has been taken too far and big companies with zero expertise can easily soar above the real experts.

Google's much trumpeted artificial intelligence should be able to to sort out the quality sites from the big brand chancers but it isn't doing so yet. These same big brands are the ones that spend huge sums on Google ads (which are totally uneconomic for most smaller companies) but that is no doubt a coincidence.

[tangor]

As always ... just follow the money!

Not sure AI will make that much difference, but time will tell!

[ichthyous]

82% drop in UK traffic this morn...wow. USA is right behind at -38%, but it's early in the day. There is zero traffic from any western Euro country this morn...not one visit from the entire continent other than one visit from Croatia and Slovenia, WTF?

India
+178%
Malaysia
+640%
Republic Of Korea
+640%
Croatia
0%
The Philippines
+640%
Egypt
0%
Slovenia

[RubicCubed]

82% drop in UK traffic this morn...wow. USA is right behind at -38%, but it's early in the day. There is zero traffic from any western Euro country this morn...

Google has targeted western nations for economic exploitation. New ad filled layouts in the USA appear designed to capture more paid clicks for Google. IMO, soon even the current naysayers will declare SEO dead in the USA because of the ever shrinking visibility Google reserves for organic results.

[ichthyous]

IMO, soon even the current naysayers will declare SEO dead in the USA because of the ever shrinking visibility Google reserves for organic results

That has been evident for years now, so not sure how anyone can be a naysayer anymore...

Despite coming off the drastic lows of April, traffic is still quite a bit lower than prior to this change in early April. I am always assured to have multiple parts of my site with large drops in traffic on any given day, or traffic from a set of countries is always low on any given day. In that way Google assures that you never really perform well anymore and that you don't get enough new leads or conversions to actually stay in business.

[tangor]

But you (webmasters in general) get enough income, scattered here and there, to keep hope in the heart that things might change. Keeps the myth alive!

[mosxu]

Reality kicks as the ads formula is not able to work unless only 3-4 advertisers make #*$! lots of money!
And personalisation also kicks in terms of how many ads a persona clicks before buying!

Legal or Illegal?

[superclown2]

Legal or Illegal?

Laws throughout the world haven't kept up with the Internet so maybe it is legal. Ethical? That's another matter.

Google is quite used to interpreting laws in it's own way.

[christianz]

Ethical? That's another matter.

For a corporation whos entire business model is exploitation and manipulation, ethics probably is not a relevant concern.

[Martin Ice Web]

Pretty calm in here?

Yesterday we had pre April traffic. I knew it would last only for one day. Today traffic is again down to 45%.
As i can see, is, all of our competitors are demoted to page 2.. Page 1 has big players with irrelevant content.

Page 2 is the new page 1 for quality content.

[ichthyous]

As i can see, is, all of our competitors are demoted to page 2.. Page 1 has big players with irrelevant content. Page 2 is the new page 1 for quality content.

I am seeing the same thing...several sites are rising hugely across all terms and locations. One was dominant last year, it's basically a templated cookie-cutter directory of service providers. Then dropped a lot from Sept - May. Now it has risen quickly back at #1 for almost every single spot we compete on. Google is deciding for us which kind of content every last user must want to see at the top...no variation. I also think that these sites are probably buying massive numbers of links.

Meanwhile, my rank is still pretty high and USA traffic is starting the day -69%. The rest of the world (except for UAE) is average or strong.

[RedBar]

Pretty calm in here?

Past experience usually indicates that whenever I write "things are looking ok, traffic steadily increasing, enquiries up", then all the wheels fall off and traffic collapses!

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is still -56% at 1:30pm, UAE is -55%. UK is up 75% today, insane. Interesting how it's the same countries day after day...

[Nutterum]

@ichthyous - what you are describing feels like seasonality shift towards the interest of your content. What is the vertical of the website? To me what you describe so far does not seem that out of whack.

[ichthyous]

what you are describing feels like seasonality shift towards the interest of your content. What is the vertical of the website? To me what you describe so far does not seem that out of whack.

How would one country's traffic suddenly dropping off 50%+ in a matter of days reflect seasonality? That to me reflects the opposite of seasonality. USA is down exactly -56% again this morning at 9am. UK/Europe are all higher. And UAE is up 312% so far today, after being down strongly for several days. USA traffic is clearly being hugely suppressed. My direct traffic is down 50% this morning... which means google image traffic. My vertical is fine arts.

[RedBar]

Insofar as my global site is concerned since Monday 12th June I have experienced higher and more traditional traffic and especially more page views per visitor.

Since the 12th June I have received more genuine project enquiries than in the last couple of months combined but I must stress that not one is for a "Western" project, that market is dead, no one is committing to anything most probably through lack of confidence, shortage of money or existing over-supply. My enquiry box looks like an advert for BRICS countries!

Our UK hotel venue is still doing well however this weekend will be a test since it is our biggest event of the year with two days of live bands, charity raising plus local and regional arts festival promotion etc. The weather forecast is extremely good therefore it will be interesting to see fairly accurately just how well the local economy is fairing.

