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]

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 ]

ibb.co Screen-Shot-2023-06-27-at-10-28-20-AM hosted at ImgBB Image Screen-Shot-2023-06-27-at-10-28-20-AM hosted in ImgBB

[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?

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Meatboat

Perhaps the SERP instability is making users have to navigate using your internal search

Precisely my thought especially because specific popular widget keyword pages had, like many other non-USA businesses in my industry, have slowly slid down the SERPs.

[anubitez]

looks like Google owes some massive refunds, like 80%? worth billions.

serps up soon! tsunami will occur since they will need to make those refunds back fast, expect more a.d spam, high-paying customers ranking in irrelevant searches, and of course broken serps!

[RareBit]

@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.

This is because a lot of people now work from home on a Monday, so indulge in a bit of online shopping on works time instead of their own.

[Meatboat]

Precisely my thought especially because specific popular widget keyword pages had, like many other non-USA businesses in my industry, have slowly slid down the SERPs.

That is a clear indicator that the new SERPs are bunk; Google should realize it's running a search engine, not a social media platform. That said, might be a good time (for everyone reading this), that your internal search, and hell, your site CX, is as tight as it can be, especially for key products. Might be worth looking into AI integration in some capacity as well...

[ichthyous]

Search is down 34% today at noon. USA is -48% and UAE is -55%. That follows the same pattern for more than a week now, no matter the ranking. My rank shot higher yesterday, but traffic is lower.

CNBC had a story about Google being under pressure for the poor quality of its search now...the company was just downgraded partly for that reason. Ad revenue is moving elsewhere and people are displeased with the number of ads on the page...the world is catching on that organic search is dead at Google.

[christianz]

Google should realize it's running a search engine, not a social media platform

Actually, they are convinced at the highest level that they are running a TickTock now.

[BigKat]

CNBC had a story about Google being under pressure for the poor quality of its search now...

It's really an interesting story and underscores the huge disconnect between Google executives and what their users want. One would think the Google employee discussing negative user feedback because of too many ads and irrelevant results would strike a chord with executives. Not at all. Google executive's answer to this is to provide a perspectives tab, likely to soon be another page of refined results that will also get loaded up with ads. Sundar's condescending comment about users not wanting blue links not only misses the mark but ignores user complaints to tell those upset users what they want. No Sundar, open your eyes and ears and see that users don't want to be spammed with ads or have to click on tabs to filter out irrelevant results for such basic queries.

the company was just downgraded partly for that reason

With a full screen of ads already, appearing so desperate to make a buck, I don't see how Google's profits can continue growing. Google will lose users as a result of the ad spam and their continued ignorance when it comes to ignoring their user's complaints.

[Meatboat]

Actually, they are convinced at the highest level that they are running a TickTock now.

Agreed, especially with the outcry about poopy SERPs and results in general. We'll see how long perspectives lasts as users flock away to traditional search engines. But who knows, maybe Google will actually capture a younger demographic with a UI that they're more used to (ala social media).

But why wouldn't the target demographic that wants a more SM UI just use their preferred social platform for that? Google is trying to leverage their brand and massive amount of data/results to appeal to a group that isn't interested.

Oh well, "money talks and people listen."

[not2easy]

But why wouldn't the target demographic that wants a more SM UI just use their preferred social platform for that?

Again, AI is not ready for dependable applications. FB is having some troubles recently and a lot of unhappy users of their "marketing tools" - see this thread: [webmasterworld.com...]
There are other threads in in our Meta/FB forum [webmasterworld.com] discussing the same problems.

[EditorialGuy]

It's really an interesting story and underscores the huge disconnect between Google executives and what their users want.

Or, more accurately, between Google executives and what publishers, e-commerce vendors, etc. want. Users don't seem to mind Google's increasingly cluttered SERPs, if we're to believe the publicly available statistics about Google's market share.