[BigKat]

Now that the FTC is suing Amazon for deceptive Prime signup and cancellation processes ( [msn.com...] ), I wonder if Google will demote them? Wishful thinking I'm sure, but being sued by the FTC sure doesn't put the "T" in EEAT now does it?

[ichthyous]

The gap between clicks and impressions keeps growing...more than three months now with declining clicks. Impressions have also dropped recently, but not nearly as much:

[ibb.co ]

[mosxu]

The click is double in price overnight! I doubt the competitors reacted like that!

Same problem no buyers with a credit card see my ads or organic!

[emperor2]

@ichthyous Same here too. Not a positive sign, in fact getting worse!
[ibb.co...]

[BigKat]

The gap between clicks and impressions keeps growing...

I wonder how the ever-scroll search result layouts impact impressions. Does Google consider an impression to have occurred if a page is buried in ever-scroll land even though the user did not invoke the scroll to even see the page? I also wonder how many users scroll in excess or hit the page down button a half dozen times out of frustration to only scroll back up? Regardless, I do feel the growing gap between impressions and clicks is symbolic of a poor user experience in Google Search and the confusion users experience when exposed to Google's excessive ads.

The click is double in price overnight! I doubt the competitors reacted like that!

It's nearing the end of the quarter so Google will try to empty advertiser's bank accounts as fast as they can. Might be best to pause ads. Google's earnings should be interesting to see since we can't see any organic results without doing a lot of scrolling.

[RedBar]

I was just checking and my June USA traffic is 72% of its long-term average plus for my top 10 most visited countries only 4 are from the "West" whereas my long-term data shows 6 from the "West".

Anyone else seeing similar?

[christianz]

Big drop today coinciding with Semrush sensor spike.

[Rlilly]

Constant fluctuations, nothing is stable, its seems like Google cannot make up its mind on which Algo to ever use again.. Fill in the blanks with Youtube videos

[ErrlyBird]

Yeah also seeing massive shifts. Feels like they rolled back the update or something, at least for our business. Visibility and keywords falling back into pre core update positions. Doubt it will last but for now the green numbers are a temporary relief.

[Micha]

the beginning of the week was really good, but now it's going down again. Slowly you feel like you're on a roller coaster.

[ichthyous]

the beginning of the week was really good, but now it's going down again. Slowly you feel like you're on a roller coaster.

Yes, except for USA numbers, which have started very low every day this week and then mysteriously surge by the end of the day to catch up to par or just under par. USA is -50% on a normal saturday today. I had two very poor inquiries the entire week...so clearly what traffic is coming has very little commercial intent. Also, the same few huge sites are being pushed up to rank #1 for every term now. Just as my site couldn't be stopped from rising from Sept. 2022-May 2023, now it's their turn.

[Treud]

Received a few orders for low value products I didn’t sold for months.!
Seems the US traffic and Europe is better, other countries are dropping, but I don’t sell there so I’ll take it.

[RedBar]

Wowser, my global site's lowest traffic day of the year so far at 70% of Xmas Day 2022 and 22% of my June daily average ... WTF?

[ichthyous]

Wowser, my global site's lowest traffic day of the year so far at 70% of Xmas Day 2022 and 22% of my June daily average ... WTF?

Yep, this weekend has been very low traffic. Today especially...search is -33% and direct is -45% at 2pm. USA is -64%, UAE is -72%. This is continuing a trend of dropping USA and UAE traffic all week, but much bigger drops today.

[Nutterum]

From Wednesday last week until Sunday there was a very unusual drop in traffic across the board, all sites in different verticals. Its like there was an outage of Google 20% of the time. Literally 80% drop in traffic in some hour compared to last period and year over year. The websites I monitor are all in different verticals totally independent of each other. There is no visible drop in SERPs , just impressions and clicks took a nosedive esp. for brand keywords. I suspect this was some test Google made where they showed some other results for very brand specific keywords, pushing the traffic to the brand ads but showing something else on organic. I suspect this because my direct traffic jumped up out of nowhere by pretty much the same amount, again on all websites.

Its like people were searching for the brand, did not want to click on the add but did not find the brand on the search results and just typed the website and landed as direct. Not sure what Google tested but man it made a dent.

Talking 10s of thousands of clicks lost across several websites, both informational and e-commerce.

[ErrlyBird]

Huge spike upwards over the weekend for no apparent reason. Not complaining but to see it spike up like this after losing and losing is nice. I don't know how long that will hold but crossing my fingers.

[BigKat]

Hideously low traffic and poor traffic quality (absent buyers/high bounce) from Google this weekend. Even the normal fake/questionable traffic (cloud, servers, etc.) Google had been sending dropped. Orders originating from DDG surprisingly jumped, yet even Yahoo produced more sales then Google. Seeing other search engines produce more sales than Google isn't really new, but seeing the fake/questionable traffic Google was sending drop does at least make it easier to analyze data.

[ichthyous]

I saw a 25% drop in search traffic and a 33% drop in direct traffic yesterday. USA was -27%, Canada -50%, UAE -71%. Western Europe also saw huge drops of 50-79%. My home page and many landing pages saw drops between 33%-71%.

Today my USA traffic is -60% at noon, search is -22%. All other locations are at par or strongly higher...only USA is seeing this huge drop today. When it's -60% at noon there is no recovering.

[ErrlyBird]

And just like that, back down the drain we go xD I can't with this roller coaster ride anymore. Someone wake me when it's over.

[EditorialGuy]

No roller-coaster ride here. We're up a bit some days, down a bit on others, and right in the middle much of the time.

Overall, our Google traffic is down by 30 percent or more compared to the same time last year, which may have more to do with Google's UI than with rankings. A top ranking in the "10 blue links" isn't what it once was, even for informational sites. I'm not sure which is worse--SERPs with half a dozen or more "sponsored" results that look just like organic results, or SERPs that are cluttered with answer boxes, "People also ask" links. etc.

ADDENDUM: Interestingly enough, our ad revenues have been increasing even as traffic has been static or worse. I think this may reflect which pages on our site are holding up best in Google. (Our most popular topics generate the highest earnings per 1,000 page views and visitors.)

[EditorialGuy]

One oddity that I find interesting:

For years, Sunday was always our busiest day in terms of traffic, followed by Monday. Saturday was always worst.

In the last few months, the pattern has changed: Monday is now our busiest day, followed by Sunday, and Saturday is better than our newest worst day (Friday). Go figure.

[goodoldweb]

Traffic to our website has been reduced to a meaningless trickle. Same goes for our eBay and Esty stores. Sales down by 97% !

We are stopping all website AdWords campaigns. Google has lost the plot, traffic is simply terrible, no point throwing more good money after bad.

[Nutterum]

@editorialGuy - you are not alone - Sunday moved to Monday for the big apparel products website since Covid. Not sure why people moved to Monday but the trend stayed even after the lockdowns are but a memory.

[superclown2]

Its like people were searching for the brand, did not want to click on the add but did not find the brand on the search results and just typed the website and landed as direct.

Interesting if they can't find the brand in the SERPs. For many of the search terms I monitor in the UK the first four 'organic' results come from the four mega ad buyers in the ads above the SERPs (when you can find the SERPs under the googlespam that is).

[ichthyous]

Search ended -8% yesterday, direct -11%...with USA -19% on the day, AU -33%, DE -33%. UAE started low and ended up +133%...so some wild interday swings.

This morning search is -27%, direct is -64% and USA is starting out the day at -66%. It's hard to recover from these types of lows, but I am seeing that the 2nd half of the day is making up most of the loss (usually).

I have a lot of traffic from schools/universities and students in general, so when school is out for the summer my traffic drops a lot...some of this is the normal summer doldrums, but not all of it. My traffic is starting to approach the lows of last year for the first time in 2023.

In GSC both impressions and clicks are lower, but the gap is still very wide. Clicks are at a low point for the year, not a good start to the summer...but they are still double the clicks of last June. This is mostly because of the addition of a lot of new content, but also a lot of changes to my site and just better ranking. All of that is overcoming the page layout changes and adspam from Google:

[ibb.co ]

[mhansen]

Google saying the quiet part out loud, when asked about the reddit blackouts and it's affect on search results.

CEO Sundar Pichai chimed in to to say that users don’t want “blue links” as much as they want “more comprehensive answers.” That’s why they add the name of forum sites like Reddit to their searches, he said.

Thus, one of the reasons they added "Perspectives", which is really just a reprint of the Reddit and other forum answers, directly in Google search results. Keep those users in the walled garden, as well as any ad revenue they may have accumulated through that content on their own site.

Full article on CNBC [cnbc.com].

[seowebdn]

I have been trying to focus on creating quality content for my new website. However, it’s taking too long for the website to rank top (up to 6 months). Is there any way to shorten this? After the recent update, many of my articles have been deindexed. I hope I’m not the only one experiencing this situation.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld seowebdn

it’s taking too long for the website to rank top (up to 6 months).

It seems to take for ever to rank a brand new website these days, I certainly have not found any method for a national or international site but local / regional sites seem to rank well within a couple of months. Wordpress sites still seem to have a faster indexing advantage.

What I have definitely experienced is that a well-established site can rank a brand new single page fairly well, definitely top 20, within 1-2 months, complete new site sections on such a site can take much longer.

Altogether it seems to be very hit and miss for me with absolutely no consistency whatsoever.

[RedBar]

I have an unusual statistic this month. My in-site search function has doubled searches compared to its long-term monthly average which very rarely varied +/-20%.

[Meatboat]

I have an unusual statistic this month. My in-site search function has doubled searches compared to its long-term monthly average which very rarely varied +/-20%.

Could that be due to users coming in on pages not quite related to searches (or finding you by branded keywords), and then having to internally navigate to whatever they're looking for using your internal search? Perhaps the SERP instability is making users have to navigate using your internal search as opposed to finding your relevant pages on SERPs like they did before billboardification of the results?